I don't feel any need to be diplomatic about the U.S. justice system: Americans who support it and perpetuate it are barbarians and idiots.
Update: Nicolas Kristof on excessive sentencing.
NY Times OpEd on the subject.
Ruling on Texas "three strikes" law in 1980, the court
upheld a life sentence for a man who refused to return $120.75 he'd been
paid to repair an air-conditioner.
The article in NYTimes.
We have a hard time comprehending why a group of adult men would want to seize a young girl and burn her alive at the stake because they believe her to be a witch.
Why? What's so hard to understand? What the hell is hard to understand about human behavior that is barbaric, savage, cruel, and irrational? Like locking up a man for life because he refused to return $120 for fixing an air conditioner? Even better: the justices in their dramatic robes, from their solemn benches, proclaimed that this was indeed rational and just and provided for good order in our society.