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Tag:

Department of Justice

BlogFrom the Desk of Bob Barr

Obama’s Drive To Impose “Common Core” On Law Enforcement

by lgadmin February 17, 2016
written by lgadmin

From the Ferguson Police Department’s first public statement about the police-involved shooting of Michael Brown in August 2014, the town of Ferguson, Missouri was doomed. Like Newton’s First Law of Motion, the shooting started a cascading series of events that continues a year and a half later.  The rounds of looting, rioting, protesting and media circuses, has morphed into a massive lawsuit filed against the small suburban town by the U.S. Department of Justice.

If one accepts the allegations in Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s lawsuit, Ferguson is nothing but a teeming hotbed of racial hatred and official incompetence; the only solution for which is federal control.  In the government’s eyes, the town has no regard whatsoever for the Constitution and laws of this country, and has engaged in widespread and systemic violation of civil rights.  Tough stuff, indeed; but the Department’s approach reflects more an example of how to address a manageable problem with a wrecking ball than a tool kit.

Tragic as it was, there was nothing so remarkable or unique about the shooting of Brown that justifies this action by the Justice Department. The aggressive and authoritarian manner in which the Department has hounded the Ferguson Police Department over the past 18-months is far different from the way in which previous presidents and federal prosecutors, including myself, dealt with incidents in which law enforcement officers or departments violated individuals’ civil rights. By vigorously prosecuting such cases individually as warranted, prosecutors and the Department of Justice itself were able to hold the officer or officers accountable; and without attacking entire departments or needlessly imposing federal government control over local government responsibilities.

For U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch’s Department of Justice, however, control – not justice – is the real goal; and Ferguson has become ground zero for its crusade to scrutinize and punish law enforcement officers and departments for perceived racial injustices. In effect, the Department is seeking to implement its own form of “Common Core” for Law Enforcement, wherein local control is stripped away in favor of federal policing standards that have been packaged into what may be “politically correct” on the surface, but have little actual impact on the troubling issues that linger in the criminal justice system.

To an Administration obsessed with “optics” more than genuine reform, this façade may fulfill its objectives. However, for those who genuinely care about individual liberty and constitutional conduct within the justice system, they actually are poisoning public debate about criminal justice reform and exacerbating the already strained tensions between citizens, police and the federal government.

By showing that it cares about civil liberties by attacking police, the Obama Administration is making it harder to protect civil liberties.

For the first time in decades, for example, we have an opportunity to achieve substantial and lasting criminal justice reform through federal legislation. Reforms that would help restore civil liberties to the criminal prosecution process while providing much-needed relief to an overcrowded and costly prison system, currently are pending in the Congress. These measures enjoy strong bipartisan support, including among policy organizations ranging from the leftist Center for American Progress to conservative FreedomWorks. It is one of those rare scenarios in which Democrats, Republicans and the President are in at least partial agreement on an issue that actually strengthens civil liberties.

Unfortunately, without Administration support and in the absence of public demand for passing these reforms, the pending bills have languished without votes to send them to the President for signature.  Ironically, the Justice Department’s highly visible crusade against Ferguson (and other police departments) is much to blame for this failure.

By antagonizing police departments and politicizing police-involved shootings of minorities, the Obama Administration has turned the conversation about “justice reform” into a false dichotomy between support of police on the one hand, or social justice groups like “Black Lives Matter” on the other. In such a polarized environment, real efforts at reform, such as those pending in Congress, are given nary a thought, much less active support from those members of Congress who can help win their passage. Meanwhile, individual Democrats and Republicans who oppose such efforts are undermining the bills before they ever reach the floor.

The clock is ticking on criminal justice reform, and an opportunity such as this for genuine, lasting reform is truly once-in-a-lifetime. If Obama cares to salvage at least a sliver of a notable legacy, he should abandon his shortsighted and misguided drive to place local police departments under Uncle Sam’s thumb, and help shift the public conversation back to substantive reforms that really matter.

 

Originally published here via townhall.com

February 17, 2016 0 comment
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BlogFrom the Desk of Bob Barr

Let’s Hope the GOP is Serious About Sentencing Reform

by lgadmin July 15, 2015
written by lgadmin

Last Friday, President Obama wrote 46 letters to men and women across the United States that will change their lives. “Dear Jerry,” Obama wrote to one man, “I wanted to personally inform you that I will be granting your application for commutation.” Jerry, like the others, is a convicted drug offender who, Obama claims, should long ago have served his time and been released back into society. Instead, tens of thousands of other low-level drug offenders continue to fester in federal prison; the consequence of overzealous, 1980s-era mandatory minimum sentencing requirements that have led to dangerous overcrowding in the federal prison system, and has cost taxpayers billions annually in the process.

