It is really mindboggling that somebody like Harvey Weinstein would be campaigning for Polanski's release. That doesn't make it look like Hollywood is uniting behind Roman Polanski, but it certainly makes me put up British director Stephen Frears, actress Monica Bellucci on the "You Are Dead To Me" board.

Which is why am more than grateful for Richard Cohen's sincerity. From PostPartisan - Let Polanski Go -- But First Let Me At Him:

It's alright with me if Roman Polanski is freed by the Swiss authorities who have detained him at the request of the United States -- if first I get a chance to bust him one in the mouth. I agree that it has been a very long time since he pleaded guilty to having sexual intercourse with a 13 year old girl -- more than 30 years, actually -- but that itself was a reduced charge. He had allegedly plied the girl with champagne and given her a quarter of a Quaalude before, as the Victorians used to say, having his way with her. He is a squalid excuse for a man.

For saying that I know I stand in mortal peril of being accused by the French and much of the Pacific Palisades of being a moral prude (ha!) or a vengeance-seeking scold. The arrest has produced consternation in Hollywood and apoplexy in France, where even the culture minister, Frederic Mitterrand, got into the act. He decried that "a new ordeal is being inflicted on someone who has already known so many during his lifetime." Oui. But he drugged and sexually abused a child. (emphasis mine)

You don't want him to do time for the rape? Fine. Throw him in jail then for becoming a fugitive of the law. For that alone he should be serving time.