Last Friday, Charles Peters, founding editor of the Washington Monthly, had this op-ed in the Washington Post, praising the Illinois legislative accomplishments of Barack Obama. In particular, he notes the bill to require videorecording of interrogations.

This seemed likely to stop the beatings, but the bill itself aroused immediate opposition. There were Republicans who were automatically tough on crime and Democrats who feared being thought soft on crime. There were death penalty abolitionists, some of whom worried that Obama's bill, by preventing the execution of innocents, would deprive them of their best argument.

Wow. That last sentence is an incendiary charge. Peters is claiming that some "death penalty abolitionists" opposed a bill intended to stop the execution of innocent people not for some alternative reason but because they actually want innocent people to be executed to strengthen their case. Now, that is fanaticism.

This accusation does not come from the conservative side of the aisle. Quite the contrary, the Washington Monthly is a left-leaning publication. I don't know if the accusation is true and would be interested in hearing from anyone with solid information on the subject.