One of the suspects in the Jihadist massacre today in Paris is 34 year-old Cherif Kouachi. An ABC News report notes this about him:
Kouachi, along with six others, was sentenced in May 2008 to 3 years in prison for terrorism in Paris. All seven men were accused of sending about a dozen young Frenchmen to join Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, after funneling them through radical religious establishments in Syria and Egypt.
It appears, however, that Kouachi served only 18 months of his sentence -- not that three years was long enough even if he'd served every day of it.
Sentencing "reform" advocates unceasingly assure us that only "low level, non-violent" offenders will be released. Even assuming they (1) had and (2) were willing to share with the public, the nuts-and-bolts specifics of what that gauzy phrase actually means, we have no assurance that its execution will live up to its promise. We have, to the contrary, a mountain of evidence that the government is incompetent to determine who is safe to release and who isn't. For several years, California has provided a good deal of this evidence all by itself; the foolhardiness of its early release decisions has been documented again and again in C&C's News Scan. Now, in a horrifying display, the Paris massacre brings home this same lesson.
"Reform" advocates tell us that the government has made a generation's worth of horrendous mistakes in deciding who should be incarcerated and for how long. In the next breath, they tell us that the same government will suddenly be seeing and wise in deciding who should be released and how early.
Today's bloody violence should give us a clue about whether they're right. It should also give us a clue about who will pay the price if they're aren't.
Yep. Time and time again moral preening gets real people killed.
When dealing with violent criminals, the issue, in my view, is one of risk allocation. It may well be that out of 100 home-invasion rapists, 2 will commit a serious crime if released after 20 years. But isn't 2 more serious crimes out of that bunch 2 too many? Therefore, 20 years ain't enough.
As for the California issues, I note that Barack Obama appointed two of the Supreme Court majority. The Justices voted in a way that would have been predictable, and their ruling has had a predictable effect. Obama's kids have secret service protection. The Plata victims do not. I'm sure Obama feels very good about their handiwork. I bet he wouldn't have the guts to say it to the faces of victims.
This incident should function as the casus belli necessary for the rest of the world to use whatever force necessary to rid it of Islamo-Fascism or whatever term you want to call it. I think the one problem Russia, USA and China share is this. Time to out differences aside and take action.
As a frame of reference, the last execution in France was in 1977 via guillotine. It was abolished in 1981. There was a bill in their assembly to reinstate the death penalty for terrorist acts in 2004 which did not pass. I wonder if we will see that change.
Matthew, I'm curious. What kind of action do you think should be taken? I'd like to rid the world of murderous religious zealots as much as anyone else, but I'm not sure what you're proposing. We could certainly go back to a full-scale ground war in the Middle East, but I doubt the American public would support that. So what do you think should be done?
- Victor
Federalist, why do you keep blaming Prez Obama for Plata rather than, say, Prez Reagan who appointed swing voter Kennedy or all the GOP members who helped enact the PLRA (on which Plata is based) or all the GOP members of the California legislature who kept opposing a sentencing commission and/or other reforms that could have prevented Plata from coming to pass?
There is plenty of "blame" to go around for Plata, but blaming Prez Obama for this is a real stretch. It would be like me blaming Prez GWH Bush for Blakely/Booker since he appointed two of the Justices in the majority (Souter & Thomas).