—Governing's Alan Greenblatt on what's wrong with California's penal system, and on New York's unique success at lowering both crime rates and incraceration rates.

—Joseph Epstein in praise of Rule by Daley:

When I was a boy, my father, the late political philosopher, Maurice Aristotle Machiavelli Montesquieu de Tocqueville Epstein, took me aside to explain that in the Chicago aldermanic races of the day, candidates were spending as much as a quarter of a million dollars to acquire jobs that would pay them an annual salary of $15,000. "Think about this, son, and let me know what you conclude," he said, walking off with a sly smile. He was of the peripatetic school of philosophy, my father.

—It wouldn't be Philadelphia without one candidate throwing racial slurs at an opponent, and offering proposals for housing the homeless in abandoned buildings and fighting crime by deputizing 10,000 Philadelphians. Sure Milton Street, brother of term-limited out mayor John Street, lives in New Jersey, and is scheduled for trial on federal corruption and tax-evasion charges the day before the May primary, but who better to embody the city's problems, and, hopefully, inspire Philadelphians to go on a very different direction?