Remora

It is a barbarous place. Men are tortured by being confined for years to silent underground chambers. Some are cast into prison for violating taboos against using unclean plants, and left to rot the best portion of their lives away. Others, for petty thefts, can receive what amounts to a life sentence.

No, we aren't speaking of some Moslem republic in Central Asia -- we are of course describing the legal system of California, in many respects more regressive than the penal system of England, circa 1815. In such darkness, untouched by the recently much vaunted fruits of Western Civilization (Limited Inc is exaggerating -- there are some very sweet sex videos coming out of the Valley), a small but astonishing victory for reason was reported by the AP's David Kravets in this story:

Federal court throws out 50-year 'three-strike' sentence for shoplifter in California

lede graf:

"A federal appeals court threw out a shoplifter's 50-year sentence under California's "three strikes" law as overly harsh � a ruling that could lead to hundreds of challenges from defendants who received near-life terms for petty crimes."

further down, the casus and crux, a scandal to the Greeks and a stumbling blocks to our homegrown redneck element, who are no doubt even now petitioning for an end to the reign of the pernicious judiciary:

"[Leonardo] Andrade got 50 years in prison for stealing nine videotapes, valued at $153, from a Kmart. The court noted that kidnappers and murderers could receive less time than Andrade, who had a record of several nonviolent, petty crimes."

Of course, given the barbarity of a considerable portion of the electorate, which has sublimated its grandfathers' thirst for lynching into a penal code of a dense, complex ignorance, and a penal archipelago that has safely euphemized its systematic cruelties under such euphemisms as 'solitary' , no doubt this will be an issue on the hustings. How can our children be safe when bloodthirsty video thieves are allowed to prowl the aisles at KMart with impunity? We can just see the torches burning in the suburbs of Los Angeles, all the Day of the Locusts faces, the masks under the masks of reaction, like some Georg Grosz nightmare.