Clinton, who said she supports a federal recommendation for shorter sentences for some people caught with crack cocaine, opposed making those shorter sentences retroactive - which could eventually result in the early release of 20,000 people convicted on drug charges.
"In principle I have problems with retroactivity," she said. "It's something a lot of communities will be concerned about as well."
So 'in principle' she's against retroactivity.
Here's what she said about the FISA bill with retroactive immunity in it for corporate criminals.
I am troubled by the concerns that have been raised by the recent legislation reported out of the Intelligence Committee. I haven't seen it so I can't express an opinion about it. But I don't trust the Bush Administration with our civil rights and liberties. So I'm going to study it very hard. As matters stand now, I could not support it and I would support a filibuster absent additional information coming forward that would convince me differently.
These crimes are not similar, and there is a good case to be made for changing our drug laws. The incentives for crack use and distribution are very different than the incentives for corporate shells to violate significant constitutional boundaries at the behest of a lawless President. One is a crime of the weak and the desperate, the other a crime of the powerful.
With Clinton, it's illustrative of how she considers politics. She's willing to make the case based on principle against retroactivity when it comes to punishing the weak, and yet, when it comes to basic norms of constitutional liberty and abusive collusion between big business and autocratic government, she hides behind the notion that she hasn't read the specifics of the bill. And she still has not come out on retroactive immunity for telecoms.
This might have something to do with it.
In an interview after the debate, Clinton's pollster, Mark Penn, pointed out that the Republican front-runner has already signaled that he will attack Democrats on releasing people convicted of drug crimes.
Her five rivals present on stage - Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, and Ohio Rep. Dennis Kucinich - all said they favor making the shorter sentences retroactive.
"Rudy Giuliani is already going after the issue," Penn said. "He's already starting to attack Democrats, claiming it will release 20,000 convicted drug dealers."
This kind of horrific conservative small-minded politics is the essence of what is wrong with the Democratic Party. Crack-cocaine sentencing, in fact, much of our criminal justice system, is an abomination, with regular incidences of rape, murder, and torture. This is paired with the abandonment of accountability for our elites, which has no better example than telephone company executives and Republicans colluding to (probably) spy on Americans in contravention of the law.
And Clinton believes in principle when it comes to smacking down the weak, and is silent when it comes to abuse of power by corporate interests in the name of national security. |
