Friday Roundup: Recession-Proof

This was a nice week for the US of A. I’m a little proud and still a little giddy.

Here are a few stories you might have missed while there was, um, another story going on.

Liliana Segura wrote on Alternet yesterday that budget shortfalls are forcing some states – including California and New York – to reexamine their policies of locking up everyone they possibly can. This is good news for us criminal justice reformers, but don’t tell the “recession proof” small towns built around big prisons.

This one is a week old, but definitely worth a read. Culture11 invited three reporters to debate the War on Drugs, and a thought-provoking conversation ensues. Reason Magazine editor Radley Balko writes that “America’s quest to rid the world of illicit drugs knows no boundaries—political or moral.” Reporter Anita Bartholomew offers “a sane, simple proposal to save the country billions of dollars a year: end the war on marijuana users.” And National Review reporter David Freddoso counters that legalizing drugs won’t end drug-related crime. “Under legalization,” he writes, “today’s drug dealers will run tomorrow’s rackets in money laundering, tax-free contraband, gun-running, human trafficking, identity theft, numbers, contract killings, perhaps even conflict diamonds.”

Balko and Freddoso continue the debate in a Bloggingheads video here.

New Hampshire just handed down its first death sentence in five decades, and it left one lawmaker wanting some more. Another lawmaker thought, why inject them with that controversial lethal cocktail of chemicals when we can have five guys shoot them? A third, more boring, representative said the state should declare an immediate moratorium on executions to study the execution of executions and "have a dialogue about do we really want to do this."

Meanwhile, that pesky World Court reprimanded the U.S. for executing a Mexican national convicted in Texas of murder and rape, despite a complaint filed by Mexico that the defendant wasn't advised that he had the right to seek assistance from Mexican authorities.

An article yesterday in the Harvard Law School’s newspaper called for an end to “the appalling political and fraternal use of (Presidential) pardons.”

And the lack of controversial last-minute pardons led John Dean to ask if there might be some secret pardons left behind.  This led blogger P.S. Ruckman to coin the phrase of the week: “secret preemptive blanket turbo pardons.”