Redistricting Follies in Maryland

Maryland's all Democratic state government has hit on a scheme to strike a blow for the national Democratic party, by flipping one of the state's 8 Congressional districts from Republican to Democrat. The district in question is the Sixth, in the mountainous western part of the state, long held by the now 85-year-old Roscoe Bartlett. The plan divides the state's Republican-leaning mountain people into two districts, each of which also includes enough Montgomery County suburbanites to insure a Democratic majority. Meanwhile the state's other two big masses of Republicans, on the eastern shore and in Cecil and Carroll Counties north of Baltimore, are lumped into one district that will probably be 75 or 80 percent Republican.

I hate this kind of crap. I think the country either needs to move to a system of non-partisan commissions or set some kind of limit on the amount of boundary snaking permitting in district drawing. (Say by setting a limit, at some defined scale, on the ratio between the perimeter and area of a district, with any segment that follows a state or county boundary counted as a straight line.) I have read enough about the issue to know that this isn't really the root cause of America's political problems (consider that the senate is nearly as messed up as the house), but it just galls me to see politicians conniving behind the scenes in this nakedly cynical way.

Zaha Hadid, Evelyn Grace Academy

The Royal Institute of British Architects just gave their annual Stirling Prize to another building by Zaha Hadid, the Evelyn Grace Academy. This is a private academy founded by a hedge fund millionaire to help poor kids in South London. Let me just nod to this piece of philanthropy -- great idea, guys -- before I start complaining about the building.

I find this building cold. In the right context -- say, a museum of modern art -- cold can come across as cool. But in a school it looks to me like institutional indifference. A school should be a warm and welcoming place. All this concrete and glass looks to me like a brush off. Plus, kids tend to be very conservative in their artistic tastes. I wrote a passage in my commonplace book once by a woman who returned to visit her old high school and said, "the school, so grim and gray in my memory, was a Corbusierian gem." I think almost all kids would agree with this author's teenage self, rather than the adult version, about stark modernism.

These interior views look dismal to me. Where are the maps, the student art, the time lines? Maybe that is all to come later; but what will these super clean lines look like, covered with the usual detritus of education? I think this is a grand mismatch between a geometric vision and the real needs of children. "Grow up fast," this building says to me, "because it's a cold, hard world out there."

Quite a Tree

Ficus Tree, from Charles Wilson, Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition during the years 1838, 1839, 1840, 1841, 1842. Volume 2, 1845

The Top Five Volcanic Lairs for Evil Mad Scientists

According to the Geological Society of London. It's hard to beat Atlasov Island (above), off Siberia.

Willpower and Glucose

I wrote a few weeks ago about the accumulating evidence mental fatigue is a real problem; we can be worn out by having to make lots of decisions, or the effort of self-control. Now a new study looks at the physiological underpinnings of this effect:

Past research indicates that self-control relies on some sort of limited energy source. This review suggests that blood glucose is one important part of the energy source of self-control. Acts of self-control deplete relatively large amounts of glucose. Self-control failures are more likely when glucose is low or cannot be mobilized effectively to the brain (i.e., when insulin is low or insensitive). Restoring glucose to a sufficient level typically improves self-control. Numerous self-control behaviors fit this pattern, including controlling attention, regulating emotions, quitting smoking, coping with stress, resisting impulsivity, and refraining from criminal and aggressive behavior. Alcohol reduces glucose throughout the brain and body and likewise impairs many forms of self-control. Furthermore, self-control failure is most likely during times of the day when glucose is used least effectively. Self-control thus appears highly susceptible to glucose. Self-control benefits numerous social and interpersonal processes. Glucose might therefore be related to a broad range of social behavior.

Source: "The Physiology of Willpower: Linking Blood Glucose to Self-Control" from Personality and Social Psychology Review.

Updating a Left-Wing Classic

Erik Loomis points out that a century ago the labor left made much use of the octopus as a metaphor for capitalism and its power. At Occupy Wall Street, they now have a new version updated with the results of deep sea biology:

From the Front Lines of Happiness Research

Some scientists are kind of weird. How about these guys, who enjoy hobbling sheep?