The President, who is to announce plans for comprehensive criminal justice reform later this week, will join a growing number of members of Congress — from both parties — who support sentencing reform. One such example is legislation proposed by Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Mike Lee (R-UT), called the Smarter Sentencing Act. This proposal would reduce mandatory minimum sentence requirements for some offenders, while expanding a so-called “safety valve” exception for others; helping to ease prison overcrowding.

This endeavor is supported by public policy groups from both ends of the political spectrum; from FreedomWorks to the Center for American Progress. The goal of this “trans-partisan” coalition is to work together to make America’s criminal justice process smarter, more effective, and more fiscally responsible.

The mainstream nature of this debate, and the growing support for sentencing reform among conservatives in particular, illustrates a radical change in Republican attitudes towards criminal justice just in the past decade. Only a few years ago, for example, the majority of Republican lawmakers would have refused even to discuss the hot-button issue of comprehensive sentencing reform. About the only “reform” GOP leaders in Washington would have considered would have been stiffer penalties and federalization of additional crimes. Now, many in the GOP are open to considering meaningful reform of the justice system’s sentencing structure; a system that saw America’s federal prison population swell by more than 750 percent in just three decades, stretching both budgets and prison resources to their limits.

The conservative case for sentencing reform is clear. The situation worsens with each new inmate added to federal prison system by an outdated sentencing structure that allows for little, if any discretion for judges to differentiate between drug kingpins and non-violent, low level offenders.

The cost of housing federal inmates, especially those serving lengthy, minimum mandatory terms, is huge. In 2013, taxpayers forked over more than $29,000 to incarcerate every federal inmate; pushing federal prison costs to more than 25 percent of the entire Department of Justice budget. This money, much of which is wasted on incarcerating non-violent drug offenders with little to no criminal history, can and should be spent on pursuing real criminals.

The current mandatory minimum sentencing system comes with disastrous societal costs, as well; consequences that are far more difficult to remedy, and which are felt across generations. According to statistics provided by Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), one out of every 28 children in America today has a family member in jail or in prison. This fact alone helps create a “cradle to grave” predicament for any spouse or child. A one-income household, while the spouse is in prison (not to mention the hardships of finding work after prison), increases the reliance on taxpayer-subsidized programs such as Medicaid and EBT/SNAP. Additionally, children from single-parent homes face increased risk of lower school performance, truancy, and criminal behavior. Without sentencing reform, we not only ruin one generation’s chance of upward social mobility, but that of their dependents as well.

Taking into consideration such devastating consequences of rigid mandatory minimums — which come with little evidence to suggest any long-term, positive impact on crime reduction – even many heretofore “tough-on-crime” Republicans have now come to recognize that simply being “tough” is not smart; nor is it fiscally or socially “conservative,” if that term means supporting families, jobs and communities.

Whether this new-found recognition will survive in the ongoing Republican presidential primary – especially with the bombastic Donald Trump leading the field – remains to be seen. But there are grounds to believe it will.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has made criminal justice reform a key component of his campaign. Texans Ted Cruz and Rick Perry have each come out strongly in favor of sentencing reform. “The current draconian mandatory minimum sentences sometimes result in sentencing outcomes that neither fit the crime nor the perpetrator’s unique circumstances,” noted Cruz; adding that, “harsh mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug crimes have contributed to prison overpopulation and are both unfair and ineffective relative to the public expense and human costs of years-long incarceration.”

Such sentiments reflecting the views of key Republican leaders, and supported by such influential conservative-oriented organizations as FreedomWorks, Americans for Tax Reform, and others — if they result in substantive changes to the way our justice system deals with crime and sentencing – will have a profound and positive effect on our society for generations to come.

 

Originally published here on townhall.com

July 15, 2015 0 comment
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Liberty Updates

Liberty Update – Is Loretta Lynch No Different than Eric Holder?

by Liberty Guard Author February 5, 2015
written by Liberty Guard Author
February 5, 2015 0 comment
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From the Desk of Bob Barr

Voter ID Vs. Concealed Carry – Liberal Hypocrisy Unmasked

by Liberty Guard Author October 8, 2014
written by Liberty Guard Author

“Let me be clear,” Attorney General Eric Holder emphatically declared in a 2012 speech to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, “we will not allow political pretexts to disenfranchise American citizens of their most precious rights.” Holder’s remarks were a call to arms against efforts by Republicans to require that voters show identification when they go to vote. His words reflect a belief that the right to vote is so “precious” that requiring individuals to show an ID before casting a vote is tantamount to being “disenfranchised.”

