Andrea Yates verdict - huh?

[--Pete]

Small nit here:

"Murder: 1. Kill intentionally and with premeditation"

I don't know where you got your definition, but let me nit your nit. From M-W online, primary definition:
"Murder: the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought."

The important point, missing from your definition, is the 'unlawfully'. Murder is defined in terms of the social norms. A state sanctioned executioner performing his task is not a murderer, nor is a police officer in line of duty, nor a military person following the ROE. Once again, while the actions are important, the circumstances and intentions surrounding those actions are also important.

This point is often mangled in capital punishment debates where the anti crowd claims that the state does not have the right to do what is illegal for the individual citizens to do. Of course, this is arrant nonsense. The state can tax you, your neighbors can't. The state can take your property under eminent domain, a private individual would be robbing you. Etc. In the same sense, the state can and does define the legality of capital punishment. In a democracy, that determination should be the voice of the majority and should be obeyed by all (which should not stop the minority from crusading within legal boundaries to get the law changed).

The King James Version says not to kill. But it instructs the Jews to exterminate every living creature in some conquered cities. A contradiction? No, simply a mistranslation of 'kill' for 'murder'. Once the extermination is mandated by authority (in this case, the insane entity who is the god of the old testament), then no murder is involved.

--Pete