Consider “Release from Restraint Generates a Positive Judgment Bias in Sheep” (Applied Animal Behavior Science, 2010). In this study, 20 young merino ewes were trained to distinguish between two buckets, one of which led to food and another to the appearance of a dog — a highly unpleasant sight for a young ewe. Half of the animals were then bound at their legs and isolated from the other animals for six hours, three days in a row. On release from their imprisonment, this experimental group was shown a new, “ambiguous” bucket, which did not clearly lead to either food or dog. The previously imprisoned animals, despite their elevated stress levels, were much more likely to approach the ambiguous bucket than were a control group of ewes. Against all odds, they were, in a word, optimistic that the bucket might lead to something good.

I love this result. It supports the ancient wisdom that a life free from suffering would lead nowhere good -- to increased fearfulness, perhaps -- and that bad experiences are necessary, if nothing else to teach us that failure is not the end of the world. Once you've been hobbled in solitary confinement for a while, the prospect of seeing a dog seems a lot less daunting.

The Ballad of the Highwaywoman

The Female Frollick:
OR,
An Account of a young Gentlewoman,
who went upon the Road to rob in Man’s Cloaths,
well mounted on a Mare, &c.

You Gallants of every Station,
give ear to a Frollicksome Song;
The like was ne’er seen in the Nation,
’twas done by a Female so young.

She bought her a Mare and a Bridle,
a Saddle, and Pistols also,
She resolved she would not be idle,
for upon the Pad she did go.1

She Cloathed her self in great Splendor,
for Breeches and Sword she had on,
Her Body appear’d very slender;
she show’d like a pretty Young-man.

And then like a Padder so witty,2
she mounted with speed on her Mare;
She left all her Friends in the City,
and steered her Course towards Ware.3

The first that she met was a Grocer
was walking with Cane in his Hand,
She soon to the Spark came up closer,
and boldly she bid him to stand.

She took from him but a Guinea,
and then met a Taylor with Shears,
And because the poor Rogue had no Money,
she genteely clipt off his Ears.

The next that she met was a Tanner,
for loss of his money he cry’d,
And because he bauld in this manner,
she handsomely tanned his Hide.

She rode about seven-miles farther,
and then a Stage-Coach she did Rob;
The Passengers all cry’d out Murther:
but this was a Fifty-pound Jobb.

And then she robb’d a Welsh Miller,
she fac’d him and gave him the Word:
Hur splutter’d, and swore hur would kill hur,
if that hur had got but hur Sword.

And then she came up with a Quaker,
she told him, she must have his Coin:
Quoth he, Thou silly Wise-acre
thou shalt have no Money of mine.

She show’d him a Pistol to prove him;
he told her by Yea and by Nay,
That since the good Spirit did move him,
she might take his Money away.

An Excise-man, she then next accosted,
and bid him Deliver with speed;
He often of Valour had boasted,
but he was a Coward indeed.

She Rifled him then of his Money;
oh! this was a very rich Prize,
She took from him Four-score Guinneys,
which he had receiv’d for Excise.

The next that she met was a Padder,
well mounted upon a bay Nag;
Oh this made her so much the gladder,
she told him she wanted a bag.

He thought she would certainly fight him,
prepared himself out of hand:
And she was resolved to fright him,
she damn’d him, and bid him to stand.

He presently drew out his Rapier
and bid her to stand on her guard;
But quickly away she did Caper,
the High-way-man, follow’d her hard.

He follow’d and soon overtook her,
and searched her Breeches with speed;
And as he did well overlook her,
he found her a Woman indeed!

The High-way man stood all amazed;
but she had no cause to complain.
Tho’ with her he did what he pleased,
he gave her the Money again.

Anonymous ballad, ca. 1690

Notes

• upon the Pad she did go: ‘to go upon the pad’ means to become a highway robber. [return]
• Padder: highwayman. [return]
• Ware: in Hertfordshire; the main route from London to York and then through Berwick to Scotland ran through this town, and so did the route into Norfolk. Highway robbers often operated on the roads round Ware. [return]

Andrew Mar

More here and here.

The Eisenhower Memorial

Shouldn't a monument to Dwight D. Eisenhower be absolutely the most boring, stolid, and traditional thing imaginable? You know, marble statue, some carved quotations, reflecting pool? Nothing against Eisenhower, but he was hardly a very radical or original thinker, and nobody alive in the 1950s had less to do with cutting edge art.

So I thought it was a little weird when the commission selected Frank Gehry to design the memorial: the master of weird curves to commemorate our most rectangular president?

