For a lot of teenagers, Valentine's Day might as well be called torture day. That's especially true if you're unlucky enough to have your birthday fall on February 14, when you wind up at the bottom of everyone's Valentine Day agenda. Bay Area teens produced by Pacific News Service. PNS reporter Lyn Duff recently returned from a six-week trip to Haiti, where she helped set up that country's first children's radio station. Bay Area youth produced by Pacific News Service.
Prisoners know otherwise.
PNS commentator Jed Miller is a third-striker serving three concurrent life sentences for auto theft and bicycle theft at Pelican Bay Prison in Crescent City. California Gov. Pete Wilson is pushing a state-wide juvenile curfew as the most effective way to cut juvenile crime. The idea has instant appeal, but a look at crime data in cities where curfews have been tried suggests they do more for the politicians who propound them than for the public that pays to enforce them. But just as mobilizing state power to stamp out drugs isn't working, neither will a libertarian leap into a world regulated by personal choice and the open market. What we need is to navigate a precarious path between the two.