Yo, Phrom Philly Wit Brotherly Love

You've gotta hand it to Philadelphia-- not even three feet of snow, the result of a historic blizzard, can keep its young sons from killing each other in the streets.

On Thursday, while most people were fast asleep under cozy down blankets or having massive heart attacks from too much shoveling, two young men were slain, in separate incidents, on the streets of North Philadelphia, the latest victims to drown in Philly's brotherly bloodbath.

Now, say what you want about lazy people in the inner city, sucking on the teet of unemployment or SSI or resorting to nefarious proto-occupations like pimp, crackhead or burglar, but you've got to be a pretty industrious S.O.B. to make your way out of your house onto an unplowed North Philly street and take the initiative to put four holes in some other motherfucker's torso, probably over a bag of dope no bigger than my cornhole.

Now that's Philly pride.

When we get bitchslapped by Mother Nature, we don't cower in our rowhomes, we fight back-- against each other, of course. And we don't bother to wait for the cover of darkness to commit these acts of brutality-- the first fatal shooting took place at 10:50am, illuminated by the glow of the sun bouncing off the endless mountains of snow. We don't care who sees-- after all, who's going to stop us? The overworked, underpaid, mismanaged Philadelphia Police Department?

Greenpeace?

No way, man. We've got work to do. There's tons of asses out there to be capped, yo, and Philly is always up to the challenge.

The police have often relied on poor weather to reduce crime rates, citing the fact that, in normal cities, bad weather drastically reduces crime because even hardened criminals historically don't like to get wet or slip on the ice and bruise their tussies. "Rain & snow are the best police partnership in the world," high-ranking cops in white shirts have often said. Well, not in Killadelphia, they're not. Rain? Please-- I'm reloading. Snow? You better duck, motherfuck, 'cuz it's payback time on Cecil B. Moore Avenue.

If you think Philadelphians are going to be deterred from blowing unnatural holes in each other by a little fluffy white stuff, think again. It's like throwing a toy poodle in a black and white striped shirt into the middle of a rabid pit bull fight and expecting it to referee.

You may have your own opinions on murder, but you've really got to respect the dedication to task. I mean, I work for a small non-profit, and I couldn't even be bothered to shovel out my car this morning to go to work, and yet, there are shitskins and fucktards roaming Philly, armed to the grills, who are totally undeterred and undaunted by whatever precipitation threatens to stand in their way. Not only that, their potential victims even find a way to get outside of their shitty, pointless dwellings to offer themselves up as visible targets. And, even as their blood colors the snow a sickening sanguine crimson, I applaud their sheer pluck in just fulfilling their destiny as another dead Philadelphian.

Forget Rocky-- we should build a statue commemorating you, dedicated crime victim, and put it in front of the Art Museum. It would be bronze, of course, and, instead of a triumphant, imaginary figure wearing boxing gloves with its arms upraised, it would be a bronze cast of you, sprawled out on the sidewalk, like a 3-D chalk-outline, and tourists could lie down on the pavement next to you, their limbs grotesquely splayed and their friends could take pictures of it and post it on Facebook. This would require much less energy than running up and down the museum steps.

Yup-- that would be just fine.

The Penalty Box

We 20somethings are often criticized, sometimes even on this very blog, for being self-centered, vapid, insipid, ignorant, ill-informed, and generally wankerish.

Most of the time, these criticisms are apt, appropriate, well-aimed and well-deserved.

Sorry. But, you know...

As I've admitted in the past, I sometimes go trolling through the candy-coated wasteland that is the www.20sb.net discussion board for inspiration on what to write about. The topics of conversation here, if they can be said to typify topics in which 20somethings, (at least, 20something bloggers) liberally engage are, well, shall we say, more sugary and less meaty.

"No More Pink Websites!"

"Holiday Giveaway Contest!" (Is this really worthy of a "discussion?")

"Anyone Else Hate the Stop & Chat?"

"Anyone Here on Google Wave Yet?"

"Charging For Plastic Bags"

and, easily my personal fucking favorite:

"If You All Had a Lion As Your Pet What Would You All Have Done?"

------------

What?

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And so, in this sometimes vacuous wasteland of inanity, I was pleased and relieved to see that, yesterday, someone decided to open up a discussion on the death penalty, in the wake of the execution of D. C. sniper John Allen Muhammad. I'm happy to follow in this person's footsteps and continue the discussion, which I think is a very worthwhile one, on my little blogiedoo, and I hope you'll join in because, of all the social dilemmae that confront us, this one is big.

