WELL, THANK YOU VERY MUCH – AT 10:53 A.M. ET:  What is it about some religious leaders that makes them so dense, and so anti-American?  Consider this, from London's Telegraph:

Scotland's Roman Catholic leader has attacked America's ''culture of vengeance'' as he defended the release of the Lockerbie bomber.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien said despite the ''gratuitous barbarity'' of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi - who the Scottish Government freed last year on compassionate grounds - ministers were right ''to affirm our own humanity."

Yeah, right, Your Eminence.  Who cares about the broken hearts of people who lost children aboard Pan Am 103, which al-Megrahi helped bring down? 

Writing in Scotland on Sunday, he accused the American justice system of being based on ''vengeance and retribution'' and said he was glad to live in a country where ''justice is tempered with mercy."

Cardinal O'Brien said: ''In Scotland over many years we have cultivated through our justice system what I hope can be described as a 'culture of compassion'.

''On the other hand, there still exists in many parts of the US, if not nationally, an attitude towards the concept of justice which can only be described as a 'culture of vengeance'.''

COMMENT:  Of course, you may be sure that his chap will get plenty of support from the American left, which regards criminals as "victims of society."

As for our "culture of vengeance," the good cardinal of course gives no examples.  There are plenty of criminals walking the streets who've been given multiple chances.  We looked the other way while Jane Fonda committed treason.  We pretend not to notice when newspapers publish national secrets, acts that would put editors behind bars in the United Kingdom. 

And we live by the principle that it is better for a hundred guilty men to go free than for one innocent man to be imprisoned.  Yes, of course, we make mistakes.  We're not perfect.  But a little depth of knowledge from a foreign clergyman might be called for in this circumstance.

Of course, we're used to this.  That great "moral voice," Desmund Tutu, of the smooth-running country of South Africa, lectures us all the time while his own nation descends into crime and violence.

August 8, 2010