Justice on the Evergreen Tip

A note from the northwest corner comes via The Hill:

A bipartisan group of Washington state legislators on Monday said they would introduce new measures to end the state’s death penalty.

Attorney General Bob Ferguson (D) and Republicans and Democrats from both chambers of the state legislature said capital punishment had become too costly, and that there is little evidence that the death penalty deters any crimes. State Sen. Mark Miloscia (R) will introduce legislation in the Republican-led Senate, while state Rep. Tina Orwall (D) will carry the bill in the Democratic-led House.

“As a means of effective punishment, the death penalty is outdated,” state Sen. Maureen Walsh (R) said in a statement released by Ferguson’s office. “Not only is life-without-parole more cost-effective, it also offers the certainty that is an essential element of justice.”

Both Gov. Jay Inslee (D) and former Attorney General Rob McKenna (R), who lost to Inslee in the 2014 race for governor, back the proposal.

(Wilson)

Appalling

There is a reason Amanda Marcotte is so angry:

There’s been a major boneheaded failure already in these nascent attempts at pretending to have “compassion” for the migrant children and pretending that the desire to send them back is borne out of this “compassion”. Adam Kwasman is one of those frothing-at-the-mouth anti-immigrant state legislators in Arizona—naturally, he’s also running for Congress—and he was trying to strike the “I just care so much about these kids!” pose by describing what he said was a bus full of migrant children that he believed were afraid.

In pure politician bullshit mode, Kwasman said, “I was actually able to see some of the children in the buses. The fear on their faces …. This is not compassion.” He went on to imply that the Obama administration is somehow failing at “border security” and that being stricter about it in some abstract way would prevent the “sad” kids, presumably by allowing them to die quietly in the desert instead of make it across the border. Compassion!

There is, of course, a punch line. And do you really want to know?

Really?