Detroit Police arrested 22 year old Deontae Bradley as the man caught on tape battering 91-year old Leonard Sims in Detroit while car jacking him at a convenience store. He hit the old man twenty-one times. The victim was a veteran of WWII, and was nearly run over as Bradley took off with his car.

It is my view that the punishment for crimes as sociopathic as this one, in which citizens less capable of defending themselves are savaged (seniors, children, women, and mentally challenged) by stronger, able-bodied persons should include non-crippling, deterrent disablement of the offender so that it is impossible for him/her to do violence to another person ever again.

What am I saying? Saudi America, i.e. cut off the hands of one who strikes the elderly? Striking the elderly man is certainly worse than stealing, for which one may lose a hand in Saudi. However, since corporeal punishment or mutilation is not consistent with our constitutional norms, then what?

My premise is that traditional punishments (incarceration, probation) do not stop repeat offenses, and death won't be imposed where the victim does not die of the battery.

Also, supporting an offender of this kind in prison is a waste of taxpayer dollars. Here he is, willing to risk taking the life of someone's elderly relative for a car and a few bucks. So to punish him, he's given more unearned resources in free room and board for years, free medical treatment on the taxpayer's dime, and other costly services with little guarantee that these will stop him from repeat offending on leaving the pokey.

So here is the difficult question. What non-crippling, violence-disabling 'punishment' would stop these people? Would it even be punishment? Could it be called treatment? What should it be, if anything? I am not talking about talk-therapy, or treatment that depends on the sociopath's compliance with some self-directed regime -- that fails too often to be affordable or acceptable.

Any ideas?

From some non-random Google search entries. As the UK prepares to announce arrest warrants for the KGB/FSB/SVR/Vympel (whatever)agents who spiked Alexander Litvinenko's tea with Polonium-210, check out the defiant neo-Sovietism in the second entry and the actions reported in the others. RIA Novosti doesn't speak without the regime's tacit permission or active direction:

Russia seeks first-strike capacity against US bases in Europe
Jane's, UK - 2 hours ago
Another Russian defense analyst, Alexander Pikayev, acknowledged at the time that Russian forces might use tactical nuclear weapons to eliminate threatening ...

Sudan using Chinese, Russian weapons in
Brisbane Times, Australia - May 8, 2007
In a 24-page report obtained by AFP, London-based Amnesty provided photographs of Russian and Chinese warplanes it said were deployed at Nyala airport in ...

No, a Cold War isn't necessary, that is, if the Bush Administration stops the Neocon abuse of the military and puts it back on a firm, rebuilding, peace-through-strength constitutional defense posture. This posture would engage and rebuild alliances while offering strength and resource trade that provides an alternative to Russian energy. The alternative to wasteful adventurism must come from the economic core of the US and prepare for decisive victory in last resort wars, not endless policing in OPC's (Other Peoples' Countries).

Internationalism has gone too far when both parties have the White House, but obviously the GOP neocons have been quite bad. However, they are not without their secret supporters on the left.

A few years ago, Dendreon Corporation reported phenomenal results in a first phase genetic-based treatment for inoperable prostate cancer patients, achieving remissions in a large percentage of study subjects compared to those receiving a placebo. The first phase in this case involved a relatively small number of subjects, increasing the risk that later phased tests across larger numbers would show less optimistic results.

The drug, in a later phase of testing inoperable prostate cancer patients who also had little progress with chemotherapy, was found to prolong the study patients' lives on an average of months, not years.

Then the bottom fell out of the stock when the FDA flirted with approval for marketing as a cancer treatment drug, hedged, and then failed to approve Provenge.

These events raise some important issues regarding bio-pharma investment and the biopharm economy. There are a number of brave biopharma companies that are putting money into R&D while posting losses until and unless one of their genetic drugs or agents gets results and negotiates FDA hoops to marketability. Until such an event, sometimes these companies will suffer investors who know the wait for FDA or further phase drug results will leave their money in a fairly inert stock, and take their funds towards current movers.

It seems that such investments, while riskier, stand to support firms that very well could profit not only investors, but everyone in ways well-beyond what money can buy or sell. These are life stocks, and so long as management keeps the firm expenses rooted in R&D and reasonable compensation, there ought to be some manner of hybrid investment benefit programmed into these stocks that incentivizes investment, or, holding the stock.

Perhaps tax credits for investment firms that take reduced commissions on buying bio-pharma firm stock for clients would enhance the intangible profit of this crucial industry to all. If the bio-pharma firms or their genetic development licensors meet certain fiscal discipline standards, why not reward investment firms and investors who support them against short term appearances?