Dateline: Winnipeg. The Chinese immigrant who beheaded a young man, chopped him up, and packaged his body parts in plastic bags aboard a Greyhound bus (from which the other passengers had fled) has been judged not criminally responsible due to mental illness. Instead of traditional imprisonment, he will be treated in a mental institution. He will be held without a criminal record and reassessed every year by a mental health review board to determine if he is fit for release.

The victim’s mother is outraged and she and the family will fight the law that allows such judicial rulings.

If this isn’t a case that calls for a vigilante solution, I don’t know what is. The fellow, true, is schizophrenic, and thought God told him to act as he did. Also, he cut up the body so that the man couldn’t “come back to life” and get revenge. The mystical, quasi-religious aspects of this aberration should not be dismissed since his insanity gains strength from his faith.

Both prosecution and defense say he didn’t understand what he was doing. Do you think a rabid dog, an out-of-control pit bull, understand what they are doing? No, I am not drawing distinctions, because a great deal of mental illness that is this profound, is never “fixed”. Oh, yes, the man says, I want to get better. Oh, poor you, here’s a free pass. Even if we accept that he was too disturbed to appreciate his actions, reviewing him for possible release is the insanity. You don’t take chances with this brain.

A reasonably intelligent fellow, during the benign phase of his condition, might well con a review board (with about as much street-wise life experience as a donkey) into thinking he has been “cured”. Until the next time. Ivory tower assessments of criminal behavior is what should be outlawed.

Whatever you thought was wrong with the 40's and 50's, this kind of touchy-feely handling of this case wouldn't have lasted a nanosecond in any court.

Meanwhile, in that bastion of moral fascism, Rio de Janeiro, a Catholic archbishop is excommunicating a girl’s mother and her doctors for aborting twins the 9-year old child was carrying after she was raped by her stepfather. If I were the mother I would say “fine, let me go, you control-freak religious nitwits.” But, of course, the indoctrination of most Catholics does not allow for such reasonable reactions.

Meanwhile, Ken Starr, another religious fanatic, the right-wing lawyer who “investigated” President Clinton for getting a blow job and lying about it (what married man in his right mind wouldn’t lie about it?) is active again in defense of Prop. 8 in California, outlawing gay marriage, even those marriages already in effect after the law was voted in. I thought he had sunk into obscurity, hoped he had. But, no, he has emerged from the cesspool to reestablish another 15 minutes of fame for his sorry self. If there is a God, he’ll give this guy aids. In any case, that is the God-like thing I would do if I were managing things.


Snarls from Teal, no extra charge.
xx, Teal