Gittim and Winkandnod, yeah I'd like to beat the crap out of Lay, Skilling and all the rest of them too, but you didn't address the meat of my proposal. You repeated the list of dastardly, immoral acts of these men and their consequences as if that justifies doing exactly what I propose not to do - simply lock them away, forever, at taxpayers expense, and never avail yourself of their know-how, their connections to powerful people, their resorces. You repeated the verdict and I'm talking about the punishment. These are bad men, not stupid men, not unknowns among the powerful. I didn't mean to imply they should be given a suite at the Waldorf from which to do their community service complete with a secretaries pool and silver tea service. I think their freedoms should be curtailed, taken away. They should have to give up all their wealth to the people from whom they stole it. I don't think they should be allowed to go shopping at Neiman-Marcus with their wives. They shouldn't be allowed to be alone with their wives. They should always have someone watching them. I don't know what else the details ought to be, but I'm sure experts in incarceration could figure it out. It sholdn't be pleasant, but neither should it be so focused on revenge and punishment that you cut off your nose to spite your face. Forcing them to repay society in some meaningful way would be far more useful to both society and to rehabilitating them from their sense of overweaning entitlement that got them into trouble in the first place. It would teach them humility. Now they're only bitter and angry and remorseless.

The number of people we have locked up in jail in this country is scandalous. Half of them shouldn't be there. Maybe we lock them all away because it's easy. It certainly isn't cheap. Locking people away without any recompense to society, to my mind, isn't allowing the guilty to repay their debt to society, it's simply society reeking revenge on the guilty. We've been merely locking people up for decades now for the same kinds of things that Lay and Skilling have done. It didn't stop Lay and Skilling, and it won't stop the next one either.

God do I love this man! If he weren't already married, I'd propose to him! The "Just us Baptists," quip had me rolling!

I'm more than delighted that the jury did the right thing, in fact I'm tickled over it. And I hope that these criminals will be punished for what they've done not only to their employees and investors but to society as a whole. These kind of crimes have a far larger ripple effect throughout society than does someone holding up a bank in a stocking. However, that said, I don't support jail time for these kind of crimes. These are very bright, very well connected, very resourceful, very powerful people. All of those resources that they can bring to bear should be put to good use to improve our economic and legal injustices throughout society. They should be sent into our most abandoned and dysfunctional neighborhoods, our struggling small businesses, our most broken down school systems and required to bring their considerable talents to bear on the problems there. What shape or form these things would take could be worked out. We're a creative people and we can come up with a way to make it happen. They should be tagged, beepered, watched, audited, controlled and have to report to a parole officer, what? weekly? daily? whatever, but they should have to produce something of value or face actual jail time. This to me is a far more intelligent approach to justice in these situations than merely locking these guys away at further expense and drain on the public pocket, with no more satisfaction for society in the situation than, what? revenge? I'd love to see us as a society move away from our revenge obsessions and fantisizes that passes for justice.

My mother believed slapping someone in the face was disrespectful even though god knows she whipped us, as I have described. I think my mother was right. Anne, I think you owe your son an apology, not for being angry with him (you're entitled to your feelings the same as he is) but for slapping him in the face. It's disrespectful, an unloving way to discipline a "child". Hopefully by this time you've already offered him the apology. He owes you one too, but you're the adult, right?, so you get to go first.

I don't care if Gore was raised on the moon surrounded by interplanetary linguists in tights, this is who his parents were:

Al Gore, Sr was born on December 26, 1907, in the mountain community of Granville, and moved to the Carthage area (that would be Tennessee, not Tunisia) when he was 2. He received an early education in the one-room Possum Hollow school and later became a teacher in the one-room school himself.

Pauline Gore was born Pauline LaFon in Palmersville, Tenn., and spent her childhood in Jackson, Tenn., before enrolling at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. She was one of the first southern women to practice law.

These were his parents, whom I presume spent a great deal of time with Al as he was growing up, talking to him. It would be freakin' weird as hell if he didn't end up sounding somewhat like his parents. Please note that his parents were not from California or New York or Paris, France. He also spent time in Tennessee as a child surrounded, one can safely presume, by people from Tennessee. This "put-on Tennessee accent" smear against Gore springs from the tiresome prejudices and ignorances of non-Southerners who can't tell the difference between an educated southern accent and the Beverly Hillbillies.