Mandatory minimum drug sentences

Back in the late 1980s when I did a lot of criminal defense work, the “war on drugs” adopted minimum mandatory sentences as its tactic of choice. The most onerous and ill-considered was a mandatory minimum 5 year sentence for a second offense of distribution of heroin. In the abstract,…

Read More »

Egypt: The Revolution

  “…We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers…

Read More »

Unrest in Egypt

The last time I remember rioting in the streets in the Middle East, it was 1979 and the people of Iran overthrew the Shah. Islamic fundamentalists seized control, the US Embassy was seized and its staff taken hostage, and the world became a much more dangerous place. Could the same…

Read More »

Joseph Donahue & Apocalyptic Poetry

Lowell-rooted poet Joe Donahue is one of the subjects of an essay titled “Apocalypticism: A Way Forward for Poetry” in the Chicago Review. Read the essay by Peter O’Leary here.     Donahue has spent years mastering long serial poems that combine elements of mysticism, esotericism, protest, and the alienation of the…

Read More »