David Harris recently had a thought-provoking article on Huffington Post (link), entitled "It's not about Israel." I received a copy by mail and then checked the site to be sure that what I received had not been selectively edited. It had not.

Before I go further, let me say that I hold no animosity toward Arabs as a whole, nor toward the Islam religion. One of my sons is hosting a Moslem girl from Indonesia as an exchange student for a year. She's a delightful person who has sung in church choirs and plans soon to participate in a Jewish Passover seder. When I lived in Toledo I had many contacts with business owners who were Arabic immigrants; on average they were more fair and conscientious in their dealings than the majority of entrepreneurs.

Looking back 500 years, it was Moslems who preserved ancient writings and employed medical knowledge handed down from the Greek and Roman empires. Continue...

You can come out from under the bed now.

Who would want to live under Soviet-style communism? I certainly wouldn't. Supposedly that was "socialism": USSR = Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. It would be more accurate, however, to describe the Soviet system as one of state-governed feudalism. The brutality and deprivation suffered by citizens of the USSR is one of the main reasons that "socialism" has become such an effective scare-word for many. Continue...

No. Not because I don't think some people deserve it, but rather because it's neither effective as a deterrent nor cost efficient. We need to have many safeguards in place to avoid taking the life of an innocent person, but even if we were to cut the appeals process in half, it would still cost more to execute a person than to incarcerate him or her for life.

There are even more serious issues. Continue...

Most mainstream Americans favor equal rights between women and men, at least in theory. In practice, however, some long-standing prejudices still hold. For example, a promiscuous boy is likely to be considered a "stud," while an equally promiscuous girl risks being branded a "slut."

Legal process should always be above such knee-jerk biases. Yet in some instances a particular sex offense committed by a male may be treated as a horrendous crime, while the same offense committed by a female is considered only slightly worse than jaywalking.

For example, take some cases from a west Texas county. Continue...

This study has been around for more than ten years, but its lessons are always current, always important. A well-designed program of early invention with at-risk children produced long-term benefits of nearly thirteen times the cost. The effects were dramatic in fewer high school dropouts, better work records, fewer teenage pregnancies, and most dramatic of all, less criminal behavior.

The study is available on my other website. You can access it immediately with this link:

Pre-schoolIntervention

To access other articles about crime, recidivism, and rehabilitation, go to this page:

Articles

It's no secret that we spend fortunes on incarceration. Continue...

The audience booed during the movie Network when Ned Beatty, as the character Arthur Jensen, proclaimed that business was more important than nationhood:

"...There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies... The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business..."

Repugnant thought. While Americans wouldn't approve a system like that of the former Soviet Union, where the government could wield absolute power, I fear that we don't recognize an equal threat, a system in which megacorporations wield the absolute power. That threat is a lot closer. Continue...

Words can't begin to describe the plight of the people of Haiti, a close neighbor in the Carribean. You surely know by now: Countless thousands lie buried in rubble, dead or dying, even more are homeless, hungry, thirsty, in need of medical attention. My wife and I made a special contribution via the internet last night; I'm asking you to do the same. If you can afford a large gift, well, I can't think of a worthier and more urgent cause. If all you can afford is the minimum $10, by all means, do your part.

To my knowledge, no one I have ever known is in Haiti, but we are all humans, and I personally thank you for anything you choose to give. Please do it NOW. Here's the link:

Red Cross for Haiti

Both news stories appeared under the "odd" heading. In one, a defendant got a 10-year sentence for stealing an $80 slab of meat. In the other, a driver was fined $290,000 for speeding. "WTF?!" you ask. As the late Paul Harvey would have said, here's the rest of the story: Continue...

1: Any promises by pompous politicians to "get tough on crime"; we already pay around $500 per household to keep people behind bars. Let's try getting smart instead of getting tough for a change. 2: Related topic. Hysterical reports about ex-convicts committing nasty crimes. Yep, it happens. People who have no criminal records do nasty things also. I'd love to hear some reports about how many ex-cons are busy doing their jobs, paying their bills, and raising their children. 3: Any more poppycock claims that President Obama isn't an American citizen or that 90% of the people in prison are illegal aliens or climate change is a socialist hoax. 4: Detailed reports of the naughty bedroom frolics of politicians and preachers, followed by tearful proclamations of remorse. Persons of either gender who provide this fodder for unimaginative paparazzi should learn to say "none of your damned business!" or else keep their knees together or zippers up, as the case may be. The voyeurs among us can pay for their fix at the porn shop rather than relying on Fox News. Continue...

The treatment of women in some eastern nations shocks and disgusts me. How can a society with any sense of honor permit such horror, I wonder. How can the males of such a society dare to call themselves men, while condoning unspeakable atrocities against women. Sometimes criminal punishment prescribed by law in those countries is also shocking. Then at times the two meet, in a way that doesn't seem all bad. Take what some fiends in Pakistan did recently to a young woman in revenge for a marriage proposal rejection.

Fazeelat Bibi, 22, was a pretty, fun-loving girl, whose cousin, Sher Mohammed, wanted to marry her. He came with relatives to ask her family's permission. Continue...