Before we really get started, I want to be up front with you and let you know that, from high school through college I was a staunch death-penalty supporter. I believed that the death penalty was an appropriate punishment for someone who had the audacity to break the most basic covenant with man by taking a life-- by committing the act of murder. I believed that the enormous, detailed, lengthy appeal process that occurs every time someone is sentenced to death in this country was sufficient for any convicted murderer to exculpate him or herself from the charges if he or she were truly innocent, that, through the appeal process, the truth would out.

I still believe some of this today, but not all of it. Being somewhat older and somewhat wiser, and a teensy bit grayer, both in hair and in worldview, I know now that there exists in some cases police and prosecutorial misconduct, and I know that it is distinctly possible to sentence innocent people to death, and such an irrevocable mistake cannot really be permitted by a society that dare call itself "civilized."

But, do I still believe, in theory and in a perfect world, that it is appropriate for the state to execute a murderer?

I sure do. Strap him down. Light him up. It's Christmastime.

We don't, though, live in a perfect world. Hell, if we did, there would be no murderers at all, would there? We'd all be holding hands and singing "Movin' Right Along" from "The Great Muppet Movie" together while roasting marshmallows over an open fire until the end of time. Wearing fuzzy, pastel-colored feet-pajamas, with butt flaps. But who are we kidding?

If you had to ask me what I truly believe should happen to convicted murderers, and I'm talking 1st degree, no extenuating circumstances, no mitigating bullshit, no remose, no nothing butchers-- what should happen to them in this world? Life. Period. No 25-to-Life. No 30-to-Life. No Life-With-the-Possibility-of-Parole.

No. Life. Period.

The question is not how much it costs to incarcerate some murderous shit for the rest of his or her natural life, versus how much it costs to clutter the judicial system with their often frivolous death-row appeals and how much it costs to keep someone alive on death row, only to carry out an expensive execution in the end. I'm not terribly interested in the cost, because the cost of the original murder is far greater to the victim's family and to the fabric of society as a whole than any prison system or judicial tab after the fact. Murder, folks, is an expensive endeavor-- and the one who inevitably doesn't pay anything towards its recompense is the murderer.

People who argue against the death penalty inevitably bring up the fact that the death penalty isn't a deterrent. This argument is spouted off unendingly and tirelessly and it's time we put it to bed, right here, right now.

There is no deterrent for murder.

That's right, you heard it here first. On My Masonic Apron. You can quote me to your friends from the ACLU and the Free Mumia Movement, too-- the next time you run into them at a tea party.

If someone wants to kill somebody, they're going to. They don't stop and think about whether they're murdering somebody in a state the conducts the most executions per capita, or the fewest. They're not thinking about what the appeal process will be like, or what the likelihood will be that they'll ever see the inside of a death chamber, or a prison cell, or a courtroom, or the backseat of a police car. They're not thinking at all. And the ones who are don't give a shit anyway.

So, what are we supposed to do? Throw up our hands and say, "Well, there is nothing we can do to deter murder? So... what can you do?"

Here's the big secret about the death penalty: it isn't supposed to be a deterrent. That's why it's called "capital punishment" not "capital deterrent." Capital punishment is in place in this country because it was felt that we as a law-abiding, respectful people need to punish murder in such a way as to say that we will not stand idly by and let these abominable acts pass unnoticed and unpunished in the gravest way possible. None of our punishments in society are deterrents for any crime. People still burn houses down in spite of 15-20 year sentences in prison for arson. People still pull guns during robberies despite harsh prison terms for larcenies commited with the use of a firearm. And people will still kill each other, no matter what you do with them afterwards-- if you can catch them.

Deterrent? Who said anything about that?

I still very much believe in the death penalty as the appropriate punishment for 1st degree murder, especially with aggravating circumstances. In theory. If we can get it right. If we can't, then mandatory life imprisonment will have to do, but I think it's a piss-poor substitute, for it allows murderers the one thing they denied their victims: life. And I don't think that's fair. It's not fair to the victims' families who have to live their lives knowing that the person who slayed their loved ones get to wake up every morning, socialize with other inmates, eat three meals a day, move their bowels, brush their teeth, exercise, watch TV, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. All of these things, even the simplest, commonest among them, the dead cannot enjoy. All because these people thought another's life out there was theirs for the taking.

