For the umpteenth time, the Obama administration's strict adherence to a rigorously Leftist ideology has trumped any respect for the law, this time in the person of Attorney General, Eric Holder. The severely rule of law-challenged Holder has decided that he and the United States Attorneys under his command, will no longer enforce the mandatory minimum criminal penalties as they apply to crack and powder cocaine offenses. The reason for the Attorney General violating his oath to uphold the law of the land is that he says it is racist because a disproportionate number of blacks are charged under it than whites. Never mind that according to the Constitution of the United States, the Attorney General has no authority to dismiss laws, in part or in whole, from being enforced. The real dichotomy is that the mandatory minimum penalties for crack and powder cocaine are similar in nature to those for methamphetamine, which results in crimes that are committed almost entirely by white offenders. Those mandatory minimums will, of course, continue to be enforced.
The Attorney General repeated the same myth used by pro-criminal advocates, i.e., our prisons are filled with non-violent offenders who are drug users, mainly of marijuana. The data from Eric Holder's own Justice Department shows that the vast majority of those in prison for drug crimes are major traffickers or those engaged in violent crimes while in possession of drugs. The Obama administration has already increased the amount of crack cocaine that one must be in possession of before they are charged with a major felony by a factor of 25. Drug offenders are not a majority of the prison populations in this country as criminal advocates would have us believe. In fact, only twenty percent of those incarcerated in state prisons are there as a result of drug felonies. Only seventeen percent of those twenty percent have been convicted of crimes involving marijuana. And only three tenths of one percent of those charged with marijuana crimes are non-violent possession cases. But the Attorney General, the President and other criminal advocates would have us believe that the country's prisons are bursting at the seams with people who were caught simply toking a joint on a Saturday night in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Attorney General Holder supported his position to ignore the law by saying that those caught in the harsh mandatory minimum sentencing for crack and powder cocaine are usually black, and because of that fact the supposition can be arrived at that the criminal justice system in this country is racist. The Attorney General and others are actually hurting the black community at large, from which the innocent victims of the criminals Mr. Holder is trying to protect are culled. Instead of decriminalizing black crime, the Attorney General, the President and other advocates should address the issues which cause it. The out-of-wedlock birth rate among the inner city black population is 75% and unemployment is at a similarly high rate. But the remedies of Leftists like Mr. Holder only perpetuate the pain for those they claim to want to help.
When the Attorney General characterizes the U.S. prison system as some sort of receptacle for the discarded black youths of a racist society, once again the data does not support his position. Half of all those in prison are Hispanic. No one, even the most ardent advocates for the criminal element in this country, are saying that the large number of blacks in prison are innocent of the crimes of which they have been charged. What the advocates and Eric Holder are suggesting, is that somehow by decriminalizing certain illegal behaviors, it will bring down the crime rate in predominantly black neighborhoods. But as bloviating Leftists like the President and Attorney General Holder will point to their policy of simply ignoring certain crimes as achieving a lower crime rate, the increased number of victims of those crimes will continue to live in fear and find no representation in their government or civic leaders.
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