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US House votes to reduce crack/powder disparity

I just finished watching the US House floor debate on S1789 reducing the crack/powder disparity in federal sentencing guidelines from 100-1 to 18-1 and am pleased to see the bill is now headed to the President in a rare bipartisan moment for Washington. I'd prefer they equalize it - the issue is the quantity of drugs required to trigger federal mandatory minimum sentences - but this is a substantial improvement. The bill raises from 5-28 grams the amount needed to trigger mandatory minimums.During the debate, Texas Congressman Ron Paul quipped that instead of the "Fair Sentencing Act" the bill should be called the "Slightly Fairer Sentencing Act" because they didn't reduce it to 1:1, calling to repeal the entire war on drugs. Houston Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee made some strong comments in favor of the legislation, and even authors of the original 1986 legislation said they couldn't justify the 100-1 disparity...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on July 28, 2010 (boomark / email).