Just a run of the mill note: President Bush is going before the National Security Agency, headquartered in Maryland, to advocate for the continuation of the “Protect America Act,” specifically the additional surveillance measures imposed on phone and internet communications. …

Today the Fed announced a bold 1/2 point cut in the Federal Funds Rate, setting it at 4.75%. The Federal Funds Rate (FFR) is the rate at which commercial banks charge one another for overnight loans of one million …

When someone who has been entrusted with property and is expected to dispose of it in some pre-agreed upon way in fact misappropriates that property for his own gain, he is guilty of “larceny by trick” if he in fact …

Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell heads to Capitol Hill this week seeking to extend the government’s power to read e-mails, listen to telephone calls and carry out other surveillance within the USA in national security cases.

Of course Democrats are …

It would seem that the definition of state crime is straightforward: any state-sanctioned conduct by individuals or organizations representing the state that’s in violation of the ethical standards by which the state operates might be categorized as state crime. …

Compensation is, I believe, a humane and civic goal to set for punishment in the criminal law.

When a convicted criminal is made to render some service to his victims, his community and society as a whole in repayment …

An omission is a failure to act when action is prescribed. While certain omissions can warrant fairly severe punishments in the criminal law of the United States, these offenses are not exactly “crimes” in the sense that murder, theft …

What to say. As with any great paradox, one must pause before this subject, “Punishment and the Balance of Purposes,” and realize that whatever might be said in a usual and customary context (such a as a blog) will …

Of course every situation is different, and every criminal offender has the right, under our legal traditions, to have his or her case considered carefully and individually, even if it is for a crime committed many times before, and even …

Criminology traditionally identifies four purposes behind punishment through the criminal law. These are:

1) Retribution
2) Deterrence
3) Restraint
4) Rehabilitation

This sounds pretty straight forward, and it’s easy to see how a sentence of 3 years in …