It’s too bad this home invading POS is expected to survive.

Suspected in the disappearance of another child? Something that will not be brought up at his trial?

A trial pending because that sonofabitch is still drawing breath?

Not sure I’d call it a win, maybe a favorable draw…

These were televised reenactments drawn from that.

He’s alive and that freak’s future victims are safer. Whiskey for my men and beer for my horses seems totally called for.

Good for her!

“Journalism” – if it was ever worth saving – effectively died the day editors figured out they could hire fresh-faced college grads with J-school degrees instead of spending years grooming reporters from scratch, starting at copy boys to covering parades and garden clubs to high school football to the crime blotter and only finally to city hall.

As soon as they starting doing that, the control of the “profession” passed to the J-school professors, a group of Marxists in tweeds and turtlenecks drawn from the pool of English Department assistant professors not qualified to teach Shakespeare, Romantic poetry, or the 20th Century American novel. It was Lenin’s dream come true, and has been our living nightmare.

Pete, crime is a people problem.

Crime isn’t caused by guns, or poverty, or drugs.

Crime is caused by people. And we have a name for people who cause crime: criminals.

While I don’t have access to the criminal record of the crackhead who made the ill-fated decision to break into my brother’s house, I’m going to take a wild guess that he was not a first-time offender. In fact, I’d be willing to bet $50 he had the proverbial “record as long as your arm,” stretching back to juvenile offenses committed when he was 13, 14, 15.

There is a predictable pattern: Petty criminals do a series of relatively minor crimes — theft, burglary, assault, drug offenses — and either (a) get away scot-free, or (b) receive fairly light punishment.

The punishment fails to deter them from their criminal habits, and they keep at it until they end up in either prison or the graveyard. This is no one’s fault but theirs, and the sooner these menaces to society are taken off the street, the fewer people they will be able to vicitimize. However many people this crackhead victimized before he broke into my brother’s house, that list is now finite; his future victims will number zero. And that’s a good thing.

Heaven knows how many peoiple

My dad’s answer for those people who question how effective the death penalty is as a deterrent to crime: for the criminal who’s executed, it’s 100 percent effective.

Stacy’s reaction is perfectly acceptable in the context that he’d rather not attend his brother’s funeral. That is certainly something to feel good about. As in, a sense of relief and joy that a loved one survived a tragedy.

This is an aspect of humanity that gets glossed over by many people (including politicians, I must note) — how are survivors of a lethal situation supposed to feel? How about their relations? “Survivor’s guilt” is a very real condition that will impact people as surely as a bullet. It sounds like his younger brother has survived nicely, and that helps the rest of the family as well.

And while all life is indeed valuable, not all humans agree with that. History is replete with examples of men and women who do not accept that standard, or are so damaged as to not care. In those conditions, triumph over evil is certainly worth considering as an acceptable response.

“He’s dead, I’m alive, and that’s the way I wanted it to be” is unpleasant, but you have to be alive to feel anything. So I’ll accept “feeling good” if I ever come into that situation, and make my own peace with The Almighty.

Feel good? HELL YEAH!

Those thugs weren’t men. They abandoned their humanity when they set out to prey on others.

Genesis is a worthy text, but I’ll take Christ’s advice when he advised Peter to “sell your robe and buy a sword.”