Every other Saturday, Melvin Bledsoe makes a two-hour drive from Memphis to visit the son he still calls by his given name.
For an hour at the Pulaski County Detention Facility in Arkansas, Bledsoe speaks through a vent in the glass that separates him from his youngest child. He reminisces about high school graduation, their father-son trip to South Beach, Tenn.
“Remember that?” his father coaxes.
Bledsoe studies the face of this dark-haired, brown-eyed 24-year-old in blue prison scrubs and sometimes catches a glimpse of the happy-go-lucky Carlos he raised. Other times, it’s Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, the Muslim convert charged in a shooting at a Little Rock Army recruiting center last summer that killed one soldier and injured another.
I am pro-life, but this kid is the exception that proves the rule.