Submitted by George Liebmann, May 14, 2007 09:15

One can see the point of the death penalty for some crimes, murder of prison guards, for example, while opposing the federal death penalty. Disputed moral and social issues, like abortion, gay rights, and the death penalty, should be left to the states, since mores differ in different parts of the country. New York's prosecutors and juries have not in recent times been enthusiastic about the death penalty. It is revealing that the challenged federal prosecutor obtained it in only one of twelve cases in which she sought it. The cases in which she was unsuccessful constitute a tremendous waste of prosecutorial resources, and demonstrate flawed judgment.

Few things in present politics are more revolting than the Bush administration's disregard for federalism on this issue and on medical marijuana and assisted suicide, even as it properly seeks through judicial appointments to return more abortion-related issues to state determination and to oppose exanded federal 'hate crimes jurisdiction. The Sun's quarrel, and that of the Bush administration, is with the law as traditionally understood--when the ordinary criminal law was a state function, and when policing and punishment were under the decentralized control of local officials, not the all-too-easily politicized federal prosecutors, none of them elected and all of them appointed and removable by one man

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