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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JohnM who wrote (5116)	8/15/2003 1:21:41 AM
From: Sully-	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793858

A couple of counties in north western PA had outages, but they might have been part of the grid that caused Cleveland to go out. South western PA had power.

To: JohnM who wrote (5116)	8/15/2003 1:54:09 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793858

I am all for "locking them up and throwing away the key" for criminals in violent felony cases, but these drug laws are just outrageous. The Point of Departures Just sentences require judicial discretion. Jacob Sullum - REASON Testifying before Congress in April, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy tried to explain why it's important for judges to have discretion in sentencing. He cited the case of "a young man raising marijuana in the woods. That makes him a distributor. He's got his dad's hunting rifle in the car?he forgot about it and wanted to do target practice. That makes him armed. He's looking at 15 years. An 18-year-old doesn't know how long 15 years is." Members of Congress apparently did not grasp Kennedy's point. The next day, almost all of them voted to impose new restrictions on sentencing discretion, making a system that Kennedy rightly called "harsh" and "in many cases unjust" even more draconian. Under an amendment that was tacked onto a wildly popular law ostensibly aimed at preventing child abductions, judges have substantially less leeway to deviate from federal sentencing guidelines. The law makes it easier for prosecutors to challenge "downward departures" from the minimums indicated by the guidelines, instructs the U.S. Sentencing Commission to discourage such departures, and requires that Congress be kept apprised of judges who approve them. Adding to the intimidation, Attorney General John Ashcroft recently issued a memo ordering federal prosecutors to notify the Justice Department of all downward departures not requested by the government. (Prosecutors approve a large majority of departures, often in exchange for information or testimony.) The Justice Department is expected to be much more aggressive in challenging sentences it considers too lenient, and the stricter review standard established by the new law means it is more likely to prevail. Not surprisingly, liberal Democrats have complained about the shift in power from judges to prosecutors. Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) accused Ashcroft of continuing an "ongoing attack on judicial independence" by requiring prosecutors "to participate in the establishment of a blacklist of judges who impose lesser sentences than those recommended by the guidelines." Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) said: "John Ashcroft seems to think Washington, D.C., can better determine a fair sentence than a judge who heard the case or the prosecutor who tried it. The effort by DOJ to compile an 'enemies list' of judges it feels are too lenient is scary." But familiar Ashcroft critics are not the only ones who are worried. Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who is not exactly known for soft-heartedness toward criminals, warned Congress in April that the new sentencing rules would "seriously impair the ability of the courts to impose just and responsible sentences." After the law passed, he said tracking the sentences of particular judges "could amount to an unwarranted and ill-considered effort to intimidate judges in the performance of their judicial duties." Or consider U.S. District Judge John S. Martin, a former federal prosecutor who was appointed to the bench 13 years ago by George H.W. Bush. According to the Associated Press , "Martin has earned a reputation as a judge capable of stern sentences: In sentencing one violent gang member to life, Martin ordered the man held in solitary confinement and said he would have imposed death if he could." In June, Martin announced that he was resigning from the bench because he could no longer participate in "a sentencing system that is unnecessarily cruel and rigid." He cited the current "effort to intimidate judges" as well as longstanding onerous punishments for drug offenders. Judges like Martin are not simply angry over losing some of their prerogatives. "For a judge to be deprived of the ability to consider all of the factors that go into formulating a just sentence," he wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece, "is completely at odds with the sentencing philosophy that has been a hallmark of the American system of justice." The sentencing guidelines, created under legislation that Congress passed in 1984, were supposed to prevent "unwarranted sentencing disparities among defendants with similar records who have been found guilty of similar criminal conduct." But if they are not sufficiently flexible, they can also prevent warranted disparities, because it's impossible for the guidelines to take into account every factor that might help determine how much punishment a particular defendant deserves. Unlike judges, the Sentencing Commission does not see individuals; it sees only broad classes of defendants. Members of Congress operate at an even higher level of abstraction, where no punishment is too severe because seeming tough on crime takes precedence over justice, which can only be dispensed one case at a time. reason.com

To: JohnM who wrote (5116)	8/15/2003 2:09:07 AM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793858

AS you might suspect, the "Wall Street Journal has an Editorial out on the blackout. Power Ties The lights didn't have to go out. Friday, August 15, 2003 12:01 a.m. The fragility of modern economic life was demonstrated again yesterday afternoon with the power blackout that struck most of the American Northeast and parts of Canada. Tens of thousands were trapped in elevators, buildings or subways, while millions had to negotiate a long, difficult commute home from the office. Airports and nuclear power plants closed. Everyone who recalls September 11 immediately thought of terrorism, and we can all be thankful it wasn't the cause. But it's somehow not reassuring to hear government officials refer to the event the way New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg did as a "natural occurrence." Natural is what happens in nature, like a tornado, but a national power grid is a man-made operation. The breadth of the energy disruption suggests that some major rethinking deserves to be done about the vulnerability of America's power grid. If an accident can shut down an entire U.S. region for half a day, imagine what well-planned sabotage could do. The U.S. has grown complacent as the memory of California's blackouts in 2000 has faded. But especially in the Northeast, the U.S. is still operating on an energy supply and with a load-sharing grid that has very little room for error. Our political class has once more turned back to attacking those power plants we do have, especially nuclear plants, rather than thinking creatively about ensuring the kind of redundant power delivery that can avoid blackouts. Yesterday's disruption was both inconvenient and costly, but it will be cheap at the price if it awakens our politicians to act before a larger power shortage strikes. opinionjournal.com

