It’s very easy to argue that young children facing accusations that would warrant detention are far more likely to have their lives set on a new course if kept out of institutional punitive settings.

In Gideon, Justice Hugo Black described the “noble ideal (of) fair trials before impartial tribunals in which every defendant stands equal before the law.”

Voters often feel isolated from Washington, D.C., and Springfield. Math and distance make it inevitable. Being cut off from local officials is a choice, one we need not make.

The working theory seems to be protecting earnest homeschoolers from red tape intended to entangle those who simply pull their kids from class and ignore them, or worse, but that raises two concerns.

Rigid belief in the infallibility of police, prosecutors, judges, juries and sentencing laws from the last millennium allows the inference that everyone serving a life sentence fully deserved that punishment and is nominally human but otherwise irredeemable.

Government is an ongoing process and sometimes the governor’s signature is only a blip in the long timeline of impact.

What is the wisdom of the rule wherein a candidate can give enough money to their own committee to make it legal for others to give millions more?

The idea just a few thousand dollars could shift a senator’s focus from the best interests of constituents to the personal bottom line is the exact thing that undercuts faith in all elected officials.

Aimless consolidation is no cure, but no agency has made a strong case for just pouring new money into the current systems.