Why is it called "overheard"? Question mark?

It should be "overlistened". Most people pay far more attention to conversations they overlisten to than those they are involved in.

For the uninitiated: Overheard in New York

On the American jury system:

I took the Are you a Political Radical quiz on blogthings (a killer killing-time site) the other day and ended up in an argument over whether people on a jury should be able to vote "not guilty" if they think the law is wrong. I am absolutely in favor of this practice.

We live in a society that is highly stratified politically. A cursory glance at America's 43 presidents reveals a striking similarity. The fact that they're all white men says a lot about racism and sexism but it speaks even more to a socioeconomic divide between those in this country that make the decisions and those that are forced to live with them (which also says something about racism and sexism but I'm getting off topic).

If we the people are unable to get elected those that express our beliefs through the channels allotted to us by the forefathers (well at least to the white land owning males among us) than we must assume power through other means.

If I am in a jury box, yawning through a trial, and the man that awaits judgement in front of me is being tried for marijuana use and/or distribution, there is absolutely no way that I am convicting. Period. (Quick aside: Wouldn't it be funny if people started using that prop for other punctuation marks? Question mark? I really think it would! Exclamation point!)

Those that argue of the dangers of runaway jurors talk about the structure of government and the importance of law and order but sometimes the government is plain wrong. And if a person truly believes that the accused is not guilty of a "natural" law then they have a moral responsibility to vote not guilty. Just as one would have had the moral responsibility to do so when abolitionists were being put to trial for abetting slave escapes or any of the other myriad mistakes our government has made in a little over 200 years.

Links:

I've been following this bizarre story about a Princeton pro-marriage student who beat himself up in an attempt to vilify those that opposed him. This is the link to the Princeton Conservative blog site.

This is the link to the former site of the on-line editor at Esquire, Eric Gillin (among others). They stopped producing new content at the beginning of 2006 but there's a lot there to sink your teeth into.

Being a man who rarely consumes one Guinness but frequently consumes many, I was happy to see that I'm going to be extra healthy.

Have a nice day. Period.