After two years, thousands of newspaper articles, hundreds of thousands of hours of television programming (about 40% of which was brought to you by MSNBC’s Dan Abrams), and one extremely disingenuous piece of legislation… Scott Peterson’s case is over. He’s going to be sentenced to death, and twenty to forty years from now he will be executed.

What a case! What drama! A guy kills his pregnant wife, there’s a ton of evidence against him, his alibis aren’t credible, and the jury finds him guilty. Who woulda seen that coming? No wonder the names of Scott, Laci, and Conner Peterson are so deeply ingrained in the national consciousness.

Quick - name one American soldier who has died in Iraq over the past two years. Just one.

Sorry, that was a bit of a trick question. Not important. Let’s carry on…

So much has changed thanks to the Peterson case. Back in April, for instance, President Bush signed “Laci and Conner’s Law.” This was an incredibly important piece of legislation - finally the epidemic of people killing pregnant women and their unborn babies and getting off with just a few weeks of community service will come to a halt. Those were dark times, but they’re behind us now.

Some nervous nellies on the left have called the law a trojan horse geared towards overturning Roe v. Wade. To shore up this ridiculous claim they’ve pointed to the fact that a lot of right-to-life activists who supported the bill were calling it “a trojan horse geared towards overturning Roe v. Wade.” To me, that’s pretty flimsy, circumstantial evidence. And just because US law now defines a “child in utero” as “a member of the species homo sapiens, at any stage of development, who is carried in the womb,” and allows someone to be prosecuted for the murder of such a child, how does that translate into abortion being outlawed? Puh-leeeze!

Dan Abrams, of MSNBC’s “The Abrams Report” ably explains his coverage of All Things Peterson nearly to the exclusion of all else on his blog (though he never spent much time on that rather boring new law - he stuck to the important stuff). “The outcome of the Peterson case will not impact international nuclear proliferation nor lead to peace in the Middle East. Anyone who tells you we are covering one of the more important stories of the day is a liar.” See? There’s no excuse! “It is… more newsmagazine than pure news.” So you’re sorry about filling a major news network with wall-to-wall Peterson during a war and the most important election of our lifetimes? Great. What’s that you say, Dan? “But there should be no shame.”

Oh. Abrams goes on to say that there’s a place at the “news dinner table” for “dessert” like the Peterson case. As long as you don’t serve only “sweets” like that brutal homicide.

Fair enough. Quick, Dan - off the top of your head name an American soldier who’s been killed in Iraq over the past two years. Heck, you’re a journalist, name a couple of ‘em.

I know, I know, it was another trick question. There have only been 1,297 American military fatalities in Iraq, and most of them, as far as most Americans can tell, didn’t have names. At least not like Laci, Conner and Scott have names. To remember someone’s name, after all, you have to see their face a few times, hear their story, and where would you find something like that about the men and women who are giving their lives for this country? If only there was some sort of institution or medium that was devoted to communicating the important events of the day, then we might know some names, but I guess it hasn’t been invented yet. We can dream, though.

Besides, our Administration believes that dwelling upon casualties is bad for the ol’ team spirit. Back in April, when the President signed The Unborn Victim’s of Violence Act with a flourish, he offered some names: “Laci, a beautiful young woman who was joyfully awaiting the arrival of a new son. They have also laid to rest that child, a boy named Conner, who was waiting to be born when his life, too, was taken.”

Quick, Mr. President, name a -

Oh, nevermind.