And some might say the very same thing about capital punishment-- that how can we as a society say that even the life of a convicted killer is ours to take, that this life too has value and worth and the potential for change, and that we dishonor ourselves in the extermination of this life.

And to that, I may just bow my head and say, "Touché."

40 Whacks

People often complain about "Saturday Night Live's" crutch-like reliance on stock or recurring characters for cheap laughs, and I'm one of them. "Saturday Night Live" blows. However, lots of other higher-quality sketch comedy shows employ the well-loved device of the recurring character, even the most lionized of sketch shows, (well, I still lionize it), "Monty Python's Flying Circus" used recurring characters. One of my favorites was Graham Chapman's stodgy, uptight colonel, who frequently interrupted sketches in a low, smooth baritone, curtly commanding,

"Right! You there! Stop that. Stop it. It's silly," chomping down on that last word, as if it is the highest insult Chapman's character could conceive. Silly-- the highest insult to common decency, and the Crown. Chapman famously (well, it's famous to me) recites the following:

"Now then. Nobody likes a good laugh more than I do. Except perhaps my wife. And some of her friends. Oh yes, and Captain Johnson. {Pause.} Come to think of it, most people enjoy a good laugh more than I do, but that's beside the point!"

Oh, Graham... we miss you down here.

I like to think of myself as someone who enjoys a good laugh, too, but sometimes I find myself adopting more of the Colonel's attitude about things, and that worries me a bit. Is becoming disapproving and dour what happens as we age? Probably, and sometimes my sensibilities and my morals quite simply get in the fucking way of me having a good time.

Take, for instance, my reaction when I read on www.nytimes.com that there is a new rock-musical out, based on the case of Lizzie Borden. I was not amused.

In case you're not familiar with old Lizzie, she was a young girl who, in 1892, butchered her mother and her father with an axe. I suppose I should say "suspected of having butchered" because she was actually acquitted at her trial, though popular sentiment still regards her as guilty.

She's about as famous, or infamous, as it gets. There's probably only two women in the late 19th century who are more famous than Lizzie Borden, and their names are Queen Victoria and Clara Barton, and at least the latter two are famous for slightly better reasons than Lizzie. When I was a little boy, I can remember reciting a little poem about Lizzie Borden on the floor of my parent's bedroom. God only knows where I heard it, I have no idea.

"Lizzie Borden took an axe,
And gave her mother forty whacks,
And when she thought the job was done,
She gave her father forty-one."

Charming, eh?

The fact that I, in 1985 or whenever the hell it was, even knew who Lizzie Borden was or what she did proves that her grisly act has a long tradition of being celebrated in song and story in this society, and that's kind of what I'm on about today. The thought of making a rock musical out of her case kind of sickens me.

"It sure is hard not to like "Lizzie Borden" a rock musical being presented with wall-rattling glee at-- ah, savor the incongruity-- The Living Theater" writes Neil Genzlinger, of the New York Times. From what he writes, the four actresses involved in the endeavor are unquestionably talented, and I'm not questioning that. What I am questioning is, are they wasting their talents on a musical that maybe shouldn't have been written.

I realize that people will write musicals about anything. I mean, Jesus Christ-- there's an Anne Frank musical, but that's a blog post for another day, I suppose.

It's no secret that we like to glorify crime in this society, but we mostly like to come down on gangsta rappers, who effusively espouse the virtues of doggy-stylin', cop-killin', and bitch-slappin'. And, why not? They're an easy target. If there's one thing America loves more than glorifying violence ourselves, it's picking on young, black men who glorify violence. But aren't we being the least bit hypocritical when our society at large does a pretty bang-up job of making heroes out of violent felons. Hollywood is the biggest perpetrator of this. "Bonnie & Clyde" and "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." The Hollywood machine has also churned out, in true, hallmark excess, four films about notorious bank-robber and cop-killer John Dillinger-- one in 1945, one in 1973, one in 1991, and, of course, Michael Mann's latest romanticized opus, "Public Enemies" starring Johnny Depp, this time in minimal eyeshadow.

There's no musical about Dillinger, though. Yet.

