We got the car swept off--the snow was light enough to move with a broom. All my garden containers look like bowls of ice cream with their caps of six or more inches of snow on top. Today we expect our temps to remain below 20F.
I have been following this story since I first heard it and was totally flummoxed by the verdict. Unlike the anchors of Good Morning, America I had heard of "affluenza" but as a critique of modern (particularly American) consumer culture not as a defense for killing a bunch of people while driving drunk. If I hadn't seen a piece earlier this week on the nearly $500k/year "treatment" center the boy is to live in for the next two years, I might have some sympathy for the defense attorney's notion that the boy needed psychological treatment to counter the parents' overindulgence. However, that posh setting simply confirms the lessons his parents' imparted: wealth and social position has bought him out of serious consequences for his act. I think the attitude expressed by some characters in one a couple of my favorite books: sometimes mercy to the guilty is an injustice to the innocent. This I think is one of those times.
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