> With all due respect, I think you ought to consider other people's motives and reasons for their beliefs with a smidgen more respect before going on a rant like this, particularly on an issue as serious as this.

I have given due consideration to those motives and beliefs that make people spineless wishywashy shirkers of responsibility and responded in the manner such motives and beliefs deserve.

You completely missed the point of my post. You apparently think I've got this case of bloodlust or something. No, actually I have total intolerance for idiocy getting in the way of justice. I'm not going to apologize for calling this flower power "if somebody does something bad, it's SOCIETY'S FAULT!!" crap the vile stupidity that it is.

> I respect the pro-DP position...because I understand their reasoning. And I couldn't in good conscience post anything resembling either the examples I gave above or this example Sam just posted. Which, again, with all due respect, I can at best think of as something from a moment of weakness. Because that's *not* something I could respect.

That post was not a pro-DP post. As a sidenote I mentioned that I *would* support the death penalty sentence in this case, but my outrage was that there was practically no punishment given out at all.

> Do you really think that this whole thing is about dodging responsibility?

Yes. Although I don't credit the people in power with the self-knowledge that that is in effect what they are doing. People who believe in this crap tend to delude themselves by conjuring all sorts of supposedly rational reasons not to face the decision to administer a harsh but just punishment to someone. "It's society's fault!" or "It's the parents' fault!" or just plain old "It's not their fault!" is generally the (ir)rationale used. If you think holding people accountable for their actions is immoral, we have nothing further to talk about.

> ...he was doing the most responsible thing he could by trying to help these two individuals out as best he could while doing everything he could to protect the rest of the population.

Oh, sure. By releasing premeditative torturers and killers (no, these are manipulative terms, they are accurate adjectives to describe what they are known to have done) into the general populace again. Where do you get the idea the criminal justice system is set up to "help" the convicted, anyway?

> And there *is* a difference between dodging responsibility and having a different idea of what the responsibility is.

In this case, it is the difference between honest immorality and denial.

> (In fact, from our POV, leaving justice aside, it seems to me killing them or tossing them in prison is abdicating our own responsibility in the surest way possible; we don't want the responsibility of rehabilitating them...

This does not deserve comment.

> Often it's forgiving that is the absolute hardest thing to do.

Forgiveness has nothing to do with failing to administer justice. God doesn't do that. Christ had to die for us to receive mercy. Of course we should forgive them -- in particular the family of the murdered child should do what they can to try to forgive them. That does NOT mean they don't at LEAST go to jail for life.

> While we're on the subject.

We weren't and aren't. Televising McVeigh's execution is not even closely relevant to this discussion.