We love to lionize butchers and murderers through music, too. Take Woody Guthrie's legendary song, "Pretty Boy Floyd," another ode to murder and mayhem. And there are those who like to proclaim, in lyrics low, that they're, "Baaaaaaad, like Jesse James."

I don't want to sound like a thin-lipped prig, but sometimes I can't help thinking that there isn't much of an evening's sport to be made out of people who shoot policemen in the head or cut their parent's legs and arms off. I also think that white culture needs to stand up and at least recognize how guilty it is of perpetuating the shameful myth that cold-blooded murder is cool, and worthy of seemingly endless rolls of film. If we don't stand up and ackowledge our obsession with blood and gore, if we just sit back in the dark and laugh and clap at the Borden quartet of talented female singers who belt out the song "Why Are All These Heads Off" then we are living in a most regrettable fantasy world, where we absolve ourselves of the responsibility for perpetuating a culture that celebrates violence and the violent, a world where Graham Chapman's colonel would almost surely have stopped the sketch long ago.

Here's a Pretty Rant-Dee-Doo!

Surgeon General's Warning:

This rant may contain profanity, nudity, adult themes, drug use, and/or harsh comments.

Rants have been clinically proven in trial tests to produce angina pectoris in lab rats and certain types of squid.

20something Bloggers, an online blogging community of which I am a member (for another year and one month) frequently posts discussions started by members. Usually, they're pretty inconsequential, generally centering on such fascinating topics like, "Can you still have casual sex with someone you've broken up with?" and "What does no sex before marriage have to do with religion?" or my personal favorite "Hey girls in relationships-- What is your opinion on your guy looking at porn?"

Today, though, someone actually posted a topic question that was intellectually stimulating and had almost nothing to do with sex!

"Is it fair to charge a drunk driver who kills somebody with murder?"

Good for you for having a thought that originates from an area above your belly-button piercing!

(And they say guys are the only ones obsessed with sex. Please, girlfriend.)

Anyway, here we go:

Should some drunk fuck who kills somebody in a car wreck be charged with murder? You bet your sloshed, red ass he/she should! I would even go so far as to argue that it should be Murder 1.

Allow me to rantify:

To classify a homicide as Murder 1, one has to look at the definitions of Murder 1 as set up by the states. There are two different classifications of Murder 1 as I understand it. The first one is used by Pennsylvania and other states:

Murder 1: An intentional killing by means of poison, or by lying in wait, or by any other kind of willful, deliberate and premeditated action.

Then there's the New York and other states classification of Murder 1:

Murder 1: Murder involving special circumstances, such as murder of a police officer, judge, fireman or witness to a crime; multiple murders; and torture or especially heinous murders.

Defining a drunk-driving homicide as Murder 1 is easy using the Pennsylvania statute: consuming a sufficient quantity of alcohol to constitute intoxication and then making the decision to operate a motor vehicle resulting in someone else's death is a willful action, a deliberate action, and a premeditated action. While the intoxicated driver might not be intentionally ramming his car into the vehicle of a sober motorist, they did make a calculated series of judgements (or misjudgements) that lead up to that other person's untimely demise. It could successfully be argued by lawyers, who are far more articulate and better dressed than I that the decisions and actions leading up to the drunk driving fatality constitute premeditation. Any reasonable person would be able to deduce that getting behind the wheel of a car while drunk could easily result in a fatality, and therefore, because it is reasonable to assume that one's actions could result in death, it could be argued that the drunk driver went out onto the road knowing he or she could be committing murder.

Making a case for Murder 1 under the New York classification is tougher, because the special circumstances are absent, unless the drunk bastard slams into a police cruiser or the Pope-Mobile.

The fact remains that, for too long in this society, drunk drivers have gotten off relatively easy, even when they kill people. Sometimes they are only charged with DUI, public intoxication, reckless driving, reckless endangerment, speeding, evading. Oftentimes the best that drunk driving victims families can hope for is vehicular manslaughter, which is a pretty limp-wristed attempt at justice if you ask me and, if you're reading this blog, you are.

Accountability has eternally been the enemy of the drunk bastard:

"Yo, I didn't know what I was doin', y'alls-- I was drunk."

"I thought she wanted it-- I mean, I was drunk."

"I thought she was eighteen. You know, I was drunk."

"I didn't see that minivan full of Tabernacle singers. I was fucking drunk."

