What you said about what we said last week

Will Sommer’s piece on Fred Pagan, the former Senate staffer who was sentenced this week to 30 months in prison on a drug conviction, had readers talking about disparities. There were readers who saw inequality in Pagan’s treatment by law enforcement and the courts. “3 years of probation?” loki5586 commented. “The man was buying and selling distribution quantities of serious narcotics…for years. That ‘punishment’ (if you can call it that) is a mere slap on the wrist. Give me a freaking break.” In reference to a Homeland Security special agent telling Pagan, “We know who you are and who you work for. That’s the reason we didn’t break down your door,” the Washington Post’s Radley Balko tweeted, “Members of the political class are spared the blunt end of police violence.” Another reader took issue with a disparity in the coverage itself. “‘volatile mix of hard drugs and gay sex’. Now think, would you have said ‘hard drugs and straight sex’? Thanks for making anything but heterosexual sex sound foreign and inappropriate,” Tom McFarlin commented.

Take Me Out

Did you know that restaurants cannot opt out of participating in some third-party delivery apps? That was just one of the takeaways from Travis Mitchell’s story on the issues some local eateries have with apps like Postmates and DoorDash. Page 7 advocated for common sense: “I have had mixed results with Postmates and this article has made me somewhat hesitant to use them. However people using the apps should use common sense when ordering food; I’d never order steak frites through an app.” While restaurateurs interviewed for the piece were concerned about the condition their dishes arrive in, lapopessa offered a consumer point of view: “I’m in the minority – but as a semi-handicapped person who can’t walk far or well, having things delivered has been a Godsend. From Amazon to Postmates or Doordash or Instacart or Task Rabbit, I am grateful for them all. There have been a few times when the food was colder than it should have been, but nuking it hasn’t harmed it (in my humble, un-gormet opinion). The delivery folks have been 99% great. I’m sure like anything in life there are problems and issues. But I am glad to see these options available to me.”

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