The most high-profile execution in the last few years took place today at 12:01 AM, Pacific time. It has given me reason to once again strongly consider and internally defend my position on the death penalty. I'd like to share with you my thoughts.

Stanley "Tookie" Williams was a thug. He founded the Crips street gang. I don't question that, at the time of his arrest and conviction, he was a real prick. A bad dude. I don't know enough about his case to say convincingly that he was innocent of the murder charges that killed him today. I do know that there were no witnesses or informants in his case that didn't get some sort of an incentive deal from the prosecution. That makes me question the results.

Whether he killed anyone or not, however, the state has no place killing him. I have reasons for feeling this way that are completely independent of his guilt or innocence.

1. It's more expensive, from beginning to end, to execute someone instead of imprisoning him for life. Conservatives should respect this, since money is one of the few non-English languages they speak.


2. It's not a deterrent. States that do not have the death penalty have lower than average murder rates, and states with the death penalty have higher than average murder rates. Again, law-and-order conservatives should respect the efficacy of true "life imprisonment" versus a politically controversial form of punishment that doesn't appear to work outside of snuffing someone out.


3. For religious folks, there are no major religions that uniformly support the death penalty (the link I've provided says that the Church of Latter-Day Saints supports retention of the death penalty, but their own Standing Council says otherwise). And don't even talk to me about the death penalty if you oppose legalized abortion.


4. It's a frightening expression of the power and position of the government. If the mother of a murdered child and the person who killed that child are left alone in a room, and the mother kills that person out of rage and a sense of vengeance, I can't fault that. I have no way of understanding the need for balance that is born out of losing a loved one to a capital crime; it's never happened to me. But for the State to say, "don't worry, we'll take care of him for you" is just plain creepy. Hot-blooded vengeance perpretated by a survivor is understandable, if not justifiable. Cold-blooded execution perpetrated by the State on behalf of that survivor is bloodlust, period.


5. (this could be 4A) It doesn't make sense. Killing someone who killed someone else is about as restorative as giving a recovering alcoholic a shot of whiskey to ease the withdrawal symptoms.

The state of Kansas has been making a fair ass of itself lately by mandating the inclusion of "intelligent design" subject matter in science classes. You can believe what you want, and you can have all the faith you feel you need; this is America, and that is your right. But religion isn't science. Faith does not imply fact. Faith, actually, flourishes in a realm completely separate from fact; faith is acceptance of an idea with no proof or solid evidence. That's what makes faith so powerful and comforting to those who have it.

The horribly named, intentionally misleading "intelligent design" (or ID) argues that life is too complex to have developed haphazardly via evolution. "Irreducibly complex" is the 25-cent phrase. It means that if you consider the eyeball, there's no way it could have developed slowly over time because to remove one small component of it makes it completely useless as an eyeball.

This is a bad argument, and scientifically disproven by a number of actual professionals in the field (such as The Digital Evolution Laboratory at Michigan State University). I'm not here to break it down in detail. I want to highlight the self-defeating behavior of a couple of ID-ers from Kansas.

Paul Mirecki, a professor at the University of Kansas, had planned on introducing a class this coming semester entitled "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism, and Other Religious Mythologies." This was done in response to the state school board shoehorning ID into science curricula. Now, this is a smart-alecky thing to do on Mirecki's part. I don't deny that. But the offense taken to the terminology indicates that proponents of ID know (somewhere in their heart of hearts) that ID is a religious topic, not a scientific one. When it gets put in the Religious Studies department, they get all worked up and make the silly claim that it's an insult to call ID "religion."

Prof. Mirecki decided, after some bad press locally, to withdraw the course from the spring timetable. It's his prerogative; I would have liked to take that class, but it's up to him as the professor to offer or pull the course. And you would think, short of some diehards who want to argue about it, that this would put the matter to bed. There were, however, at least two diehards who really wanted to pick a fight about it.

Mirecki was treated and released from Lawrence (Kansas) Memorial Hospital late on Monday, after being accosted by two men and beaten along the roadside. The men tailgated his car early on Monday morning, and after Mirecki pulled over to let them pass, they pulled up behind him and got out of the truck. He (foolishly, to his own admission) followed suit, and was promptly beaten about the head, face and shoulders. His account indicates that they knew who he was, and shouted something accusatory about his previous course offerings.

So, what, they were defending their turf? Trying to show dominance?

Mirecki should be glad he still has both nuts.

Way to go, ID. You've attracted quite a following.