The idea that criminals should forfeit certain civil rights reaches back at least to the 19th-century concept of civiliter mortuus (“civil death”). Today, federal law bars convicted felons from possessing firearms or ammunition. Case closed, right? Wrong. Federal law works in mysterious ways, particularly when it bumps up against state interests and high court interpretations.
Blaise Pascal was the quintessential Renaissance man. After all, how many people have a computer language, a religious argument, a triangle, a mathematical theorem, a law of physics and a unit of pressure named after them? Here was a man who could not only pose a philosophical wager, but also invent the system for calculating its odds and a digital calculator with which to tally the results.
It is unusual for a prodigy to stray so widely and successfully from their first area of excellence, but, as Pascal put it, “The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing of.”