But I kind of like this design. It is different from other memorials in an interesting way. The big screens will be translucent, made of woven metal, and they will carry pictures of the landscape of rural Kansas, Eisenhower's home. They will surround a park with trees and benches and the like.

As a bonus, it hides one of DC's ugliest office buildings, and that part of Washington (behind the Air and Space Museum) is desolate and desperately in need of something to liven it up.

The details of what will go in the plaza are still being worked out, and the commission says there may be some quotations. I wonder if they will put in his most famous words:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Fifty Percent Success after Ten Years

From the AP:

On the 10th anniversary of the American war in Afghanistan, the former top U.S. military commander in the war said the United States and its allies are only "50 percent of the way" toward achieving their goals.

American military commanders have repeatedly sought over the past decade to "put time on the Washington clock," as retired General David Petraeus once put it, by describing the progress their forces made in the counterinsurgency campaign.

However, Petraeus' predecessor as the top commander in Afghanistan, retired General Stanley McChrystal, sharply broke with that message Thursday in bracing remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations.

"We didn't know enough and we still don't know enough," McChrystal said. . . . "Most of us, me included, had a very superficial understanding of the situation and history, and we had a frighteningly simplistic view of recent history, the last 50 years."

Hey, another ten years and another trillion dollars and we might reach our goals! Wait-- what, exactly, are our goals?

Sherds

Sherds of an earthenware dish from the late 1700s found in a pit feature at one of my sites in Delaware.

The Path Through the Maze

Not far from the burial ground of unmarked graves that the old Harmonists share with a millennium of Indians, the mystical Rappites in 1820 planted a circular privet-hedge labyrinth, "symbolic" (a sign said) "of the Harmonist concept of the devious and difficult approach to a state of true harmony." After the Rappites, the hedges disappeared, but a generation ago, citizens replanted the maze, its contours strikingly like the Hopi map of emergence. I walked through it to stretch from the long highway. Even though I avoided the shortcut holes broken in the hedges, I still went down the rungs and curves without a single wrong turn. The "right" way was worn so deeply in the earth as to be unmistakable. But without the errors, wrong turns, blind alleys, without the doubling back and misdirection and fumbling and chance discoveries, there was not one bit of joy in walking the labyrinth. And worse: knowing the way made traveling it perfectly meaningless.

--William Least Heat Moon

Things not to stare at

. . . perhaps society has always been one of those things that, like death and the sun, cannot be stared at for too long, for it is never reassuring.

-- Theodore Dalrymple

Pablo Herrero, Among the Trees

From Street Art Utopia.

Love Said to Me

I worship the moon.
Tell me of the soft glow of a
candle light
and the sweetness of my moon.

Don't talk about sorrow,
tell me of that treasure,
hidden if it is to you,
then just remain silent.

Last night
I lost my grip on reality
and welcomed insanity.
Love
saw me and said,
I showed up.
Wipe you tears
and be silent.

I said, O Love
I am frightened,
but it's not you.
Love said to me,
there is nothing that is not me.
be silent.

I will whisper secrets in your ear
just nod yes
and be silent.

A soul moon
appeared in the path of my heart.
How precious is this journey.
I said, O Love
what kind of moon is this?
Love said to me,
this is not for you to question.
be silent.

I said, O Love
what kind of face is this,
angelic, or human?
Love said to me,
this is beyond anything that you know.
Be silent.

I said, please reveal this to me
I am dying in anticipation.
Love said to me,
that is where I want you:
Always on the edge,
be silent.

You dwell in this hall of
images and illusions,
leave this house now
and be silent.

I said, O Love,
tell me this:
Does the Lord know you are
treating me this way?
Love said to me,
yes He does,
just be totally…
totally… silent

--Rumi

Iznik Flask, ca. 1575

Just sold at auction for £184,850.

Self Invention and Steve Jobs

We are all, largely, the products of our cultures. We like to think we are self-invented, but the world we know sets severe limits on what we can imagine for ourselves. We assemble our lives from the pieces available around us. Steve Jobs is famous, for, among other things, constantly talking about self invention:

Don't be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

But he, like everyone else, invented himself within the confines of the world he was born in. The very words Jobs uses to extol individuality here are clichés. That's not really his fault; this passage comes from a commencement speech, a form that requires a standardized message. Where does this particular cliché come from?

