Senate Bill Would Eliminate Cocaine Sentencing Disparity:   Washington Post Staff Writer Carrie Johnson reports that Thursday, the Senate's second-ranking democrat introduced a bill to eliminate the sentencing disparity between crack and powdered cocaine.  Under current law, it takes 100 times more powdered cocaine than crack to trigger the same mandatory minimum sentence.  Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin introduced the bill to change the sentencing disparity between the two forms of the drug.  Senator Durbin believes that tough sentencing has led to the imprisonment of African Americans at a rate six times the rate of whites. The bill would erase the current sentencing disparity and would increase the volume of crack cocaine required to trigger a mandatory prison term.  The measure would stiffen penalties for large-scale drug traffickers and violent criminals.  Law enforcement officials have approached the issue differently.  They advocate elimination of  the disparity by increasing the penalties for possessions of powder cocaine.  Raising the volume of crack cocaine required to trigger a mandatory prison term could save more than $510 million over the next 15 years, according to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

Texas Governor Defends Execution:  Associated Press writers Kelly Shannon and Michael Graczyk report that Texas Governor Rick Perry is standing firm on the recent controversy surrounding Cameron Todd Willingham.  He stated that Willingham is "a monster" who killed his three children.  He believes suggestions that Willingham may have been innocent are anti-death penalty propaganda.  Willingham was convicted of capital murder for the 1991 deaths of his children, by setting fire to the family's home while the children were inside.  Recently, forensic scientists have called into question arson evidence used to convict Willingham, but the prosecutor in the case, John Jackson, still believes Willingham is guilty.  Governor Perry was recently criticized for replacing members of the Texas Forensic Science Commission before they reviewed the arson report used in Willingham's conviction.  Craig Beyler, an arson expert hired by the Forensic Science Commission to study the case, concluded that "the arson findings were not scientifically supported and that investigators at the scene had poor understanding of fire science."  Beyler went further last Wednesday, when he stated Governor Perry's failure to recuse himself from the Commission is "unethical and injurious to the cause of justice."  Allison Castle, the Governor's spokeswoman, said, "this statement demonstrates that [Beyler] was never an objective scientist looking only at forensic facts.  He clearly has another agenda."  Governor Perry states that he wants to remind the public of all the facts of the case that implicated the man, instead of "glomming onto" one piece of evidence "and saying 'Ah-ha.'"