However, when it comes to protecting the right to “keep and bear arms” – which, unlike the right to vote, is a right expressly guaranteed in the Constitution itself – the Attorney General of the United States is nowhere to be found. Apparently our Second Amendment rights are just not “precious” enough to worry about when governments engage in actions expressly designed to “disenfranchise” individuals from exercising those rights.

The hypocrisy is so blatant it is painful.

Currently 32 states have implemented some variation of voter ID laws to curb election fraud. Nevertheless, these reasonable requirements — well within states’ Tenth Amendment rights to implement — have been the targets of repeated Justice Department threats and legal challenges. The Department argues that simply requiring a valid ID in order to vote — the same that is required for purchasing alcohol, or attending Obama fundraisers — places an unfair, racially-biased burden that threatens the constitutional rights of minorities.

If alleged racial discrimination is the catalyst for such intimidation by the Justice Department, the Department’s silence is deafening in the face of very real efforts by state and local governments to deny and limit the right to keep and bear arms. As noted in a recent report by theWashington Times, some states — notably Illinois, for example — are effectively denying citizens their right to carry concealed firearms by placing a number of costly and time-consuming obstacles in their way; and doing it in such manner as clearly to disproportionately impact minorities and lower-income individuals.

The double standard reflected in the Justice Department’s selective assertion of concern for minority rights is deeply disturbing. Even a ruling in one case earlier this year by U.S. District Court Judge Edmond Chang concluding that “certain fundamental rights,” such as those protected by the Second Amendment, should be “outside government’s reach” and not entrusted to government stewards to protect, has not awakened Holder from his selective slumber.

The findings by the Washington Times illustrate the point convincingly. The newspaper’s research found that burdens such as expensive training and permitting procedures, coupled with lengthy bureaucratic delays in issuing concealed carry permits, hit minority and lower income citizens especially hard. In Illinois, a favored playground for gun control public officials, wealthy white residents hold 90 percent of concealed carry permits.

“There are a lot of systematic and economic barriers that make it difficult for South Side of Chicago residents, many of whom are African-American, to obtain concealed carry permits,” NAACP Illinois State Conference President George Mitchell told the Washington Times. “Some of the barriers include the high costs, time commitment, bureaucracy and the community’s distrust of the police.” The effect of these racially biased restrictions are compounded by gun control regulations that enable local law enforcement officials to deny gun permits for any reason, including many completely unrelated to an individual’s competency to own, possess or use a firearm.

Imagine if voter ID laws were as rigorous as gun regulations found in many of America’s major cities. In order to vote in such a scenario, citizens would be forced to take a day-long class (at a cost of $100 or more) about the basics of the U.S. government and electoral process. They then would be required to take a competency test (only available at inconvenient locations during normal working hours) on the current election’s issues. Finally, after paying a non-refundable processing fee of $100 to score the results, they would then be forced to wait months for the actual voter registration card — which could be rejected for any reason — to arrive in the mail. If a voter decided to seek the help of a tutor to help ensure his non-refundable processing fee was not wasted by a possibly failing grade, he would have to be prepared to shell out another $100.

The obvious solution is to immediately reform the concealed carry licensing procedures, including the power by government officials to deny permits arbitrarily. Should the stringent and financially taxing gun regulations remain in place, as no doubt liberals will argue in spite of the overwhelming evidence about the racial disparity they create, then immediate action should be taken to reduce the costs of obtaining a concealed carry license, which routinely amounts to hundreds of dollars after the costs of safety classes and processing fees that are intentionally inflated to deter applications.

Were this any other issue, the level of bias against the poor and minorities in concealed-carry permitting would have Leftist bloggers, government lawyers, and liberal politicians marching in the streets, and calling for the heads of “racist” Republicans and NRA Members. The fact that this President and his Attorney General remain deaf, dumb and indifferent to the blatantly discriminatory anti-Second Amendment actions by liberal state and local governments, even as they rail against voter ID laws, is testimony to the constitutional hypocrisy that is at the very core of this presidency.

October 8, 2014 0 comment
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