60 Minutes makes the case for the death penalty

Leslie Stahl had a 30+ minute piece on last Sunday's 60 Minutes showing how California's gangs are run out of prison by the imprisoned "generals." The story focused extensively on the "Nuestra Familia" gang, or "Our Family" as Ms. Stahl so helpfully translated. The jist of the story was that it was pathetically easy for arrested "generals" often times serving life sentences at California's most secure prison, Pelican Bay, to communicate to the "troops" on the outside and run their criminal enterprises even from the most secure and isolated lockdown prison.

I doubt Ms. Stahl realizes that she just made the most compelling pragmatic argument for the death penalty out there. The typical liberal mantra is that the death penalty doesn't deter anyone and locking the perp up in jail forever, with no possibility for parole, is just as good as killing him. Well la ti da, it doesn't appear so in this case now does it?

The interesting part of the piece, to me, was the proposed "solution" - disperse the "generals" throughout the county in the Federal prison system. What a great idea! Give the generals more contact with potential recruits! Allow them to easily expand beyond California! The one idea that never came up was kill the SOBs.