D'oh!

Justice Dept. Admits Error in Not Briefing Court: The recent 5-4 Supreme Court ruling, which held that using the death penalty as punishment for the rape of a child is unconstitutional, may be asked to reconsider the case based on an error by the Justice Department.

Justice Anthony Kennedy's majority opinion, founded in part "on the conclusion that because child rape was a capital offense in only six states, and not under federal law, the death penalty for the crime did not meet the 'evolving standards of decency' by which the court judges capital punishment," was wrong—Congress added rape of a child to the military death penalty in 2006, and President Bush issued an executive order in 2007 that "added the new provision to the current version of the Manual for Courts-Martial."

In a highly unusual admission of error, the Justice Department acknowledged on Wednesday that government lawyers should have known that Congress had recently made the rape of a child a capital offense in the military and should have informed the Supreme Court of that fact while the justices were considering whether death was a constitutional punishment for the crime.

Hmm. Maybe stuffing the government full of graduates of Pat Robertson's fourth-tier backwater Regent University wasn't a good idea after all.