Berkshire Eagle
  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.