I am running for the United States Senate because I believe that public service is for the purpose of helping our fellow citizens realize improvement in their lives.  I believe that a government that treats its citizens with fairness, equality and respect, brings peace and justice to its citizens.  In this framework, killing in retribution for killing has no place.  It is in the community of sharing each other's burdens that we bridge the human chasm we cannot comprehend.

Thus, I cannot condone a system that perpetuates the pain from which sprang the punishment.  A civilized society does not abide barbarism to ease its pain.  It is not justice for me. Even when those who represent me and make the laws say that it is,  I say that the people have said, "Then if this is justice, it must not perpetuate the cruelty from which it has sprung."  It must neither torment its recipients nor its administrators.

That very sound and appealing argument, it should be noted, poses a challenge not just to the dea