CASEY ANTHONY

Is she a monster, sociopath, or psychopath?

It is difficult to ignore the revelations and NOT feel sorry for Casey's Mom, who seems so deaf, so blind about her daughter's lies. And the father -- despite what Casey said about him abusing her, her father and mother continue to support what appears to be their daughter's fairytale fiction.

It certainly seems to be a story about a 25-year-old woman who didn't want to be a Mother, and got rid of the child.

The trial is hypnotizing. Are we dealing with Casey A. being put to death? I doubt it. She's young, average-ordinary-nice-looking.

Are we dealing with life imprisonment? I think so. I can't imagine that she will not be spending the rest of her life in prison.

Could she, instead of prison, be sent to a prison hospital?

Yes. I think we'd be paying for her parents inability to raise their daughter with a sense of right and wrong. Is she insane? Mentally ill? How does her crime relate to the horror story of Andrea Yates, in jail for life, for drowning her five children?

Casey A. is our current O.J. soap opera. Lawyers lawyering got him a Not Guilty verdict. Now he's in jail, not playing golf, not gallivanting around with various girlfriends, but the sense that we, society and the law failed, is still in the air. With testimony about the odor of death that was in Casey's car, chloroform research on her computer, duct tape on the decomposed corpse, I can't conceive of Casey A . being deemed NOT GUILTY, but ... well, it could happen.

It's the biggest show we've got right now. More interesting than Weiner's weenie and will his wife divorce him, more interesting than Romney, or any of the Repubs except Palin, who is cuter, sexier, more outspoken but capable of riveting us with her singing out some strong conviction that gets her headlines and gets our hackles up.

Yes, the Casey A. trial is a compelling diversion from poll numbers, statistics, doomful facts showing us that the economy is still failing, that more and more Americans are being endangered by the inability of Congress and the President to keep the country running. He can't move because they won't move -- it's still just talk-talk about a debt-ceiling, trying to fix what eight years of Bush/Cheney did.

(The time that's being wasted in our House of Representatives ... it's as if the faucets are open -- all of them open and running water full blast.. Will we run out of water to drink, to clean ourselves with, and have no water for nourishing crops, growing green things, and putting out fires? Will we become one of the countries where people wash in and drink unclean water?)

I am going upstairs and turning on the TV to watch the Nancy Grace style bitter, practical, commentary on Casey A. and continue to be repelled -- shocked by what happened to her two-year old daughter, rather than contemplate what would happen if Obama decided NOT to run for a second term -- not run because he knows that much of the hatred and anti-everything that he tries to do, is because he's Black? Oh no! Well ... maybe yes.

Watching the trial is less painful.