If I were a liberal, I would have spent the last week in shock that a Democratic audience in Flint, Mich., cheered Vice President Joe Biden’s description of policemen being killed.

That’s how liberals reacted to a Republican audience’s cheering for Rick Perry during this exchange at the NBC debate:

NBC’s Brian Williams: “Your state has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times. [Applause] “Have you struggled to sleep at night with the idea that any one of those might have been innocent?”

Gov. Perry: “No, sir, I’ve never struggled with that at all. In the state of Texas, if you come into our state and you kill one of our children, you kill a police officer, you’re involved with another crime and you kill one of our citizens, you will face the ultimate justice in the state of Texas, and that is you will be executed.” [Wild applause.]

The airwaves bristled with righteous liberal indignation for the next week.

— CNN’S Jack Cafferty: “Highly inappropriate” and “bloodthirsty.”

— MSNBC’s Chris Matthews: Republicans “look hot and horny for executions.”

— CBS’s David Letterman: “What kind of a person says, ‘You know what, for president I want a heartless gunner. I want a guy who can kill 250 people without blinking an eye …’”

— CBS’s Nancy Giles: “Applause at the number of people executed in Texas? … How could they not challenge the applause and maybe suggest that their invited audience take a step back from the bloodlust?”

But there hasn’t been a peep about Biden’s audience whooping and applauding last week in Flint when he said that without Obama’s jobs bill, police will be “outgunned and outmanned.” (Wild applause!)

I suppose liberals would claim they were applauding because they believe Obama’s jobs bill will prevent these murders. Which reminds me: Republicans believe the death penalty prevents murders!

Which belief bears more relationship to reality?

In a case I have previously mentioned, Kenneth McDuff was released from death row soon after the Supreme Court overturned the death penalty in 1972 and went on to murder more than a dozen people.

William Jordan and Anthony Prevatte were sentenced to death in 1974 for abducting a teacher, murdering him and stealing his car. They came under suspicion when they were caught throwing the murder weapon from the stolen vehicle in a high-speed car chase with the cops and because they were in possession of the dead man’s wallet, briefcase and watch.

The Georgia Supreme Court overturned their capital sentences in an opinion by Robert H. Hall, appointed by Gov. Jimmy Carter.

Hall said that the death sentences had to be set aside on the idiotic grounds that the jurors had overheard the prosecutor say that the judge and state supreme court would have the opportunity to review a death sentence, which might have caused them to take their sentencing role less seriously.

(If the facts had been the reverse, the court would have overturned the death sentences on the grounds that the jurors did not take their sentencing decision seriously enough, under the misapprehension that no judge or court would second-guess them. Heads: liberals win; tails: crime victims lose.)

Prevatte was later released from “life in prison” and proceeded to murder his girlfriend. Jordan escaped and has never been found.

As president, Carter appointed Hall to a federal court.

Darryl Kemp was sentenced to death in California in 1960 for the rape and murder of Marjorie Hipperson and also convicted for raping two other women. But he sat on death row long enough — 12 years — for the death penalty to be declared unconstitutional. He was paroled five years later and, within four months, had raped and murdered Armida Wiltsey, a 40-year-old wife and mother.

Kemp spent the next quarter-century raping (and probably murdering) a string of women. In 2002, his DNA was matched to blood found on the fingernails of Wiltsey’s dead body. Although Kemp was serving a “life sentence” for rape in a Texas prison, he was months away from being paroled when he was brought back to California for the murder of Wiltsey.

His attorney argued that he was too old for the death penalty. He lost that argument, and in 2009, Kemp was again given a capital sentence. He now sits on death row, perhaps long enough for the death penalty to be declared unconstitutional again, so he can be released to commit more rapes and murders.

Dozens and dozens of prisoners released from death row have gone on to murder again. No one knows exactly how many, but it’s a lot more than the number of innocent men who have been executed in America, which, at least since 1950, is zero.

What is liberals’ evidence that there will be more rapes and murders if Obama’s jobs bill doesn’t pass? Biden claims that, without it, there won’t be enough cops to interrupt a woman being raped in her own home — which would be an amazing bit of police work/psychic talent, if it had ever happened. (That’s why Americans like personal firearms, liberals.)

Obama’s jobs bill tackles the problem of rape and murder by giving the states $30 billion … for public school teachers. Only $5 billion is even allotted to the police.

Did Flint, in fact, use any money from Obama’s last trillion-dollar stimulus bill to hire more police? No, Flint blew its entire $2.2 million on buying two electric buses. Even if what Flint really needed was buses and not cops, for $2.2 million, the city could have bought seven brand-new diesel buses and had $100,000 left over for streetlights.

The “green buses” are more likely to increase crime by forcing people to spend a lot more time waiting at bus stops for those two buses. It’s going to be a long wait: The “green” buses were never delivered because the company went out of business — despite a $1.6 million loan from the American taxpayer.

But if I were a liberal, I wouldn’t acknowledge these facts, or any facts. I would close my eyes, cover my ears, and pretend to believe that taxpayer-funded “green” projects and an ever-increasing supply of public school teachers were the only things that separated us from a criminal dystopia.

And when Republican audiences cheered for the death penalty that wasn’t available to stop McDuff, Jordan, Prevatte and Kemp, I would pout and call them “bloodthirsty.”

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