A Green Bay-area legislator wants the state to ask the citizens of Wisconsin whether the death penalty should be reinstated. (via Althouse)

My initial thought on reinstatement should be, "Yes, but only under extremely rare conditions for particularly heinous crimes." For some reason, it's not. I don't believe in capital punishment. I am fully aware that some people deserve to die. I weep not for those who have been executed in the past. I don't feel bad when a bad guy gets his due. I have had a vacarious pleasure sensation when I heard a murderer has been executed. I'm just saying that the government should not deliberately be killing people it already has imprisoned. Lock them up and throw away the key, fine, just don't kill anyone who is already locked up. Hire extra guards, build more prisons, stick the prisoner in a super-max prison cell for 23 hours per day, have a nice nursing home with iron bars on the windows and doors for doddering old perverts and murderers, but do not become murderers ourselves. We do not have the right.

I know it costs more and I complain about taxes, but some things are worth the money to avoid, like changing my own oil or making my own chocolate turtles. Also let me be clear that I make a distinction between murder and killing. Deaths which occur in a military operation are not murder and do not constitute capital punishment. I'm talking about taking someone who will or should never be outside of a prison again, strapping them to a table and stopping their heart with a lethal injection. This retroactive abortion is no more right than the other kind and for all the same reasons. I am opposed to both.

My thought on whether there should be a referendum is, "Yes, every four years."