Yeah, well, you sure were drunk; and that was your decision, wasn't it, turdlick? I am so sick of hearing slurry bullshit about impaired judgement and altered states and shut the fuck up already, you pathetic losers. When you kill someone in a drunk driving collision, it ceases to be an "accident" and it should become murder. The act of getting into an automobile drunk is no different than picking up a gun and firing into the dark and blowing somebody's head off, sight unseen: your reckless, irresponsible, dangerous, motherfucking stupid and, yes, premeditated actions caused the death of somebody else.

And, guess what, Donny Drunko? That is fucking murder.

The Craigslist Killer

They caught him.

Shemales, masseusses, whores and trannys rejoice. All those who provide "erotic services" in New England area hotel rooms for money: you are now safe at last, and you have the Boston Police Department to thank.

Well, you're safe-er, I guess.

It's funny, the Craigslist Killer (isn't the media so undyingly clever?) does not fit the profile of what the American populous expects a Craiglist Killer, or any killer for that matter, to look like. We expect killers to be, um, I don't know... unwashed? Er... stark, raving, looneybonk? Uh... black?

(Uh-oh, another blogger who "tells it like it is!" EEP!)

Seriously, though, people are as surprised that someone as successful and good looking as Philip Markoff can kill as they are that someone as frumpish and awkward looking as Susan Boyle can sing. When people don't fit into stereotypes, the American public just goes ape. We don't know what to do.

"But... he was going to get married in the summer...."

"But.... he wears his Abercrombie sweater tied around his shoulders...."

"But.... he was going to be a doctor...."

Well, guess what, homies: rabbis kill their wives, priests finger boys' buttholes, cops use excessive force, and doctors are not so nice sometimes too.

Ever hear of Josef Mengele? 'Nuff said.

People like the Craigslist Killer shake us out of our state of complacency, where everything fits just right and the people we see are who we think they are, or who we want them to be. But, really, this guy is just a hapless schmuck like the rest of us, who probably had one too many student loans to pay, and bills for his impending marriage to his All American Girl looming overhead like a sword of Damocles-- and he made the decision to get some quick money by robbing some less-than-proper folks and, in doing so, became one himself. Especially when one of them made the mistake of resisting or fighting back. Oops! You're dead.

It's time, though, for people to stop being so stunned and shocked when these good ol' boys from "the top of their class" wind up in handcuffs. They're nothing special because their names were on the Dean's List a couple years ago. They're just shitheads, the same as the ones you see getting jacked up against Crown Vics outside trailer parks on FOX every Saturday night. The only difference between them is that Bobby Deans List has the means to facilitate a veneer to fool and obscure that Jamal Drop Out does not possess.

We really show ourselves to still be an inherently racist society when our mouths hang agape everytime a clean-shaven white kid gets busted. People, get over yourselves and get over your love-affair with the crew-necked, crew-cut, crew-team American boy.

He ain't home.

"I Like to Stab"

Reporters just don't use headlines that grab anymore.

So, when I troll the various news websites looking for information and fodder, I rarely expect my attention and focus to be piqued by a simple headline. Fortunately, bbcnews.com this morning did not disappoint.

"SA Gang Leader: I Like to Stab"

I thought two things when I read this headline:

1.) Now there's a reporter who knows the value of a good headline.

2.) Now there's a gang leader who tells it like it is.

The report, actually a video report, was a serious one, exposing the very real problem of violent gangs in Cape Town. It wasn't terribly revelatory, though: gang members were shown doing drugs, displaying weapons, and discussing their affinity for wounding and killing people. The most surprising thing I learned from watching this piece is that people still stab people (and they like it!)

I think it's refreshing to know that, despite this American culture that celebrates firearms and consistently makes guns more accessible to even the poorest criminal element, that there are other countries where people are still using good old knives as their primary weapon of mayhem and destruction.

That kinda just makes you feel good, doesn't it?

In this country, only serial killers and prison psychos use knives, giving the knife an unwarranted, negative association. But when gangs, who are routinely glorified by mass media, are shown to still be favoring knives after all the technological advances and price reductions relating to guns, well, that says something about the power of a sharp blade.

Let's bring back the pride in the knife!

Let's, too, aspire to instill in the criminal element of this country the unashamed desire to tell the truth about how they feel about crime. We have a society where criminals consistently lie about the crimes that they commit, their involvement in said crimes, and their attitudes towards crime, because they feel they will be incriminated, judged or persecuted for their disclosures. If you watch COPS, you'll know what I mean:

Officer: "Why'd you run, man?"

