The Left's war on the criminal justice system has largely been successful.

Republicans, who were once tough on crime, have been co-opted into supporting "criminal justice reform". Meanwhile police departments around the country have been terrorized with the Ferguson Effect. And the death penalty has become precarious because of a sustained effort to cut off access to the medications needed for lethal injection.

And now comes an unexpected announcement from Attorney General Barr.

Attorney General William P. Barr has directed the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to adopt a proposed Addendum to the Federal Execution Protocol—clearing the way for the federal government to resume capital punishment after a nearly two decade lapse, and bringing justice to victims of the most horrific crimes. The Attorney General has further directed the Acting Director of the BOP, Hugh Hurwitz, to schedule the executions of five death-row inmates convicted of murdering, and in some cases torturing and raping, the most vulnerable in our society—children and the elderly. “Congress has expressly authorized the death penalty through legislation adopted by the people’s representatives in both houses of Congress and signed by the President,” Attorney General Barr said. “Under Administrations of both parties, the Department of Justice has sought the death penalty against the worst criminals, including these five murderers, each of whom was convicted by a jury of his peers after a full and fair proceeding. The Justice Department upholds the rule of law—and we owe it to the victims and their families to carry forward the sentence imposed by our justice system.”

The details are horrifying. And the timing is important.

Governor Newsom in California decided to give monsters that were just as bad a pass. The Trump administration won't.

Here are some of the promising candidates.

Daniel Lewis Lee, a member of a white supremacist group, murdered a family of three, including an eight-year-old girl. After robbing and shooting the victims with a stun gun, Lee covered their heads with plastic bags, sealed the bags with duct tape, weighed down each victim with rocks, and threw the family of three into the Illinois bayou. Wesley Ira Purkey violently raped and murdered a 16-year-old girl, and then dismembered, burned, and dumped the young girl’s body in a septic pond. He also was convicted in state court for using a claw hammer to bludgeon to death an 80-year-old woman who suffered from polio and walked with a cane. Lezmond Mitchell stabbed to death a 63-year-old grandmother and forced her nine-year-old granddaughter to sit beside her lifeless body for a 30 to 40-mile drive. Mitchell then slit the girl’s throat twice, crushed her head with 20-pound rocks, and severed and buried both victims’ heads and hands. Dustin Lee Honken shot and killed five people—two men who planned to testify against him and a single, working mother and her ten-year-old and six-year-old daughters.

The Brennan Center is freaking out right on schedule.

"Trump Cranks up America’s “Machinery of Death,” To No One’s Surprise," the leftist pro-crime group, which some conservatives have unfortunately chosen to collaborate with, writes.

"It doesn’t matter to Trump, or to Barr, that violent crime rates are down in America and at generational lows in many jurisdictions. It doesn’t matter that, as more states abolish the death penalty, executions are down across the country and that the imposition of death sentences in murder cases also is waning for good and practical reasons. It does not matter to this administration that conservative opposition to capital punishment has grown significantly over the past decade or so," one of the Brennan Center's hacks shrieks.

But it does matter. That's the whole point.

The pro-crime movement has made great gains. It's time to put the issue in front of Americans. And to make it clear that conservatives believing in putting down monsters who murder children while leftists sympathize with them.