Word: victimless
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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More important, mandatory minimums for nonviolent (and arguably victimless) drug crimes insult justice. Most mandatory sentences were designed as weapons in the drug war, with an awful consequence: we now live in a country where it's common to get a longer sentence for selling a neighbor a joint than for, say, sexually abusing her. (According to a 1997 federal report, those convicted of drug trafficking have served an average of almost seven years, nearly a year longer than those convicted of sexual abuse.) Several new books, including Michael Massing's The Fix, point out that the tough-on-drugs...
...life. Rather than admit to traveling aimlessly around Europe, I put down that I was studying French, in which I was fluent. How truthful was that? My daughter rolls her eyes when I order bouf bourguignon. These incidents, embarrassing though they be, fall within the acceptable range of victimless embellishment, those exaggerations that burnish a humdrum existence, amuse our listeners or impress a potential employer. A resume is a sales document, and some puffery is tolerated. Family weddings would be duller if Uncle Joe were limited to the small fish he caught...
...battle had taken a bad turn that day as well. Just when the whole affair was looking like a victimless crime, out stepped Gayla Zigo, deceived ex-wife, who alone among the contestants had played the game by the rules. Her letter to Secretary Widnall about her husband's affair with Flinn had leaked that morning; it gave the story a new twist. Gayla wrote that when she discovered Flinn's love letters to Marc, she complained to her supervising sergeant. When the affair continued, she felt outmaneuvered and overwhelmed. "How could I compete with her?" the wife wrote...
There is always the winking Old World idea that adultery is an essentially victimless indulgence. At Francois Mitterrand's graveside not long ago, the mistress mourned alongside the widow. Further, what was once considered the seed-scattering privileges of the seigneur may have yielded to the modern thought that reckless masculinity is characteristic of the risk-taking personality best suited to strong leadership...
...allows itself to move in a direction that resembles that of Iran? How many Americans will find themselves jailed because of censorship laws? Why do Americans allow themselves to be bullied by extremist religious leaders and hysterical conservatives? Why is so much prison space occupied by perpetrators of victimless, "moral" crimes? BOB ROWELL Collingswood, New Jersey