NYtimes on Americans in Jail:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/us/23prison.html?scp=20&sq=prison+statistics&st=nyt
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/10/opinion/10mon1.html?scp=6&sq=prison+statistics&st=nyt

Oh, and thanks, and welcome back! You know you’re welcome to comment on my blog anytime, anywhere, for any reason.

You might be interested to see that Del. Brian Moran, Chair of the Virginia House Democratic Caucus, has just introduced an important bill in support of bipartisan redistricting in Virginia:

http://www.raisingkaine.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=6498

It doesn’t address gerrymandering everywhere else in the country, but here in your home state of VA, there’s a growing movement in support of a more fair approach to redistricting.

Note that this is bipartisan rather than nonpartisan, but that’s still a hell of a step in the right direction.

(BTW, yes, it’s that Maura, catching up after many months of not reading your blog after reading your great email about the B&N #1 designation for Infoquake! Congrats, my friend! Timshel.)

It’s a problem, but I don’t no how you’d go about making this better with a law.
You can’t completely solve it with laws. But you can raise the minimum wage, close tax loopholes for the rich, encourage small business development, etc.

It’s worked this long - the term was coined before the War of 1812. More seriously how do you set up something bipartisan in this era? We’ve also got an issue where a setup like that has to be Federal but power over HOW to run elecions is down at the state level.

The gap between rich and poor is growing like crazy.

It’s a problem, but I don’t no how you’d go about making this better with a law. Social pressure might be a better route - fewer people smoke now not because the government said ‘no’ but because it’s not cool to smoke.

We need an alternative energy Manhattan Project.

Agreed. But I’m biased - I know some guys in Bremerton, Washington who would be thrilled to transport parts for an SPS constellation to oribit ….

Why are we still building nuclear weapons? .. We can use nukes because we’re nice. You can’t because we don’t trust you.

It’s all about intention. The Brits have had nukes for .. oh years and years. No one thinks they’re about to go and nuke Paris. This might not be true of other actors in the world.

I shoulda also mentioned David Halberstam’s book The Powers That Be here. A history of the media in the twentieth century that also points out how Nixon and his Watergate sins were the end product of a long line of power-grabbing chief executives starting with FDR.

Bad for children and other growing things as well. People forget that the reason we’ve GOT the government divvied up three ways is that the Founders had recent past experiences with both extremes - the rump parliment having de-facto executive power during the Commonwealth period and the Kings deciding to .. you know .. just ignore Parliament when it suited them.

Which is why the FBI should not ever never have raided the Congressman’s office for evidence this year, and more of a stink should have been raised over it. This one time well we can shake our heads and mutter “he was a crook”. But now we’ve set precedent that the Legislature is not inviolate.

Swell.