Justice is screwy.

 Which is the most polite way I can think to say it.

 Because most of the time there isn't any justice. All sense of right and wrong and balance is out the window. And what passes for justice in our courtrooms is a mockery.

 Like yesterday.

 In two upstate New York courtrooms yesterday, two murderers were sentenced. Their crimes were very different. And their sentences were very different. But not the way you'd imagine.

 Let me explain.

 Bad guy No. 1 is Eric Parsons. He is the king of the bad guys. He's the type of guy God had in mind when he designed hell.

 Eric is 28. He was married, and had four kids. Cute little kids. Erica, David, Eric Jr. and Katelyn. They were 6, 4, 2 and 1, respectively. Like I said, they were little kids. And, like I said, he "was" married and he "had" kids.

 But not anymore.

 Because he murdered them.

 Just got tired of them, apparently. Turns out he'd found a "friend with benefits" and was getting some on the side pretty regular and just decided he was tired of the whole family thing.

 So he burned them up.

 Rented them some tinder-box old house, waited for them to fall asleep, and started sloshing kerosene. In front of the door, across the floor, on their mattresses. And he put a match to it. Poof.

 Well, that's not exactly right. There was probably some screaming, too. But it was mostly poof. And they all burned up. A 23-year-old mother and her babies. Three of them pre-schoolers, two of them in diapers, the oldest not yet able to read. Scream and scream and scream. And poof.

 He was a volunteer fireman, and had his turnout gear in the back of his car, and said he escaped from the flame but could not get back in to save his family. And then he drove miles and miles to call for help from a store. While there was an exterior fire box across the street from his house, and neighbors all up and down the road.

 Five counts of murder and five counts of first-degree arson. The whole enchalada.

 And he was sentenced for that yesterday.

 Bad guy No. 2 is Freddie Walker. He is the garden-variety bad guy. And he got in a shoot-em-up with a drug dealer.

 There were three guys -- Freddie Walker, David Lopez and Andrew Bradstreet. Walker wanted to buy some weed and Bradstreet wanted to sell some weed and Lopez wanted to be a facilitator.

 So Lopez gets Walker and introduces him to Bradstreet and Walker had $1,200 and Bradstreet had four ounces of marijuana, but Walker also had a gun and he started using it when the transaction ceased being cordial.

 Down went Bradstreet dead and down went Lopez wounded.

 Pretty bad stuff.

 But Mr. Walker met Mr. Handcuff and is now going to Mr. Prison. Two felony counts, one of killing and another of wounding.

 And he was sentenced for that yesterday.

 Which brings us to the screwy part.

 Eric Parsons got 25 years in prison and Freddie Walker got 32 years is prison.

 Which is hard to figure. Because 32 is more than 25. Something like 25 percent more. I'm not much of a mathematician, but it seems Freddie Walker did 20 percent as much murder as Eric Parsons yet got 125 percent as much prison time. I think that reduces to less crime and more time.

 And though all human life is precious, it does seem that four innocent children and their sleeping mother might be purer victims than an innercity drug dealer. Sleeping peacefully in your crib, for example, may be a more innocent undertaking that trying to move four ounces of marijuana on the streets of Rochester.

 Yet the guy with one body to his credit and just two felony charges will be in prison longer than the guy who killed five and was tagged for 10 felonies.

 I guess it just sucks to be black.

 Or maybe the laws are simply screwy. State law gave the guy who offed the drug dealer consecutive sentences, and state law gave the guy who slaughtered innocent children concurrent sentences.

 Which is another reason folks don't respect the law. You throw the book at these people but it's not the same book. And don't even tell me about the guy with a trunk full of marijuana who gets 50 years in state prison.

 It doesn't make sense. Big crime, big punishment. Medium crime, medium punishment. Small crime, small punishment.

 But it doesn't seem to work that way. Eric Parsons deserves the death penalty, but he won't get it.

 Instead, he will probably be out of prison in time to -- according to average life expectancy -- live 20 more years a free man. And for seven of those years Freddie Walker will still be in prison.

 Like I said, justice is screwy.

 Which is the most polite way I can think to say it.

After 40 years of wandering in the wilderness, the Lord let the children of Israel into the promised land.

 They had escaped from Egypt and lingered in the desert of Sinai, some few hundred thousand people who today we call Jews. But their wandering was done, at least for a season, and they were given a land for their inheritance, a bountiful land, and it was divided up amongst their tribes.

 Along one border ran the Jordan River, with most of the tribes on its far banks. But three tribes lived together on the near side. Reuben, Gad and Manasseh. It wasn't quite the promised land, but it was close, and it was theirs.

 And when the time came to settle it and put down roots, they did.

 Now, religion was very important to those people back then. It was their prime identification and biggest priority. And preserving their religious purity was very important to them. They feared that new doctrines or traditions might be picked up and incorporated into their faith and spoil it.

 The center of their faith was the tabernacle, a temple of sorts made from a tent. They sacrificed there, and drew close to their God. It featured an altar where they did their rituals.

 The tabernacle was with the tribes on the far side of the River Jordan, some distance from the tribes of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh. The tribes that had the tabernacle saw themselves, it seems, as special protectors of their religion's orthodoxy.

 Which was fine. Everybody was happy.

 Until word came that the tribes of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh had built a huge stone altar on their side of the River Jordan.

 This was scandalous. There was only one place the children of Israel could offer their sacrifices and perform their rituals, and it was not upon that foreign stone altar. The altar, as an expression of faith, was unseemly and alien to the other tribes. It appeared odd and freakish, an abomination.

 So they decided to go to war. The several tribes on the far side of the river, not wanting to anger God by allowing a perversion of their faith, set out to kill their brethren among Reuben, Gad and Manasseh.

 It was that important to them.

 So off they set.

 The tribes of Reuben, Gad and Manasseh, quite naturally, were surprised by this.

 And the other tribes -- when they heard the explanation of Reuben, Gad and Manassah -- were also surprised.

 Because it wasn't a perversion after all. It wasn't an apostacy. It wasn't a departure from the faith. It was, in fact, a memorial to the faith they both shared.

 The three tribes, so far from the tabernacle and its altar, had built the stone replica not as a substitute, but as a reminder. It was not for sacrifices and rituals, it was for remembrance of the tabernacle and its altar, and the central role they played in the tribes' shared faith.

 The problem was not about what people believed, but about what other people thought they believed. It was not about religious difference, it was about religious misunderstanding.

 And sometimes it's still that way. Our various beliefs are not that alien or contradictory, though our perceptions of one another's beliefs can be unreconcilable and offensive. Often, the hard lines between our various religions are like the difficulty between the tribes, based on ignorance instead of fact. Often, like the tribes, with knowledge comes an awareness of shared and common faith. With knowledge comes brotherhood.

 Certainly, there are differences, and they matter. Truth is absolute and eternal. Our various conflicting religions and beliefs cannot all be right. Some, maybe most, are at least partly in error. God is not a god of confusion.

 But the point remains.

 When we see the other man's altar as a perversion, it is typically because we don't know what it means to him.

 And, typically, if we made the effort to learn, we would see not how different his beliefs were from our own, but how similar.

Watch as Bob DOESN'T go down the side of the First Federal Plaza Building.