Shitstain: "Yo, I wuz scared!"

-----

Officer: "What do you have to say about the forty baggies of crack I just pulled out of your pockets?"

Knucklebutt: "Yo, these ain't mah pants!"

-----

Officer: "You know this car is stolen, right?"

Doucheduck: "Yo, lookit-- some dude just gave me this car today."

-----

Officer: "Why'd you kill forty-seven people in this shopping mall?"

Retard: "Yo-- that was my evil twin, Marvin."

-----

The stream of horseshit that spews from the lips of miscreants and bastards is unending, and so it is kind of refreshing to hear gang members in South Africa unapologetically making statements like, "I like to stab." They're not saying,

"Well, I stab because I have no legitimate opportunities."

Or,

"I stab because the White Man keeps me down."

Or,

"I stab because my parents slapped me around when I was a kid and I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and Aspergers and White Fish Salad Cholera and my Siamese Fighting Fish that I had when I was six was an alcoholic."

Or,

"Me?! Yo, I don't stab!"

They just come out and admit a.) that they do it and b.) that they like it.

I say, good for them. We Americans are always very fond of feel good, follow-your-rainbow statements like "do what you love."

Aren't we?

Just Another Nazi Granddaddy

Say goodbye to Racine, Wisconsin, motherfucker.

Josias Kumpf is going bye-byes, off to Austria, and he's not thrilled to be leaving his porch and his Chinese-made American flag stuck in the planter.

Oh, well!

The benign-looking sag-ass sitting in his plastic chair wearing his Costco parka ain't your old granddaddy. He is a Nazi who, in 1943 participated in a mass-shooting that left 8,000 Jews dead in one day. He did other things, too, I have no doubt, that we will never hear about, because, even sixty-six years later, they're too shocking and too horrible, even for Yahoo! News.

Apparently, Kumpf got his citizenship by not mentioning that he was an SS guard because, according to this lawyer, "he feard it would disqualify him when he applied for a visa."

Now, that's good thinking, Kumpf!

I'm sure there are some who are upset over Kumpf's deportation. Those assholes in the Lehigh Valley who named their kid Adolf Hitler, I'm sure aren't pleased. There are other, seemingly more normal folk, though, who seem to think that the mere passage of a large chunk of time is all that is needed to absolve someone of a heinous crime.

Here's what I say to those people:

"Let someone kill someone you love, let forty or fifty or sixty years go by, and then let's see what you think."

On May 21st, 1971, during the height of racial tension and unrest in New York City, two young New York City patrolmen were summoned to a project in Harlem at a little after ten p.m.-- a woman needed help. It came in as "a sick call." As the two patrolmen walked back to their radio car, chatting about this or about that, three armed men snuck up behind them and shot them in the back. Waverly Jones, 33, was killed instantly. His partner, Joseph Piagentini, lay writhing on the ground, begging for his life as his butchers fired bullet after bullet into his body. Piagentini was white, Jones was black-- and they were both killed in the name of black liberation, although the only thing Jones was liberated from was his family.

38 years later, the two surviving killers (one died in prison) come up for parole every two years. They are consistently denied by a parole board that is still mindful of the horrors they committed against humanity. There are some people out there who say that the killers have been imprisoned for long enough. That "enough time has passed." That this "all happened a long time ago." That "it's time to move on."

But, how can we do that? Sure, it was a long time ago. So was the Civil War-- but we don't stop trekking to Gettysburg. Washington sparred with Cornwallis a long time ago, too-- but we still have our bewigged patron saint on the one bucker, don't we? Martin Luther King, Jr. got shot in the face a "long time ago," too-- but I wouldn't suggest we stop honoring him, or forgetting what he stood for anytime soon, just because that all happened "a long time ago."

Memory is only as brief as we allow it to be. And I wouldn't presume to slap a police officer's widow or the kin of a Holocaust survivor across the face with a "well, that was really a very long time ago." Who are we to say?

So, as you look at the picture of this pathetic, droopy old fart, settin' there on his porch in the Wisconsin sunlight and question whether we are in the right to kick him out of our free country, picture him instead like this, and maybe that will give you a moment's clarity.

There is no statute-of-limitation on murder, just like there's no statute-of-limitation on memory.