"I would clean up Frankford and Kensington avenues with a broom for 10 years if they wanted that," he told fellow Councilman Frank Rizzo on WPEN-AM radio.

You know, that's not a bad idea.

Think about it. When Mariano goes bye-bye, that's the last we see of him. (That is, until he re-emerges to found a newspaper or write a prison survival manual or something.) Out of sight, out of mind. When's the last time you've thought about Corey Kemp?

So let's say we grant Mariano his wish. Give him a broom. Maybe even one of those Ghostbusters-style backpack vacuum things. The next time a politician is tempted to betray his office in exchange for a little sugar, it wouldn't be like Rick? Rick who? It would be: Look at Rick out there, at the corner of Frankford and Sellers. There but for the grace of God suck I.

This kind of punishment would also make life a little easier for Mariano once he completed his sentence. Pop out of the Gray Bar Hotel, people are like, Oh, you again. Finish up a 10-year stint slurping up beads of glass and cigarette butts off the hot asphalt, and people could walk up Kensington Avenue and think, You know what? Rick's paid his debt. I could practically eat the bad heroin off these streets.

Why do we lock up nonviolent offenders, anyway? Prisons make a lot of sense when you want to keep the violent guy with the Uzi away from the innocent taxpayers. But for people who have pulled some fiscal shenanigans, I believe a more Old Testament punishment is called for. Sell your office to the highest bidder? Let's see you live like one of the low bidders in our society. The ones who don't have the means to offer up a bribe.

So I applaud Mariano's suggestion, as facetious as it may have been. He's not the only one thinking along these lines. This week's cover story (p. 24), by contributor Bob Finkelstein, describes an innovative program with a similar idea. Convicted felons can repay the communities they've betrayed in the most direct way possible: by feeding them.

What Bob's story underscores very nicely is that the motives of many crimes are rooted in hunger—for respect, power and sometimes quite literally, food. They were hungry, and now they have a chance to feed a generation coming up behind them.

Who would have guessed? Mariano has the right idea, at long last.

Speaking of punishment: When I attended Catholic grade school, the only thing more nerve-racking than the stations of the cross (in which you kneeled on hard wood and meditated on the systematic torture and execution of a man… like that didn't warp me) was the awarding of honors around report card time.

Everybody wanted first honors, which came in the form of a little white holy card embossed in gold ink. Second was the same deal, only in silver ink. But then there was the dreaded "honorable mention," which didn't feature any fancy ink. Or if it did, it was the dried blood of Christ, as if to say, "Jesus died for your sins, and the best you can do is a C plus?"

Fast forward two dec- ades: The 2005 Society of Professional Journalists' Spotlight winners have been announced, and I'm pleased to say that City Paper is walking away with more than a half-dozen honors. Three of our staffers scored first-place wins (read: gold ink): Reseca Glasser for page design, Doron Taussig for enterprise story and Mike Regan for photo story and feature photo. There were second-place honors (silver ink), too: Lori Hill, in the category of business and labor story, and the rest of us, for "Best Overall Weekly."

Rounding out the awards, in third place (read: dried blood of Christ), are Bruce Schimmel for commentary, and yours truly for feature, non-daily.

You know what? I don't mind the dried blood of Christ so much anymore. Congrats to my staff, who I think deserve gold ink all around.