Michelle Malkin, 4 December 2000 (my emphasis):
Most of those behind bars, unlike Downey, can’t afford to post bail or hire competent lawyers. Julie Stewart of Families Against Mandatory Minimums points out that drug offenders now make up 60 percent of the federal prison population, up from 38 percent 14 years ago; in 1998, 57 percent were first offenders and 88 percent had no weapons. "We are not catching drug kingpins," Stewart writes. "We are catching the little guys, the girlfriends, the mules, and we are sending them to prison for 5 years, 10 years, and often much longer."
[...]
Black and white, young and old, famous and nameless – Americans from all walks of life can identify with the broken soul of Robert Downey Jr. His addiction is his own prison. His public humiliation is its own life sentence. The war on drugs is an expensive quagmire that needlessly punishes people who’ve already punished themselves beyond repair.
Michelle Malkin, 21 December 2007 (my emphasis):
Gov. Schwarzenegger's gift to California: 20,000 criminals on the loose?
Brilliant:
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is proposing the early release of more than 20,000 low-risk prison inmates as a way to save money amid a worsening budget crisis.
The Sacramento Bee reported on its Web site Thursday that the governor will ask California lawmakers to authorize the release of certain non-serious, nonviolent offenders. The prisoners would have less than 20 months to go on their terms.
Sex offenders would not be eligible for release under the proposal.
The plan would cut the prison population by 22,159 inmates and save the state $256 million in the fiscal year that begins July 1, the Bee reported. Savings could reach $780 million through 2010.
The proposal also calls for eliminating more than 4,000 prison jobs, most of which would involve guards.
Just an idea being "floated."
Proving that the ivory tower is phenomenally out of touch with reality, one professor says this plan would be no big deal:
UC Berkeley law professor and corrections expert Franklin Zimring said that in raw numbers, "I don’t know of any" other releases across the country that would match what Schwarzenegger’s administration is proposing.
But he said the proposed 13 percent cut in the prison population – which stood at 172,079 as of Dec. 12 – would be on par with the results of changes in parole policy that Gov. Ronald Reagan imposed in the early 1970s.
"This could be an extraordinarily interesting experiment," Zimring said. "The nice thing about having a Republican governor do it is that I don’t think there is going to be a firestorm."
Clueless.
Remember when conservatives at least claimed to stand for something that at least resembled small government? It's incredibly depressing how they've morphed into a monstrous authoritarian movement in order to defend the Bush junta.
Also of note is this:
There is no denying that what happened to Japanese-American internees was abhorrent and wrong.
And this:
No one denies the barbarism of Chinese exclusion laws, the Japanese internment, or physical violence against migrant workers.
"9/11 changed everything," I suppose she would say.
She would be wrong though. 9/11 didn't change the Consitution that she's so willing to trample on these days, and it sure as hell didn't change my conception of human dignity. In the history books, 9/11 won't negate the inhumanity of the War on Drugs, Bush's torture regime, and the Japanese internment.