You’re right Beverly. From a practical application standpoint common sense should prevail. But our laws and court decisions don’t define practical application or common sense. That’s why we now have known criminals avoiding the consequences of their actions because of a technicality that was overlooked during the common sense approach to practical application by a law enforcement officer or prosecuting attorney. The courts must make their decisions based on their interpretations of the “letter of the law” and the the constitutionality thereof. A lot of well intentioned laws get misconstrued when practical application oversteps a judge’s interpretation of the “letter of the law” and that judge’s decision sets a precedent that eventually also get’s misconstrued by attorney’s so that other, more egregious offenders later find a loophole through which to slip. Then that law starts sliding down that slope.

he should be put in the stocks and be publically shamed.

I think if you emigrate to another country, you should research their laws to make sure you can follow them and if you feel you cannot respect the laws of the land, then you should not come - it’s somewhat simple to me - this man committed murder, the only motive allowed in court is self-defense and there is no apparent argument for that when the Founding Fathers said “freedom from religious persecution”, they meant that there would be no national religion as there had been in England (or course, this was right after the witch trials but we won’t go there today) and not that you can claim that murder is okay because your religion (?) forbids you to leave an arranged marriage (yipes, and don’t turn this into an abortion debate either, that’s different - the law hasn’t determined when a fetus becomes a protected member of society) - oh, what am I starting - LOLOLOL forget it - just hang the guy - divorce is legal in this country, she had every right to leave her marriage and he had no right to take her life, period…

This situation shows base depravity. I’m not concerned with the cultural implications. Here in Atlanta this case is another sad story of a person from Middle Eastern descent refusing to let go of archaic standards and wholesale bigotry and machismo. The first case was just decided in court. Last week a life sentence was given to a 60 year old Indian man who hired a hit on his young African American daughter-in-law. When you step into the land of opportunity, get with the d**n program! Everyone is free here! If that goes against your cultural sensibilities, get a plane ticket and take your ass back to where you came from.

This is America. Not Pakistan. I have a hard time understanding how anyone could do such an uncivilized thing.

have been reading thru the comments on this…i agree with what you ALL have said…the bottom line is (i live smack in the middle of a huge immigrant population, some of who choose to become ‘americanized’ and some who cling to their 3rd world customs tooth and fang)that if you come to this country you should learn the language, customs, mores, what the constitution says, etc…our european, asian, etc forefathers made sure their children went to school, learned english and how to be good AMERICANS…i agree we are quickly becoming segregated into our own exclusive groups/tribes once again…..

The thread of these comments has been a discussion about how to deal with people who don’t fit the social mores, and how to craft laws that will enforce behavior we need, without stepping into areas of tyranny and racism. In the first place, it’s not racist to have an official language. Language is not racial. In Seattle, we had to spend a huge amount of money because the person who translated our ballots into Chinese didn’t do as good a job as someone thought they should have. A Laotian man sued the Seattle school district because the notices sent home to parents were not in Laotian. A Vietnamese mom sued the school district because her daughter was not able to attend the local school, but had to go to another school to get a teacher who spoke Vietnamese. We have to put a stop to this. We can’t insist that all 172 languages in the Seattle schools have certified teachers in the classroom for anyone who chooses not to learn English. That’s ridiculous. Meanwhile, we are selling our parks and closing our libraries because of budget shortfalls. I’m a tad disturbed by the postings that imply that because a handful of people die from medical conditions that could have been cured (they say) by medical doctors that parents should not be allowed to choose prayer for treatment. That would make sense if no one ever died or suffered unnecessarily because of the limitations of allopathic medicine. I’d like to see more information about these subjects. People just spout off opinions without having enough information. Hundreds of thousands of people die every year from medical treatments. Yet, when one person dies from an alternative treatment, it makes headlines across the country. I avoided vacinnations for my daughter, and only used naturopaths when she needed medical care, and she never had the kinds of conditions that are endemic in kids around us. Another area I’d like to see more information before shouting of opinions is in this article. I would like to hear from the family - what is their story? There was an article in the past few weeks about an African community in Seattle, there are thousands of people in that community, and the government is bringing more in. They didn’t just decide to hop on a plane and come here. They were brought here by the US government. The CIA did the same thing after the fall of Viet Nam - they brought in thousands of people from southeast Asia. In the 90’s, I was talking to a woman who runs a food bank in a suburb of Seattle. One of her volunteers, an immigrant from Russia, was a high school student doing the community service work required of all students, at the food bank. My friend talked her, and found out that a local fundamentalist church went to Moscow right after it opened up, and bought people’s apartments in exchange for a ticket to the US, a car, free money, a place to live, free food, clothes, medical care, etc. Turns out, they brought these Russians to the US, put them on welfare, gave them a car, got them into subsidized housing, and pointed them to the food banks. Meanwhile, those Moscow apartments were remodeled and are worth a fortune. The US is bringing in thousands of Iraqis to immigrate to the US. We need more information at this stage. What is the deal that is being cut here? Is the deal that these people will be able to retain their own culture? It would make sense that there is some kind of understanding. We need to know more about what they are thinking, and what their goals are. It is understandable that the family wouldn’t talk, but surely it would have been possible to find someone from their community that could explain what is going on in their head, what they were thinking, at least culturally. We may not know the specifics in this case: the guy may be a drunken retard psychopath military guy, or an upstanding member of the community holding on to cherished ideals surrounded by a world of infidels. Are they ashamed of what he did, or would they do it again? It’s important that we understand this.