Look it up, Ann Coulter, and maybe you can discuss it at your next council meeting with GOProud:
"Punishments I know are necessary, and I would provide them, strict and inflexible, but proportioned to the crime.
Death might be inflicted for murther and perhaps for treason if you would take out of the description of treason all crimes which are not such in their nature.
Rape, buggery etc. -- punish by castration.
All other crimes by working on high roads, rivers, gallies etc. a certain time proportioned to the offence. But as this would be no punishment or change of condition to slaves (me miserum!) let them be sent to other countries.
By these means we should be freed from the wickedness of the latter, and the former would be living monuments of public vengeance. Laws thus proportionate and mild should never be dispensed with."
-- Thomas Jefferson to Edmund Pendleton, August 26, 1776
-- Thomas Jefferson to Edmund Pendleton, August 26, 1776
