The critical issues here concern what is right, what is just -- not the balancing of benefits.

Our lives are led, and our decisions made, within a network of needs and wants, some natural, some arising from the acts of others, some aggravated by the acts of the state. We are all bored, or threatened, or tantalized in differing degrees by a perilous world, some hostile people, and a not very sensitive government.

Prison is, simply put, the bottom rung of the welfare ladder.

A Reagan appointee, Justice Kennedy is no liberal, as he has shown on issues from affirmative action to corporate campaign spending. But he has repeatedly sided with gay litigants before the court.

I don't think this call for the FBI to run something independent of the Justice Department is going to work with him, ... He is part of the Justice Department. That's the way our system works.

Rehabilitate instead of Incarcerate.