Supreme Court justices Stephen Breyer and Ruth Bader Ginsburg have suggested that the death penalty may be unconstitutional, violating the Eighth Amendment.  The Eighth Amendment says that the U.S. may not impose cruel or unusual punishments.

Now, keep in mind, the death penalty has been constitutional since our country was formed, and no courts have had a trouble with it since.  Has that been an oversight?  But now, more than 200 years later, Breyer thinks it is no longer constitutional.

And I think he's right!  If you look closely at an original copy of the Constitution, you will see that some of the text is written in darker ink than other text.  I think the founders were trying to tell us that the text written in slightly lighter ink was binding for only a period of time – say, 200 years – and no more.  If you look at the Eighth Amendment, you will see the "un" in unusual written in unusually light ink, which means that the government is prohibited from not only unusual punishments, but also, eventually, even usual ones as well.

Additionally:

Breyer wrote that he believed it was "highly likely that the death penalty violates the Eighth Amendment" and called for the court to address that "basic question." He suggested that the decline of the death penalty made it an "unusual" punishment that, for the past 40 years, has been "imposed arbitrarily."

So what Breyer is saying is that the death penalty was formerly not cruel and usual, but now, with the decline in executions, has become cruel and unusual.  If states speeded up the execution process, and the death penalty became more usual, do you think Breyer would be more satisfied?

Breyer cited studies that suggested that individuals who murdered white victims were more likely to receive the death penalty, and said that geography also played a major role in who is put to death.

Uh-oh!  We're not executing enough killers of black people!  As we know, 93% of killers of black people are black, so Breyer thinks we are doing a grave injustice by not executing enough black killers.  Could that be solved by the Court requiring New York and California to reinstate the death penalty?  Are liberal states racist for refusing to execute killers of black people?

And what about imprisonment in general?  Illegal aliens are much more likely to be imprisoned than U.S. citizens, based on their percentage of the population (they are 25% of the prison population).  Does that make imprisonment arbitrary, and should all prisons be emptied?  Or should we arrest enough citizens (preferably white people) on trumped up charges and jail them until the percentages work out right?

He said that after "considering thousands of death penalty cases and last-minute petitions" in more than 20 years on the bench, there were "discrepancies for which I can find no rational explanations." He also said that lengthy delays in death penalty cases, during which death row inmates are likely kept in solitary confinement, were problematic and raised constitutional issues.

I agree.  Prisoners should be given one avenue of appeal only for all their objections.  It should be processed immediately after trial, and then they should be executed quickly if they lose.  If the Supreme Court limited appeals and required immediate resolution, this problem would be solved.

But by the way...what do disparity in circumstances and delays in execution have to do with the "cruel and unusual" clause of the Constitution?  Unless you see a shadow of a penumbra from this phrase that touches on prison stays and absolute statistical distribution of executions by race, geography, and circumstance, there is no connection.

But we know that the Constitution is a changeable thing; so how long do you think before we have to read it in Spanish?  "Nosotros, la gente..."

This article was produced by NewsMachete.com, the conservative news site.