Murder Charges For Ariel Castro...

Prosecutors in Ohio announced that they'll be seeking aggravated murder charges against Ariel Castro, for the miscarriages his abuse of his captive women caused.  I'm surprised that keeping three women captive for ten years doesn't carry the same sort of penalties as murder (life in prison without parole or execution), but apparently it does not.  If charging him with murder is required to make sure that miserable scum is never a free man again, then I'm all for it.

But it does raise some questions.

How, exactly, is it possible to simultaneously have legal abortion and charge someone for murdering a fetus?  If you can charge someone with murder for killing a fetus, then you are saying that killing a fetus is (under the law) the same as killing a human.  If that's the case, then how can abortion be anything other than murder?  It can't be the mother's permission – there's no other circumstance I can think of where permission excuses murder.

I'm no lawyer, but this isn't making sense to me.  I don't see how our legal system can simultaneously hold that abortion is legal and that Ariel Castro is a murderer...

Castro's Daughter Endorses Obama...

Mary Anastasia O'Grady has a piece this morning in the Wall Street Journal, talking about Ms. Castro's endorsement of Obama (for reelection).  The Obama administration recently granted a visa to Ms. Castro so she could travel to San Francisco to make a speech about homosexual rights.  Given our current relations with Cuba, and their holding of American citizen Alan Gross, the Obama's administration's willingness to accommodate Ms. Castro seems pretty odd.  Ms. O'Grady concludes:

This is the kind of thing that makes U.S. presidents look weak in the eyes of tyrants and that seems to be the way Ms. Castro likes it. If Mr. Obama had more backing from Americans, she speculated in her CNN interview, U.S.-Cuba relations could be "as good or better than we had under President Carter." And isn't every American just pining for the good old days of Carter foreign policy?

That's a very nice touch of sarcasm, Ms. O'Grady.  Carter-style foreign policy...just what we need!