A List of Interesting Stories I’ve Read Recently

• Education is nowhere mentioned in the Constitution; the creation of the world’s first system of universal public education—from kindergarten through high school—and of mass higher education is one of the great achievements of American democracy. It embodies a faith in the capabilities of ordinary people that the Founders simply didn’t have. [New Yorker]

• The federal government imposed tougher sentences for crack in 1986, when use of the drug was rampant and basketball star Len Bias died of cocaine intoxication. Early reports said Bias had used crack, but after the federal law was passed, a teammate of Bias’ testified that Bias had actually snorted powder cocaine the night he died.
A person convicted of crack cocaine possession got the same mandatory federal prison term as someone with 100 times as much powder cocaine. President Obama signed a law in August narrowing the federal disparity to 18-1. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

• As it happens, Sorkin’s “The West Wing” is one of Zuckerberg’s favorite television shows. … Zuckerberg said that he liked the authenticity of the series—the way it captured the truth, at least as friends of his described it, of working in Washington. … When I asked Sorkin to guess the episode that Zuckerberg liked best, he said, “The Lemon-Lyman episode”—the one in Season Three where Josh Lyman, the deputy chief of staff, played by Bradley Whitford, discovers that he has a following on an online message board and unwisely interacts with its members.
Actually, Zuckerberg’s favorite episode, he told me, was “Two Cathedrals,” at the end of Season Two, in which Martin Sheen, who plays President Josiah Bartlet, grieves at the death of his longtime secretary and, after disclosing that he has multiple sclerosis, ponders whether he should seek reëlection. He is inside the National Cathedral and orders that it be temporarily sealed. He curses God in Latin and lights a cigarette. “It’s, like, even in journeys like Facebook, we’ve had some very serious ups and downs,” Zuckerberg said. … A few days after we spoke, Zuckerberg changed his Facebook profile, removing “The West Wing” from his list of favorite TV shows.

• As for Jeter, there is something puritanical and prudish to the charge that he cheated. As someone must have said sometime, baseball ain’t church. [New York Times]

• The question comes down to whether we want a society in which the rich take an ever-increasing share of the pie, or prefer to return to conditions that allow all classes to anticipate an increasing standard of living. Demanding that the rich get a tax cut as a condition for tax relief for others is simply elitist. Tea Partiers, take note. [NY Times]

• For the past few years, billboards on buildings being fixed up in Venice have become an increasingly common sight. Too common, perhaps. When the Coke billboards went up this summer on buildings that abut Piazza San Marco — the historic and, perhaps more to the point, touristic heart of Venice — Mrs. Bianchini d’Alberigo’s organization denounced their intrusiveness, and that started the public debate.
“We couldn’t stay quiet,” she said. “Too much is too much.”
Venice officials counter that without these ads the city could not begin to keep up with the maintenance of its historic monuments, many of which bear the burden of centuries of wear, accentuated by Venice’s aquatic nature and its erosive effects on the city. [New York Times]

• Street said the mostly white mainstream media were not in tune with the depth of disdain for Nutter in the African American community. He said Nutter was “not a black mayor, he’s just a mayor with dark skin.” Street relayed an anecdote of a black man who stopped him on the street and asked if the city would ever have another black mayor. [Philadelphia Inquirer]

• First Dude’s narrow defeat continued a streak of frustrating races this year, which includes six consecutive in-the-money finishes in graded events but only a maiden victory to his credit. [Philly.com]

• The lethal-injection death of Teresa Lewis, convicted of the 2002 contract killing of her husband and stepson, broke with a tradition of societal “queasiness” about executing women, one legal expert said.
It could also psychologically clear the way to carrying out death sentences on others among the 60 condemned women in the nation, including 18 in California, according to some capital-punishment observers. [Philly.com]

• Lots of states measure the costs of imprisonment and of new criminal laws, but on a generic scale. Many states, for instance, calculate the average cost of housing a prisoner, but that is rarely mentioned with down-to-the-dollar figures for a specific person as a judge picks a sentence.
To some, the concept sounds crass, and carries the prospect of unwanted consequences. Might a decision between life in prison and a death sentence be decided some day by price comparison? [NY Times]