Who does Canada think it is?

Well, that's a difficult one.
I'm not sure about your claim that over half of your prisoners are immigrants.
A hugely disproportionate number happen to be black, a fact that is recognized by the black community, which calls for systemic changes to change this pattern. (I don't want to get into this one, because it's so complicated and so highly charged an issue.)
Three percent of black males were sentenced to prison in 2006; corresponding figures were 1.2 percent of Hispanics and 0.49 percent of white people.
BTW, while you do have a high immigration rate in absolute numbers (roughly 1 million per year), Canada's per capita rate is far higher, since we, with only a tenth of your population, bring in roughly 250,000, the majority of them peaceful types from Asia. (Not all are peaceful, however ... and we have had some trouble with triad gangs.)
In fact, we have the highest per capita rate of immigration in the world.

Yes, but the fact remains that only a little over 0.1 percent of our population is currently incarcerated.
This figure shows a slight upward trend from recent years, but still, a 17 percent reduction from the figures of a decade ago.
110 of our citizens per 100,000 are in prison, while 738 of 100,000 American adults are in prison. (The discrepancy is if anything slightly higher than it looks, since our figures include juvenile prisoners and yours do not.)

That's a pittance, phe. Of course, we have to update our prisons and occasionally build new ones. But our rate of incarceration is comparatively low.

That corner of Toronto is a deeply troubled place, phe, and you are right to point it out.
That said, our crime rate is low and falling over the long term.
Unless there is an unaccountable and very large increase in crime, we will only need to build new prisons as old ones fall into disrepair and our population increases.

Didn't it?

No.

You havn't explained to me what right the man in question had to kill the other man. It wasn't self defence.
If the first man were then to be killed in punishment, he would have got as good as he gave.

It appears, though as there has been no trial this has not been adjudged so, that the defendant committed murder and so had no right to kill the victim.

Yes, if the murderer were to be killed in punishment, he would have got as good as he gave. As you acknowledge, that's not killing in self-defense, that's killing as vengeance.

Rubi--responding to the very long posts altogether, given that you were able to stay up later than I was last night and get earlier as well. Main point is that I have a good internet blog buddy living in Shanghai who looks 'postively' at the 'Iraq War spreading democracy' business, he even refers to it as WWIV and has written a brilliant guidebook to Shanghai, as well as a few years ago another important book on Georges Bataille. But...I just like him and his exquisite writing, and is one of the few internet people I would love to meet (my experience hasn't been wonderful with that, having liked only one girl of a number of people I'd talked to on the net, and I never ever try to get sex over the internet, but that could be because in NYC it is simply not difficult to come by for me), but the curious thing is that, while true that is vaguely possible democratization might spread if there's time, on balance it simply doesn't equal the gross stupidity of pretending you were going after your attacker (who was in Iraq only for a day or two, it seems, Mistah Bin Laden finding Mistah Hussein a bit too profligate with his hundreds of irreligious whores, against which 10 or 12 wives living in caves seemed relatively Dale Evans/Roy Rogers/Pat Robertson...). This is what you rightly call 'misguided', and while it is not impossible that good results won't come from out-and-out lies and betrayals non-stop such as Cheney and Bush and Rummy shamelessly indulged in, that is still not my point. And even though I've been a Clinton suppiorter, Obama has definitely been much the best on focussing on the obvious, which has been all through these years death to all logic--he not only voted against the Iraq War, but some 6 months ago did speak about how it might be necessary to become quite aggressive in Waziristan whether or not the then-Musharraf (and this one is even more placating with the tribes) Regime agreed to it. Bush knows all this, but wouldn't do it. The world has changed, not just the U.S., as a result of this supreme insult to intelligence that the Iraq War has been.

Everybody who keeps up with foreign affairs knows of the NIE that strongly warns of the re-sterngthening of the true Al Qaida, not the one that was spawned in Iraq and only pays lip service to brotherhood with Bin Laden's outfit, etc. Now, if this has happened, and the greater likelihood of attacks inspired and masterminded by Al Qaida in Pakistan/Waziristan emerges in the form of results, 'democracy-building' in the Middle East, even if it has positive results after many hundreds of thousands of deaths and otherwise ruined lives--still would come across as a sort of 'Violent Peace Corps', given that is, of course, likely that not addressing and very single-mindedly the matter of the real threat in Pakistan/Waziristan will result in more AQ attacks.

Obviously, I am not disagreeing with you, I think I am just not able under any circumstances to look at the Iraq War as positive, because it just was never a priority. The priority, that being the attackers now comfortably ensconced in Cave Dust and lack of deodorant, shows the U.S. foreign policy at its flimsiest. The CIA more recently has been saying more about the complete lack of a plan.

