My cats run in, look at me, and head straight to their food dish. Still blinking from their seven hour naps, the bastards.

LIKE THIS!

I'm an Old, and I'll kill a whole bag of delicious Goldfish crackers. Don't judge me.

YOUR MOM IS DISGUSTING

"they're disgusting"

caramel apples are gross/boring

Too high a bar. This is all kinds of fucked up.

I am not saying impulses as in spur-of-the-moment actions. I mean doing things because you want to despite the negative consequences.

My 12 year old plays with her barbies all the time. She is walking a fine line between childhood and beconing a teenager, but is definitely still a child.

I think what those of us who are arguing with you do not understand is why you think that the viciousness of a crime somehow makes the perpetrator more adult. If anything, the viciousness of a crime would make me more inclined to treat the perpetrators as children. But clearly there's no point discussing this.

What is your basis for saying that? Adults impulsively murder people all the time. You think all those people killed in bar fights and all those wives beaten to death by their husbands were victims of planning?

I'm pretty sure you missed everything I said. It's not about them not knowing it's bad or knowing the consequences. It has 0% to do with knowing it's bad. Nothing. It's about solid, biological differences between a child brain and adult brain and how they act on the things in their brain. Murder doesn't advance the…

The idea that kids can't face adult trial because they don't know what they are doing is wrong is a really frustrating misconception. If you don't understand what you did was wrong you are not supposed to be tried, you are supposed to get treatment in a mental health facility, child OR adult.

Yeah. I'll go on record that I'm never terribly optimistic when it comes to the courts helping kids get appropriate psychiatric care, but you're right that her parents don't seem to have recognized the importance of intervention. Hopefully with her lawyer advocating and a compassionate judge, she can get treatment and…

As someone who has worked with kids in that age range, yes, there really is a difference, a huge difference, between 12 and 18. It's more subtle than the difference between 6 and 12, but it is definitely there: in their impulse control, in their ability to truly understand long-term consequences, in their capacity to…

Totally true. And enough people have commented about this being more about the distinction between juvenile offenders and adults that I'm going to go in a different direction.

Supporting decades in prison for a 12 year old child is supporting torture.

An actual trial, as in the thing Darren Wilson and Daniel Pantaleo never got?

Agreed. Except I usually take a quick shower afterward. It's not because I'm filthy, it's because I use WAY too much bubble soap and get sticky if I don't rinse off.