blood sacrifice

I was reading this story about Jokar Tsarnaev in Rupert Murdoch's New York Pile this morning, about how prosecutors have figured out that he's eligible for the death penalty if they'll charge and convict him of using weapons of mass destruction.

This follows hard on the stupid (and still ongoing) debate about whether the Marathon bombing suspect ought to be given his first-amendment rights, i.e., the Miranda stuff. Since he's an American citizen, and the Constitution makes no provision for "special circumstances," there actually is no debate. Either the gov will abide by own laws, or, what's more likely, it won't.

All this raises the question of what we're looking for in this case. Justice? Or a bloody ritual sacrifice.

Many Americans have now devolved to the point where, like primitive and superstitious people everywhere, they have a conscious urge to propitiate and bribe the deity to protect us from those who would  harm us, by offering it their hearts and their blood.