INSTAPUNDIT'S HYPOCRISY IS "RIDICULOUS ON ITS FACE"

ANDREW C. McCARTHY, NRO:

The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments do not distinguish between the lives of capital murderers and the lives of other persons. They don't mention "criminal" and "civil" distinctions. In this context, they command simply that no person shall be deprived of "life...without due process of law."

There is no reason in the text of the Constitution to believe that "due process of law" should have a different meaning depending on whether the life to be taken by state action is that of a convicted criminal or that of some other person. Complementing that textual consideration are the equities involved. Given the absence of any apparent reason for having one set of due process requirements for murderers and another set for everyone else, if society nevertheless decides to have different requirements, why in the world would we think the murderers should get the better process? Such a notion is ridiculous on its face.

This HYPOCRITICAL position - which affords more rights to convicted murderers than to Terri - is EXACTLY "INSTAPUNDIT" Glenn Reynolds' position. And I say it stinks.

BUT IT'S EVEN WORSE: because Glenn Reynolds BELIEVES that because of "inevitable caprice and mistake" in the judicial system, the death penalty (while abstractly just) can never be 100% correct and that therefore it is inevitable that innocent people might be wrongly put to death, and that therefore to avoid this inevitability no one convicted of any crime should ever be put to death. (YUP: gun-toting-Glenn opposes the death penalty.)

SO GLENN IS DOUBLY HYPOCRITCAL, AND BOTH TIMES - ON BOTH LEVELS - HE FAVORS MURDERERS!

First, Glenn argues that judicial reviews are inadequate for murderers, but then argues that judicial reviews were adequate for Terri!

Second, Glenn argues that because death is irreversible and mistake is inevitable, no one should be subject to death as a penalty which is ordered by any court of law, but if death is ordered by a court of law in a civil case, then it's OKAY.

In other words, Reynolds believes that convicted murderers should NEVER get the death penalty because the CRIMINAL judicial system is imperfect, but that the judicial system is adequate in deciding CIVIL matters of life of death.

Well, Professor, since the THRESHOLD FOR EVIDENCE IS LOWER IN CIVIL CASES THAN IN CRIMINAL CASES - (hearsay is often allowed - as it was in the Schiavo case, and you can't plead the 5th, for example) - IT MEANS THAT THE LIKELIHOOD OF "CAPRICE AND MISTAKE" IS ACTUALLY HIGHER IN CIVIL CASES THAN IN CRIMINAL CASES - NOT LOWER.

Which means that when it comes to trying to avoid irreversible damage to a plaintiff that Glenn Reynolds has it exactly BACKWARDS on this issue: Reynolds blithely accepts too little and too few Due Process protections for Terri, and simultaneously grants way too much for convicted murderers. THIS IS PURE HYPOCRISY.

Which puts Reynolds squarely in the pathetic Left-wing/pro-death/pro--murderer crowd. YUP: to me - except for his support for the GWOT and the 2nd Amendment, Reynolds is an old-fashioned Leftie through and through. Which, after all, is what Glenn himself always said he was whenever others called him a conservative just because he was a hawk. Well, the Schiavo case PROVES he was right: Reynolds is a bleeding-heart liberal who would give more rights to convicted murderers than to Terri.

SEE MORE BELOW - HERE and HERE.