Creative Invention: Plan for the future, learn from the past

Many small colleges are struggling with low inquiry, application, and admission rates, including here in the Northeast. Rising tuitions, student loan abuses, and radical change in employment patterns have discouraged… Read More

Prison, a barometer of our collective failures?

The scale of incarceration in our country is more than a gauge of domestic crime, it is a socio-economic indicator, telling us how we are doing on the key metrics… Read More

Knee-jerk Legislation Makes Bad Law

With the highest incarceration rate in the world, American liberals and conservatives are crossing ideological lines to question why. For every 100,000 citizens, China jails 165, Russia 450, and the… Read More

Common Sense: Criminal Background Checks

I got my first gun when I was eleven. I’d taken the NRA safety course at Camp Timanous in Maine and, as a reward, was given a Winchester .22 rifle… Read More

Jail or College?

Congressman Paul Ryan and his conservative colleagues want to reduce government spending on “entitlement” programs and curb the cost and impact of government in general. But I believe that with… Read More

Freedom of Information, Criminal Records, & Accountability

By way of full disclosure, I’m Chair of the VT Journalism Trust, doing business as VTDigger.org, serve on the Board of the VT ACLU, and am a former Chair of… Read More

The Land of the Free … in Jail

The most expensive service our government provides to its citizens, other than heroic healthcare in Medicare, Medicaid and the VA, is to lock them up. According to the Bureau of… Read More