Official Death in New Jersey Offed

A few days ago New Jersey made it official. It became the first of the currently heavily disUnited States of America to discontinue the use of capital punishment, including the death penalty.

Obviously New Jersey does not have very many Republicans.

Suddenly, with one stroke, this kind of almost unprecedented forward thinking has allowed the Garden State to leapfrog from its former position far in the rear of the pack -- due to pollution, heavy urbanization, and an untoward number of bad drivers -- to becoming the country's most distinguished state.

This development puts a dent in my feeling that legal systems have too little to distinguish them from the criminal activities that they are intended to curtail, though not on the fact that also too often they operate purely on the basis of bias, bigotry, and the ability to pay. In addition, the common dictum that a defendant is innocent till proven guilty has been completely reversed. And on and on.

New Jersey's action was Big News, yet I fear that it didn't attract the appropriate attention in the national media. The online Google News, for one, devoted more space -- as always -- to someone named Britney Spears. Apparently this person of uncertain though surely numerous and wide-ranging accomplishments has been forbidden from doing something else, and, that not being enough, Google added the key revelation that a younger sister of Ms Spears is pregnant.