Martha Stewart gets 5 months

An awful lot of schadenfreude has led to the independent development of the same lame joke: "Big House and Garden."
 
Martha's sentence was close to the minimum the sentencing guidelines permitted. I think a minimal sentence is a good thing; Martha Stewart is essentially guilty of lying to investigators. Now that may be a stupid thing to do, especially when thousands of shareholders in her company relied on her good judgement to maintain the value of their investments. But it is not the kind of wrongdoing that should have her cracking rocks on the chain gang. It certainly can't compare with the kind of malfeasance that has turned up elsewhere in the corporate governance scandals that followed the dot com crash.
 
Personally, I think the judge should have taken Martha Stewart's offer to volunteer her time and efforts teaching poor women how to start successful businesses. That would have been a far more constructive use of her particular skills than making doilies for the electric chair, or potpourri shivs (I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist.)