Prometheus 6   

Editorial Run

Lending a Hand in an African Village (Don't Mind the Goats)
By ADAM COHEN
Teaching in a poor Ghanaian village, you'll find limited English, goats and dignity in tough circumstances.

Grabbing the Nettle
By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
We're so used to the Bush administration's hyping the Iraq threat that it's stunning to see officials playing down the North Korean crisis

The Growing Inmate Population

The nation's prison and jail population rose again last year, to 2,166,260, a record. The increase comes at a time when crime is falling and state and local governments are struggling to close budget deficits. The price of imprisoning so many Americans is too high, in scarce tax dollars and in wasted lives. Congress and state legislatures should find ways to reduce the number of people behind bars.

The population of federal and state prisons and local jails grew 2.6 percent last year, according to new Justice Department data. Since 1995, it has risen nearly 30 percent. By the end of last year, the proportion of United States residents who were behind bars was a staggering 1 in 143. The nation's incarceration rate is among the world's highest, 5 to 10 times as high as in many other industrialized nations.

Politics beats science in Senate
(By Derrick Z. Jackson)
IN THE LATEST sound science seance, we take you to Washington, where senators, cringing under the spell of Exxon-Mobil and Ford, again refused to raise fuel economy standards to fight global warming

Cartoons
Bill DeOre seems to have gotten a clue.
Joel Pett on Dubya's travelogue
Ann Telnaes on Bush press conferences.

posted by Prometheus 6 at 8/1/2003 08:50:12 AM |