Rep. Sensenbrenner (R-WI) who sponsored Real ID, the really bad idea ID, is pushing for reasons for more prisons with his new drug bill (TalkLeft via Crooks and Liars).
A five year mandatory minimum sentence for passing a joint to a person who has been through a drug treatment program?
Two year jail sentence if you observe or come across info about drug distribution near colleges and don’t report within 24 hours and “provide full assistance investigating, apprehending, and prosecuting those involved”?
A 3 year mandatory minimum prison sentence for parents who witness or learn about drug trafficking activities, targeting or even near their children, “if they do not report it to law enforcement authorities within 24 hours and do not provide full assistance investigating, apprehending, and prosecuting the offender”?
So if little John or Jen comes home smelling of pot and parent doesn’t turn him or her and his friends over to the police, then you could to jail for a mandatory three years for not narcing on your child.
This piece of legislation is truly insane. Congressman Sensenbrenner, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, also on the Homeland Security Committee, is insane! What is wrong with this man?
Here is his voting record on crime:
Voted NO on funding for alternative sentencing instead of more prisons. (Jun 2000)
Voted YES on more prosecution and sentencing for juvenile crime. (Jun 1999)
Voted NO on maintaining right of habeus corpus in Death Penalty Appeals. (Mar 1996)
Voted YES on making federal death penalty appeals harder. (Feb 1995)
Voted NO on replacing death penalty with life imprisonment. (Apr 1994)
Rated 30% by CURE, indicating anti-rehabilitation crime votes. (Dec 2000)
More prisons, more enforcement, effective death penalty. (Sep 1994)
Sensenbrenner’s voting record on drugs:
Voted YES on military border patrols to battle drugs & terrorism. (Sep 2001)
Voted YES on prohibiting needle exchange & medical marijuana in DC. (Oct 1999)
Voted NO on subjecting federal employees to random drug tests. (Sep 1998)
Sensenbrenner’s voting record on Homeland Security:
Voted YES on federalizing rules for driver licenses to hinder terrorists. (Feb 2005)
Voted YES on continuing military recruitment on college campuses. (Feb 2005)
Voted NO on supporting new position of Director of National Intelligence. (Dec 2004)
Voted YES on adopting the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. (Oct 2004)
Voted YES on emergency $78B for war in Iraq & Afghanistan. (Apr 2003)
Voted YES on permitting commercial airline pilots to carry guns. (Jul 2002)
Voted NO on $266 billion Defense Appropriations bill. (Jul 1999)
Voted YES on deploying SDI. (Mar 1999)
Rated 44% by SANE, indicating a mixed record on military issues. (Dec 2003)
No US troops under UN command; more defense spending. (Sep 1994) *
More on his voting record at Votesmart.
At the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on the Judiciary website, there is a Statement of Ronald Brooks, preisdent of the National Narcotic Officers’ Associations’ Coalition, before the Committee on the Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security , United States House of Representatives. It reads, in part,
On September 11, 2001, America was attacked by terrorists based in foreign lands. This attack resulted in the murder of almost 3,000 Americans. Because of the intensity and magnitude of that single attack, it is easy to lose sight of the chemical attack that occurs daily in cities and towns in every state in the nation. Illegal drugs and their effects kill more than 19,000 Americans annually and the impact on our economy is estimated to be more than $160 billion each year.
This continuous and unrelenting attack by international drug cartels, American street gangs, meth cookers, and neighborhood drug traffickers is equivalent to a September 11th tragedy every two months. We must continue our commitment to fighting these criminals as aggressively as we fight terrorists who have political motives. Tough drug laws such as those proposed in the “Safe Access to Treatment and Child Protection Act of 2005†are essential weapons in our arsenal.
Vigorous enforcement of drug laws helps to keep families and neighborhoods safe from violent criminals and serves as a deterrent to first-time drug use for most young people. It also helps many addicts reach the road to recovery through drug courts and other corrections-based treatment programs.
What?
Pete Guither at Drug War Rant has a lot more info plus a post on Narcs scramble for loose change from terrorist victims.
And if they need to maybe they’ll tack it onto the back of some other “Must do!” legislation like they did with Real ID. Hell, maybe they’ll just pull a “we didn’t but we’ll say we did.”
Sensenbrenner: Bill passed!
Public: No, it didn’t!
Sensenbreener: Did so. I say it did.
Talkleft on April 15th quoted the Marijuana Policy Project report on HR 1258 and what gives it that extra special something:
This bill has traction because it also contains a section that serves as the House Republican leadership’s response to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that made the Federal Sentencing Guidelines advisory, rather than mandatory. The Republican leadership is highly motivated to pass this bill — and with it, the harsh new penalties related to marijuana.
Well, there you go.
Sensenbrenner with Dave Weldon (R-FA) sponsored the Terri Schiavo legislation H.R. 1332, the “Protection of Incapacitated Persons Act of 2005”.
