Category: The Dish

How much more damage can Howard Dean do to the Democrats before someone finally pulls the plug?

America has by far the highest incarceration rate in the world – ahead of even Russia and Iran. The South leads the way, of course. But this stat blew me away:

The report by the Justice Department agency found that 62 percent of people in jails have not been convicted, meaning many of them are awaiting trial.

More than a million people are jailed in this country without being convicted for anything? Or am I reading something wrong? I wonder what the comparable rate is in other countries.

Update: a reader tells me I am reading something wrong:

It is 62% of people in jails, not of the total incarcerated. The article states that 750,000 are in jails, so 62% of that is 465,000.  Still a very high number, of course, but not "more than a million."

Tom Cruise survives as a big movie star. Dammit.

Julian Sanchez responds to Maggie Gallagher’s latest.

That’s Dan Drezner’s counter-intuitive take.

"White House and congressional Republicans seem to have adopted a one-word strategy: bribery. Buy off seniors with a prescription drug benefit. Buy off the steel industry with tariffs. Buy off agribusiness with subsidies. The cost of illegal bribery (see the case of former congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham) pales next to that of legal bribery such as congressional earmarks." – Richard Viguerie, venting.

It should be remembered, however, that Viguerie once said similar things about Ronald Reagan (prompting a very rare Reagan personal smack-down.) But he’s on firmer ground this time.

"Liberals are meddlers! Conservatives aren’t supposed to be meddlers! You’re baaaad Republicans!" – Opus, from today’s cartoon strip.

The Church of England stands by while one its chief bishops in Africa backs a new law making even verbal support for same-sex love a crime.

John Burns writes the definitive, desperate plea for sustaining some sort of hope. More evidence of the Bush administration’s staggering incompetence in trying to fight a critical war on the cheap and on the fly can be read here. This passage from another NYT story today chilled me:

Mr. Awad said he was bracing for more violence. Iraq, deeply damaged during the years under Mr. Hussein, is simply not yet ready to calmly accept democracy, he said. "For a period of time, things need to burn," he said, seated on a mat in the house of his dead relatives in Sadr City on Friday. The deaths left a family of 11 women without men. "We have to pass through this period," he continued. "Forgive me if I speak in a sectarian way, but this is the reality."

Increasingly, I fear it is.

It garners an astonishing $224 million worldwide in one weekend. $77 million in the U.S. opening. Bigger than even the hype. Something is stirring out there.

(Photo: David Silpa/UPI/Landov.)