I have always felt that when politicians clamor for work projects, instead of focusing on roads and bridges, they should be mentioning prisons. We never seem to have enough of them. As a result, felons are constantly being released before finishing their sentences.

And whereas liberals are always insisting that civilized nations shouldn’t have so many people incarcerated, the truth, as usual, is they’re wrong. So long as those behind bars are there because they’ve committed actual felonies, and aren’t there because of their political or religious beliefs, there is no ideal number or percentage of people who should be locked up. If you’re in jail, it’s proof that you’re uncivilized, not that society is.

For my part, I believe that any judge who shows leniency to murderers, rapists and pedophiles, should be removed from the bench. I also believe that any defense attorney who succeeds in springing a defendant only to see the thug go out and repeat his crime should be indicted as an accessory. Furthermore, I think parole boards should disappear. The very notion of taking time off a sentence for so-called good behavior is a perversion of justice. Time off for not robbing a bank, stealing a car or raping a child, while behind bars? Time off for making his cot or eating all his peas? Instead, the system should simply add years for misbehavior.

Age limits are another absurd part of our legal system. But we’re not alone. In India, a gang of six raped and murdered a 23-year-old woman. The first defendant was recently tried and found guilty. He received the maximum sentence, but because he’s 17, the maximum sentence was three years in a juvenile facility. Three years for rape and murder?! What’s more, the chances are he would have received a similar sentence over here.

The fashion magazines like to say that 70 is the new 60 and 60 is the new 50, but it also works in reverse. Thanks to a society that encourages young girls to enter beauty contests when they’re five years old, promotes so-called sex education classes and the distribution of condoms to junior high students, and spends more time trying to disarm hunters than young thugs, 12 and 13 is the new 30.

Someone should come out with a book titled “Foreign Policy for Dummies,” and send a copy to Barack Obama. Starting with his mea culpa on behalf of the United States in Cairo four years ago, he hasn’t done a single thing that didn’t suggest we had a rank and stupid amateur as our head of state.

Whether it was leading from behind in Libya; insisting that Israel stop building apartment houses for their citizens and to pull back to pre-1967 borders in order to facilitate phony peace talks with Arab terrorists; announcing a surge in Afghanistan while at the same time announcing a date of withdrawal; breaking our promise to Poland and the Czech Republic to provide them with a missile defense system in order to placate Russia; or announcing that if al-Assad crossed the red line by using chemical weapons on Syrians, he would suffer dire consequences, and then repeating the same threat after he had crossed it a second time, Obama has shown himself to be incapable of performing on the world stage any more competently than he does here at home. Frankly, I am still looking for a job that isn’t above his pay grade.

On top of everything else, even when he was announcing a strike on Syria, he promised it would be swift and painless – sort of like when the dentist is about to give you a shot of Novocain – and shouldn’t be interpreted as an attempt to bring about regime change.

In the two weeks he spent futzing around before he finally decided he would leave it up to Congress to take the heat, Syria had successfully moved its weaponry out of harm’s way and allegedly moved political prisoners to airports and armories, using them as human shields. God forbid we should ever attack without warning!

What I don’t see Obama doing, although I suspect it would play fairly well with everyone except, perhaps, those last few subscribers to the NY Times, would be to resign from the U.N. How many more times do we have to go, hat in hand, to those creeps asking for a united action only to have Russia or China veto it? Heck, if we quit and stopped subsidizing the U.N., we’d not only save a few bucks, but we could stop pretending that the likes of Susan Rice and Samantha Power are qualified to do anything beyond overseeing a PTA bake sale.

Finally, I heard a prominent Protestant minister on the radio last week. When the host asked him why so few evangelical pastors seemed willing to speak out on social issues, such as same sex marriages, he said that most of them are afraid of being labeled right-wingers by those on the left.

Once I understood he was being serious, I had to laugh. Assuming he knows what he’s talking about, someone should explain to those demented souls that so far as run-of-the-mill Marxists are concerned, there’s only one thing worse than being a conservative, and that’s being an evangelical.

If they don’t even know that much, perhaps I’ve stumbled upon the reason that church attendance is plummeting.

Author’s Note: Although I’m still seeking sponsors, my online radio show is on the air, every Wednesday, at 1 p.m. That’s L.A. time. Access www.latalkradio.com, channel 1, and click on Listen Live. You can also download to your iPhone or Android apps. The call-in number is (323)203-0815. I’d like to hear your questions and comments, pro or con. Especially pro.