ENOUGH ALREADY. The folks at the Fox News Channel just can't let the Laci Peterson case go. I'm with James at Outside the Beltway.

I'm one of the relative few people who don't much follow these high profile trials. It's never been clear to me why the murder of one person I never met by someone else I've never met is any more noteworthy than any of the thousands of other murders that are committed each year. For whatever reason, though, this trial has gripped the nation for months.

For example, why is this case less important?

The Monday trial of a suspect in an alleged murder-for-hire scheme has been postponed. Jonathan Gene Benavides, 30, of Houston was set to be tried Monday before 207th Judicial District Judge Jack Robison for allegedly plotting with the wife of a former New Braunfels police officer to have his ex-girlfriend and her son killed - reportedly to evade child support payments. The trial has been reset to Feb. 22, 2005. Benavides and his co-defendant, Samantha Kaderli Childs, 24, of New Braunfels, stand charged with criminal conspiracy to commit murder.

To be sure, nobody died, but had the plot worked, would anybody outside the former German districts of Texas noticed? And how many more such cases are there, and why are there so many? One observer of the Peterson trial addresses the last question:

I think this should be an essential component to consider when evaluating the "Battered Woman Syndrome." It never ceases to amaze me that the men who treat women the worst are never lacking in women to abuse. One of the great paradoxes of life, I guess.

You would think that the feminist movement would be disseminating information telling women how to avoid slime like this. As long as abusive men keep getting there [cq] jollies with truckloads of women, there will be no shortage of abusive men.

Let us not speak ill of the dead, but how many followers of the Peterson case are aware that Laci's high-school sweetheart was doing time?

Speaking from a Washington state correctional facility, the high school boyfriend of murdered Modesto schoolteacher Laci Peterson said he has doubts about her husband, Scott Peterson's contention that he told her he was having an affair. William 'Kent' Gain spoke with Fox News' Rita Cosby over the weekend. He said he dated Laci when they both attended high school in Modesto and for a while when they were in college. Currently, he is incarcerated in the Stafford Creek Corrections Center in Aberdeen, Wash., for shooting his girlfriend.

This guy is a real piece of work ... and Most Likely To Hook Up the night of his release from prison.

And yes, there are research centers that study family violence, and yes, they have some work to do to get the word out. (The site I linked to has yet to report a research finding.) But how many party chicks with an affinity for bad boys hang out at Womens' Studies departments?