Crime

On a muggy August afternoon in Baltimore, trash scuttled down Guilford Avenue, the breeze smelling like rain and asphalt. It was the last week of shooting for the fifth and final season of the HBO drama The Wire, and the crew was filming a scene in front of a boarded-up elementary school. Cast members had been joined by forty or so day players -- mostly kids from the neighborhood. Earlier, the episode’s director, Clark Johnson, had been giving some… more

Do you ever find yourself in a scary situation where you start spontaneously reciting the 23rd Psalm? You know, "The Lord is my shepherd ... "? Well, a new movie, Trade, gave me the shuddering feeling that I needed protection from wickedness -- that we all do, that America does.

Trade, starring Kevin Kline, opening Friday, is a fictionalized look -- sometimes lurid, always harrowing, and by the end, profoundly spiritual -- at the sex-trafficking industry, demonstrating clear and present danger… more

Sacramento lawmakers are in a trap. U.S. District Judge Lawrence Karlton will decide in little more than three months whether to set a population cap on the state’s vastly overcrowded prison system, potentially forcing the early release of thousands of convicted criminals. To keep the court at bay, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has asked the Legislature to approve billions in new prison construction money, and to consider revising sentencing and parole laws to put fewer criminals behind bars.

The trap is this:… more

In the opening sequence of Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-contender The Departed, Jack Nicholson’s gangster character recalls that when he was young, the priests used to tell the Irish American children of South Boston that they could either become cops or criminals.

The movie, which is essentially an urban morality tale played out between Irish American gangsters and cops, is only the latest in a long line of American films featuring the rivalry between good and bad in ethnic enclaves. (Think James Cagney… more

So American troops are surging in Iraq, and withdrawing along our own border. What’s wrong with this picture? Nothing, say the journalistic and political elites.

Yet, before anything else, what we need is a surge of troops on the U.S.-Mexican border, which is a lot closer to home than Baghdad. On Jan. 6 The Arizona Republic reported that a small team of National Guard troops "abandoned their post near the border southwest of Tucson as four gunmen approached from Mexico."

American authorities… more

It's a paradox of our time that the Amish, arguably the least technological people in America, have nevertheless proven to be extraordinarily effective at communicating what they believe. In a time of proliferating techno-clutter, they got their message across the old-fashioned way: through the blood sacrifice of martyrs.

Of course, there's no reason to think the Amish -- who lost five of their own in an Oct. 2 school shooting in Pennsylvania -- had any plan for teaching us a lesson… more

Victor slouches into a bustling courtroom at Los Angeles County Children's Court. He would be tall, if he stood up straight, and broad, if his shoulders didn't follow his eyes to the floor. He doesn't look sullen or defiant. He just looks like a big kid, humble and out of place in this room full of busy grown-ups. When the judge glances up from her papers and smiles at him, he smiles back, just a bit.

At 19,… more

The hottest movie coming out of Hollywood, The Anthony Pellicano Story, hasn't actually been filmed yet. Nonetheless, it's real; the action is taking place right now in corporate suites and law offices -- and jail cells -- all over Los Angeles. Perhaps I should explain.

The players in Pellicano are some of the most notorious and most prominent bold-print names in Hollywood. The most notorious, of course, is Anthony Pellicano, private eye to the stars. At present, Pellicano is in… more

The Duke University rape allegations will be remembered as a turning point in the history of judicial-media relations.

Lawyers in the case have been shameless in their effort to manipulate the case to their side's advantage. And the media have been eager co-conspirators, such that the trial has, in effect, already begun. It is being conducted, not in the courtroom, but in news pages and on TV.

So here's a modest proposal: Why not make it official? Why not just… more

Be afraid. Be very afraid. That's the message we Americans receive daily from everyone from government officials to newscasters, environmentalists and corporate marketers. Let's face it: like sex, fear sells. But has hyperactive fear-mongering become corrosive to American society? That's what a growing number of social critics and sociologists are concluding. In a nation so proud of its pioneering spirit, the culture of precaution, they say, is turning us into a bunch of chickens.

Even before 9/11, Americans -- who… more