Career criminals have many origins, and it's naive to assume that a habitual criminal only becomes one because society "forces" it on him somehow. The car thief who got a break could just as easily have gone on to kill someone later during another crime. I assume Rather saw something unusual in this kid's circumstances to give him a break, and it's unfair to assume someone else would have thrown the book at him just because that person is a conservative and not an "enlightened" liberal like Rather is apparently supposed to be.

I'm getting more than a little tired of the assumption that liberals have a monopoly on compassion, especially when its often at someone else's expense. Just part of that crystalline certainty that many liberals seem to have of their moral superiority over conservatives, I guess.