Monday, May 02, 2005 Editorial Mitt's morality play There is no way Governor Mitt Romney's "gold standard" death penalty bill is going anywhere but down, hard, in the Massachusetts Legislature. The governor, with his eye on 2008, is staging a little morality play for the GOP faithful in which the Republican, somehow elected governor of the bluest state in the Union, tries to restore the death penalty to its flabby justice system. Claims that the law is based on science don't disguise the reality that no government can ever be certain enough of itself to take a life. Of course, once the Democrats in the Legislature reject his plan, professing their unwillingness to play God in matters of life and death, Governor Romney can turn to the rest of the country and say "Behold, they are so sunk in moral relativism, they refuse to kill their heinous criminals!" And the choir says "Hallelujah for the culture of life" and maybe even nominates him for president. It's naked political pandering, dressed in a flimsy negligee of scientific legalism.