From the counterculture movement of the 1960s:

After dropping out of Reed College, a stronghold of liberal thought in Portland, Ore., in 1972, Mr. Jobs led a countercultural lifestyle himself. He told a reporter that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life. He said there were things about him that people who had not tried psychedelics — even people who knew him well, including his wife — could never understand.

Decades later he flew around the world in his own corporate jet, but he maintained emotional ties to the period in which he grew up. He often felt like an outsider in the corporate world, he said. When discussing the Silicon Valley’s lasting contributions to humanity, he mentioned in the same breath the invention of the microchip and “The Whole Earth Catalog,” a 1960s counterculture publication.

And here is the thing I find most interesting about Steve Jobs and Apple. There are in America lots of people (Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich, for example) who support capitalism but despise the counterculture, and I spent this afternoon at a counterculture rally denouncing capitalism. Jobs and his fellow personal computer pioneers merged these nearly opposite things. They went into business with the aim of empowering people to define their own lives, and they created tools that allowed millions of us to publish ourselves, write our own games, and construct our own online realities. They got rich furthering the dreams of the anti-establishment movement.

What made Jobs unique among computer magnates was his legendary sense of style. Here he merged other nearly opposite things, technical savvy and artistic enthusiasm. He was the original hipster, the pioneer of a generation of digital artists and cool geeks.

So when I said that Steve Jobs, like everyone else, was limited in inventing himself by the world he lived in, I did not mean that our society defined his choices. On the contrary he picked from the ideas and opportunities of our world to create for himself a unique role, as our foremost computer magnate/ digital filmmaker/ design maestro/ lifestyle guru.

The lesson I draw from his life is not the "seek your passion" pablum that Jobs himself sometimes peddled. It is to reject the arbitrary boundaries and divisions of your society. Why not be a counterculture businessman, or a stylish geek? Here is my idea of asserting individuality: refuse to be defined and limited by the categories you find yourself in.

Jobs had cancer for years before he died, and he spoke frequently about death. He said, in the more original part of that same commencement speech,

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life.

Steve Jobs certainly did not, and while I mourn his death I also celebrate his achievement.

Why Internet Learning Isn't Taking Off

It takes too much self-discipline. Matt Yglesias:

Investing some time during the years 15-22 to equip yourself with a quantitative analysis toolkit is something that’s definitely rewarded in the marketplace. And you can find all the relevant textbooks, lectures, information, etc. online already. And yet the number of people who’ve self-taught calculus is tiny. I personally left off my math learning after taking the AP Calculus test in high school and sometimes toy with the idea that I ought to learn more math. After all, I pretty frequently find myself writing about studies that use quantitative techniques I don’t really understand. I even downloaded an MIT lecture course off iTunes for free to refresh my existing base of math knowledge and lay the groundwork to pursue it further. But did I actually watch the lectures, study, and learn the stuff? Of course not!

The thing most in short supply in life is not opportunity to learn but effort and motivation. A college campus is, for many people, a great motivational machine.

What I Saw at Occupy DC

I wandered over to the Occupy DC protest today. The first word that comes to mind to describe the protest is "small." There can't have been more than 300 people there when I got there, and there were fewer when I left. You can see pretty much the whole shebang in the picture above (click to enlarge). Almost everyone I saw looked like a habitué of protests, shabbily dressed and proudly far outside the mainstream. Whatever happened to protesting in suits and ties, like the Freedom Riders? There was nothing like the mass of ordinary people it would take to make any impact.

This guy captured the two main messages of the day, anti-war and anti-capitalist.

This foreclosure protest was, I thought, the most effective display. Clear message, made visceral by people sleeping in cardboard boxes.

Some of these leftists aren't cutting the President any slack.

There were a few protesters with their own agendas, including the LaRouchites and this guy with his gold standard sign. I saw two young Republicans with signs explaining how much rich people pay in taxes. I hope they weren't thinking of persuading anyone in this crowd, because they would only have been laughed at. But then what does any of this have to do with persuading anyone?

My favorite part was these mock drones, which I liked so much that I had my picture taken with them.

And these guys had some good signs, too.

