I have a theory.

I wish I didn’t.

Therese Kozlowski got a videotape of her husband Brian poisoning her coffee with sleeping pills. Even with this evidence, the poisoner received a sentence of just 60 days in jail, which he will be allowed to serve on the weekends. The prosecutor called the sentence “a slap in the face” of the victim. Oh, it’s much worse than that.

It all started after Therese said she wanted a divorce. The she noticed that she was feeling drowsy and tired on mornings when Brian made the coffee. She narrowly avoided an accident when she fell asleep while driving to work. So she secretly installed video by the coffee machine, and sure enough, Brian was putting the equivalent of eight sleeping pills in the morning java.

“Brian’s continuous, methodical, and calculated plot to poison me included a complete disregard for human life, including his own daughter [she also drank some of the spiked coffee], along with hundreds of other drivers who he put at risk every day for weeks,” Therese Kozlowski said in court. “I believe this was attempted murder. Once Brian realized he lost me and there was no getting me to stay in this unhealthy marriage, his goal was to eliminate me.”

This convinced Macomb County (Michigan) Circuit Court Judge Antonio Viviano , he said, to give Brian jail time instead of merely probation, which was his initial instinct.

When rapists are given slaps on the wrist, or a sociopathic kid escapes a major sentence for negligent homicide because he suffers from “Affluenza,” there is an immediate public uproar. Sometimes judges are suspended, or forced to retire. This case is getting some national publicity, but so far, not nearly enough.

I am fighting the tendency to see political forces in everything, and fighting hard, but what the hell: I think this is partially the result of judges and members of the pubic steeping in the rotten waters of the cultural rot being spread from the Left to undermine law enforcement, personal responsibility, and the rule of law. These didn’t arise to help white middle class domestic poisoners, of course: they arose, as has much else, out of misplaced compassion and the desire not to make blacks, the poor, and, of course, illegal immigrants have face the consequences of their own anti-social behavior because its not their fault.

I’m noted here many times that this was the basis of Clarence Darrow’s belief that the law punishing anyone was unethical, hence his habitual use of jury nullification tactics. Darrow was a progressive pioneer, and I suspect he’d love today’s “mass incarceration” arguments. The problem, as this incident shows, is that when you poison the culture it’s like poisoning the aquarium—all the fish are affected. (Or When they (I can say “they” because it sure isn’t me) keep pouring  “all punishment is mean, cruel and vindictive” into the water, the resulting ethical blindness won’t just help blacks, the poor and illegals, it will help dangerous people like Brian Kozlowski too,  because its hard to keep rationalizations in narrow paths. The  the judge, for example, has fallen prey to Consequentialism (#3) and “No Harm No Foul!” (#8), as well as “Everybody makes mistakes!” (#19),  “It’s just a small part of what I am!” (#21A,  “There are worse things” (#22), “Give him/her/them/me a break!” (#38) and more. No wonder.

After all, it’s not like anyone was really hurt, right? Now, if the Mrs. had fallen asleep at the wheel and her car swerved into the lane of an oncoming semi, or maybe an SUV filled with kids resulting THEN Brain would be bad, and deserve prison, but not the way things turned out.

In related news, the Trump administration has announced that the Federal government will again begin executing those serial killers, mass murderers, lethal gang members  and predatory psychopaths that Clarence Darrow believed were blameless because that’s just the way the God he didn’t believe in made them.

Good.