Don't mess with Cokie

You can take the girl out of Louisiana, but you can't always take the Louisiana out of the girl.

And, you know, that ain't always a bad thing.

I suppose I need to follow This Week more carefully, because I totally missed this gem of a moment from early October, when veteran ABC and National Public Radio correspondent Cokie Roberts gave a short, blunt and quite reasonable answer to the question "How do you solve a problem like Polanski?"

REALLY, there's a certain rough elegance to prescription written by the daughter of two Louisiana members of Congress -- just take Roman Polanski out and shoot him. While we can argue about state violence and the death penalty -- which I'd just as soon abolish -- it takes a moral midget (of which we have plenty) to equivocate about the gravity of what the acclaimed director did.

He took a 13-year-old girl, plied her with drugs and champagne, then had his way with her. The law calls that rape. Most also would call it pedophilia. And what he has coming would pretty much involve taking him out and shooting him.

And though I would like the state to operate on a plain slightly above "He needed killin'" . . . well, sometimes, it just has to be said.