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Apr 14, 2008 11:15 pm US/Central
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In The Know: Crimes That Aim For The Human Heart
(WCCO)
This weekend more than a dozen summer cabins were torched by arsonists in two Minnesota counties. Monday night, Don says, what punishment fits that crime? I can't think of a punishment that satisfies the Constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.
I've been reporting the news for a long time, and it never fails. Every year someone does something that defies reality, and shakes the faith of hardened journalists in human nature.
There are more horrendous crimes, to be sure. But, when a criminal aims his or her criminal ways at the human heart in an effort to break it, it is hard to hide our disgust.
Sure, these cabins can be rebuilt. But, the screen door won't slam the same way. The cabin smell, accumulated over a half century of late night cribbage games, have evaporated. The pictures of grandpa with the biggest fish anyone ever saw come out of that lake - is gone. The sofa you wouldn't have in your own house, but was ever so comfortable for a nap with the breeze coming off the lake - gone.
Someone took that, and more, from 13 families. What will the law take from the arsonist of equal value?
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