There’s very little that strikes me as more absurd than offering or accepting a guilty plea for time served. It represents so much about what’s wrong with the criminal justice system. And that’s a lot. If you’re guilty, then it’s a travesty of justice because you get to go home. If you’re innocent, it’s an even worse travesty. But you…
The current and first issue of the new food magazine Lucky Peach has an article about yakamee in New Orleans. This further supports my belief that Baltimore and New Orleans were siblings separated at birth. Yakamee is a crappy Chinese take-out noodle dish. I ordered it once, to the amazement of the woman behind the plexiglas and pretty much every…
Suspect runs into police, gets arrested.
The Timesand a grim read about a boy with mental problems, gone bad. It’s interesting but in all-too-many ways nothing new. But what struck me was this great example of doublespeak: Mr. Clergeau was discharged … with the expectation that he would be imprisoned. Hospital authorities told the state police that he was “not a psych patient,” which appears to…
From the Singapore Straits Times: A Briton on a visit here was charged on Friday with outraging the modesty of a 30-year-old woman in a Clarke Quay club. Austin Charles Arnold Cowburn, 34, is alleged to have grabbed her buttock in the China One pub at 4am on April 3 2011. AOL Travel adds: The maximum sentence for the crime…
Three cheers for actor Matt Damon! You know, Matt and I have a lot in common. Both our mothers are retired school teachers. Both of us went to school in Cambridge, Mass. And both of us are devilishly good looking! But seriously, both of us know that the answer to bad teaching is not job insecurity. You go, Matt! While…
From the AP: The number of homicides in Mexico rose by nearly a quarter in 2010 compared to the year before as the drug war intensified across the country, Mexican statisticians said Thursday. The National Institute of Statistics and Geography recorded 24,374 homicides over the course of last year, a 23 percent increase from 19,803 in 2009. Last year’s figure…
Thoughtful piece by Thane Rosenbaum in today’s New York Times: It’s difficult to have honest conversations about revenge. Seeing someone receive his just deserts often feels righteous and richly deserved, and yet society regards vengeance as primitive and barbaric. Governments warn citizens not to take justice into their own hands, insisting that the state alone has the duty and right…
Omar from The Wire, that is. The story from the Balto Sun. [thanks to a reader]
USA Today has five ways to fix our prison system. I have a sixth.