Grandma is pushing fent:

N. WISCONSIN - Following a Jan. 17 traffic stop on U.S. Highway 8 East, three Eagle River residents have been changed on multiple drug charges each. Susan Cody, 74, Barry Clure, 69, and Patrick Menting, 63, face Class C felony drug charges in Oneida County for possession with intent to deliver over 100 grams of fentanyl, allegedly part of a Chicago-to-northern-Wisconsin trafficking ring. The defendants confessed to traveling to Chicago on Jan. 16 to buy fentanyl/heroin. Cody admitted to a decade of Chicago purchases and selling fentanyl to Clure and Menting for 1.5 years. Menting admitted to contributing $320 to the $2,000 purchase and occasionally selling fentanyl, buying about eleven 0.5-gram bags weekly from Cody for a year and a half. Clure claimed the fentanyl found on him was payment for driving. Seized fentanyl from all three totaled over 125 grams. Judge Mary Sowinski set a $500,000 cash bond and no-contact orders for all three. Initial appearances are scheduled for some time this month.

Discourse surrounding the punishment of criminals has been utterly captured by the simplest form of utilitarian thinking: pleasure good, pain bad.

People who despise criminals want to punish them, want them held accountable for their actions and punished at the feet of their victims. The people who claim to love and cherish the criminals want them spared punishment, want them freed from the confines of their cells.

Hogwash. Those who despise criminals ought to want them set free. Let them continue to ruin themselves. Just as the child is made rotten by sparing the rod, the criminal is ruined by his absolvement.

Those who love criminals ought to want to see them punished harshly, to be spared from their wickedness by the rod and crafted into better men.

The punishment for using your phone in class shall be death.

I make fun of people for not working enough and suddenly 6,000,000 people want me to tutor them today. How much time can I give each of them?

Using the term "Faustian spirit" as a complement has always seemed like such a bizarre practice. "Yeah, this guy wants to know and to advance so much that he's willing to embrace evil and sell his soul to the devil." This is a good thing to you?

The prophecy is being fulfilled....

The tyrant is the unhappiest man imaginable.

American relations with Israel plunged to their lowest point in a decade yesterday when the White House denounced as "unacceptable" statements by the Israeli prime minister comparing the US coalition-building in the Arab world to British appeasement of the Nazis in the 1930s.

The Bush administration was reported to be furious with Mr Sharon's actions, and the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, told journalists that the president felt personally affronted by the comparison to Neville Chamberlain and the discredited policies of appeasement in the run up to the second world war. Mr Bush is an avid admirer of Winston Churchill.

An admirer of Churchill, you say? Explains a bit.

In A Preface to Philosophy, Woodhouse suggests that one of the primary benefits of treading the Pilgrim-path of Philosophy is the Baptism of a certain type of Tolerance into the Practitioner.

Some of you might hear that dreaded T-Word and immediately think that this is actually a reason not to practice Philosophy. However, while universal Tolerance is of course a Heresy, there are certain types of Tolerance which are Good and Beautiful and True, and there are certain things that ought to be tolerated

How might Philosophy increase Tolerance? What type of Tolerance? And of what? Mark this: when you run into your own Mistakes and have them corrected, and this happens to you repeatedly throughout your Studies, it starts to imbue a certain Humbleness. You understand that you're a frail Being prone to Error. And this can easily be projected outward onto others. You learn to have Patience with people who disagree with you. Part of you may wonder if it is you who is in Error on a particular Point. But even in cases where you are sure that you are Correct, absolutely sure, you understand that mortal Men make Mistakes when dealing with these Questions, and that they are genuinely, tremendously difficult to tackle. It's normal for people to make Mistakes when facing difficult Tasks, including answering difficult Philosophical Questions, and so you show them Patience. You tolerate their Ignorance. You understand that guiding them to the correct Answer could take Time, and that it might be unsuccessful.

Let us, therefore, bear with our erring Brethren, knowing full well that Truth is a rugged Summit conquered not by the swift and prideful, but meandered towards, even if not fully subjugated, by the slow, patient Footsteps of the Humble.