Send them to jail for a while

And while you are at it, tap their phones and trace their internet activities for the foreseeable future. Send undercover cops to infiltrate their organization and take names, most of all, take names.

Then prosecute.

The danger here is that as time passes, what happened at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday will be viewed as little more than a mischievous rampage on the part of some over-passionate partisans.

It was not.

It may have started out that way, but it mutated over time, leaving us with troubling images from inside the building of people who were too awe struck to not stay inside the ropes as they headed out to destroy what they could of our democracy. They killed a capitol cop, by most accounts a pretty gentle man who worked hard in his life to get on the force. One of their own members was shot to death by a capitol cop, and no matter how much people try to rationalize it, she put herself in the way of that bullet. She should not have been there.

Someone who should have been there and paid the highest price of all is Officer Brian Sicknick, hit in the head by someone with a fire extinguisher. He died at the hospital later. That was a homicide, not a mischievous act of protest. The person who did it should spend a life behind bars.

Degrees of misbehavior are distinguishers in these matters. Breaking window is not the same as killing a cop. But the person who killed the cop should not be able to hide behind First Amendment arguments about freedom of expression.

And what of the ring leader of this process, the man who has been stirring up deep trouble on the right since the day he began running for office. President Trump has been muffled, but apparently is still not aware enough of reality to know what role he played in this national heartbreak.

It’s not extreme at all to say he caused it, and it won’t take much of a prosecutor to prove it, because, just like the ignorant fools in their costumes who trashed one of our most important symbols, he’s been out there for ever moment of it. There should be no place for him to hide.

We’ll get to the traitorous House and Senate members later, because they share a good deal of the blame by helping propagate the myth that the election was stolen.

Their day is coming, too, but it will be at the hands of justice, not the hands of a mob.