by Patrick Appel
It's a joy to fill in once again. We have an all-star cast joining Chris and me this week, and it's an honor to blog alongside them. As Andrew mentioned, I will be monitoring the Dish inbox, andrew@theatlantic.com. To kick off the week, I thought we might try an experiment and have readers submit topics for debate. Ideally, these debate prompts will allow readers with special knowledge of a given topic or industry a chance to sound off and/or pose a question to the Dish's readership. I'll keep the threads going back and forth so long as they remain compelling. I'm especially interested in The Dish's blind-spots, ie topics The Dish or the MSM don't cover often or at all. The sum knowledge of Dish readers is enormous and I hope we can use some of that insider knowledge to ferret out under the radar stories and debates. Title your e-mails "Ask The Audience." One to get us started:
How do we reduce the booming prison population? I'm in favor of decriminalizing marijuana and scrapping mandatory minimums but neither of those is very realistic at the moment. What is the ideal balance between stopping crime and restoring sanity in sentencing? How do you treat the rights of a population that is political anathema?
Let's see what this blog can do.