This intelligent article that purports to ask some important moral questions -- published in the same tabloid rag that made that loathsome and privacy-violating accusation about Angelina Jolie that even the Enquirer would not print.

Are you people postmodern nihilists or are you committed moralists?

Who the hell are you?

You can't wink and nudge and gleefully commit serious defamation of character in the most bitchy and heartless fucking manner possible -- and then fold your prim little hands and deliver a serious moral examination of the outside world.

I swear, Salon is like some fundamentalist preacher who likes to get pooped on by hookers in his spare time.

It appears we still read this swill anyway, don't we?

Perhaps not for long. One more major expose starring Farhad Manjoo and I'm outa here. There are better places to spend my money.

Traumatic injury during childhood impacts a human personality in an analogous manner that a diamond cutter's blade cuts a diamond: sometimes the result is beautiful, but sometimes the rock just crumbles into diamond dust.

But the process of trauma is always experienced as a pain that echoes and echoes throughout a person's life. Those who withdraw into themselves and don't leave their houses unless they have to, limit their exposure to the trauma-echoes caused by their initial injury. Those who try to live their lives as survivors end up harming themselves every time they try to overcome alone what can't be overcome alone. Here I am not referring to trauma that occurs in an adult; what traumatizes an adult would likely kill a child, or break their personality into tiny shards. Something as simple as neglecting to change a child's diaper for hours at a time can be devastating to the psyche of a particular child at a particular developmental stage.

Those who do kill are often admired, or secretly envied, by those who choose not to cross that line. The sanctimonious ones -- those who not only choose not to kill but who also get on their righteous high horses about their alleged virtue -- presume to be the bearers of human truth and human justice. These necrophiles are often more despicable than the cretins they claim to put to death.

One point we can all agree on: the personality that committed the heinous acts of murder can no longer be tolerated or permitted to exist. The offender should be permitted to either rehabilitate or take themselves out. I do not believe in financing an institutionalized death industry and exposing innocent human beings to further traumatic injury simply because, "it's my job, it's my duty." Killing people to end killing is not a job or an assignment, it's just furthering the abuse and the insanity that brought the process on in the first place.

Here's a clue: if you want to keep people from growing up and killing other people, STOP KILLING PEOPLE. Dugh.

I don't know what happened to the body of my post. It was there when I sent it to publish.

What I said was, as long as the victims' family and friends are allowed to testify as to the perfect character of the victim, I can't imagine why anybody would think it's out of line for family and friends of defendants to provide mitigating testimony. Of course prosecutors don't agree, but I've never heard of a prosecutor agreeing with anything that might level the playing field in a trial.

As far as Patricia Schwarz' concerns about the reputation of Angelina Jolie, Ms. Jolie has managed to permanently besmirch her own reputation and has required very little assistance from Salon in the process. Apparently she has decided that she can throw some money at Africa, buy a couple of children and procreate another, and we'll all rejoice at her canonization. I doubt the efficacy of that course of action.

I'm far more concerned about Salon's heels-dug-in stance on the 2004 Ohio voting frauds. I was sorry the last time I read anything with Farhad Manjoo's byline, and even more sorry this time. Never again.

One of my best friends is a prosecutor (really). Ninety percent of the remainder are smug, self-righteous assholes whose purpose in life is imprisoning as many people as humanly possible. All things being equal, they’d generally prefer that defendants actually be guilty of the crimes with which they’ve been charged, but it’s hardly essential.

The notion of defendants’ rights is derived from their status as a class threatened with the deprivation of liberty by the government. Victims, on the other hand, HAVE no particular rights, independent of the civil rights of all American citizens and the universal rights of all human beings. The formulation of victims' rights is intended as a rhetorical repudiation of defendants’ rights, and is a typical example of pandering, half-witted Republican propaganda. As such, it invites the question suggested by every expression of the moral leprosy of Republicanism: stupidity or dishonesty.

Then you are free to explore whatever root cause you wish for as long as you wish. Think about this sentence for a moment: We execute children, the retarded, the drug addled, mentally ill, etc etc.....BECAUSE.....

Because? Because we like to execute people, that's why. The feeble, the weakest and the most heinous of them merely make our jobs easier, that's why.

Re. the writer's reference to "terrible beatings or parental breaches, such as a mother working as a prostitute or a father putting the mother in the hospital and molesting the sisters": these do *not* belong in the same category!

Granted, a mother's involvement in prostitution no doubt makes for a chaotic environment for a child, and is also often accompanied by the mother's addiction to the drugs that enable her to cope with her abuse in prostitution. However, the mother may well have entered prostitution as a last resort, precisely in order to support her children economically. By no means does she belong in the same category as a father who "put[s] the mother in the hospital and molest[s] the sisters." The prostituting mother deserves compassion and help in getting out of prostitution, for her children's sake as well as her own. The father deserves a long prison sentence.