Death Penalty
Marc Bookman is a good lawyer; an acquaintance of mine. Although he is good lawyer, he’ll never pull down Big Lawyer bucks because he’s pretty much devoted himself to lost causes, those already convicted, the out-of-sight, out-of-mind people. He is the executive director of the nonprofit Atlantic Center
Guns
A picture is worth 1,000 words, they say. So is a graph. Look at this one: Radical reformer Larry Krasner took over the Philadelphia district attorney’s office in January 2018, promising sweeping changes and restorative justice, whatever that means. Change we got, and it's not good.
Police
Derek Chauvin is the first pop trial I have been able to watch wall to wall. Previously, I was working and saw snatches of trials at best. Seeing it all allows me to judge which snippets the media chooses to focus on, but, more importantly, I am learning some things
Joe Biden
It was bound to happen. In addition to calls for U.S. Reps Matt Gaetz (Florida) and Marjorie Taylor Green (Georgia) to resign, and for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign, it’s no surprise that the White House dogs are being called on to resign. In what I
Voting
Americans long have “complained” or “joked’ about the way we handle elections, from how Chicago Mayor Richard Daley emptied the graveyards to secure John F. Kennedy’s election in 1960, to Donald J. Trump's assertion that “millions” of illegals voted. There is no proof of either. But the
Voting
Over the past several days I’ve tried to learn everything about the new “sweeping” Georgia election law, called Jim Crow by some Democrats and an expansion of voting rights by some Republicans. As usual, the truth lies between. The best overview of the new law was in the Atlanta
Joe Biden
You ever been constipated for a couple of days, feeling really clogged, then swig some prune juice to get things moving? I promise to be delicate here, but remember that feeling of relief when — finally — you were unclogged? That was just half the sublime feeling I had Thursday afternoon when
Immigration
I’m not sure I should be writing this, because no one who subscribes to me is a racist. At least I hope not. This essay has to do with anti-Asian bigotry, which is wrong, like all bigotry based on something you were born with. Due to what some — without
D.A. Larry Krasner
District Attorney Larry Krasner likes boogeymen. Although Frank Rizzo has been dead 30 years, Krasner mentioned him four times during Monday afternoon’s Zoom district attorney debate sponsored by the Philadelphia Bar Association. He waved the name like an amulet to ward off evil. Then, on the subject of immigration
Uncategorized
You have to crawl to the bottom of this Chris Brennan column to get to the (marginal) Good News for reform D.A. candidate Carlos Vega. Reform? You thought Larry Krasner was the reformer? Yes, Krasner claimed that when he ran in 2017, but now that we have seen the
Dogs
There are two kinds of dog guardians, which is the term that is preferred to “owners,” because it is more accurate. There are the people who sleep in the same bed as their dogs, and those who do not. I don’t know any who do not, although I thought
Race Relations
From the mid-‘70s to mid-‘80s I was an adjunct at Temple University, usually teaching introduction to newswriting. Adjuncts were outsiders, freelancers who were paid by the number of courses they taught without benefits such as health insurance or paid vacation. They were like Uber drivers with briefcases. I