Why do you build me up (build me up) Blogwatcher, baby

Just to let me down (let me down) and mess me around…

Body and Soul: Does executing murderers comfort victims’ families? I don’t know. But I do know that a “therapeutic” understanding of capital punishment is exactly the sort of thing that Avery Cardinal Dulles warned (scroll down to Cardinal Dulles’s response) would happen as democratic societies maintained execution without an overarching belief that state justice is ordained by God. Cardinal Dulles argued that democratic societies are liable to make punishment about us, about our needs for comfort and vengeance, and not about restoring justice. I don’t find his argument entirely convincing as a case for eliminating the death penalty (here’s what I think is my biggest post on the death penalty), nor do I think what you might call the “subjectivist” understanding of the death penalty is peculiar to democratic societies, but I do think his argument may help explain the belief that execution provides “closure.”

Kesher Talk: Jewish tribute to Martin Luther King.

The Poor Man: Give a poor man nonfiction reading recommendations! (Link via Barlow.)

Regions of Mind: What could be wrong with an emergency drought relief bill? Honey, never underestimate Congress….