Dennis said don’t charge mom who left kid in hot car. He’s sorry you can’t handle it.

Last week, I wrote about a mother in Lakewood who left her kids in the car in a parking lot on a hot summer day. She was immediately arrested and charged.

Judi and I talked about it on the air and also did a poll online and found that very few people agreed with our point that what she did was poor judgement and frightening — but she didn't deserve to be cuffed and booked. I was asked to blog about it the next day and I did.

Over the weekend I had breakfast with my family and my brothers told me there were more than a few nasty responses to the post. I didn't read them but we got a pretty good chuckle out of it. Please don't stop writing angry comments if the vitriolic release serves as some form of therapeutic relief. Please, knock yourself out. It's what the Internet is for, right?

In response, I have to say I am very sorry. I'm sorry that some people can't disagree without getting offended or nasty. I'm sorry that some people can't challenge ideas with information, but would rather lash out. I'm sorry that today's norm is to react on a very emotional surface level without thinking things through or putting them into context. I'm sorry that some people don't have empathy for, what's possibly in this case an over worked mom. I'm sorry that we live in a society that accepts draconian punishments for what a generation ago would have seemed ludicrous in this country.

I'm sorry that some people want to exact revenge on people to prove what a morally correct person they are. I'm sorry that some people are more and more willing to put more and more power in the hands of an ever more powerful government. I'm sorry that some people are willing to give away our most valuable right to manage our own families without the heavy hand of government.

Ask some of our Eastern European, South American or Asian friends who struggled to get here in the last 20 years about the heavy hand of government. You'll find just about every one of them would rather be locked in a hot car for an hour than live through another totalitarian government. In little more that a generation and a half we have become numb to the slowly, ever creeping power of the government to do just about anything it wants to us.

It seems that not many people are noticing or making much of a stink over it. And for that, I am most sorry!

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