My favorite writer at The Moderate Voice is Polimom and it’s good to see that she’s back and blogging again! Today she writes that the Houston Chronicle’s policy of using "racial or ethnic identification only when it is clearly pertinent" went too far by failing to include important information about the at-large suspect: On the…
Category: Crime
Too Many Americans Behind Bars
KHOU in Houston reports that over 1% of the adults in America are in prison – more than China and, tellingly, more than Iran. America is supposed to be the land of the free. So why are so many of our citizens in the pokey? Drugs, in a word. KHOU says: “After 15 years in…
Spitzer’s Last Crusade?
Yesterday Eliot Spitzer admitted that he was a client of a prostitution ring, today he’s said to be considering whether or not to resign as Governor of New York. America loves to build up and then tear down its idols. Witness Michael Jackson, Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, and others who were catapulted to fame and…
Of Criminals & Presidents
Dave Winer wonders: What if you were a criminal President? President Bush wants to give the phone companies immunity. Who would you like to give immunity to? What crimes are you willing to excuse? Interesting question. Here’s one answer: If I were a criminal president, my wife might be running to be the Democratic party’s…
Dishonorable Parenting
First there came the sickening Chicago case of the Hindu man from India who set his daughter – who was pregnant, son-in-law, and the couple’s 3-year-old toddler. Why did Subhash Chander burn his three close relatives to death while they slept? The India native told police he disliked his son-in-law because he belonged to a…
California to Release 22,000 Prisoners?
The buzz at the Sacramento Bee is that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger will soon ask the state legislature to approve a massive release of prisoners who are thought to be of low risk to the general population: According to details of a budget proposal made available to The Bee, the administration will ask the Legislature to authorize…
Deadly Force
The question of when or if deadly force can be used is an open one in the minds of many Americans. Not so in the case of Joe Horn. The Houston Chronicle first reported on Mr. Horn’s case and the pair of burglars he gunned down nearly a month ago, saying: On a 911 tape released…
A Modicum of Justice
In Indonesia Muhammad Basri was convicted of beheading 3 Christian schoolgirls in 2005 and sentenced to a whopping 19 years in prison. He was also convicted of shooting two other students and a priest in 2004. So that’s what a Christian’s life is worth in Indonesia? 5 years in the clink, where he’ll strut around…
Parents, Kids, Guns
Judging from this article in the Boston Globe, the parenting situation in Beantown is worse than I could have imagined: Boston police are launching a program that will call upon parents in high-crime neighborhoods to allow detectives into their homes, without a warrant, to search for guns in their children’s bedrooms. The program, which is…
Of Youth and Discipline
The NY Times Board wrote today: The Government Accountability Office exposed a national outrage earlier this month in a report that found thousands of allegations of abuse and neglect at treatment programs that sell military-style discipline as a way to set delinquent youngsters straight — sometimes known as boot camps. The GAO report, unveiled at…