Like manna from Hell

It almost sounds like one of O’Reilly’s made up stories, but although it fell into Fox’s lair like a gift, it’s true.  Vermont Judge Edward Cashman sentenced a child molester to just 60 days of jail time -- a sentence he said was designed to ensure the man got prompt sex-offender treatment.  

This is a country where someone can get 55 years for having a couple of lids of weed and a country that jails offenders by the millions, but it only takes one example for the Republican Hate Machine to build a plenary case upon it.  This judge is too lenient, therefore all judges are lenient – sounds logical if you’re an idiot or if you pursue outrage as an avocation as many in the Budweiser Belt do.

Cashman’s argument, that the offender needs treatment and that there is no treatment in jail is factually true, but the argument is incomplete as it assumes that treatment will work and that the offender will be released harmless into the midst of us.  I doubt that this is reliably the case and I’m sure that popular sentiment prefers punishment to rehabilitation in any case.

In sentencing the man to 60 days in jail, Cashman warned the defendant, who allegedly has such a low IQ that he cannot understand why is actions were criminal, that he would get life behind bars if he failed to undergo treatment or comply with other conditions, including a prohibition against alcohol or living in an apartment complex that allows children.  That’s not quite, lenient as it is, the same scenario being flatulated by Fox and it’s disturbingly out of character with Cashman’s record, which is hardly liberal as the average Limbaughian lunkhead would define it.

Cahsman is religious, a Catholic and a man who has jailed parents for refusing to testify against their children. Although he has long had a concern for the convict, as a Christian might be expected to have, his reputation is harsh, but all it takes is one misstep and he becomes another straw man for the burning.  

It’s another victory for the Fox.