The steady right-wing pressure to maintain maximum harshness against convicted criminals seizes on and magnifies any outlying case.

Every decision about policies in dealing with crime is a probabilistic one. If you replace policy A with policy B, there will be cases where the result of B is better and cases where the result of B is worse. Whether B is a change for the better overall depends on the frequency of better and worse outcomes.

A wave of indignation is not a substitute for a rational evaluation of. the results of using policy B, not even in one specific case. We don't know yet whether convict Tubbs will commit more crimes after experiencing juvenile hall than she would have committed after a sentence in adult prison. Indeed, the general experience with adult prison suggests it often directs prisoners toward a life of crime.

If B turns out to give worse results in a identifiable subset of cases, that doesn't necessary imply that going back to A is the best change. Maybe some variant B' would be better than either A or B in such cases.

So I think that Gascon's latest decision was premature.

The UK allows people to fire lead shot at birds, and the lead gets into other birds and makes them toxic.

UPS is so profitable that it is cutting wages.

*The Russian leader’s pretext for invasion recasts Ukraine’s Jewish president as a Nazi and Russian Christians as true victims of the Holocaust.*

*US fossil fuel industry leaps on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to argue for more drilling.*

Fossil fuel companies led the US and Europe to become so dependent on those fuels that we became vulnerable to Putin. We must not let them off the hook.

The long-term way to defeat Putin and other petrostate autocrats is by decarbonizing.