A friend just sent this to me. It’s an English folk poem, circa 1764, so he says.
They hang the man and flog the woman
That steal the goose from off the common,
But let the greater villain loose
That steals the common from the goose.
The Law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own
But leaves the lords and ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.
The poor and wretched don’t escape
If they conspire the law to break;
This must be [...] read more >
Prisons
A poem
Posted by jtellerelsberg on January 22nd, 2008Telephone justice
Posted by jtellerelsberg on October 19th, 2007Kudos to the folks at the Center for Constitutional Rights and their allies in the struggle to end exploitative telephone contracts in New York state prisons. The problem is not restricted to New York, but that’s where the Telephone Justice coalition has been focusing its efforts.
Typically, states receive kickback commissions from the phone companies who receive the contract, creating a situation in which there is no incentive to seek competitive bids. Unsurprisingly rates for such calls are well [...] read more >
Cheap justice (habeus corpus too expensive for GOP)
Posted by jtellerelsberg on September 23rd, 2007My wife and I wrote a letter to the editor of our local paper yesterday. Out of respect for the paper’s request that submitted letters be otherwise unpublished, I won’t copy it here, but I will spell out some of what we were writing about.
So it started with an article about the recently successful filibuster by Senate Republicans, to prevent a vote on a bill that would allow Guantanamo Bay detainees, and other prisoners in the “war on terror,” to [...] read more >
