A SHORT ROPE AND A LONG FALL
He got away with murder.
In an Arizona courtroom yesterday, a cold-blooded killer essentially walked free.
We can pretend justice was done, he can disappear into Club Fed, and the sickening spinelessness of the current administration will once again be on public display.
Because he should have been killed.
Of all the killers in all the cases across all the country, this puke deserved to die. Somewhere, in a land where justice still lives, there’s a big, fat vial of lethal injection with this guy’s name on it.
Jared Lee Loughner.
On a Saturday morning, outside a supermarket, where a congresswoman and many of her constituents had gathered, he dealt death.
He shot 19 people, six of whom did not survive.
One of the murdered was a sitting federal judge.
And the intended target of his political assassination was that congresswoman, a member of the House of Representatives, a constitutional officer of the United States of America.
He tries to kill a duly elected member of Congress, and leaves her permanently disabled. He shoots a federal judge to death. He kills an elementary school girl. Another of his victims, since elected to Congress himself, will be scarred for the rest of his life.
A nation and a region were shocked. Our peaceful system of governance was violently assaulted. He shed innocent blood.
And we’re giving him a pass.
We’re sparing his life.
And we’re pretending that somehow some great victory has been achieved. The congresswoman’s husband is pleased, some lawyers are relieved, and people are talking about sparing the country the trauma of a trial.
Which is bunk.
A trial isn’t trauma, it’s justice.
It’s catharsis. It’s therapy.
It’s an act of protection for a civil society. It is where evidence is presented and fact is found. It is where 12 Americans sit on behalf of us all to see, hear, deliberate and decide.
It is where justice is done.
Where wrongs are righted and where scores are settled.
And we were deprived that in this matter.
There will be no evidence, no conclusions of the investigation. All those countless-thousand questions about why will never be answered.
Because the Justice Department took the easy way out. Because, when push come to shove, we were willing to applaud Gabby Giffords and show her our tears, but we weren’t willing to truly punish her attacker.
We kept him doped up for months on end, paraded him through a courtroom he certainly didn’t seem to understand, pretended that he was suddenly sane, and thanked him nicely for agreeing to seven consecutive life sentences.
Never mind that he tried to cheat an election by killing the successful candidate. Never mind that dead on the ground was a federal judge. Never mind the fact that the country mourned a 6-year-old child in the rubble.
This administration is opposed to the death penalty, so Loughner got lucky. Instead of taking the big shot and being put to sleep, he will be a big shop and live the life of Riley in the Big House.
He has some 30 years yet to be as old as I am, and 30 more years after that before he’s expected to die. So for 60 years, at taxpayer expense, he will have three hots and a cot, and his own special brand of Obamacare.
When he should be swinging from the nearest tree.
The death penalty is not about vengeance, it’s about doing what’s right.
It’s about society defending itself.
We had an attempted political assassination, in which the voters of a congressional district in Arizona were essentially robbed of the franchise. They wanted a certain person to represent them in Washington, and a monster gunman took that away from them.
It was an attack on our government and our system, it was an attack on representative government and the will of the people.
And that’s just for the attack on the congresswoman.
In the murder of the federal judge, though likely incidental, there was still violence directed toward the federal judiciary, one of the bulwarks of our freedom.
Six people murdered, including a little girl, and 13 more wounded, and the Obama Administration doesn’t even think that’s worth taking to trial? That’s not worth pursuing the death penalty?
Crazy.
Not him.
The system.
These people would have given John Wilkes Boothe community service.
Like they have given this guy a slap on the wrist.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2012
