A magnificent gesture by a family that has lost much

In case you haven’t seen it yet, Bill and Denise Richard have written a magnificent essay for The Boston Globe asking that the government drop its quest to execute the Boston Marathon bomber. (In deference to the Richards’ decision not to name the bomber, I won’t either.)

“For us,” they write, “the story of Marathon Monday 2013 should not be defined by the actions or beliefs of the defendant, but by the resiliency of the human spirit and the rallying cries of this great city.”

This is #bostonstrong.