OK, now that I have your brief attention, you should check out
this article from "In These Times" by boomer cultural icon Garrrison Keillor (bit more below the fold):
The article is subtitled "Democrats Fled in the Face of Danger":
We Democrats are at our worst when we try to emulate Republicans as we did in signing onto the "war" on drugs that has ruined so many young lives.
The cruelty of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 is stark indeed, as are the sentencing guidelines that impose mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug possession-guidelines in the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act that sailed through Congress without benefit of public hearings, drafted before an election by Democrats afraid to be labeled "soft on drugs." As a result, a marijuana grower can land in prison for life without parole while a murderer might be in for eight years.
No rational person can defend this; it is a Dostoevskian nightmare and it exists only because politicians fled in the face of danger.
Keillor obvously doesnt agree with most of the mainstream/so-called progressive dems on this site who still think pandering and sticking to "safe" issues is the way to win elections and become a governing party.
If suddenly on a Friday night the red lights flash and the cops yank your teenage son and his little envelope of marijuana into the legal meatgrinder and some bullet-headed prosecutor decides to flex his muscle and charge your teenager-because he had a .22 rifle in his upstairs bedroom closet-with a felony involving the use of a firearm, which under our brutal sentencing code means he can be put on ice for 20 years, and the prosecutor goes at him hammer and tong and convinces a passive jury and your boy's life is sacrificed so this creep can run for Congress next year-this is not your cross alone to bear. If the state cuts off your right hand with a meat cleaver on my account and I don't object, then it is my cleaver and my fingerprints on it.