I blogged here, here and here about the murder this month of two children and their mother by a man, Wendell Callahan, who should and would have been in federal prison but for the early release he was given under a 2010 version of sentencing "reform."  Callahan was a hard drug dealer (crack cocaine) who had his sentence twice reduced.  He was said at the time to be no threat to public safety. This was simply false.  At best, those who took this position were forecasting a future they could not know. At worst, they were lying (having plenty of reason to know, from Callahan's violent past, that he was a threat).  In either event, two little girls and their mother wound up paying the ultimate price for their mendacity.

[S]entencing changes are triggering the biggest -- and most vivid -- rift among Republicans. Cotton and other Republicans pointed to a triple murder earlier this month in Columbus, Ohio, in which a man is accused of killing an ex-girlfriend and two of her children. The suspect, Wendell Callahan, had his prison sentence on drug charges reduced twice for a total of more than four years, according to The Columbus Dispatch....

Cotton isn't alone. Other Senate Republicans, including Sens. Jim Risch of Idaho and David Perdue of Georgia, also registered their strong opposition during the lunch, even as Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) vigorously defended the bill, which he helped negotiate.

Until sentencing "reformers" are willing to come clean about specifically how much violence the country should tolerate from the thousands of felons they aim to release early, Congress should refuse to move on this bill.  It's bad enough to buy a pig in a poke, but worse still once you already know the pig can kill you.