From the Wall Street Journal: The London Telegraph reports that in 2009 the EU gave at least €2.6 million ($3.6 million) to groups lobbying against the death penalty in America. The European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights, a project of the unelected European Commission, has given six-figure handouts to groups such as the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, Witness to Innocence and—the list’s largest stateside recipient—€708,162 to the poverty-stricken lawyers at the American Bar Association Fund for Justice and Education.
This concern for convicted American murderers is touching, given that its normal recipients are civil-society groups in the likes of Sudan and Zimbabwe. Somehow North Korea and Cuba didn’t make the EU’s list, perhaps because they execute people without a trial. …
Europe can’t find the money to pay for its fair share of NATO but it can spare a dime to hector its main defense benefactor on criminal law. This is why fewer and fewer Americans take Europe seriously.
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