Stanley Fish gets to the issues on teaching the craft of writing in “What Should Colleges Teach?” I was blessed to have good English teachers throughout my Evanston public-school education. I also had good and literate parents. Collectively, they somehow taught me skills I use pretty much every day: write, type, and edit (though I must have been sick on…
Month: August 2009
“People have got to get indignant”
[Detroit Police Chief] Evans reiterated his sense that people feel Detroit is supposed to have crime. He said he goes out two nights a week and works the streets, stopping motorists who rarely have driver’s license, registration, insurance. “What I say is: ‘Do you drive north of 8 Mile like this?’ And they say, ‘Hell no! They’ll lock you up.’…
Bad News with Shake and Bake Meth
“New formula lets meth users make drug in soda bottles, avoid anti-drug laws.” The AP story by Justin Juozapavicius.
Sentence Length [or lies from the Heritage Foundation]
In a Heritage Foundation foundation report by Charles Stimson and Andrew Grossman, I learned a very surprising fact: Convicted persons in the United States actually served less time in prison, on average, than the world average and the European average. Among the 35 countries surveyed on this question in 1998, the average time actually served in prison was 32.62 months.…
Time Served
Perhaps nothing speaks better to our broken justice system than the fact that people–guilty and innocent alike–are held in jail for more than year beforetrial. Lise Olsen reports in the Houston Chronicle: Though the U.S. Constitution guarantees the right to a speedy trial, at least 500 county inmates [out of 11,500] have been locked up for more than a year…
Crime Prevention Tip
Never leave your bike unlocked. The latest in bike-theft prevention. From Chetumal, Mexico.
Build a better photo lineup
The traditional “6-pack” is flawed because people will pick the person mostlike the suspect. Showing pictures one-by-one is supposed to change there. Here’s an AP story by Jeff Carlton about the Dallas P.D.
Ohhhh….
I couldn’t figure out this the whole let-the-terrorist-go thing the Brits did. I think the New York Times may cut to the chase: Colonel Qaddafi made his remarks as British and Scottish officials were doing their best to distance themselves from Mr. Megrahi’s release, which they insisted was decided without any pressure from London by Scotland’s justice secretary, and based…
Mexico Decriminalizes Drug Possession
The story in the New York Times. The law sets out maximum “personal use” amounts for drugs, also including LSD and methamphetamine. People detained with those quantities will no longer face criminal prosecution; the law goes into effect on Friday. Too bad this won’t stop the narco violence.
So, honey, how was your day at the office?
Check out this video. New Mexico is crazy, man (and I say that only because my wife is from there, ese)!