Jared Loughner slipped the surly bonds of reason and became a complete, blithering lunatic before gunning down a crowd of people at a congresswoman's town meeting.
Now, after a rigorous application of mind-altering chemicals, the government is noting signs that Loughner is returning to Earth after and extended absence:
Jared Loughner making 'progess' toward standing trial, judge says - latimes.com: "Excerpts of the mental health reports read by the judge painted a picture of a much-improved defendant, who was deemed incompetent to stand trial in May.
Loughner has undergone two four-month commitments for treatment, during which his attorneys have waged a legal battle to spare him from being medicated against his will with drugs they say could harm or kill him.
Loughner could face the death penalty if convicted. "
It's one of the long-standing mysteries of our advanced, compassionate society: the legal establishment takes a raving lunatic, sedates and subjects him to lengthy, intense "treatments," and in the end they render him sufficient docile that he can be compassionately executed.
He cannot be exonerated in any case, even if his mental state was such that he was not able to control his actions. He either must remain in confinement as the state works to make him "competent" for execution, or he is found "competent" and put to death.
The nicety of making the man "competent" seems overwrought, if there is no alternative but death while in state confinement. The Supreme Court at some point has found it unconstitutional -- at least at one time -- to execute and insane person, one who's not able to aid in his own defense. That's a standard that, no doubt, will soon be revised, but in the interim we're put through the lunacy and torment of watching the system apply its entire resources in the service of killing an insane individual.
This squeamishness will be put to rest, along with previous imperatives like the mandate of due process of law before the government executes alleged terrorists. The Obama regime has already established the bipartisan precedent that the president, on his word alone, has unlimited power to decree that citizens must die.
Is it such a stretch that the executive, at some point, will claim the power to eliminate other inconvenient beings from our midst?
What better case to establish this precedent than that of a deranged killer?
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