On April 5th, TalkLeft noted that Sensenbrenner wanted to criminalize TV indecency:
Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner III, R-Wis., told cable industry executives attending the National Cable & Telecommunications Assn. conference here on Monday that criminal prosecution would be a more efficient way to enforce the indecency regulations. “I’d prefer using the criminal process rather than the regulatory process,” Sensenbrenner told the executives.
People who are in flagrant disregard should face a criminal process rather than a regulator process,” Sensenbrenner said. “That is the way to go. Aim the cannon specifically at the people committing the offenses, rather than the blunderbuss approach that gets the good actors. “
Anyway, Sensenbrenner’s idea of governance seems to be putting America in prison. He’s just carrying out process like I’ve expected since 9/11 and the Patriot Act. Soon there will be one or several laws for jailing anyone in the US for a mandatory two years or so. I’m a paranoid sort, some will say, but I figure that’s how you get around jailing people for political dissent. Mr. or Ms. Ordinary American says something you don’t like, set up his or her kid with some pot in just the right way so they’ll know about it but you figure they won’t tell and then you bust them for it for three years. Mr. or Ms. College Student says something you don’t like and they get two years for not reporting themselves for buying cannibis or for being around it at a party. What a windfall!
The following is from a 2002 article by John Stanton and Wayne Madsen posted at Newsinsider, UN Intervention is Necessary:
With the collapse of the American justice system, the United States stands on the precipice of the totalitarian state. Indeed, the evidence is there to show that the US is in the initial stages of some form of mutated capitalist totalitarianism. And in one of the most stunning bits of irony, the very system of justice that steered the country away from dalliances in State totalitarianism, is leading America there.
The War on Drugs – based on ill-conceived presidential directives, legislation passed by a deaf, dumb and blind Congress, and public paranoia and panic fueled by self-serving interests – increased the U.S. prison population by approximately 3 million people between 1990 and 2000; the collateral damage being innocents behind bars, ruined reputations, federal interagency squabbles and further erosion of the Bill of Rights. The War on Terrorism, designed with equal simple-mindedness and expediency, seems destined to perform in similar fashion and will undoubtedly produce fresh crops of productive inmates for the American justice system…
The Bush-Cheney “regime,” that being the only descriptor that comes to mind for it, is playing fast and loose with the U.S. Constitution, demonstrating that they are not upholding the oath of office they took on January 20, 2001. America must come out of its catatonic state. It is time to recall the words of Russian novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in his famous book, The Gulag Archipelago:
“And how we burned in the camps latter, thinking: What would things have been like if . during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those blue caps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. Or what about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur—what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst; the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If…if…We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more. We had no awareness of the real situation. We spent ourselves in one unrestrained outburst in 1917, and then we hurried to submit. We submitted with pleasure! .We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”
The United Nations must recognize that one of its founding members is drifting dangerously towards totalitarianism – a prospect that endangers the peace and freedom of the entire world. Perhaps it’s time they intervene.
Saving kids, my ass. Has nothing to do with saving kids. “The Safe Access to Drug Treatment & Child Protection Act of 2005” has nothing to do with protecting kids and nothing to do with safe access to drug treatment. It has to do with totalitarianism. It has to do with more ways to put more people in jail. A two year mandataory jail sentence if you observe or come across info about drug distribution near colleges and don’t report within 24 hours and “provide full assistance investigating, apprehending, and prosecuting those involved is not about protecting you or anyone else from Reefer Madness (Arvin Hill blog). A three year mandatory minimum prison sentence for parents who witness or learn about drug rafficking activities, trargeting or even near their children, “if they do not report it to law enforcement authorities within 24 hours and do not provide full assistance investigating, apprehending, and prosecuting the offender†is not about protecting your child. It’s an excuse and nothing more. A set-up. A way for putting more people in jail.
If you’re Bush or anyone with money and/or a smidgen of neocon influence then you don’t have to worry about it. Laws like these aren’t made for such.
Laws like these are made to lock up only certain target populations. Anyone who doesn’t realize that probably has a friend they think they can call who will help them to get a little special treatment because, y’know, they’re not one of “those” prison fodder type persons, they don’t belong in prison like those others do.
Believe me, when Barbara or Jennie Bush go to a party near a college campus (define near?) and come home smelling of this or that or acting a tad funny, neither of them, nor pop nor mom, are going to end up with a mandatory two years.
(*Note: I got the voting info from the Activote website. I don’t know why but my Firefox and IE both flip out now at their site so am not giving a link. My computer screen turns black whenever I move my mouse when I’m at Activote. Didn’t start immediately, just as I was looking through the Sensenbrenner page. I managed to get over to the back button finally and back out of the website and things returned to normal. Tried going back in another browser, same problem. I don’t know what is up with that. This is only happening at Activote so maybe something in their coding they need to clean up and maybe already have but I’m not going to try to check it out yet.)
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