Americans love nice round numbers. Anticipation of a 200-yard game, the year 2000 or a 12,000 Dow can make us downright giddy. Try this one: 2,000,000. The folk at the Justice Policy Institute (JPI) have vetted the trends, crunched the numbers and come up with a nice round prediction. On Feb. 15, 2000, America's prison and jail inmate population will top 2 million. What is involved, though, is a lot more than roundness, says JPI policy analyst Jason Ziedenberg. "What blew me away when I was doing this research was the whole issue of where we stand internationally," he told me. "Next year, America, with under 5 percent of the world's population, will have a quarter of the world's prison inmates." [continues 564 words]
Police officers in Oneonta, N.Y., took a sliver of a description and turned the town's black male population into a company of humiliated, frightened suspects. Given the hue and cry over racial profiling - particularly the state trooper-created "offense" of "driving while black" - it's a little strange that so little has been made of the recent ruling of a federal appeals court in New York. The ruling, in effect, dismissed the claims of black male residents of Oneonta, N.Y., and black male students at the State University of New York College at Oneonta (SUCO) that they were mistreated by local police in a 1992 sweep in search of a burglary suspect. [continues 686 words]
The first surprise is to see the three men making common cause. Charles Ogletree, the suave Harvard law professor; Ed Koch, the often contentious former mayor of New York; and the Rev. Al Sharpton, the civil rights gadfly whose arrest Koch once ordered. The second surprise is that, at a time when big-city politicians are exulting over the reduction in crime during the past few years, these men should be backing a proposal to reduce the effects of one anti-crime measure. [continues 716 words]
WASHINGTON - "Mr. Bush, now that you've admitted using cocaine some time ago, the American people want to know why it took you so long to tell the whole truth. Was it because you hoped, like President Clinton, that you could get away with clever answers? Didn't your political smarts tell you that the best thing to do was to put it all out there at once and get it behind you? "Mr. Bush, I appreciate the fact that you've owned up to using illegal drugs. But you haven't said how long you used coke. Was this a one-time use? Twice? More times than you can remember? [continues 655 words]
The House's approval of a constitutional amendment that would allow Congress to protect the American flag against burning or other desecration proves that the House majority: (a) Opposes the free-speech guarantees of the First Amendment. (b) Is made up of conservative (and inconsistent) demagogues who will do whatever it takes to play to the ignorant prejudices of the masses. (c) Cares deeply about America and worries that patriotism is on the wane. (d) Is incapable of understanding the distinction between a symbol and the thing itself. [continues 668 words]
One of the recurring gags on the old "I Love Lucy" show had Lucy working on an assembly line -- boxing candy, wrapping packages, whatever -- when the boss sped up the line. Suddenly there was no way for the frantic Lucy to keep up. She wrapped or boxed as quickly as she could, obviously determined to do her best under the dreadful circumstances, but the packages always overwhelmed her -- until someone thought to pull the stop switch. It was funny when it happened to Lucy. It's not funny when it happens in the criminal justice system. [continues 574 words]
WASHINGTON - Is this latest U.S.-Europe trade war a matter of high principles in conflict, or just a silly little spat over bananas? Whichever it is, it's serious. Already, European companies are reacting with a mixture of puzzlement and outrage over the U.S. announcement that it will impose 100 percent tariffs on a line of products ranging from Belgian cookies and French handbags to English greeting cards and Scottish cashmere. The issue: Several European nations have rules favoring bananas imported from their former colonies in the Caribbean, while restricting bananas imported from places like Honduras. The United States has taken the issue to the World Trade Organization (WTO), where it has won favorable rulings but no end to the preferences. [continues 582 words]
Is this latest U.S.-Europe trade war a matter of high principles in conflict, or just a silly little spat over bananas? Whichever it is, it's serious. Already, European companies are reacting with a mixture of puzzlement and outrage over the U.S. announcement that it will impose 100 percent tariffs on a line of products ranging from Belgian cookies and French handbags to English greeting cards and Scottish cashmere. The issue: Several European nations have rules favoring bananas imported from their former colonies in the Caribbean, while restricting bananas imported from places like Honduras. The United States has taken the issue to the World Trade Organization (WTO), where it has won favorable rulings but no end to the preferences. [continues 586 words]
Vincent Schiraldi's call sounded for all the world like another of those false syllogisms that make me crazy. You know: For the money it costs to keep a young man in prison, we could send him to Harvard. Or, if we took the money we're spending on the drug "wars" and spent it on the public schools, every kid in America would have a shot at a first-rate education. Such non sequiturs, I told him, fail to convince anyone not already on your side of the argument. Worse, by giving your opponents such a vulnerable target, you encourage the impression that your argument -- not just your jerry-built straw man -- has been demolished. [continues 687 words]
It's hard to know which is more cynical -- the content of the juvenile crime bill Republicans have crafted or the way they are trying to railroad it to enactment. If you haven't heard about the pending legislation -- well, that's part of the cynicism. Even a fairly alert observer at the Capitol last Tuesday -- assuming such an observer wasn't distracted by the roaring Clinton/Lewinsky scandal or by the party primaries in the Washington area -- might have missed it. He might have seen a notice for a vote to reauthorize the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children -- a piece of legislation so noncontroversial it might have sparked little interest. [continues 516 words]
