Sunday, June 12, 2005

Is Relying on Foreign Law Impeachable?

Wow. I'm linking to an article by Phyllis Schlafly. That's a first for me.

In the May 2005 issue of The Phyllis Schlafly Report, poor little Phyllis, too old now to be barefoot and pregnant the way God intended, instead turns her attention to "the latest outrage by the U.S. Supreme Court" — the ruling in Roper v. Simmons in which Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority, found that it is "cruel and unusual punishment" (within the meaning of the 8th Amendment) to execute a criminal who was a minor at the time the crime was committed.

Schlafly's greatest dismay is reserved for the fact that Kennedy makes reference to something outside the United States of America. Since 1989, when the U.S. Supreme Court last upheld it, the juvenile death penalty has been abolished in Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria, Congo, and the People's Republic of China — all nations known for their sterling record of humane treatment of criminals. Kennedy noted this trend in the reasoning for his decision that in 2005 execution of juveniles constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment."

How dare Tony Kennedy even acknowledge the existence of the outside world?! For that matter, how dare that well-known liberal Thomas Jefferson refer to the outside world in the Declaration of Independence:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people [the United States] to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another [Britain], and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God [that's a Deist reference, not a Christian reference] entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Clearly we need to retroactively impeach President Jefferson.