A home invasion in the small town of Cheshire CT this week reached a level of violence “almost unfathomable.” I lived in L.A. for thirty years and don’t remember any home invasion as sickeningly violent as this. Remember that 14 yo Iraqi girl who was raped and murdered by US troops? This is worse.
The husband was beaten with a baseball bat almost beyond recognition. The wife was strangled to death. The 11 and 17 yo daughters were raped, doused with gasoline, and set on fire.
Police caught the alleged humans who did it, and I have no trouble saying they are guilty considering police saw them running out of the house after setting it afire. While I oppose the death penalty, people committing crimes this horrendous need to be locked up and never let out. Let them die of old age decades from now in prison.
(This wasn’t a gang thing, there is no apparent link between the victims and the murderers, and robbery appeared to be the motive.)
The only thing that’s certain about this awful occurence is that the conservatives will try to blame the non-conservatives for it happening. Something I’ve never understood: how come with all the “family values” in the Red states that they have so much more divorce, child abadonment, and domestic violence than the blue states?
Joe, you got some stats on that? The stats I see show a pretty good mix– and my own red state is tied for divorce rate rank at 26, just above a blue state. Same for domestic violence homicides: the red states include some of the highest rates (NV), but also some of the lowest (MT, ND) while blue states tend to hover in the middle but include some states (VT) with very high rates.
“The Associated Press, using data supplied by the US Census Bureau, found that the highest divorce rates are to be found in the Bible Belt. The AP report stated that “the divorce rates in these conservative states are roughly 50 percent above the national average of 4.2 per thousand people.”
New England states have the lowest rates.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2004/10/31/walking_the_walk_on_family_values
The Bible Belt is only a few of the many red states! Perhaps you’ve mistaken all conservatives for southern conservatives.
The stats I’ve got show a nice mix of red and blue. True MA and CT are at the top. But ND ranks 7th, LA (a southern state) ranks 10th, SD & SC tie for 18th– all above CA, which ranks 21st. Blue states DE, OR, WA, & FL all rank in the bottom half, with FL at 42nd. Considering that red states outnumber blue states 32 to 19, I don’t believe these stats show a consistent pattern.
Dead last, BTW, is NV which, while a red state, is certainly not Bible Belt or Family Values paradise.