In a general way I support the Occupy Wall Street protest, of which this was a spin-off. I think there ought to be some push from the left to balance out the Tea Party push from the right, and I think the Wall Street guys who wrecked the world economy ought have been punished in some way. I share some causes with these protesters, like withdrawing our troops from the Middle East, national health insurance, more regulation of financial markets, and higher taxes on the rich.

But the whole business still leaves me queasy. I hate slogans, signs, chanting, and protest songs -- my approach to life is just too cerebral for any of that. Plus I have this idea that politics should emphasize the possible. If your idea of how to proceed is to impeach the most liberal President in 50 years, what chance do you have in America? America is a very strongly capitalist country -- consider the outpouring of love for arch-capitalist Steve Jobs, who probably has more fans than any of our political leaders. If you want to have an impact, leave your socialism at home. I have a feeling that millions of Americans would look at a gathering like this and say, "These people are gross, I'm voting for Mitt Romney."

I kind of liked this sign, especially after it occurred to me that it could equally well have been displayed at a Tea Party rally. Elected officials should be afraid for their jobs, constantly. They are not because most people pay no attention to what politicians are doing, and just vote either the party line or the economy. People who don't like what the government is doing need to get more involved. Twenty-four million people who voted in the 2008 Presidential election didn't bother to vote in 2010, and they were mainly young, poor, and liberal. Now they are mad that the President isn't doing more for them. Well? If protests and zombie street theater are the way to get people involved again, great. What liberals should really be doing, though, is mounting primary challenges to Democrats who get too cozy with corporate interests, copying the Tea Party's tactics. That is the way to make your voice heard.

Black Swans and History

Nassim Taleb's The Black Swan doesn't say much about academic history, since it focuses mainly on economics and finance. But what it does say intrigued me.

Taleb thinks that much historical change happens through the kind of events he calls "black swans," that is, events that are in practice completely unpredictable but have very important effects. After such events, he says, we have a habit of going back and explaining why they were inevitable, but these "explanations" are really just stories we tell ourselves to make our world seem more predictable and controllable. As examples of historical black swans Taleb offers the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War in 1975, which made him into a refugee, and the rapid rise and spread of Islam and the Arab empire. The thing that still bothers Taleb about the Lebanese war is that all the adults he knew -- he was from an elite Christian family, and one of his grandfathers was Interior Minister when the war broke out -- said it was impossible. Lebanon, they said, was a merchant society with an ancient tradition of tolerance where people would rather get rich than fight. They were wrong, and it seemed to him that the higher up people were in politics, the less they knew about what was going on. His grandfather kept saying the war would end in a few days (it went on for 15 years), whereas his grandfather's driver was much more pessimistic. Taleb has not trusted anyone in authority since. Nor does he ever seem to have felt that his new homes in London and New York were really any safer from spasmodic violence than Beirut was in 1975.

I don't know much about Lebanon, but I think the Arab conquests of the 7th and 8th centuries are a great example of a black swan. They were not predictable, and I do not think they are explainable in any detailed way. And they were important.

Likewise the establishment of the Mongol empire in the 13th century. Such events depend on the particular genius of leaders, the outcomes of chancy battles, or the loss of nails from certain horseshoes, and people who try to explain them in terms of shifting weather patterns or some other rational "cause" are pseudo-scientific charlatans.

But even if those events were random and ultimately inexplicable, that does not mean historians can't explain anything. One has to step back from the events themselves to the conditions that made them possible. Throughout ancient and medieval times, settled empires were at constant risk of being conquered by nomadic peoples. China, Persia, India and Rome had huge populations and great wealth, but they remained vulnerable to being overrun by bands of horsemen with only a tiny fraction of their resources. To defend themselves they collected brutal taxes, raised huge armies, and placed them in vast networks of fortifications, where thousands of heavily armed soldiers gazed across the emptiness where the nomads pastured their horses and camels. What was it about the organization of these two kinds of societies that made the settled people so vulnerable? Then, in the 1700s and 1800s, the situation so reversed itself that all the world's nomads were brought under the rule of people from cities. What changed in the 17th and 18th centuries to make any further conquests by nomads all but inconceivable?

These are the questions with which history, as an explanatory science, is concerned. The outcomes of battles and the rise and fall of particular empires are great material for stories, but only rarely do they illustrate the kind of long-term economic and social forces that a modern social scientist can hope to understand and predict. The best historical storytellers work at both levels, showing how the actions of men and women and the weird chances of fate shape events, and how people and events are constrained by the physical, economic, and social facts of their worlds.

