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Thread: Rand op-ed: Sessions' sentencing plan would ruin lives

  1. #1

    Rand op-ed: Sessions' sentencing plan would ruin lives

    Rand Paul: Sessions' sentencing plan would ruin lives

    By Rand Paul
    May 15, 2017

    The attorney general on Friday made an unfortunate announcement that will impact the lives of millions of Americans: he issued new instructions for prosecutors to charge suspects with the most serious provable offenses, "those that carry the most substantial guidelines sentence, including mandatory minimum sentences."

    Mandatory minimum sentences have unfairly and disproportionately incarcerated a generation of minorities. Eric Holder, the attorney general under President Obama, issued guidelines to U.S. Attorneys that they should refrain from seeking long sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.

    I agreed with him then and still do. In fact, I'm the author of a bipartisan bill with Senator Leahy to change the law on this matter. Until we pass that bill, though, the discretion on enforcement -- and the lives of many young drug offenders -- lies with the current attorney general

    The attorney general's new guidelines, a reversal of a policy that was working, will accentuate the injustice in our criminal justice system. We should be treating our nation's drug epidemic for what it is -- a public health crisis, not an excuse to send people to prison and turn a mistake into a tragedy.

    And make no mistake, the lives of many drug offenders are ruined the day they receive that long sentence the attorney general wants them to have.

    ...
    read more:
    http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/15/opinio...ion/index.html



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  3. #2
    Rand is right you know...
    #StandWithRand
    BEWARE THE CULT OF "GOVERNMENT"

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  4. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by ChristianAnarchist View Post
    Rand is right you know...
    #StandWithRand
    He is right, I just wish race was left out of it.
    "The Patriarch"

  5. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by Origanalist View Post
    He is right, I just wish race was left out of it.
    Yes I do too but it can still be positive using the race card can lead to reductions in the sentencing and maybe decriminalization. If that happens then I'm all for using race to get attention in this very important issue (still a long way from where I want to be but every step helps).
    Last edited by ChristianAnarchist; 05-16-2017 at 08:25 PM.
    BEWARE THE CULT OF "GOVERNMENT"

    Christian Anarchy - Our Only Hope For Liberty In Our Lifetime!
    Sonmi 451: Truth is singular. Its "versions" are mistruths.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:ChristianAnarchist

    Use an internet archive site like
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  6. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Origanalist View Post
    He is right, I just wish race was left out of it.
    Me too. But, if it moves the ball forward as ChristianAnarchist mentions then, meh. I'll get over it.

  7. #6
    Quote Originally Posted by Origanalist View Post
    He is right, I just wish race was left out of it.
    He's right about the race stuff, too. If we are going to give a full, honest and truthful accounting of the tragedy of the War on Drugs, then there is no way to leave race out of it. The very roots of the War on Drugs have been deeply racist from the start (going to way back before Nixon & Reagan ever came along). The overtly racist origins of the drug war have been sublimated, sanitized and institutionalized (sentencing disparities are just one manifestation of this). Our well-deserved contempt for race hucksters like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton should not be allowed to blind us to these facts.

    If anything, I am (relatively) much more bothered by Rand's "epidemic"/"public health crisis" rhetoric, which only reinforces the insalubrious "medicalization" of behavior (and not just with respect to drug use).
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  8. #7
    We just had a female judge set a brutal muslim migrant rapist free because she said 'this kind of thing is normal in their culture'.

  9. #8
    I don't care what anyone says, Sessions is poison. My good friend Mike, someone whose opinions I trust implicitly, is wrong when he says that Sessions is a good choice if put to the right mission because it is pretty clear he is not being so put. He would have made a superb special prosecutor for the purposes of hunting and trying the manifold traitors including Obama, Clinton, etc. As AG, however, I think he sucks precisely because his opinions on issues such as the drug war are not even remotely sound. What's next, prosecution of chromosexuals and adulterers?

    This is the sort of thing that puts people against the so-called "conservatives", precisely because so many of them are rank, unwashed $#@!s where these questions arise. They spew and spout "freedom" as they destroy the lives of non-criminals who happen to engage in acts they find personally objectionable. Hypocrites, and in many ways no better than their accursed counterparts on the so-called "left". If only we could be rid of them all. Of course, the twenty people remaining would have a difficult time keeping America going.



    Quote Originally Posted by jct74 View Post
    Mandatory minimum sentences have unfairly and disproportionately incarcerated a generation of minorities. Eric Holder, the attorney general under President Obama, issued guidelines to U.S. Attorneys that they should refrain from seeking long sentences for nonviolent drug offenders.


