Kennedy's Injustice

Ed Whelan on the Supreme Court's outrageous decision that the death penalty is an unconstitutional punishment for those who rape children:

Justice Kennedy's opinion in Kennedy v. Louisiana was entirely predictable, but that doesn't make it any less appalling as a matter of supposed constitutional law.

Kennedy's 36 pages of insufferable blather amount to little more than a declaration that the majority doesn't think that capital punishment is ever a fair penalty for the rape of a child-"no matter," as Justice Alito puts it in his dissent, "how young the child, no matter how many times the child is raped, no matter how many children the perpetrator rapes, no matter how sadistic the crime, no matter how much physical or psychological trauma is inflicted, and no matter how heinous the perpetrator's prior criminal record may be."