To: JohnM who wrote (5116)	8/15/2003 3:17:24 AM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793858

Fred Barnes take on Bush's conservatism. I am going to respond to it later after letting it gestate. A NEW REPUBLICAN BREED A 'Big Government Conservatism' George Bush hasn't put a name to his political philosophy, but we can. BY FRED BARNES Friday, August 15, 2003 12:01 a.m. Is President Bush really a conservative? When that question came up this summer, the White House went into crisis mode. Bush aides summoned several of Washington's conservative journalists to a 6:30 a.m. breakfast at the White House to press the case for the president's adherence to conservative principles. Aides outnumbered journalists. Other conservative writers and broadcasters were invited to luncheon sessions. They heard a similar spiel. The White House needn't have bothered. The case for Mr. Bush's conservatism is strong. Sure, some conservatives are upset because he has tolerated a surge in federal spending, downplayed swollen deficits, failed to use his veto, created a vast Department of Homeland Security, and fashioned an alliance of sorts with Teddy Kennedy on education and Medicare. But the real gripe is that Mr. Bush isn't their kind of conventional conservative. Rather, he's a big government conservative. This isn't a description he or other prominent conservatives willingly embrace. It makes them sound as if they aren't conservatives at all. But they are. They simply believe in using what would normally be seen as liberal means--activist government--for conservative ends. And they're willing to spend more and increase the size of government in the process. Being a big government conservative doesn't bring Mr. Bush close to being a moderate, much less a liberal. On most issues, his position is standard conservative: a pro-lifer who expects to sign a ban on partial birth abortion, he's against stem-cell research and gun control, and has drawn the line at gay marriage. His judicial nominees are so uniformly conservative that liberals are furious. On taxes, Mr. Bush is a supply-sider. He's gotten large tax cuts that would have slashed even deeper if a few moderate Republicans hadn't balked. His interventionist foreign policy has near unanimous support among conservatives. His backing of tough internal measures against potential terrorists has riled civil libertarians but pleased most conservatives. Yet conservative critics insist Mr. Bush is no Ronald Reagan--and they're right. Mr. Reagan was the leader of the conservative movement before he entered the White House. In his initial years as president, he cut taxes as boldly as Mr. Bush and curbed domestic spending. But Mr. Reagan was a small government conservative who declared in his inauguration address that government was the problem, not the solution. There, Mr. Bush begs to differ. The essence of Mr. Bush's big government conservatism is a trade-off. To gain free-market reforms and expand individual choice, he's willing to broaden programs and increase spending. Thus his aim in proposing to add a prescription drug benefit to Medicare is to reform the entire health-care system for seniors. True, the drug benefit would be the biggest new entitlement in 40 years. But if paired with reforms that lure seniors away from Medicare and into private health insurance, Mr. Bush sees the benefit as an affordable (and very popular) price to pay. Mr. Bush earlier wanted to go further, requiring seniors to switch to private health insurance to be eligible for the drug benefit. He dropped the requirement when queasy congressional Republicans balked. Now it's uncertain whether Congress will pass a Medicare bill with sufficient market incentives to justify Mr. Bush's approval. Should he sign a measure without significant reforms, he won't be acting as a big government conservative. On education, Mr. Bush and Mr. Kennedy joined to pass the No Child Left Behind Act. Its only real reform was a mandate for states to test student achievement on the basis of federal standards. Many conservatives, including some on the president's staff, felt this wasn't sufficient reform to warrant boosting the federal share of education spending. Still, Mr. Kennedy and other liberals aren't happy either. They'd expected even more spending. When I coined the phrase "big government conservative" years ago, I had certain traits in mind. Mr. Bush has all of them. First, he's realistic. He understands why Mr. Reagan failed to reduce the size of the federal government and why Newt Gingrich and the GOP revolutionaries failed as well. The reason: People like big government so long as it's not a huge drag on the economy. So Mr. Bush abandoned the all-but-hopeless fight that Mr. Reagan and conservatives on Capitol Hill had waged to jettison the Department of Education. Instead, he's opted to infuse the department with conservative goals. A second trait is a programmatic bent. Big government conservatives prefer to be in favor of things because that puts them on the political offensive. Promoting spending cuts/minimalist government doesn't do that. Mr. Bush has famously defined himself as a compassionate conservative with a positive agenda. Almost by definition, this makes him a big government conservative. His most ambitious program is his faith-based initiative. It would use government funds to expand social programs run by religious organizations. Many of them have been effective in fighting drug/alcohol addiction and helping lift people out of poverty. So far, the initiative has had only a small impact, its scope limited by Congress. Another trait is a far more benign view of government than traditional conservatives have. Big government conservatives are favorably disposed toward what neoconservative Irving Kristol has called a "conservative welfare state." (Neocons tend to be big government conservatives.) This means they support transfer payments that have a neutral or beneficial effect (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) and oppose those that subsidize bad behavior (welfare). Mr. Bush wants to reform Social Security and Medicare but not shrink either. Mr. Bush has never put a name on his political philosophy, though he once joked that it was based on the premise that you could fool some of the people all of the time and he intended to concentrate on those people. An aide characterized Bushism as "an activist, reforming conservatism that recognizes it's sometimes necessary to use the power of the government to change the status quo." I doubt that Mr. Bush would put it that way, but at least it distinguishes him from the ordinary run of conservatives. He's a different breed. Mr. Barnes is the executive editor of The Weekly Standard. opinionjournal.com