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Oh, Christ, I thought. He's saying the protesters are hypocrites because they're using banks. I sighed. "Listen," I said, "where else are you going to put three hundred thousand dollars? A shopping bag?"

"I teach Criminal Justice in a rural and predominantly White state. One of the difficulties teaching my discipline in this environment is that I am mainly discussing urban problems in a place where the nearest large city is several hours and an entire state away. Many of my students only know about crime and urban America from what their family, cable news and AM radio tell them."

"Footage of self-immolations in Algeria, clashes between police and protesters in Yemen and Bahrain, government reshufflings in Jordan and fledgling street demonstrations in Iran could lead to the impression of a domino effect under way in the Middle East in which aging autocrats are on the verge of being uprooted by Tunisia-inspired revolutionary fervor. A careful review of unrest in the Middle East and North Africa , however, exposes a very different picture. "

In 1990, in a depressed area of Buffalo, New York, eleven schoolgirls were raped. According to George Kelling, a criminal justice scholar, eight of these incidents could have been prevented. After the third case, police knew that a serial rapist was on the loose but, even though they had a description and modus operandi, they issued no warning to local parents. They saw their job as catching the criminal rather than preventing more girls from being raped. Kelling argued that the cops hadn't wilfully neglected their duties. Their actions were swayed by their views of police-work, which were in turn affected by metaphors. They saw themselves as crime-fighters who trod the "thin blue line" protecting innocent civilians from criminal marauders. With this role entrenched in their minds, they saw their job as catching the rapist, even at the expense of preventing further crimes. As Kelling said, the eight Buffalo schoolgirls "were victims, though no one realized it at the time, not only of a rapist, but of a metaphor."

"The identity of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing -- Chechen brothers Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, and Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26 -- confirms several of our suspicions. From this profile, the simple nature of the attack, their efforts to rob a convenience store and their lack of an escape plan, we can conclude that they were what we refer to as grassroots militants. Despite being amateurs, such militants clearly still pose a significant threat."

This article is designed to be quite provocative. It's sure worth exploring. "The real reason the Second Amendment was ratified, and why it says "State" instead of "Country" (the Framers knew the difference - see the 10th Amendment), was to preserve the slave patrol militias in the southern states, which was necessary to get Virginia's vote.  Founders Patrick Henry, George Mason, and James Madison were totally clear on that . . . and we all should be too."

"I'm not saying that people shouldn't love the art they love. But I am suggesting that the mean-spiritedness of geek culture-a mean-spiritedness that is often, but by no means always, directed at women-is not an accident. A culture that values knowledge and access above all things is going to be a culture dedicated to hierarchy and to power-to defining who is in and who is out. Such defining involves, and is meant to involve, a good deal of antagonism, score-settling, back-biting, and cruelty. There's not much point in defining yourself as the knower if you cannot define others as those who do not know."

"In 1968, Harvard political scientist Samuel P. Huntington published Political Order in Changing Societies. Forty-five years later, the book remains without question the greatest guide to today's current events. Forget the libraries of books on globalization, Political Order reigns supreme: arguably the most incisive, albeit impolite, work produced by a political scientist in the 20th century. If you want to understand the Arab Spring, the economic and social transition in China, or much else, ignore newspaper opinion pages and read Huntington."

"Russia is generally freer now than it was under communism, but its spy-chiefs are, if anything, even more entrenched. No longer is it the government that is running the spies. The spies are running the government." By Robert Cottrell at The New York Review of Books on July 12, 2010.

"A headline from the Denver Post this week read: "Colorado Drug Force Disbanding." Another from the Seattle Times announced, "220 Marijuana Cases Dismissed In King, Pierce Counties.""

"Even at this early stage of a much belated evolutionary process, empirical evidence and ongoing technological advances, as well as pro clean energy and sustainable development polices and market developments, highlight the fallacy of their arguments."

"Mark Kleiman, a public policy professor at the University of California-Los Angeles who has studied promising methods of controlling crime, suggests that because criminologists are basically sociologists, they look for sociological explanations, not medical ones. My own sense is that interest groups probably play a crucial role: Political conservatives want to blame the social upheaval of the '60s for the rise in crime that followed. Police unions have reasons for crediting its decline to an increase in the number of cops. Prison guards like the idea that increased incarceration is the answer. Drug warriors want the story to be about drug policy. If the actual answer turns out to be lead poisoning, they all lose a big pillar of support for their pet issue. And while lead abatement could be big business for contractors and builders, for some reason their trade groups have never taken it seriously."

"Analysis - Two years after taking power in Ivory Coast, Ivorian President Alassane Ouattara's efforts to pacify the country continue to be undermined by persistent unrest -- some of it perpetrated by elements of the president's own support base. Several recent attacks have also been attributed to supporters of former President Laurent Gbagbo, who was extradited to the International Criminal Court after contested elections in 2010. On April 12, protesters wearing army uniforms -- reportedly former members of the New Forces militia that fought to remove Gbagbo in 2011 -- disrupted traffic on the country's main north-south highway in the city of Bouake to demand payment for military service and integration into the government. Since taking office, Ouattara's regime has refashioned the New Forces as the Ivorian military -- now called the Republican Forces of Ivory Coast. Still, the government has faced frequent attacks, supposedly by Gbagbo loyalists, in Abidjan, other parts of southeastern Ivory Coast and west along the Liberian border. The attacks have targeted primarily government security patrols and outposts, such as an assault on a police station on the night of April 8 in Abidjan's Yopougon neighborhood. These incidents illustrate the breadth of discontent and the diversity of security risks in the fractured country. The president faces no immediate threat to his hold on power, but the lack of reconciliation in Ivory Coast -- especially its southern regions -- portends continued instability."

