An Arkansas town has recently been so plagued by crimes (ranging from drive by shootings to home invasions), that the city has voted to place parts of the town on lock down. A 24 hour curfew has been put in place and anyone violating that curfew is subject to being stopped by police and, if they cannot sufficiently explain themselves, placed under arrest.
So, ProgressiveU has been down as most of you have undoubtedly noticed by now. And you even managed to survive an entire weekend without it. Now that we're back up and running after the server issue (heretofore known as the Great Server Debacle... because it sounds cool); I thought I would start the resumption of blogging festivities by continuing (sort of) my last entry.
Before Kaia was born, there was a standing joke around here that we were going to start a 'fund' for him. Instead of a college fund, his was going to go toward paying for the massive amounts of therapy he would undoubtedly need after enduring my sister, my self and the rest of the family for 18 years. We are, to put it mildly, kind of like Dharma... without a strong Greg force.
There are many theories as to what causes deviance to exist. Theorists come from a multitude of backgrounds, anywhere from biological to psychological to sociological. What many do not address, however, is any possible origin of deviance.
The war on drugs in America is an outdated idea that is wasting billions of taxpayer dollars every year. According to the world drug clock America has spent over $12,500,000,000 so far this year combating drugs and it is estimated that the total will be nineteen billion for all of 2008. There have been nearly 460,000 arrests made so far this year and estimates exceed 1.8 million this year.
Last night, 60 Minutes aired an investigation that they did on the conviction of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman on charges of bribery. The video can be found here: http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=3870545n.
The criminal justice system can be a funny thing sometimes. Not funny in the "ha-ha" sense, but funny in the strange way. It works well in theory, but outside influences (mostly the mass media) morph the process quite a bit in many cases. The old adage "innocent until proven guilty" seems to have been rewritten in recent years- "guilty until proven innocent."
Last night the President of Eastern Michigan University, John Fallon, was fired by a unanimous vote. No reason was given in his firing, but many suspect it was because of his role in the cover-up of the rape and murder of EMU student, Laura Dickinson, in December.
For those unfamiliar with the story; in December, Laura Dickinson was found dead in her dorm room. College officials told her family, students and the general public that she died of asphyxiation and that there was no indication of foul play. Only after Orange Taylor III was charged with the rape and murder of Laura Dickinson in February did the family, students and the rest of the world learn that she had been raped and murdered and that school officials new about it the entire time.
