Every crime is unique. Despite that uniqueness, every crime contains its teachable moments. Below is a book review I wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle that appeared in print earlier this month. The lessons are multiple. PRESUMED DEAD: A True Life Murder Mystery By Henry K. Lee Berkley, 445 pages, $7.99 Reviewed by Steve [...]

A conservative senator blasted a Justice Department crime-prevention program this week, portraying it as a waste of taxpayer dollars undermining the department’s core mission. Senator Tom Coburn released a 42-page report documenting in lurid detail recreation activities funded via DOJ grants. I use “lurid” here liberally, since we’re talking about [...]

It's playoff season for youth baseball, which means managers, parents and players who act only a little crazy when they get a bug up their butt about something during the regular season now have the stakes raised high enough that the same bug will cause them to go ballistic. Here are [...]

I love the wild animal enters home and wreaks manageable havoc then leaves type of story as much as the next guy, but this one has a great twist. In New Hampshire a bear entered a house through an open door then proceeded to eat two pears, a bunch of grapes, [...]

The Interior Ministry's Department of Economic Security reports today that as President Dmitry Medvedev's war on corruption heats up, so has corruption. In the first six months of 2010, the size of the average bribe has nearly doubled, from 23,000 RUB ($760) to 44,000. Since Medvedev was elected in 2008, [...]

It has been a year and a half since Chris Brown was arrested for assaulting Rihanna, his girlfriend at the time, the night before the 2009 Grammy Awards. Both of them have released albums since then, acknowledging the incident in their own ways – Brown with songs like the over-the-top [...]

Arizona, where I live, has become ground zero in one of the most divisive issues of our day: immigration. There are two reasons for this unfortunate distinction. On the surface, the element that gave the issue traction here was passage of SB1070. The new law, which is due to go into [...]

Rounding a bend in the road around a local airport the other day, I glanced to the left and saw a cop sitting in the grass off the pavement. The white SUV was easy to see. The guy wasn't trying to hide, but he didn't need to because people love [...]

This fall, California will consider repealing marijuana prohibition by way of a voter-sponsored ballot initiative called Proposition 19. If passed, it would stand as a direct affront to federal law, representing the most significant change in a state's drug policy since cannabis was first outlawed in 1937. Though marijuana legalization is [...]