… why the primaries are important, check out this New York Times article on today’s Supreme Court session.

The issue at hand is whether the current “three drug” system of lethal injection constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Oral arguments gave Antonin Scalia more opportunities to taunt those on death row. He does this because he thinks the argument is about murderers. It’s not. It’s about us.

The fact that ours is the only western nation to still execute people speaks volumes about how far the United States has fallen from the leadership of the civilized world. The fact that so many people have been freed – and continue to be freed – from our death rows, because they have been convicted on flawed evidence, speaks other volumes about they way in which justice is (or isn’t) meted out in this nation.

Our death houses speak further volumes about why we have a president who orders torture and then defends it. It speaks to why people would want to attack our nation in the first place.

Pity Antonin Scalia, not because you have sympathy for murderers, but because we as a nation could have put such a weak conscience at the top of our judicial pyramid.