Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

I had another excellent month abike. Today's 34.2-mile ride gives me 479.8 miles for February (in 14 rides). The weather has been superb, and I have taken full advantage of it. Today, for instance, it was 64º when I left the house and 75º when I returned. Usually, we get snow and ice in Dallas/Fort Worth during January or February, but this year it has hardly even been cold. If this is Global Warming, then I want more of it!

Here.

Here.

Marco Rubio's puppetmasters are having him call Donald Trump "con artist." Rubio used the term "con" or "con artist" at least six times during a short interview with Chris Wallace today. Donald Trump needs to start calling Rubio "Puppet Rubio" while naming some of Rubio's wealthy donors. This man is bought and paid for, people. He will do the bidding of billionaires who want open borders and free trade. These billionaires don't give a damn about ordinary, hard-working Americans, about American culture, about our safety, or anything else. It's all about earning even more money. Donald Trump will seal the border, negotiate better trade deals, and keep us safe. Get on over to Donald before it's too late!

If The Revenant doesn't win Best Picture this evening, something is wrong. Here is the trailer.

Betcha didn't know Donald Trump is running for pope.

You have no idea how this sickens me. What's the old saying? "The enemy of my enemy is my friend"? My enemy is the Republican establishment; the establishment's enemy is Donald Trump; ergo, Donald Trump is my friend. He will be a great president, better even than Ronald Reagan.

To the editor:

While worrying about a Donald Trump nomination, Jonah Goldberg he [sic] misses the point. ("A Rubio-Cruz ticket may be the only way to stop Donald Trump," Opinion, Feb. 23)

The GOP has done this to itself. By encouraging the hateful rhetoric and anti-government vitriol of Fox News and others, the party has set the stage for Trump.

Less educated, working-class whites are afraid of the demographic and cultural changes coming because it means the loss of their status as members of the preferred class. The GOP has taken advantage of this by whipping up fear and anger among them. Along comes their savior Trump, who tells them what they want to hear.

The monster is loose, Dr. Frankenstein. Your creature is going to kill you.

Paul Moser III, Studio City

Note from KBJ: It's the likes of Jonah Goldberg that produced Donald Trump. Republican voters are sick to death of having their candidates chosen by elites, who, by the way, have an uncanny ability to choose losers. This time around, we're picking the nominee. Deal with it.

Listen up, young'uns. I'm going to give you the truth in prospect. Be sure to write all this down so you will appreciate my genius by the end of the 2016 Major League Baseball season:

1. It'll be the New York Mets against the Seattle Mariners in the World Series. Are you up from the floor yet? If so, continue:
2. King Felix (Hernandez) proves his greatness by winning 27 games. He is the American League Cy Young Award winner for the second time, this time deservedly. (Are you happy, Ray?)
3. Robinson Cano has the year everyone knew he could have. He leads the American League in batting (.372) and runs batted in (147) and wins the MVP award.
4. The New York Yankees finish fifth in the five-team American League East Division. Manager Joe Girardi is fired in the final week of the season and replaced by Derek Jeter, team management knowing that he will be given slack by Yankee fans for at least two years of rebuilding.

Feel free to make your own pathetic predictions in the comment space.

Retributivism holds that punishment is justified for the sake of restoring an order of fairness, particularly in respect of the distribution of the benefits (including liberty) and burdens (including sacrifices of liberty) of common life, when this order of fairness has been disturbed by criminal wrongdoing. For example, a criminal may justly be deprived of liberty commensurate with the liberty he wrongfully seized in breaking the law. The retributivist wishes the law to maintain a state of affairs in which a law-abiding individual, looking back over a period of time, will have no reason to consider himself to have been a sucker for obeying the law when others were disregarding it with abandon. Retributivism thus considers (just) punishment to instantiate—immediately and in itself—the good of justice because it restores the order of fairness.

(Robert P. George, "Moralistic Liberalism and Legal Moralism," review of Harmless Wrongdoing: The Moral Limits of the Criminal Law, by Joel Feinberg, Michigan Law Review 88 [May 1990]: 1415-29, at 1426)