(satire) *Amazon Transfers Insubordinate Employee To Shifts Working In Solitary Warehouse.*

(satire) *Scotch-Brite Unveils New Scouring Bread For Wiping Up Leftover Pasta Sauce On Plate.*

China is pushing for world dominion by 2030, but it is boosting greenhouse gas emissions so much that its power is likely to be broken by the cost of global heating effects by 2050.

The lies that Dubya forced into US intelligence reports about Iraq caused a lasting skepticism about US intelligence reports, which did harm just now, as people distrusted the reports about Putin that we now know were valid.

Now US intelligence says that Putin's army is considering taking the relatives of Ukrainian soldiers hostage and killing them if the soldiers don't surrender.

Putin has established a pattern of shocking the world by taking barbarity further than people could have believed. Threatening war if Sweden and Finland join NATO is the latest example. That doesn't prove he would descend to terrorism, but it would fit his pattern.

We must not allow him to win victories by threatening barbarity. The proper response to such barbarity is, "Wanted dead or alive."

However, even if Putin is planning to do that, he has not done it yet. There is a big moral difference between "may do X" and "has done X." Putin still has the option of not murdering hostages.

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.