Take all the rope in Texas, Find a tall oak tree...

Beer For my Horses - Toby Keith

Well a man come on the 6 o'clock news
Said somebody'’s been shot, somebody'’s been abused
Somebody blew up a building
Somebody stole a car
Somebody got away
Somebody didn'’t get too far yeah
They didn'’t get too far

Grandpappy told my pappy, back in my day, son
A man had to answer for the wicked that he done
Take all the rope in texas Find a tall oak tree, round up all of them bad boys
Hang them high in the street for all the people to see that

Chorus:

Justice is the one thing you should always find
You got to saddle up your boys You got to draw a hard line
When the gun smoke settles we'’ll sing a victory tune
We'’ll all meet back at the local saloon
We'’ll raise up our glasses against evil forces
Singing whiskey for my men, beer for my horses

We got too many gangsters doing dirty deeds
We'’ve got too much corruption, too much crime in the streets
It's time the long arm of the law put a few more in the ground
Send 'em all to their maker and he'’ll settle 'em down
You can bet he'’ll set '’em down '’cause

Chorus (x2)

This Monday morning musical interlude was brought to you by one Stephen A. Marshall who fatally shot himself in the head late Sunday night:

BOSTON - Maine police found two registered sex offenders shot to death in towns 25 miles apart and quickly zeroed in on a suspect, who fatally shot himself as investigators closed in.

The daylong manhunt that stretched through three states ended when police pulled over the bus Stephen A. Marshall was riding to Boston and the 20-year-old Canadian turned his gun on himself as officers boarded.

Marshall died late Sunday before he could answer questions about whether he knew the Maine victims - sex offenders whose deaths prompted officials to take down the Maine Sex Offender Registry Web site. The site lists the photos, names and addresses of more than 2,200 sex offenders.

"We will try to establish what is the link between these three men but as of tonight there'’s no known connection,"” Maine Department of Public Safety spokesman Stephen McCausland said.

The sex offenders -— Joseph L. Gray, 57, of Milo, and William Elliott, 24, of Corinth -— were shot to death in their central Maine homes, officials said.

[...]

Web site taken down
A sex offender registry Web site in Washington state was cited in the deaths of two convicted child rapists last summer. Michael Anthony Mullen, 35, said he targeted the pair and posed as an FBI agent to gain entry to their home after finding them on the online Whatcom County, Wash., sex offender list.

Mullen pleaded guilty in March to two counts of second-degree murder and was sentenced to more than 44 years in prison. Whatcom County continues to list sexual offenders on the Internet.

Now this leaves some tough questions. Actually, that's not true. It's just one big multifacited question:

Who are the real victims here?

Personally, I think it was the folks sitting behind Mr. Marshall. The ones who got splattered with blood and had to deviate from their days plans as a result.

I think the good citizens of Maine are victims as well. As a result of this adventure they've lost their sex offender registry. Citizen groups and police services have to fight tooth and nail to get these registries put in place with the aims of informing and subsequently protecting the public. Now that control measure is lost. We don't know for how long.

Was Marshall a victim? Undetermined. How about the two sex offenders that got popped? Undetermined. It is noteworthy that the story quoted above cites a simillar case from a year ago. Are they trying to generate sympathy for those poor, poor hunted sex offenders? It kind of seems like it, in my mind anyway. Perhaps MSNBC is a victim of moral relativism. Perhaps.

When it boils right down though, is society not the victim? The Victim of a justice system that isn't. Somewhere along the line our judiciary and elected representatives, with the help of the lib-left, decided that criminals didn't need to be punished. Pedophiles and rapists are allowed roam free to comit their crimes again. Our prisions have revolving doors and no one in authority is willing to do something about it lest they be called inhumane by the likes of the ACLU and John Howard Society. Have they not created an environment where individuals feel that they have to take justice into their own hands to see it done?

We can't condone what Marshall did but it does cause us to give pause to reflect on where we're at and where we're going with our criminal justice systems. Think about it.