News of the Day 10-04-06

The Christian Science Monitor has a great article up on women in Mexican prisons, over half of them on drug crimes, primarily due to their maridos pendejos (if Mike Myers can say "shag" and Aaron Sorkin can say "pussyboy," I can say maridos pendejos). . . (That got you to your search engine, didn't it?). Anyway, what's good about the article is the home-grown campaign to get these mujeres tontas away from those hombres locos or to pull the yahoos (originally Spanish) from the trade. Not quite the fool-proof Lysistrata approach we've advocated only half-kidding here, but you do wonder why we couldn't put a little more effort here as well, using young women's control of resources vital to young men to divert into more productive behavior. But then, what would "Law & Order" do for plots? . . . Speaking of non-criminal justice approaches to stop crime, DE has unwrapped a giant new early childhood education plan. Its relevance to us? Its explicit invocation of future crime reduction as a goal. The plan asserts that every dollar spent will save $17 later in prison beds, mental health services, etc. And, even if they are only half right, that's still pretty cool. . . . And shiver me timbers (sorry, too much chocolate today)--a coalition of NV religious leaders supports an initiative for legalization of sale/possession of up to one oz. of pot for adults, get this, on moral grounds. Now they want tougher penalties for selling to under-21s and for DUI, but they want state-regulated and -taxed pot shops in order to cut the violence, corruption, and hypocrisy associated with the crime. A Lutheran minister says gov has to do this because pot "is far easier to access than alcohol because drug dealers don't card." The shops would apparently impose a $45/oz. excise tax (say hello, black markets?) to go for admin and gen revenue, with 50% guaranteed for substance abuse programs. Right now the measure is down in the polls 51%-42%, but only half oppose? Reminds me of how NE was one of the leading states in the 60s in liberalizing marijuana laws because people got fed up with the lack of enforcement of stricter laws. This'll be a vote we'll watch on election night. If it passes, it may be the lede.