Today's Lesson in Politics

One would think the Christian conservative-lead right would have enough to worry about. What with the shooting of innocent Italians in Iraq (and equally innocent Iraqis on a daily basis), the fight to destroy Social Security, the trials of Delay's money launderers and here in Texas the shameful attempts to cheat millions of children out of quality education (so busy they over-looked 100 million in federal funds meant for poor children's healthcare and lost rights to the money).

But no, not our dear friends in the GOP. Fearful of allowing one branch of the government to perform as the constitution instructs (as a system of checks and balances), the right has started a rallying call, circling the wagons and informing the righteous of the need to weed out compromise-minded justices from the list of possible replacements for Chief Reinquist, should he retire. This in response to the latest Supreme Court ruling, striking down the death penalty for juveniles. Seems conservatives are mad at Justice Kennedy for writing the majority opinion, which concludes that murdering children violates the constitutional restriction against cruel and unusual punishment. What's even worse, he used the court of world opinion as a basis for his decision. Nothing pisses off the conservative right more than being told we shouldn't kill kids because we are the only country in the world to do so. F**k France and all those countries like them, we wanna kill!

You gotta love the inconsistency of the right. Death penalty good, abortion bad. 16 year-olds are old enough to know murder is wrong and therefore should be put to death, but not old enough to choose to have a legal abortion without parental consent. One day a 16 year-old will be put to death for ending a pregnancy and the right will sing Hallelujah and pronounce it justice, American-style. Is this a great country, or what?