Good on the judge, although I do think he should have tacked on several years of community service groundskeeping in cemeteries after this jerk gets out of jail:

A Chalmette man has been sentenced to five years in prison for stealing brass flower vases from a cemetery and selling them as scrap metal for pennies on the dollar. [...] Police said the scrapyard bought the vases, which were engraved with the names of the dead, for less than 2 cents on the dollar compared to retail prices. The 8-pound vases cost $600, but they fetched $9.60 each at the yard, which was paying $1.20 a pound for brass.

We enjoy an abundance of jobs in the New Orleans metro area since Katrina and there is no excuse for this theft; I’m glad the judge threw the book at him.  My mother in law is buried in that cemetery, although her grave was not robbed.  I’m upset that the scrap yard owners seem to have gotten off scot free for dealing in stolen property, but this is at least a good start.

A good point on book “banning”.

Governor Matt Blunt has a few things to say about Obama’s Truth Squads, including:

“Barack Obama needs to grow up. Leftist blogs and others in the press constantly say false things about me and my family. Usually, we ignore false and scurrilous accusations because the purveyors have no credibility. When necessary, we refute them. Enlisting Missouri law enforcement to intimidate people and kill free debate is reminiscent of the Sedition Acts – not a free society.”

h/t Hot Air, which notes

Needless to say, no one actually has to be prosecuted for this to work. Prosecution will be impossible anyway in most cases thanks to the First Amendment. The point isn’t to jail critics but merely to price the cost of prospective litigation into their decision on whether to publicly criticize The One.