and they called it humane . . .

So, yet another botched lethal injection . . .

The issue at stake has nothing to do with capital punishment. Two hours is a long time. Longer than 'hanging by the neck until dead.' Longer even than fire, as rare as that may have been. Certainly longer than a Roman criminal would have lasted in the Colosseum. It's even longer than having your insides cut into a blood eagle by savage worshipers of Odin . . . The point is there are few societies in a history awash in cruelty who tortured their condemned for two hours before they expired.

And yet this, and this alone, is what passes the test of 'cruel and unusual'? How is this possibly better than the firing squad, or the noose, or the guillotine? Even that other insane twentieth-century science project (or better still, billboard) of death, the electric chair, is better than that.

What is it about lethal injection that appeals to the modern American? The technological distance imposed by the drug? The clinical nature of it mirroring the blindness and dispassion of justice? Perhaps the fact that it is administered by doctors rather than executioners (as fine as that distinction may be becoming)?

It's certainly part of a broader trend of general callousness and sentimentality in the administration of justice. Only a sentimentalist could hold that life in a modern prison without parole is the merciful option; only one utterly callous to every urge of humanity could view the universal prevalence of sexual assault of the worst description behind prison walls with a smirk and smile. Only a sentimentalist could believe that in general rehabilitation is possible after throwing minor offenders in with the worst and most hardened of felons to live and learn (and be assaulted and become addicted) for two, three, four, ten years. Only the most callous and despicable of libertarians could think that it possibly a good idea to give profit-seeking enterprises a financial stake in expanding the number and duration of incarcerations, and to actually advise that the state hand over what is arguably the most fundamental of its responsibilities into the hands of CFOs and consultants.

I have no doubt that coming centuries will remember us, if at all, with just a sad shake of the head . . . perhaps, we will be remembered for more than our cupidity and cruelty, but remove those two elements, and what is left?