Does the guy who imprisoned three females for a decade deserve to die?

I have nothing against revenge per se. Unless going after it interferes with public safety. Public safety is the first duty of government to its citizens--not getting revenge on people who harm citizens, after the fact.

The best cure is prevention, after all.

Legal eagles claim that our legal system is not about either revenge or public safety, but about justice. Whatever that is. But they're kidding.

Because whatever our legal system says, revenge is obviously the main focus of many elected district attorneys: it plays well with voters. Voters also like the idea of prisons as revenge factories with no rehabilitation programs, virtually no job prospects if and when they get out, extra revenge on men who committed a crime while being black.

Not to mention the fact that voters also oppose spending money on public defenders, such that most have impossible jobs that only permit them to negotiate plea bargains--not to actually try to exonerate the accused.

So you can argue that the current penal system is theoretically devoted to justice but in practice it only honors that principle with rich people who can afford competent representation. For all else it's revenge-o-rama all the way, every day.

But going for revenge interferes with going for public safety.

Take this Castro scumbag who imprisoned, tortured & raped 3 females for a decade. I believe he deserves to die slowly and brutally for what he did. But I'm against killing him, because right now, many other scumbags around the country have imprisoned thousands of innocent people similarly. I say thousands because most of these are sex slaves the public sees as prostitutes. There are real prostitutes, but I'm talking about the involuntary ones. They number in the tens of thousands. Nice middle class people just don't see them. Apart from the ones who go to the bad part of town and pay pimps to rape them (they don't think they're raping them for the most part, I'd guess, but they are).

I don't want these enslaved people to be murdered by their captors. Or maimed. Or imprisoned for longer rather than shorter periods. And so forth.

So if public safety is your goal, you need graduated sanctions that give criminals incentives to not murder their victims, ratcheting up the sanctions for every increment of bad things done to their victims.

Reserve death for murder & nothing else. Not for justice. Not to thwart revenge. For the victims' sake. It's the least we can do for them.

I realize it galls to lighten up on criminal sanctions for heinous crimes. And I agree that the sanctions should be severe if the crime is severe. But not so severe that the criminal believes he has nothing to lose by killing his victims.

Cuba--a new idea, for once

If we can have full commercial relations with corrupt, politically repressive countries like Saudi Arabia and Communist China, not only should we have the same with Cuba--it makes us look hypocritical and vengeful not to.

Pretty much all the complaints of the Anti-Castro crowd are true. So? If you think we should only deal with virtuous regimes, that would cut out many if not most of our current trading partners. Don't bother to argue against normal relations with Cuba unless you have a game plan that also includes cutting off China and Saudi Arabia, among others.

As for the OAS--every tinhorn quasidictator needs a big scary enemy to divert their people's attention from his own shady dealings and subversion of democracy. Chavez and other self-styled populists need America to oppose them, just as Bin Ladin does.

A good enemy is the first priority of rapacious pols. And we're the best--the biggest, the baddest, and with enough historical dirty dealings to let them build a plausible narrative in which we're the villain.

So we have to tread a careful path of neither kowtowing to these clowns--nor letting reflexive opposition to them dictate our foreign policy.

Lastly, as for Guantanamo--Cuba wants it back in the worst way. But I don't want to give it back to them. Close the prison and the naval base there--and turn it into the finest resort in the Caribbean, while normalizing relations with Cuba and offering a raft of well-paid jobs to Cuban "guest workers." Now wouldn't that grind the Castro brothers' grits? Guantanamo is a fine port and a short flight from the USA. It could be immensely profitable for us, and do more to subvert Cuba's dictatorship than all the ranting revanchists in Miami.

And we could up the current insulting $4K/yr. rent we pay Cuba for Guantanmo (I've heard they don't cash the checks), and instead give them, say, a 5% cut of profits generated by the resort. And make sure the Cuban people know about it.

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