I think we owe Timothy McVeigh an apology.

Will Collier expresses what a lot of us feel about the Moussaoui verdict. Hugh Hewitt on the air made the point that this result is what we should expect if we adopt the Democrats' view about giving terrorists at Gitmo full due process.

The defendant didn't actually board one of the planes to help fly it into a building, but he conspired with others to bring it about. That makes him guilty of the murder of 3000 of our fellow citizens and others.

I've thought about arguments for and against the death penalty. I can see how it isn't a an effective deterrent and how it is applied inconsistently and the rest, but what I can't get around is the fact that courts claim to do and are supposed to do is render justice. Justice is not a just an intellectual pursuit. It's also an emotion. As C. S. Lewis noted, we all have a sense of fairness, of what's right and wrong. We feel that. Little children feel it. It's in the cry of King Lear over his dead daughter, "Why should a horse, a dog, a rat have life and thou none."

And I believe that most people feel, as I do, that Moussaoui got off easy and that it wasn't fair to the people whom he conspired to kill. That isn't justice, but it's generally what our courts produce these days, in their effort to show other sophisticates that we aren't motivated by vengeance.

Whether Moussaoui preaches Islam or changes and becomes a gentle soul, he was part of a crime much worse than many who murdered far fewer people.