    And this is the sort of thing Rand does that leaves me shaking my head: pandering. What in hell does race have to do with it? I know he's playing the game, but I find it despicable. Speak forthrightly, for Christ's sake, and cut the $#@!. This is a failing of his that he needs to work to erase. His father is not in this habit which is one of the reasons I have such respect for the man. He calls it clearly, honestly, and without these cheap attempts at appealing to people who will hate him no matter what he says or how he says is. It demeans himself, as well as those who support him, which I still do, but find myself in a state of indigestion in the wake of such transparent antics. It lacks art, though I admit this is from a thinking man's standpoint. I suppose he may be assuming the rank stupidity of those who fall for such nonsense and he may well be right. I just hope it's not that tired old act of...what are they calling it now... "virtue signaling" (do I have that right?). I don't care what grand and oblique strategy may be at play - trust is the issue at hand and that is not won by sneaky, back-handed approaches. It is precisely this that puts me off about Trump - doing apparently stupid-$#@!ty things with supposedly some grand master plan of inscrutable obliquity behind it, leaving mere idiots such as myself wondering what in hell is going on. At least if such is the true case, explain the ideas behind it so people can get behind YOU.

    Honestly, I don't see how the race will survive this ever deepening pool of stupidity into which Theye are wading and dragging the rest of us along for the ride to lunch with Davey Jones.

    I agreed with him then and still do. In fact, I'm the author of a bipartisan bill with Senator Leahy to change the law on this matter. Until we pass that bill, though, the discretion on enforcement -- and the lives of many young drug offenders -- lies with the current attorney general
    I admit my narrowness in not being able to fathom that I could agree with Holder on any point, including were he to say water was wet. Once again, it is difficult to see this statement as anything better than virtue signaling. Even if it is not, many will see it as such. I think Rand chooses his words VERY unwisely at times; something that in this game one can ill-afford.

    The attorney general's new guidelines, a reversal of a policy that was working, will accentuate the injustice in our criminal justice system. We should be treating our nation's drug epidemic for what it is -- a public health crisis, not an excuse to send people to prison and turn a mistake into a tragedy.
    I must also question this. Working? Define the term. I don't see it. The drug war has been on, remains so, and looks to be about to ramp way up with this jack-boot in the AG's chair. What in hell was Trump thinking?

    And make no mistake, the lives of many drug offenders are ruined the day they receive that long sentence the attorney general wants them to have.
    So sorry Senator Paul, but this is disingenuous nonsense. The lives of all drug offenders are ruined, whether under Sessions proposed guidelines, or Holders. These days there is no escaping a felony conviction. The effects run WAY past mere jail time. So you don't go to prison - that is certainly a good thing, but what about your life on the outside in the wake of conviction? In an age where anyone can find out which hand you use to wipe your backside; where employers refrain from hiring anyone without a "pristine" record, what does one do after copping a plea and getting a felony conviction? Go on welfare? Great.

    The DC game is pure filth and if reducing oneself as Rand appears to have done here is the price one must play to be a "player", then you can have it. I'd rather dress in drag and become a scullery maid.
    Last edited by osan; 05-21-2017 at 07:15 AM.
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  11. #9
    Does Sessions believe that admitted guilt
    of any number of acts of espionage committed by
    Hillary Clinton should be ignored due to the fact that she
    is among the super-rich and politically connected,
    and should serve no time nor be inconvenienced
    for all things up to and including murder?
    Or is this better answered by Hillary herself;
    ''...what does it really matter at this point?''

  12. #10
    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    And this is the sort of thing Rand does that leaves me shaking my head: pandering. What in hell does race have to do with it?
    What race has to do with it is, way back during the Clinton Administration sentences for crack cocaine (disproportionally used by the poor, and therefore minorities) became many times longer than sentences for other forms of cocaine. Now, we could argue for a week whether this was deliberately racial (we could, but I'm not going to), but it is perceived that way. And since trying to get someone elected The GOP Way gets us barred from conventions, gets our convention votes ignored, gets us hijacked, baited and switched to establishment tools the MSM is falsely advertising 24/7 as mavericks, gets us subverted and overrun with racists in order to make their false redefinitions of us seem valid, and gets us saddled with primary voters who only seem interested in seeing who's leading the horse race and jumping on the bandwagon, I suggest finding a more bipartisan route into government would be a huge boon to libertarians.

    And considering that Clinton-era miscarriage of justice (is cocaine not cocaine?) is indicative of the kind of mistreatment minorities have been suffering on the Democrat Plantation for forty years, maybe we should start entertaining the possibility that they are becoming 'low-hanging fruit'.

    Quote Originally Posted by osan View Post
    I'd rather dress in drag and become a scullery maid.
    That, of course, is a personal decision, and I have no intention of standing in your way.
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