The rest of the things you say may have a lot of merit, and I see them as going along with the external worldview of other nations. Naturally, in having experienced 9/11 up close, I simply cannot get out of my head how Bin Laden was allowed to escape at Torah Borah, and since then, Bush has had power for many years, and what is the net result of trying to get Osama Bin Laden? well, it's getting Saddam Hussein, and asking the world to accept that as a consolation prize. That Bush will leave office without having caught Bin Laden is the most embarrassing imaginable thing, but given his Christian zeal and his obvious personal stupidity, he won't even think of that. He paid little attention to Katrina such that even McCain had to rail against him in New Orleans recently.

Do agree that McCain as 'Bush Sequel' is unlikely. McCain's history as a man of character does say something. Bush is not a man of character, even though he ran on that platform.

But, while the importance of Israel/Palestine cannot be minimized, that too is not solved by going to countries that are evil and yet have not attacked you (and not even Kuwait for a decade or so).

I would imagine that I won't be convinced of anybody's foreign policy on any country, nor care what the U.S.'s reputation is, until there has been some real engagement and the obviously-needed results from Pakistan. The rest is all very important, but by comparison, beside the point--even if one sees only that all the military engagement in the region is supposed to have become overt because of 9/11. And even John Kerry, a weak candidate, forced Bush in his 'successful debates' (quotes because who cares? Bush really beat him in the debates as well, Kerry just not tough enough to pull it off) to admit that Saddam Hussein had not had anything to do with 9/11, or rather, at least that it was Bin Laden's people who executed this. That rotten-egg combination--saying Iraq was allied with Al Qaeda (it was not AT ALL) and that Iraq definitely had WMD--is something anyone with concentration is not going to forget, no matter how many times McCain tells us that's old hat, and it is also not very impressive that he cannot keep Syria and Iran straight from either his ass or a hole in the ground, in no particular order.

Some other arguments against the the death penalty:

It is actually more expensive due to court an legal costs for multiple appeals at several levels of jurisdiction, to execute someone, rather than warehouse them for the rest of their life, at around $60,000. per year.

Some people have fantasies of going out in a blaze of glory, to them life imprisonment is a greater deterrent than the death penalty.

There are quite a few cases of it being imposed on people mistakenly, the system likes to find a person to blame, and then considers it's work to be done. Sometimes it blames the wrong person.

Even Russia is in this matter more progressive than the US, they have not carried out (at least publicly) any executions since joining the Council of Europe twelve years ago.

I have never understood that Bin Laden was in Iraq at all. There was some Al Qaeda operative ... Atta, perhaps?
I agree that the Iraq war was the grossest stupidity that the American government has perpetrated in my lifetime.
I agree that Obama has been the most prescient leading politician with respect to the Iraq venture.
I don't blame Bush for Bin Laden's escape, BTW. You seem to assume that any reasonable effort would have caught him in the vast mountain ranges of Afghanistan. But we can't even be sure if we knew at any time where he really was. It was guesswork. And even if we find the right haystack, needles are small.
You are right to say ventures outside Israel and the Palestinian territories do nothing to promote a solution within them. But a great deal is going on in Israel and the Palestinian territories, a good deal of it at the instigation of Bush & Co. We can only wish them well on that one.
Pakistan is a whole other chapter. I think it's far too soon, however, to worry about fundamentalists actually taking over the government ... and accordingly, I think worries about the Pakistani bomb being controlled by fundies are currently overblown. And that's my main concern with Pakistan.
But stranger things have happened ...
Anyway, your post has set out so many axes for discussion that one couldn't address it at anything much short of book-length.
And I don't have that much to say, or the time to say it.

A crucial point.
Funny how we've only seen it brought up at this point.
Tnx., Kal.

I think Bin Laden may have met with Hussein once, but I'm not sure, what I am thinking of was in Lawrence Wright's 'The Looming Tower.' They did not find each other of any use, whether or not they spent time together in Baghdad.

I don't 'seem to assume that any reasonable effort would have...' How could I even get to that point of what a reasonable effort would turn up, given that there hasn't been one? It definitely seemed easy enough to the Bushies to go do the Iraq number and concentrate enormous effort, manpower and billions into it. The fact is, right after 9/11, Bin Laden's capture was a priority, and after that, it wasn't. Bush even said as much. However, any discussion of the U.S.'s standing in the world is not even in question if Bush is not himself, along with his cronyist government expected to take responsibility for it. But that's enough, I guess. Just that Obama is smart about this, Bush is not and never cared to be, had 'gut feeling', that thing you definitely don't get from over-education by the way, or you learn not to rely on it too profoundly; and over-education is not something I'd accuse Bush of having acquired.

