The United States now has more prisoners than any other country in the world. Ever. In sheer numbers and as a percentage of the population. Our rate of incarceration is roughly seven times that of Canada or any Western European country. Despite our “land of the free” rhetoric, we deem it necessary (at great expense)…
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As you may or may not know, I’m a guest blogger on The Agitator. A clever woman I’m married to pointed out that I shouldn’t have the same things posted in both places so that when when people visit here from there (or vice versa) they’ll be rewarded for their hard-earned click. So I’m going…
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Al Sharpton and Ron Paul are the two people I can’t imagine ever voting for, and yet… God bless ’em for their contributions to presidential debates! They both liven things up, buck the Party Line, and sometimes just make plain sense (though, alas, not all the time). Here’s Paul talking about drug legalization. He makes…
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I’m skeptical of the very term prisoner “rehabilitation.” It seems rooted in a misguided sense of paternalism, implying there is some criminal class just waiting to be cured by us, the enlightened class. Rehabilitation implying there is something to “habilitate” in the first place. And this hogwash it is the very foundation upon which our…
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In a shameful move, the trustees of the City University of New York voted not to allow my college to give an honorary degree to Pulitzer Prize-winning playing Tony Kushner. It’s the first time this has happened since 1961. Why? Because one of the trustees did some research on the interwebs and found some statements…
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It what might be end of a long (and glorious?) Baltimore police tradition, two officers were convicted of misdemeanor for picking up two 15-year-old boys and dropping them off far from home, one of them barefoot. The officers were acquitted of far more serious kidnapping charges. These officers were certain not the first police officers…
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OK, this isn’t a real post. I just always wanted to see this printed in The Agitator. Ha! [–Peter Moskos]
Two men were attacked in a bar for flashing signs. Not gang signs. Sign language, according to the AP: “Two hearing-impaired South Florida men were stabbed at a bar when their sign language was mistaken for gang signs.” Man… I didn’t stab them till after I told them to stop. What?! I did. They wouldn’t…
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Radley Balko has a bold post on the killing of Osama Bin Laden, “He Won.” Speaking of Balko, he has been nice enough to invite me to guest blog for a week over at The Agitator. So I’ll be posting the same things both here and there. Over there, the grass looks greener: there are…
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I mention this only because I’ve known Seth Meyers for years, from his days at Boom Chicago, my brother’s comedy club in Amsterdam. But I thought he did a great job. And there’s a nice cut away to my brother at 1:25 of Part 2. They actually wanted to show Seth’s parents but instead got…
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