Hey, get this... I gave my goatee the week off to attend a blues festival in Negril, Jamaica. And speaking of the blues, I want to talk about our legal system, which currently has more holes in it than Sonny Corleone (search) at a deserted tollbooth vis-à-vis capital punishment.

We’re about to enter the morass of the D.C. sniper trial, a trial in which one of the snipers, John Lee Malvo (search), told an interrogator that he shot a sixth grader in the chest to see how the chief of police would react on the nightly news. Now he’s going to plead insanity. Well you know something? That’s just not good enough, pal.

Why does insanity always get you off the hook? It’s like a “Get Out Of Reality Free Card.” All you have to do is say you were a little cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, and all of a sudden caring people with zero regard for the victim’s loved ones will convert some of their Delta miles and fly in to attend an anti-death penalty candlelight-vigil in your honor. All of a sudden people are feeling sorry for you, because you killed someone, because you were crazy! Of course you were crazy! That’s the point!

Lawyers have to start passing on guys like this. When a guy admits to shooting a sixth grader on a playground as a goof, you have to walk away. Forget the quaint, secular notion that everybody deserves a defense for a second and actually hear what the guy is admitting to and rightly take a pass. And if anybody upbraids you about not upholding your constitutional duty or some crap like that, just tell them you were temporarily insane when you passed on the case.

While it’s almost impossible for the rest of us to believe, it would appear this guy Malvo liked doing it. I say we let the surviving family members decide what should be done to him. It’s their cataclysmic loss, simply let it be their decision. Who could possibly argue with that?

And if that was the case, I’m pretty sure John Lee Malvo wouldn’t last too long after the final verdict is rendered. As a matter of fact, maybe this is the case where we install a hair-trigger derringer in the judge’s gavel and as Malvo is standing to be sentenced the judge can close the case and even the score in one fell swoop.

Got that?