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Why? Because a company usually thinks about the bottom line: profit. And what's profitable isn't always what's best for the inmate. The New York Times reveals the downside to this social experiment in a recent story , which details: Rampant Drug Selling & Use : “Bo is like the projects,” said Matthew Leibe, who was an inmate there last year. “I’m walking down the hallway from mess and I’m getting approached by everybody selling everything. ‘I’ve got batteries, T-shirts, weed, heroin, coke.’ ”  Questionable Hiring Practices :  Dana Vetrano, a former counselor at Bo Robinson, said the staff had many former prison inmates. She herself was one, having served time for robbery. “They were from the streets,” Ms. Vetrano said. “They needed a job, they came in from the street, they were hired — that was it. They had no qualifications. Nothing.  Poor Staffing : “An older resident comes in my office; he wants to see me,” Mr. Watkins reca...

That would be Newark Mayor Cory Booker .

New Jersey Governor and previous GOP darling Chris Christie mad a little news for defending his nomination of a person who happened to be Muslim. Specifically, his replay to conservative critics was : Sharia Law has nothing to do with this at all — it’s crazy! It’s crazy. The guy’s an American citizen… This Sharia Law business is crap. It’s just crazy, and I’m tired of dealing with the crazies. It’s just unnecessary to be accusing this guy of things just because of his religious background . It shouldn't be surprising, then, to hear that the anti-Muslim conservatives are pushing back .

I think it would go without saying that this is bad and unprecedented . Yet I've seen some jerks claim that where they're from, this is "normal" and they wouldn't panic. Well, I suppose if Maryland, DC, Virginia, New Jersey and Pennsylvania had blizzards every damn winter these states (and the people who live there) would be more prepared. So let me ask these "blizzard experts:" how prepared is your town/state for a flood? A tornado? An earthquake? Would you still just brush it off, or would you maybe feel a bit overwhelmed?

Charles Krauthammer : Even though I believed that the George Bush/Donald Rumsfeld-led war in Iraq was never going to have any significant setbacks at all, I have little-to-no confidence in the American judicial system . Eugene Robinson : The odds that Khalid Sheik Mohammed will be doing "Jihad Hero" during his trial, or even escape like a Batman villain out of Arkham Asylum is very unlikely .

18% of New Jersey conservatives believe that President Obama is the Anti-Christ .

... and they get arrested along with 40 other people . A two-year corruption and international money-laundering investigation stretching from the Jersey Shore to Brooklyn to Israel and Switzerland culminated in charges against 44 people on Thursday, including three New Jersey mayors, two state assemblymen and five rabbis, the authorities said. The case began with bank fraud charges against a member of an insular Syrian Jewish enclave centered in a seaside town. But when that man became a federal informant and posed as a crooked real estate developer offering cash bribes to obtain government approvals, it mushroomed into a political scandal that could rival any of the most explosive and sleazy episodes in New Jersey’s recent past. It was replete with tales of the illegal sales of body parts; of furtive negotiations in diners, parking lots and boiler rooms; of nervous jokes about “patting down” a man who turned out to indeed be an informant; and, again and again, of the passing of cash —...