It’s funny ’cause it’s true.

The university decided against awarding Obama the degree because it is customarily awarded for “lifetime achievement,” ASU spokeswoman Sharon Keeler told POLITICO.

“It’s normally awarded to someone who has been in their field for some time,” she said. “Considering that the president is at the beginning of his presidency, his body of work is just beginning.”

Obama was invited by the university to be its commencement speaker and accepted the invitation in March. But a separate six-member committee that determines the awarding of honorary degrees did not nominate him to receive such a degree.

Meanwhile, the Notre Dame nonsense continues to fester. I didn’t realize that Bush had delivered a commencement address there in 2001; knowing that now, I’d say O’Donnell has the better of the argument with Buchanan from tonight’s Hardball. A quote from the Church’s official catechism:

Assuming that the guilty party’s identity and responsibility have been fully determined, the traditional teaching of the Church does not exclude recourse to the death penalty, if this is the only possible way of effectively defending human lives against the unjust aggressor.

If, however, nonlethal means are sufficient to defend and protect people’s safety from the aggressor, authority will limit itself to such means, as these are more in keeping with the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person.

Today, in fact, as a consequence of the possibilities which the state has for effectively preventing crime, by rendering one who has committed an offense incapable of doing harm – without definitely taking away from him the possibility of redeeming himself – the cases in which the execution of the offender is an absolute necessity are very rare, if not practically nonexistent.

Buchanan’s point about innocent versus guilty life is well taken but seemingly irrelevant to Church teaching. Why is Obama’s pro-choice invite a problem when Bush’s pro-capital punishment invite wasn’t?