One Outrage, One Weird Item

Once again, the US Supreme Court is to hear a case of a schizophrenic on death row. America's death rows are filled with schizophrenics and other mentally-ill. SCOTUS ruled about 20 years ago that it was unconstitutional to put them to death, but left the details of defining "insanity" and "competent" to the states. Nice work. Bottom line: people should be punished for their crimes, sane or not. But to execute the mentally-ill goes way beyond the standard of cruel and unusual punishment to completely outrageous and inhumane. I wonder what TAC thinks of matters like these. Knowing them, they'd want the patient medicated into sanity, so that they can then be executed and then use it as an object lesson for outpatient commitment for everyone else. OK, I'm being cynical. But, hell, Texas and Arkansas have executed mentally-ill people in recent years. Anyway, this is one of those messes that the supremes should clean up. Bet they don't.

In other news, a British court has found Intel liable for causing an employee's depression and subsequent unemployment for forcing her to work 20 hours and more of overtime each week during a cost-cutting spree. Serves them right.