"Piracy off the coast of Somalia has dropped off dramatically in 2012. Successful ship hijackings have decreased from 31 in 2011 (and 49 in 2010) to only four so far in 2012. Attacks against ships have also decreased, falling from 199 reported attacks in the first nine months of 2011 to 70 attacks over the same span in 2012 -- a 65 percent drop. However, diminished activity does not necessarily mean a decrease in the cost of sailing around the Horn of Africa. Somali pirates occupy a unique position, which is right along highly strategic global shipping lanes yet outside the reach of any national power. For international actors, it is politically and militarily easier to try to contain the Somali piracy threat than to eliminate it. But containment comes at a high cost."

"A terrifying new "legal high" has hit our streets. Methyl-carbonol, known by the street name "wiz," is a clear liquid that causes cancers, liver problems, and brain disease, and is more toxic than ecstasy and cocaine. Addiction can occur after just one drink, and addicts will go to any lengths to get their next fix - even letting their kids go hungry or beating up their partners to obtain money. Casual users can go into blind rages when they're high, and police have reported a huge increase in crime where the drug is being used. Worst of all, drinks companies are adding "wiz" to fizzy drinks and advertising them to kids like they're plain Coca-Cola. Two or three teenagers die from it every week overdosing on a binge, and another 10 from having accidents caused by reckless driving. "Wiz" is a public menace - when will the Home Secretary think of the children and make this dangerous substance Class A?"

"During the Bush years, Guantanamo was the core symbol of right-wing radicalism and what was back then referred to as the "assault on American values and the shredding of our Constitution": so much so then when Barack Obama ran for President, he featured these issues not as a secondary but as a central plank in his campaign. But now that there is a Democrat in office presiding over Guantanamo and these other polices - rather than a big, bad, scary Republican - all of that has changed, as a new Washington Post/ABC News poll today demonstrates" Thanks to Erik Hanson for the pointer.

I don't know that this was me. My take on this whole thing is that liberals mostly feel that Obama has let them down by being too centrist, but that they'll still vote for him over Rom-tor-rich anyday.

I coulda sworn you did...sorry. And I share your sentiment. That's the kind of trap left-centrists and leftists have. I surely don't hate Obama. I think I understand that presidents make concessions. But when you made such a big, _big_ stink about it during the race, at the very least, don't... say... _increase_ drone strikes. The crux, though, doesn't have anything to do with this stuff. It's about rhetorical inconsistency. Someone yesterday remarked "This is why I think Obama is not the lesser of evils." Keeping Guantanamo open and increasing drone strikes is exactly the kind of thing that self-described Conservatives *supported* during G.W.'s administration. But, we're really not that different after all. Once 'our man' gets the office, we make retroactive justifications. Isn't it fun to be a human animal?

The video is shocking. (See it here.) A line of students sits on the ground, heads bowed. A police officer dressed in riot gear walks up to them, holding a pepper spray gun. He theatrically raises his arm, as if about to carry out an execution, and presses the trigger. A foul-looking orange spray shoots out. Methodically, deliberately, he walks to the end of the line, saturating each student. He might as well be casually spraying bug spray. When he reaches the end he begins walking back in the other direction, spraying each of them again. The students huddle in obvious pain. People in the crowd nearby gasp in shock and began chanting, "Shame on you! Shame on you! Shame on you!"

"Many years ago, I visited Four Corners in the American Southwest. This is a small stone monument on a polished metal platform where four states meet. You can walk around the monument in the space of a few seconds and stand in four states: Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Utah. People lined up to do this and have their pictures taken by excited relatives. To walk around the monument is indeed a thrill, because each of these four states has a richly developed tradition and identity that gives these borders real meaning. And yet no passports or customs police are required to go from one state to the other."

"The name "Ukraine" literally translates as "on the edge." It is a country on the edge of other countries, sometimes part of one, sometimes part of another and more frequently divided. In the 17th and 18th centuries, it was divided between Russia, Poland and the Ottoman Empire. In the 19th century, it was divided between Russia and Austria-Hungary. And in the 20th century, save for a short period of independence after World War I, it became part of the Soviet Union. Ukraine has been on the edge of empires for centuries."

"Two weeks ago a man in France was arrested for raping his daughter. She'd gone to her school counselor and then the police, but they needed "hard evidence." So, she videotaped her next assault. Her father was eventually arrested. His attorney explained, "There was a period when he was unemployed and in the middle of a divorce. He insists that these acts did not stretch back further than three or four months. His daughter says longer. But everyone should be very careful in what they say." Because, really, even despite her seeking help, her testimony, her bravery in setting up a webcam to film her father raping her, you really can't believe what the girl says, can you?"