All true, though it doesn't really invalidate the criticisms against the league's rather skewed disciplinary/suspending priorities.

And with the rise of Twitter that lets celebrities share their thoughts with their fans without even having to bother with an interviewer, the PC tyranny has grown even worse than before, to absurd levels where athletes or actors have to be as careful about what they say as politicians - e.g. what I just read about NBA star Paul George having to apologize publicly for suggesting Ray Rice was just hitting Janay back after she hit him first, as his team immediately called him out on it.

I'm a little confused about this paragraph, particularly the "violently abusive" description of Janay Parker. But as for being justified in hitting back because she hit him first (if she even did? I couldn't really tell much from the video) - I think at the point where you're dragging your unconscious girlfriend out of an elevator like a bag of potatoes, you kind of have to figure that it doesn't exactly matter anymore who hit first, or whether there was any other reason that might possibly have justified a certain level of violent reaction. At that point that's really just nitpicking.

This is the part I strongly agree with - where does everyone get off denying her her agency, and deciding on her behalf that she shouldn't be with this guy? Her personal friends and family might be qualified to offer an opinion on that, but media pundits or the general public certainly aren't. Domestic abuse victims shouldn't be treated as if they are incompetent to make decisions for themselves.

And as you say, seen from that PoV, banning Ray Rice for life doesn't exactly improve or ease life for her. On the other hand, at this point the league couldn't refrain from taking stronger action - not, at least, after having made at some point in the distant past the frankly asinine decision of policing players' behaviour outside the game. No professional sports league in Europe would dream of dishing out suspensions to players for things that have nothing to do with the sport, nor should it, and it would be left up to the team to make a call on whether to fine or fire the player if the transgression was so awful as to damage the team's image. If the player's contract even contained such a clause in the first place, though I expect they generally do.

True. Your solution seems somewhat impractical, but the Baltimore Ravens and the NFL might try to make up their atrociously stupid PR earlier by donating a generous part of what would've been Ray Rice's earnings to some women's shelter or other domestic abuse charity.