At The Fiscal Times, David Dayen writes—Congress Is Making It Even Harder to Crack Down on White-Collar Crime. An excerpt:
The House Judiciary Committee this week finalized a bipartisan criminal justice reform package, with a level of cooperation unseen on other issues. The bills include a provision to end the “three strikes” rule of life imprisonment for those who commit three federal nonviolent drug crimes. They give judges flexibility to alter mandatory minimum sentences, and clean up other parts of the criminal code to remove outdated statutes. They provide resources to deal with inmate mental health problems, encourage alternative sentencing and implement community supervision support.
But there was one problem: The package also includes a measure that critics believe would make it harder to prosecute white-collar criminals.
It’s not like we have a problem with runaway prosecutions of corporate executives; if anything it’s the opposite. Practically nobody went to jail for the actions that triggered the financial crisis. The bigger problem we have is the wave of deferred prosecutions for criminal conduct. And after years of failure, the Justice Department is scrambling to prove to the nation that it is serious about corporate accountability.
But the House’s back-door effort to immunize the executive suite furthers the suspicion that we have a two-tiered system of justice. Even when you try to balance the scales a bit for poor and vulnerable populations, the wealthy and well-connected have to get a gift, too.
H.R. 4002, “The Criminal Code Improvement Act,” contains the controversial provision. The bill, written by Republican James Sensenbrenner of Wisconsin, is among six that the House Judiciary Committee advanced on Wednesday. The meat of the bill comes in Section 11, proposing a “default state of mind proof requirement in Federal criminal cases.”
This would force prosecutors to prove that a white-collar criminal suspect knew their conduct was unlawful, meaning that prosecutors must produce evidence that effectively peers into the mind of the offender. “The House language violates the basic precept that ignorance of the law is no defense,” said Public Citizen President Robert Weissman in a statement, “and may offer corporations and company executives an ‘ignorance of the law’ defense.”
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Blast from the Past
At Daily Kos on this date in 2009—The Fox, the bow-gate poll, and the crickets:
So Fox conducts a poll on whether or not Americans approve of President Obama's bow while meeting the Emperor of Japan. Given that they attacked President Obama mercilessly over the bow on Monday, it's likely they wanted to excoriate him once again, this time using poll results showing how much America hated the bow.
But there's a problem for Fox: it turns out their very own poll shows Americans don't have a problem with bow-gate. Indeed, 67% said they think it is appropriate for the American president "to bow to a foreign leader if that is the country's custom" and only 26% felt it was "never appropriate for the president to bow to another leader."
Perhaps the most notable thing is not just that Fox failed to manufacture outrage over bow-gate, it's that as I can tell, Fox never put their poll on the air. I've searched through their transcripts and watched much of their coverage since the poll was released in a PDF on their website, seen by approximately 5 people from their target audience of conservatives.
Perhaps Fox should change their slogan: we report and you decide, but only if it's something that we think will make you hate President Obama.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, the Great Refugee Freak-Out actually worsens; Cruz creeps into position, flips on refugees; both Mitt & I said “Mali” at some point; FL attempts to make “Stand Your Ground” even worse; Vitter abandons his wife, again; the dream of “regular order” in the House dies, again
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