Looking Into the Future

If you know me even a little, you know that I hold the website 538 in the absolute highest regard. Maybe it's because I've never been good at math so I'm easily convinced by statistics and models that I don't fully understand, maybe it's because the site predicts elections correctly the vast majority of the time, or maybe it's because I'm widely known as the Nate Silver of Oscar Predictions, so I feel a certain kinship.*

So when a journalist from 538 tweeted that Clinton would probably secure the nomination before the polls even closed in California, I had a vision of the future where people were complaining that she "stole the election" because they called if for her before the people of California even decided. This blog post is here to explain why that's not the case.

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Death: Overridden

Today, legislators in Nebraska voted to repeal the death penalty, making them the first conservative state to do so in over 40 years. This marks the end of a long hiatus on the death penalty in Nebraska, with their most recent execution being in 1997.

There are still 30 states that allow the death penalty, even though many, like Nebraska, haven't executed a criminal in years. New Mexico, which outlawed the death penalty in 2009, hadn't executed anyone since 2001, and the only reason the execution went through is that the criminal said he did not want to appeal anymore, and chose to die. He had been on death row since 1986.

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