Take the word “willful,” says Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican, which appears throughout the code despite the Supreme Court complaining that it's “a word of many meanings.”

“Courts have described 'willful' as meaning a high degree of culpability, such as a bad or evil motive,” the congressman notes. Indeed, the late federal judge and judicial philosopher Learned Handargued a half-century ago:

“It's an awful word! It is one of the most troublesome words in a statute that I know. If I were to have the index purged, 'willful' would lead all the rest in spite of its being at the end of the alphabet.”

The revised code would employ a straightforward approach, Mr. Sensenbrenner says, and where possible the term “knowingly” would be used to define the intent for most every crime.

“The term 'knowingly' means that the act was done voluntarily and intentionally,” he explains.

UH-OH

”CJR's running total of journalists laid off or bought out since January 2007 was 11,250 by mid-February, and we surely missed some. Our fear is that America won't realize what it has lost until the mainstream press is a ninety-pound weakling - online, on paper, on whatever. And in the words of Joseph Pulitzer, in a paragraph that sits on a brass plaque in the building where we work, 'Our Republic and its press will rise or fall together ... .' ”

- Dispatch this week from the editors of the Columbia Journalism Review