David Berkowitz, the "Son of Sam" murderer of six people in the late 1970s, is serving six consecutive life sentences in the Sullivan Correctional Facility in Fallsburg.
Gary Leon Ridgway, the infamous "Green River Killer," who confessed to killing 48 Seattle-area prostitutes in the early 1980s, is serving a life sentence in Walla Walla, Wash.
Dennis Rader was known as the "BTK Killer," which stood for "bind, torture and kill." He's serving 10 consecutive life sentences at the maximum-security El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas.
Juan Corona sexually assaulted and stabbed to death 25 men in the early 1970s. He's in the California State Prison in Corcoran. Charles Manson is in the same prison, as is Sirhan Sirhan.
All of these people have at least two things in common.
1) They were tried and convicted in a civilian court.
2) America's prison system has had little trouble keeping all of them behind bars, along with thousands of members of the Crips, the Bloods, the Aryan Brotherhood and all the other twisted fiends whose crimes make them unfit to live in society.
Yet, you would think from the Republican party hue and cry elicited from the Obama administration's decision to try 9/11 "mastermind" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and other defendants in a New York City civilian court that we are all going to be murdered in our beds.
"It is an unnecessary advantage to give to terrorists," former NYC mayor and presidential aspirant Rudy Giuliani said about the upcoming trials. "I don't know why you'd want to give terrorists advantages; and, secondly, it's an unnecessary risk."
On Monday, Rep. John Shadegg, R-Ariz., on the floor of the House Representatives, directed this statement to New York's current mayor, Michael Bloomberg.
"It's easy to say we're tough. ... Well, mayor, how are you going to feel when it's your daughter (who) is kidnapped from school?"
For one thing, Bloomberg's two daughters are 30 and 26 years old and don't attend school. That, and possibly realizing how stupid his remarks were, led Shadegg to apologize.
While we would like to think politicians give appropriate consideration to every issue, the fact is that, by and large in this political environment, if President Obama is for something, Democrats will support it and Republicans will attack it.
New York's judicial system and prison system will do just fine in dealing with the alleged terrorists, and the world will see a democratic republic at its best, operating in full public view.
