Happy Monday and welcome back!

• Was a man shot in Mount Vernon the victim of a hate crime? HT: Baltimore Crime.
• Who would buy meat from a van, anyway?
• Letting 300 people out of pre-trial lockup every month would save $10 million a year? Page Croyder is skeptical.
• Under 10 percent of drug offenders have access to drug courts.
• A legal secretary says she was fired two hours after telling the firm she had cancer.

Jim Downs, an assistant professor of history at Connecticut College, has an interesting essay posted today on the History News Network’s Web site about the cultural significance of the noose.

He mentions the noose-hanging incident last year at the University of Maryland’s Nyumburu Cultural Center in College Park — also the impetus for a hate crimes legislation introduced this year in the General Assembly — as well as other recent incidents that garnered media attention.

Downs suggests that the “recent rash of noose hangings seems to have less to do with the viscous horrors targeted against African-Americans, and more to do with how the history of the noose has enabled the leading media, such as the Washington Post and the New York Times, to define racism.”

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