Fresh off their series of sob stories about teens and young adults sentenced to life without parole for heinous murders, the New York Times laments the harshness of laws that disenfranchise convicted felons – including those still in jail.

The United States has the worst record in the democratic world when it comes to stripping convicted felons of the right to vote. Of the nearly five million people who were barred from participating in the last presidential election, for example, most, if not all, would have been free to vote if they had been citizens of any one of dozens of other nations. Many of those nations cherish the franchise so deeply that they let inmates vote from their prison cells.

The basis for the position taken by the Times? International standards and a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights. American constitutional law and history simply are not good enough for them. No doubt the editors of the Times are longing for the day when, as in this last termÂ’s Simmons case, a bare majority of Supreme Court justices remove another policy decision from the hands of the people on the basis of laws which are alien to our tradition but popular among the wwine-and-brie set in the tonier parts of NYC.

Posted by: Greg at 11:56 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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