I was busy yesterday and didn’t learn of the jury’s decision to give Moussaoui life until late last night. Too late to do anything but curse at a jury who had front row seats at the Cinema Evil and still couldn’t summon up enough guts to condemn him to death. How in the world can a civilized people expect to continue to live in a civilized world if they don’t kill the rabid dogs among them?

So Moussaoui had a bad childhood. What he did as an adult was the issue. So what if he wants to be a martyr. After viewing all the evidence of guilt which Moussaoui has admitted to the jury had no right to try to psychoanalyze him. They were charged to render a verdict. The jury failed us.

This politically correct era has brought with it muddled thinking. Do we dare to call a spade a spade? No. Even that term is suspect. This hesitance has effected so many Americans that while we may be able to recognize evil when we see it we are afraid to do anything about it. Fear had something to do with this verdict.

We need Judges like Isaac C. Parker to hand down sentences today just as much as we did during the days of the wild west. He knew how to condemn criminals to death.

Conscious guilt has hung like the pall of night over you. Go where you would nothing but quiet has stared you in the face. This conscious guilt weights down your soul today. This fearful, terrible reality will not down at your bidding. The only way you can dispel it is by sincere, contrite and heartfelt repentance. You have taken human life. You have sent a human soul unprepared to its maker. You have cut off one in the very bloom of youth, in the very morning of his young life. You have broken a mother’s heart. You have brought mourning and agony to the heart of a fond father of an only son. You have cast a shadow of gloom and sadness over the dismembered family circle by the hearthstone, and the shadows will not depart from the friends and kindred of Edwin Clarke.

Peggy Noonan gets it…..

It is not a matter of vengeance. Murder can never be avenged, it can only be answered.

If Moussaoui didn’t deserve the death penalty, who does? Who ever did?

And if he didn’t receive it, do we still have it?

And now Moussaoui begins another career, that of favorite live man walking. Just hide and watch as the bleeding heart America haters begin to make pilgrimages to his cell. They hate imperialist America even more than Al Qaeda.

UPDATE: So predictable. It didn’t take long for Jacques Chirac to make an attempt to rescue Moussaoui. It’s going to be a circus.

UPDATE llDeena Burnett is not happy with the verdict.