Atlanta is reeling over the story of two local girls being murdered at their out-of-state universities, Auburn and University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Sorry to say I don't know the two girls' names offhand and since I'm typing this when I should be preparing for work, I'm not looking it up at the moment. However the story inspires a couple of different opinions on crime and punishment.

The girl pictured on the left was killed at Auburn, and if I heard the story right it appears the killer was after her credit card. That girl was Jewish, and her rabbi was interviewed on the 11 o' clock news. He memorably said, "I know there are religions that say you should love the sinner and hate the sin, but I don't believe that at all. The person who did this is just garbage," or words similar to that.

The rabbi made me want to sign up at my nearest synagogue right away. That "turn the other cheek" crap sounds like a good way to insure the other cheek gets bloodied. The old "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" Jewish code sounds more sensible in this scenario. If we follow the former line of logic we arrive at the modern mentality where instead of putting someone under the prison, we try to understand how their potty training may have inspired their behavior. I hate to tell the rabbi but the media is already working on this spin.

This morning I get up, and am inspired to type this, because we have a picture of the Auburn shooter and some news of his background. Why, he's an Iraq veteran who "hasn't been the same since he came home." Aww, bless his heart! Set him free, I say! This man is a war hero!

What a load of crap! I bet one thing that is the same about him is he likes free credit cards at someone else's expense. (There's something to think about: if you have your credit card in your wallet or purse, you're carrying $10,000 around. There was a big story in January in Georgia about a serial killer who was offing people in state parks for the credit and ATM cards.) If this guy pleads post-traumatic stress syndrome and gets away with it he'll be fucking up the lives of even more people, and ones who really are war heroes. I hope he doesn't get away with it.

There was a poster that hung in our seventh grade science class that said, "I know I'm good because God don't make no junk!" Whoever created that poster had written a fallacy. Some people are junk, and they deserve to be thrown in a landfill like dirty rags.