The reports are all over the place. A car is vandalized - its windows smashed, its doors painted with illegible words. A bear cub is slaughtered and campaign signs hung on its neck. People cowardly stealing yard signs, or shouting for murder of a presidential candidate.
Let's be perfectly honest about this. The people who are perpetrating these crimes - and yes that's exactly what they are; premediated criminal actions against life and property alike - are a small, extremely active minority. These people are not mentally ill. These people have no defense for their actions. These people are domestic terrorists. These people deserve to be arrested, arraigned, tried, and hopefully sentenced to some jail time.
However, they do not represent the whole, or even the half. They might be acting in a manner they see as supportive to McCain's campaign for the presidency, and those of us on the receiving end may interpret it that way.
But they are not doing it for him, they are not doing it for McCain's other more mannered supporters, and they're sure not doing it with McCain's blessing. In that spirit I'm sure if McCain were pressed on the question he would eventually squeak out an equivocative response repudiating these actions. Right?
Riiiight.
Now let's also honest about the fact that the left is not without fault. We have had our share of domestic terrorists over time. And yes, the infamous Bill Ayers was one of them. However his crimes were forty years ago. He has already admitted his crime, and served his sentence for it would have served time for it had the prosecution not been botched. He has since reformed himself into a productive member of society. He has completed a college education and become an educator himself. He continues to be a political activist, but now he works within the system to change and implement policy, rather than insult and destroy it. This was the path that led him to the Annenburg Foundation and his colleage-level association with Barack Obama.
This isn't the only example on the left, and there are just as many examples on the right as well of criminals being reintroduced to society - just look at Gordon Libby, or Scooter Libby, or John Negroponte, or Oliver North, or Judith Miller who are all fine examples of the kind of people that are allowed to reenter society productively after commiting a crime. Sure they haven't exactly repented for their actions like Ayers did, or even done their time, but let's not let that prevent them from getting another chance.
So who knows.. perhaps today's baby bear killers and window smashing graffiti artists are tomorrow's National Director of Intelligence and Fox News Analyst. We'll just have to wait and see.