When our Founding Fathers established the framework for this country they were careful to limit the powers of the federal government. As James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers, the primary and central job of the federal government is to “provide for the common defense.”
Okay, here I go with another flip flop. Regular readers of this column know I’m not a big fan of more gun control laws. Generally speaking, I think we’ve got enough federal and state laws already on the books. And besides, criminals don’t follow the law when they go out to get or use a…
It’s a scientifically proven type of crime fighting that is banned in all but a handful of states. The question is why aren’t more crime labs using it? It’s called familial DNA testing and it has been widely restricted because it is seen, by some, as an invasion of the privacy of innocent people.
Here’s a crime story you likely didn’t hear about. It happened in the New York City subway. But it is not the hate-filled crime that matters as much as the response to it by a group of total strangers who happened to file into a particular subway car on a wintry-cold Saturday night. As the…
Change is often a good thing. Thinking outside the box can bring about dynamic and fresh solutions to longstanding problems. That’s why I’m hoping that President Trump’s administration — which is on record as wanting to upend the status quo in Washington, D.C. — will employ this kind of thinking with the subject of prison…
Here’s a thought. Maybe we’ve been going about trying to reduce the rising murder rate in this country the wrong way. Maybe, instead of taking an aerial view of the problem we should have been looking at things from down at the street-level. Analyzing crime reports neighborhood by neighborhood to specifically target the simmering pockets…
Serial killers, guns and the death penalty. Whenever I write about one of those topics my mailbox blows up. Last week’s column about convicted murderer Dylann Roof and America’s policy of capital punishment — public support for it, the costs associated with it and its usefulness in deterring others – definitely stirred passions.
As my father would have said about the year 2016, “So long, and don’t let the door hit you in the rump on the way out!” Although Dad surely would have used more colorful language. It was a confusing, divisive and extremely frustrating year, wasn’t it?