<I'm so glad that you have no sympathy for the concept of personal redemption, nor mercy, nor forgiveness.

One could bring up the fact that a vast majority of felons are probably not sweet, misguided teenagers, but people who would cut your throat for the five bucks in your wallet. But that's not the point.

The point is that the concept of responsibility for one's actions is a dying idea in this country, including having to live with the consequences of one's actions. It is remarkably easy in this country to not become a felon, and I am sick to death of people acting like someone just walks down the road, minding his own business, and gets hit with the Felon Stick.

And while I concede that your personal motivations in this may be worthy ones, you know as well as I do that the issues in Florida as far as the Democratic Party was concerned were not issues of redemption, mercy, or forgiveness, but of garnering more Democratic votes from a constituency which typically tends to vote for Democrats. So let's not go too far overboard with the whole "milk of human kindness" bit.

As for the Merchant of Venice, that's all very well. My own personal view is that mercy is for the victims to disburse, not uninjured third parties looking for some polish on their halo and maybe a few more Democratic votes.

BTW, most people enjoy the view of Shylock as a one-dimensional sleazebag, and ignore the stupendous amount of crap he has taken throughout the play to unhinge him to the point where he demands the pound of flesh. And at the end, he is forced to renounce his ancestral faith in penalty, which I'm sure got a hearty guffaw from the audience.

An exercise for the student: Look up the treatment of Jews in the Venice of the time of the play. For extra credit, look up the origin of the term "ghetto."