Why I'll never make Chief Justice...

Remember the code of Hammurabi? Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth (those were tough times for the Tooth Fairy). If you need a memory jog, just visit a well-pulicized murder trial, particularly one involving children. Segments of the code will bouncing around on picket signs and banners. Similarly, anti-gay demonstrations will inevitably give air to cuttings of ancient Hebrew law. I wonder how many of the latter are Jewish and/or thoroughly practice Judaism, or of the former, how many can realistically trace their ancestry to the Sumerians. Too many mildly-remotely educated people in this country have the right intentions, but the wrong methods and means. Too many highly educated law-makers, for that matter, have severly questionable intentions, and absolutely no creativity. For example--our justice system. We as a nation have certainly come a long way since good old Hammurabi's rather indifferent system of justice. I'm sure we congratulate ourselves on our humane and well-thought-out verdicts and judgements. My concern is that instead of moving closer to the 'let the punishment fit the crime' ideology, we have swung wildly in the other direction. For example--Martha Stewart. A 'white collar' criminal, an opportunist, a slightly annoying actress. Nothing more, I should guess. Last I heard, she was facing jail time. This is pointless. She hires great lawyers, she shows the prison guards how to spiff up the place, she's out in no time. There's nothing learned from it, except be more subtle next time you jump ship before the rest of us have seen the iceburg. You know what I think she should be sentenced to? Subsidized housing. For a good long time. See what she can do with supplies she finds at the dump site at the complex, because that's what the majority of Americans are using at best. Also, there's a local boy, 21, who just got drunk out of his mind and drove home. During the ride, he managed to go off the road and decapitate his best friend, who was likely vomiting at the time, by glancing past a telephone pole wire. When the police woke him up in the morning, he was covered in blood, still drunk, and unaware of what had happened. What is he facing? Life in prison--vehicular manslaughter. Okay--anyone who thinks this makes more sense than the code of Hammurabi probably either doesn't pay taxes (a healthy portion of the population, these days) or works for the ACLU. You know what should happen there? No license. Not for a good ten years at least. During that ten years, one full year of addiction counseling for the boy. For the next nine years, he must offer addiction counseling to young men and underage drinkers at juvenile centers and prisons. Life in prison is a sentence for someone who proves themselves unwilling or unable to exist within a particular society without continually harming or infringing upon the rights of their fellow citizens. It's not for a young man who has made a grotesquely irresponsible and horrific mistake. Such a person needs and owes an opportunity for their life to be used in service of a greater need. Or, we could let him go, monitor him to see when he drinks again, and from that, deduce whether in the end, his conscience was enough judge and jury to begin with. Or, we could just hang him from his ankles and drain all his blood slowly from him, thereby removing the alcohol and making a strong statement to irresponsible drinkers. But thankfully, we can't all be Nazi scientists.