Lesser penalty?

Sen. Sam Brownback appears to be joining other Catholic politicians reconsidering their support for the death penalty in favor of a “culture of life.”

“If we’re trying to establish a culture of life, it’s difficult to have the state sponsoring executions,” Brownback, a Kansas Republican, told U.S. News & World Report columnist Gloria Borger.

Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum last month became the first high-profile Catholic Republican to speak of reconsidering the death penalty. That happened after American Catholic bishops launched the “The Catholic Campaign to End the Use of the Death Penalty.”

Last month’s death of Terri Schiavo provided additional spark to “culture of life” efforts. Brownback told Borger he could foresee such campaigns working both to reduce abortions and capital punishment.

“My hope,” Brownback said, “is that we form a left-right coalition on life.”

The judiciary

Schiavo’s death has revealed a possible difference of opinion — or, at least, rhetoric — between Brownback and Kansas’ other Republican senator, Pat Roberts.

Brownback appeared at a Thursday-Friday seminar last week, “Confronting the Judicial War on Faith,” which featured the lawyer for Schiavo’s parents.

In the wake of Schiavo’s death, Brownback told the Chicago Tribune that Congress might need to increase regulation of judges. “It’s no longer balance of power — it’s all in the hands of the judiciary,” he said.

When House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, of Texas, warned that judges in the case “would answer for their behavior,” however, Roberts sought to distance himself from those remarks.

‘I think that’s pretty dangerous ground to even think about,’ Roberts said, according to The Associated Press. “I’m not a party to that, and I think those comments are not helpful.'”