News Cut: December 12, 2007 Archive

Word of the year

Posted at 10:15 AM on December 12, 2007 by Bob Collins (0 Comments)

Merriam-Webster, the dictionary people, have selected the word of the year.

"W00t," a hybrid of letters and numbers used by gamers as an exclamation of happiness or triumph, topped all other terms in the Springfield-based dictionary publisher's online poll for the word that best sums up 2007.

A word... with numbers in it. Isn't that just... Gr8? This is, I am told by the folks with cool cubicles, an example of leet speak.

(For those of you who speak this language, let's bring you up to date on the post so far)

M3rriam-W3bst3r, th3 dictionary p3opl3, hav3 s3l3ct3d th3 word of th3 y3ar.

"W00t," a hybrid of l3tt3rs and numb3rs us3d by gam3rs as an 3xclamation of happin3ss or triumph, topp3d all oth3r t3rms in th3 Springfi3ld-bas3d dictionary publish3r's onlin3 poll for th3 word that b3st sums up 2007.

W00t beat out facebook, conundrum, quixotic, blamestorm, sardoodledom, apathetic, Peckniffian, hypocrite and charlatan.

Apparently, this was a bad year to be a verb.

(h/t Sean Collins)

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The point of no return

Posted at 12:42 PM on December 12, 2007 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)

(Pierre-Henry Deshayes/AFP/Getty Images)

So that's it, then.

Global warming may have passed the "tipping point," according to some scientists who have just released data showing the Arctic summer ice has reached its highest level of melting ever, and may be gone entirely by 2012. It was just three years ago that scientists calculated the ice would disappear in the summer of 2060. Whoops.

Tipping point: "the critical point in an evolving situation that leads to a new and irreversible development."

Tomorrow (Thursday), James E. Hansen, who directs NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies, will tell scientists at the American Geophysical Union scientific convention in San Francisco that "in some ways Earth has hit one of his so-called tipping points, based on Greenland melt data."

Scientists, who have struggled to give us a sense of urgency on global warming issues, have now given us a new tipping point: hopelessness.

When the ice melts in the summer in the Arctic, we're told, there's no surge of Canadian air to collide over Minnesota with the warm air from the Gulf of Mexico and, so, it doesn't rain anymore.

It's not like we can just all make an extra tray of ice cubes for the Arctic, or turn off a light, or even wait for progress from Bali.

If we've reached the point of no return, what exactly are we supposed to do about it, other than laugh and wait for it?

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Is Minnesota's sentencing system broken?

Posted at 3:03 PM on December 12, 2007 by Bob Collins (2 Comments)

Tuesday's move by the U.S. Sentencing Commission to lighten the punishments retroactively for crimes related to crack cocaine, recalls the same dilemma faced by Minnesota justice officials in the '80s and '90s: harsher penalties for crack cocaine use put more blacks behind bars than whites.

Black offenders were more likely to use the crack form and white offenders were more likely to use the powder form of the drug, a problem in terms of sentencing guidelines because the penalties for crack were harsher than for the powder.

At the time, it was thought that crack was more harmful than powdered cocaine, a belief debunked in part by University of Minnesota psychologist Dorothy Hatsukami, who criticized the fact that a person would have to possess 500 grams of cocaine to get the same five-year sentence that a person possessing 5 grams of crack would get. Hatsukami and her colleague, Marian Fischman at Columbia University, didn't recommend equal treatment for the drugs, but suggested a 2-to-1 ratio rather than the 100-to-1 ratio because crack was -- and is -- more widely available.

Congress was an unwilling listener at the time, but Minnesota acted comparatively quickly when the Minnesota Supreme Court struck down the state's 10-to-3 ratio as unconstitutional in 1991. The Legislature, upset with the court ruling, responded by raising the penalties for other drug offenses, rather than lowering them for crack cocaine; a decision, we're still paying for 16 years later, according to one expert.

"The weird thing that happened after the powder-rock cocaine case is we discovered who was being prosecuted for powder cocaine sales. Those were black people, too," according to University of St. Thomas law professor Scott Swanson, a former head of the Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission. "(The sentences) were out of control for rock cocaine and now they were out of control for the powder."

Still, more whites went to prison for drug offenses in Minnesota, but not because of cocaine, according to the Commission. Its 2007 report on drug offender sentencing issues (Word file) says meth is now the "predominant drug of choice for white offenders." And most of the cases are prosecuted in predominantly white outstate.

But all of these statistics mask a problem, according to Swanson: an overemphasis on drug crimes. He says most of the time judges in Minnesota "depart" from sentencing guidelines in drug cases, and impose different, usually lower, sentences.

"Why do we have guidelines? The system is broken," Swanson says. "Nobody's following it anymore. If I sell you 10 grams of cocaine for $1,500, I get 86 months in prison, if I take your $1,500 at gunpoint, I get 48 months in prison. Which of those two offenders is more dangerous? I don't have any doubt that it's the guy with the gun stealing your money. Yeah, people who sell 10 grams of cocaine are serious offenders... but when these two stand in front of a judge, the judge says 'who's the worse person?,' and clearly it's the nut with the gun, breaking into your home."

"If all of the judges agree that a sentence is wrong, and are imposing a different sentence, then you have a problem with the guidelines," he said.

The Minnesota Sentencing Guidelines Commission this month considered reranking the penalties for some crimes, including drugs, in the state (Word doc). But the Commission, according to Swanson, sent the issue to the Legislature without a recommendation, where it's unlikely to get much debate. Politicians are reluctant to be seen going soft on crime.

If the Commission had taken action, Swanson said, the headlines would've said, Sentencing Commission lowers drug sentences. But he says it's not about going soft, it's about stepping back and concentrating on "proportionality," identifying "who are the worst people? Who are the ones we want to pluck out for a longer period of time?" Swanson said.

Those are questions that got lost in the political debate about crime.

Listen to the interview with Scott Swanson.

Bob Collins and All Things Considered host Tom Crann discuss the issue.

Related story: About 200 inmates could get lower sentences (Bemidji Pioneer)

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