Washington Post essayist Henry Allen today demonstrates that liberalism and compassion don’t always go together, especially upon the death of Ken Lay, the convicted Enron boss. Allen boils over with rage that he hoped instead that Lay, just for starters, ”might be spending long nights locked in a cell with a panting tattooed monster named Sumo, a man of strange and constant demands; and long days in the prison laundry or jute mill or license plate factory, gibbering with anguish as fire-eyed psychopaths stare at him for unblinking hours while they sharpen spoons into jailhouse stilettos.”

Mark Finkelstein found a more typical media reaction to the news: within 74 words of the breaking news of Lay’s heart attack, Associated Press business writer Kristen Hays made room for the line “Nicknamed ‘Kenny Boy’ by President Bush…”