Abstract

In Fact…

This feature covers two men who worked to improve life in America. The winner of the third annual Puffin/Nation Prize for Creative Citizenship is David Protess, professor at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism. Protess founded the Innocence Project, which enlists journalism students, journalists, lawyers and private investigators to investigate questionable convictions for capital and other crimes. Former Illinois Governor George Ryan recognized the work of the project as being instrumental in his decision to suspend executions and grant clemency to every prisoner on death row. John Nichols writes: Paul Simon, who died unexpectedly on December 9 at 75, was elected to the Senate as an unapologetic liberal in the same year that Ronald Reagan won his landslide "morning in America" re-election. Against the corruptions of empire and politics, Simon said it was time for an ethics revolution: cracking down on Iran/contra conspirators, forcing special-interest money out of campaigns, reasserting the regulatory role of federal agencies gutted during the Reagan years.