One of the reasons often cited for the death penalty is that it is important to "send a message" to potential criminals to make them "think twice" before committing a capital crime.

What's the message from the Williams execution? I wondered about this, watching the coverage on CNN last night.

Whatever Mr. Williams did or did not do -- and I have no idea about his guilt or innocence, given the conflicting reports from predictable corners -- it seems pretty clear to me that once he landed in prison, he did his best to do some good in the world.

The message from this execution seems to be that if a person is convicted of murder with circumstances in California, it doesn't much matter what kind of life he lives after that. If he does his best to undo the evil that can be undone (Williams campaign against the gang lifestyle he helped to establish)it doesn't matter.

A life is beyond price, and Stanley Williams was convicted of taking four lives. Does his death really even the scales? I don't think so. Could his life have continued to do some good? Perhaps.

I'm sorry that the governor did not have the courage to say aloud that Williams was an unusual case, a case of a man who had turned his life around. In saying so, he might have offered encouragement to Californians to do good and not evil, to strive to make better choices. He might have "sent a message" to young men in South Central LA and elsewhere that there is some point to making good choices. Instead they heard loud and clear that it doesn't make any difference.

Shame.

About a year ago, when my twenty-something son was feeling desperate and angry about the Bush Administration, I reminded him that within living memory we'd been to the Constitutional brink with a bad President, and the system worked.

I am reduce to hope in the system, rather than faith. I HOPE the system works. It is inconceivable to me that the President can admit to usurping the powers of Congress, to the violations of the Constitution that he has made, and that only a few voices will rise to even question it.

Congress is controlled by his party, but surely there are Senators and Congressman who will hear what Senator Byrd has said so eloquently, and be able to see beyond their partisan solidarity to defend the Constitution they all claim to revere.

I hope.

The majority of Americans don't understand what Big Brother means, and so they don't care. There is a happy assumption that the wire tapping, etc., is only for "bad guys" and that of course no good guys need worry. Pursuing that line of discussion is a losing game, despite the fact that it is a hideous erosion of the principles on which the Union was founded.

The Democrats need to roar about more tangible issues in the upcoming campaigns: corruption, cronyism, and the cruelty and folly of the tax cuts for the rich, and so on. They need to do more than moan and complain: they need to offer the American public a vision of the future that includes both our traditional values (free speech, fair taxation, etc.) and prudent security.

I was a bit of a latecomer to the show, didn't start watching it until I think the third season and had to catch up backstory. I've always been a bit disorganized about TV. I have often wondered what it would have been like to get the whole arc as an arc, instead of in bits.

The truth: I developed a crush on John Spencer.

But I think NBC is right: it's done. Everything really good deserves to have a dignified ending.

There are some things that trouble me about this letter. What I read in this letter is a lot of extreme language: everyone is either a saint or an agent of the devil. No real marriage is "perfect," and no real child is, either. Marriages and children are always human and flawed.

I am puzzled that the cruel, foolish, ignorant MIL pictured is the same one who was the mother in a family scene comparable to the Cleavers.

My own family background is troubled, and the language of extremes is familiar to me. I used to think in patterns much like the ones I see in this poor woman's letter, and I had to learn some new ways of thinking before I could be happy. I was accustomed to being around abusive people, and I had to learn that it was safe to use words like "no." I had to learn how to participate in the ordinary give-and-take of a normal family; I tended to see abuse where there was none, because that was what I was used to seeing.

I might add that I confused the heck out of a lot of people who were neither perfect nor evil, just human and fallible. Cary's suggestion of counseling is a good one. Whatever MIL is like, the letter was written by a woman in pain who needs some new options.