Without question the United States has the right to respond to this incident, but the passage of the Jesse Helms-Burton bill, which poses a direct threat to Canadian companies doing business with Cuba, is itself an excessive use of force. The United States has every right to determine its own trade policy with Cuba, but the Helms-Burton bill oversteps legal boundaries and violates the purposes and principles of the UN charter. It furthermore infringes on the sovereignty of Canada and that of other friendly trading nations in the Caribbean basin. However, the Helms-Burton bill is no way to do business nor is it a way to treat your friends. Therefore I urge the U.S. Congress to kill such an irresponsible piece of legislation.
Violent criminals get an inordinate amount of our attention.
They are celebrities, and so they have all the trappings of success. For them, room service and cable. For them, counselling, university education, exercise equipment, health care, clothing, mail service, hot showers and central heating. Commit something big enough and get your own room away from the other riff-raff, which will ensure that you are not subjected to the same sorts of abuse you have been shelling out to others. The bottom may drop out of the social safety net for the rest of us but one sociopath and many other criminal deviants will be safe and warm.