I am against the death penalty in general. I’m not passionately opposed to it, but I’m just not big on the idea. I think life in solitary is worse. But I will make exceptions. Men who take little children and do horrible things to them should be drawn and quartered. And before they breathe their last breath, you release the buzzards. And scorpions. And hungry jaguars.

Technically, that would be a natural death.

Yeah, so I’m a band-wagon-er or something, but go read The Bleat, please.

(via Seki)

I've thought for a long time that Capital Punishment needs to be replaced with something like Punishment by Nature.

You drop them about 75 miles from Fairbanks on December 21st or Reno on June 21st in shorts and a tee-shirt. If they make it back to civilzation alive, so be it.

My only concern with capital punishment is the possibility of getting it wrong.

But if I knew to a moral certainty that Joe-Bob there wilfully killed a little kid, I'd throw the switch myself. And growl. Just watch me.

I almost posted the link for this particular Bleat (permalink here, but I do Lileks so often, I figured folks might get tired of it. His notes on turning around and having his kid dissappear were ... spot on.

My mom says that if I'd had Justin from Day One (would that that were the case), I wouldn't move through malls and other heavily populated areas the way I do (which, according to her, is to say "keep up" and start walking).

In my defense, I actually check that he's keeping up, and I check often.

But yeah, Lileks description of not seeing your kid where you're supposed to see him... dead on.

At the same time (and here, I'm 'ahead' of my friends who have mostly toddlers and kindergarten age), we're getting to that point with Justin where I have to find that middle ground where you can give your kid some freedom and power and say "Hey, here's five bucks, whyn't you go to that stand over there and get us some sodas?" Because that's really cool for him, and to see him strut 50 yards over to the stand all by himself is great.

...and not at all stressful, especially since it would be very very uncool to watch him like hawk every second he was getting the soda.

(Or at least, to be seen watching.)