>That's a circular argument: "The meaning of the words to the people who wrote the words doesn't matter because we don't think the original meaning is what governs today."

That's not circular. That's pretty much exactly what you do when you take a balancing approach to conflicting interests. Some part of the original meaning is often tossed out. It happens a lot in Speech cases, and (in my opinion) is happening more frequently with 4th Amendment cases.

>I think that's actually a bit of a strawman of the "living Constitution" position.

Maybe.

>Clearly, very smart people would not subscribe to a patently absurd idea like that.

It doesn't matter what we think very smart people would or wouldn't do. The constitution means what the Supreme Court says it means, and the justices themselves are free to interpret however they wish. The current bench contains a variety of approaches, some fairly divergent from originalism, which it sounds like you prefer.

At this point you're probably a little bit surprised to learn that I do ascribe to originalism as my preferred approach to constitutional law. I can appreciate the other approaches, but there's the slippery slope of making the constitution fit whatever it is that we're trying to accomplish today, and at that point we might as well be like the British again and have no written constitution. Constitutional positions aside, though, I'm not a huge fan of capital punishment, whether or not the 8th amendment permits it (it does).