Ciudad Perdida, Colombia

This remote site, founded around 800 AD, was rediscovered by archaeologists in the 1970s after gold idols and other objects began to show up for sale in Colombian markets. It was the largest center of a culture called the Tairona that emerged around 200 AD and endured until the Spanish conquest. Local Indians call the site Teyuna. In its prime the town had perhaps 2,000 inhabitants. Ciudad Perdida is now the focus of a major preservation effort of the Global Heritage Fund.

The site is in mountainous terrain and is centered around 169 stone terraces.

The site can be reached only along this ancient road, with more than a thousand stone steps.

Like so much else about Colombia, it was caught up in and damaged by the civil war between the government and the alliance of leftist rebels and drug traffickers. In 2003, eight tourists visiting the site were kidnapped by rebels and held hostage for three months.

This stone is thought by some archaeologists to be an ancient map of the city and its surrounding area.

The name Tairona may mean "Sons of the Jaguar," and it seems to refer to the initiates of a society that included most or all adult men. Tairona society was strongly divided into separate men's and women's spheres, and the religious activity of males was focused on the "men's house" where women were not permitted. Jesuit missionaries thought the rites of the men's house included homosexuality, but local Indians dispute this.

The Tairona rebelled against Spanish rule in 1599. They were defeated, their leaders executed, their towns burned. After this they faded, perhaps ravaged by European diseases, and the jungle grew over much of their homeland. Their rediscovery owes much to the value of their artistic productions, like the golden pendant above, now in the Louvre.

Microphotos 2011

The top 20 photos from the 2011 Nikon Small World Microphoto Contest are at Discovery, here. Above, Filaria worms inside lymphatic vessels of the mouse ear, by Dr. Witold Kilarski. Below,agatized dinosaur bone cells, by Douglas Moore.

New Fire Pit

This is what Lisa and I gave each other for our anniversary. We used it for the first time last night, and it was really fun. Our house does not have a fireplace and I miss having fire in my life.

Aaaahhhh

Love this forecast. I think this is the first time since July we have had a five day forecast with no chance of rain.

Politics in the 2010s

How to get today's young people interested in political protest: let them dress as zombies.

The Anti-Romantic Child

An expert on Romantic poetry and therefore primed to view childhood as an artistic Eden, Amy Leal has a nonverbal autistic son.

My children are all, so far, normal in all the key ways. So my experience of parenting is not like Amy Leal's. Or is her experience just an extreme version of what every parent experiences, as our children show themselves to be completely different from whatever we imagined about them before they were born?

Another Convicted Man Freed by DNA Evidence

The saga of the Texas criminal justice system continues:

A Texas grocery store employee who spent nearly 25 years in prison in his wife's beating death walked free Tuesday after DNA tests showed another man was responsible. His attorneys say prosecutors and investigators kept evidence from the defense that would have helped acquit him at trial.

Michael Morton, 57, was convicted on circumstantial evidence and sentenced to life in prison for the August 1986 killing of his wife, Christine. Morton said he left her and the couple's 3-year-old son to head to work early the morning of the slaying, and maintained through the years that an intruder must have killed her.

Prosecutors had claimed Morton killed his wife in a fit of rage after she wouldn't have sex with him following a dinner celebrating his 32nd birthday. . . .

Morton was freed thanks to the efforts of the Innocence Project:

This summer, using techniques that weren't available during Morton's 1987 trial, authorities detected Christine Morton's DNA on a bloody bandana discovered near the Morton home soon after her death, along with that of a convicted felon whose name has not been released. . . .

The case in Williamson County, north of Austin, will likely raise more questions about the district attorney, John Bradley, a Gov. Rick Perry appointee whose tenure on the Texas Forensic Science Commission was controversial. Bradley criticized the commission's investigation of the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 after being convicted of arson in the deaths of his three children. Some experts have since concluded the forensic science in the case was faulty.

Bradley did not try the original case against Morton. But the Innocence Project has accused him of suppressing evidence that would have helped clear Morton sooner. That evidence — including a transcript of a police interview indicating that Morton's son said the attacker was not his father and that his wife's credit card and personal checks were used after she was killed — was ultimately obtained through a Texas Public Information Act request.

When the defense has to file an information act request to get crucial information about a case, something is very wrong.