Cutting and pasting from his last 3000 speeches, Attorney General Holder testified today before the House Judiciary Committee. He repeated his standard lines in favor of cutting by half the minimum required sentences for drug dealers -- which, of course, he never actually identifies as "cutting by half the minimum required sentences for drug dealers." Instead, he talks in roundabout language designed to obscure what's actually going on. Thus, he uses the always-a-good-tipoff set of phrases like "evidence-based," "commonsense change," and "tough and smart."
For right now, I want to highlight one thing Holder said that's simply not so. He stated (prudently tucked into his eighth paragraph) that the Smarter Sentencing Act "would give judges more discretion in determining appropriate sentences for people convicted of certain federal drug crimes."
Well, not really. The SSA says not one word about judicial discretion, and, as John Malcolm of Heritage has pointed out, actually adds three mandatory minimums to existing law. To that extent, the SSA reduces such discretion.
It's the Justice Safety Valve Act, sponsored by the even more extreme Pat Leahy and Rand Paul, that would let judges run wild again, as in the bad old days of the crime-ballooning Sixties and Seventies. The Smarter Sentencing Act "merely" cuts mandatory minimum sentences, but they remain mandatory, and not subject to the the whim ideology temperament frolic discretion of judges.
Leave a comment