Smaller States Find Outsize Clout Growing in Senate
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- Published on Wednesday, 17 April 2013 12:59
The disproportionate power enjoyed in the Senate by small states is playing a growing role in the political dynamic on issues as varied as gun control, immigration and campaign finance.
By Adam Liptak NYT 11 March 2013 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/03/11/us/politics/democracy-tested.html?pagewanted=all
Voters misjudgments on judges cry out for a method that involves merit
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- Published on Sunday, 25 November 2012 05:45
The Plain Dealer November 24, 2012, http://www.cleveland.com/opinion/index.ssf/2012/11/voters_misjudgments_on_judges.html
Greater Cleveland voters have a long history of making big mistakes in judicial elections. But in two contests decided Nov. 6, they outdid themselves. They did it by ousting two incumbents -- one from each political party -- who were challenged by opponents with credentials so inferior that no rational erson could justify the outcome.
Activist discusses work against death penalty
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- Published on Wednesday, 21 November 2012 03:01
November 16, 2012
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Activist-discusses-work-against-death-penalty-4045184.php
SisterHelen Prejean, 73, anti-death penalty advocate and author of "Dead Man
Walking," which was made into a movie in 1995 of the same name, was in Houston for the 10th anniversary of GRACE, the Gulf Region Advocacy Center, which represents low-income death-penalty defendants at no cost. She spoke with Houston Chronicle reporter Harvey Rice about her passion for her cause.
Shafted by the Electoral College
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- Published on Thursday, 11 October 2012 05:06
http://reason.com/archives/2012/10/11/shafted-by-the-electoral-college
Battleground America
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- Published on Wednesday, 18 April 2012 09:19
One nation, under the gun.
by Jill Lepore The New Yorker April 23, 2012
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/04/23/120423fa_fact_lepore
The United States is the country with the highest rate of civilian gun ownership in the world. (The second highest is Yemen, where the rate is nevertheless only half that of the U.S.) No civilian population is more powerfully armed. Most Americans do not, however, own guns, because three-quarters of people with guns own two or more. According to the General Social Survey, conducted by the National Policy Opinion Center at the University of Chicago, the prevalence of gun ownership has declined steadily in the past few decades. In 1973, there were guns in roughly one in two households in the United States; in 2010, one in three. In 1980, nearly one in three Americans owned a gun; in 2010, that figure had dropped to one in five.
Men are far more likely to own guns than women are, but the rate of gun ownership among men fell from one in two in 1980 to one in three in 2010, while, in that same stretch of time, the rate among women remained one in ten. What may have held that rate steady in an age of decline was the aggressive marketing of handguns to women for self-defense, which is how a great many guns are marketed. Gun ownership is higher among whites than among blacks, higher in the country than in the city, and higher among older people than among younger people. One reason that gun ownership is declining, nationwide, might be that high-school shooting clubs and rifle ranges at summer camps are no longer common.
Although rates of gun ownership, like rates of violent crime, are falling, the power of the gun lobby is not.