Terry Nichols, the terrorist whose twisted little mind told him to fight government oppression by blowing up babies and postal clerks, is suing officials at the federal prison where he resides, apparently not counting it so much a blessing that he has yet to join mass murderer Tim McVeigh in a bunkhouse in hell.
Nichols’s complaint? It seems he wants more whole grains and less refined foods. Oh, and unpeeled fruits. Following in the footsteps of his Al-Qaeda brethren at Guantanamo, Nichols went on a hunger strike, and prison officials gave him I.V. nutrition. Perhaps the glucose wasn’t free-range glucose, but instead that overprocessed, Wal-Mart kind of glucose. Or perhaps instead of an I.V., the prison doctor should have prescribed a swift kick in the pants, however likely that might be to cause Nichols brain damage.
I’m all for presumption of innocence before guilt is proven, and for humane treatment of guilty-as-sin prisoners. But I think we need a re-examination of the social contract here. At some point, perhaps when the number of your victims requires a football field for burial, you give up the right to any nourishment beyond a daily bowl of gruel, and anything that comes from your piehole other than “I’m so sorry for being a murdering sack of monkey poo” gets you a slap in the jaw.
But I’m a conservative troglodyte that way.
