* Republicans on the new crime bill
Topics: Crime
22 Aug 1994
From: ervan
Lest one thinks there is a glimmer of sense to be found among the
Republicans, Phil Gramm opposed the new crime bill on the senate floor today
because it removed the provision requiring mandatory minimum sentences for
drug possession offenses. None of the good reasons were mentioned. Orin
Hatch lamely quipped on the problem of finding $30G and the budget caps
which are now being ignored. He also got stuck on the mandatory minimum
issue on MacNeil/Lehrer.
There is an irony here. The Republicans believe in prison inflation just
like the Democrats believe in monetary inflation. That is, if we sentence
everyone to spend forever in jail, it will all work, no matter how much jail
space we actually have (as opposed to: if just print money we can make
everyone rich regardless of how productive we actually are). How odd that
the Democrats actually came to realize that putting pot smokers in meant
letting rapists out.
---Ervan
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