From a UK perspective the US acceptance of the death penalty seems amazing. After all it is a defining characteristic of regimes like Iran and China, and the USA does itself no favours inviting comparisons with such regimes.

In Britain we certainly have our "nothing is too bad for these people" lobby who would advocate using the death penalty for terrorists, paedophiles, mass murderers, traitors, rapists, anti-social elements, communists, homosexuals, anyone else they don't like. But thankfully more moderate views have prevailed. "Thou shalt not kill" is a fundamental right enshrined in our ethical code and our laws, and people don't lose this right for any reason. That the state must not kill people through a judicial process open to mistakes and abuse is pretty generally accepted in Britain. And the UK could not deport someone to a country including the USA if we believed they would be executed. Were our government to try to do this the appropriate British national court would intervene, and if necessary it would go to the European Court.

Presumably in time the international community will put pressure on the USA to uphold fundamental human rights and abolish the death peanalty. If the USA did not have the economic clout it does it would have happened long ago. But sooner or later it will happen.

Do unto other as you would have them do unto you - I much prefer that one to your eye for an eye 'philosophy'.

No person has the right to take the life of another. Including the state. Certainly there is a school of thought that believes if a person rejects their duty to uphold human life as sacred (i.e. not commit murder) they have rescinded their right to life. However, someone then has to take the murderer's life because the victim of the murder is not, by definition, around to do so. so murder (or killing at any rate) is made legal for some and not others. I don't agree with that, for a start.

My feeling is that killing in vengence for murder is not as harsh a punishment as life imprisonment and that it is inhumane to lock up a person for years on end while an argument is fought over if, how and when to kill that person. That clearly is not your feeling, AD, but I hope you understand that no one is saying this man (if he is guilty) had the right to do what he did. The argument is over what merits reasonable punishment and the fact that Canada would be breaking its own law to extradite the man knowing he could face the death penalty. Without assurance of no death penalty the Canadian Government would have been in breach of Canadian Law had they extradited him. Once the man is in US custody I guess the Federal Government and State in question could go back on their word. Canada would not be able to stop them, but then Canada would probably never extradite to the US again.

My point had nothing to do with whether any effort had been made to capture Bin Laden.
It is your view that bush is blameworthy for the fact that Bin Laden was not captured. Or at least I read that into this remark:
Bush can only be blameworthy if Bin Laden's capture was reasonably doable, right?
And I express that in the assumption that 'any reasonable effort would have ...'
And for a long time, there did seem to be considerable effort expended in going after him.
But it's a large country, unfamiliar to the Americans, among people whose loyalty to the coalition forces was not only questionable but highly doubtful, while working with, among others, Afghani forces whose loyalties were as indecipherable and no doubt as split as those of the Afghani people themselves.

It is not a matter of points belonging to one or another, but whether enough emphasis was placed on capturing Bin Laden. When you say 'And, for a long time, there did seem to be considerable effort in going after him', there we have it. If it didn't continue, that does not make sense to me. Anyway, yes, I do hold Bush Regime responsible, you don't, what's the big deal? We needn't discuss that any more, because neither will budge on it. To me, all the effort the went into Iraq should have surely gone into Pakistan and Bin Laden. Bush was not interested in that, so he sold the American public a bill of goods. Obama at least has the memory of what the priority was.

So--yes, I do think Bin Laden's capture was 'reasonably doable'. It just wasn't done.

Final point: You have said nothing to demonstrate that Bin Laden's capture was 'reasonably doable.' You and I can't really know anything about it.
And nothing would have been sweeter to Bush than seeing him captured or killed.
His failure to achieve that end is itself a prima facie demonstration of its difficulty.
No one really knows even where the man is.
Theories only.

And you don't know that it wasn't 'reasonably doable'. It is not my responsibility to offer this proof, I said there was not enough emphasis on it if Iraq became focus. I saw this as indisputable, you don't. It's obvious that attempts to make it 'reasonably doable' would have had more of a chance without the gigantic adventure of Iraq.

And you also don't know that this would have been 'sweet to Bush.' Otherwise, he wouldn't have lost interest as early as 2002, when he began the propaganda to concentrate on Iraq.

You've now said 'no one knows where the man is.' Yes, but they do know that his disciples and many of them are in that area of Waziristan, otherwise there wouldn't be any CIA clandestine activity going on there, there wouldn't be any continued discussion of them vis-a-vis the Pakistani Govt. itself, there would have been no damning NIE report. It just isn't politically expedient to bother with him anymore, but he was very useful to Bush every time a new tape came in, and the Orange Alerts were used until Bush won the 2004 election, and he then did not wait even 3 weeks before saying that 'these were no longer needed' because the 'terrorist threat' was no longer serious (apparently due to election results.)