Watch George W. Bush brag about his tough-on-criminals stance on his 2000 campaign website:
# Lowered to 14 the age that most violent juveniles can be tried as adults and streamlined the certification process;
# Expanded determinate sentencing options – the toughest juvenile incarceration penalty – for serious and habitual juvenile offenders;
# Enacted new mandatory minimums for length of stay at the Texas Youth Commission;
# Made juvenile records freely available to law enforcement officials;
# Expanded the use of fingerprinting and photographing of juveniles;
# Adopted a Progressive Sanctions Model sentencing system of incrementally more intrusive sanctions for juvenile offenders;
# Created zero tolerance policy for juvenile drinking and driving. In 1997, Texas enacted a zero-tolerance policy for those under 21 who are caught drinking and driving.
# Increased penalties for graffiti offenses. Lawmakers gave law enforcement officials the incentive to crack down on graffiti offenses.
# Abolished mandatory release of inmates and increased parolee supervision:
# Abolished mandatory release. In 1995, Governor Bush and the Legislature ended automatic release for all inmates convicted after September, 1996.
As President, George W. Bush not only supported but tasked his underling Michael Chertoff with writing the Feeney Amendment, which decreased the ability of judges to show leniency in sentencing and placed judges who showed mercy in sentencing on a Justice Department blacklist.
George W. Bush spoke in very different terms yesterday when referring the commutation of the sentence of Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby:
I respect the jury’s verdict. But I have concluded that the prison sentence given to Mr. Libby is excessive. Therefore, I am commuting the portion of Mr. Libby’s sentence that required him to spend 30 months in prison.
That’s George Bush Republicanism for you: go draconian on punishments for the masses, and protect the lawbreakers among your high-placed friends and underlings. This gang has had its self-interested grip on the reins of power for too long.
(Sources: National Public Radio July 3 2007; Bush for President 2000 campaign; LA Weekly January 13 2005)
Then there’s the 152 executed by the state of Texas during the Bush tenure with only a cursory review of their cases. Bush did intervene in only one execution, after a public outcry when the accused was proved to have been in another state when the crime was committed.
http://www.niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=showcase.view&showcaseid=008
And of course the infamous Bush statement mocking the clemency request of Karla Faye Tucker: execution.http://www.geocities.com/kftucker2007/index.html#Bush%20Mocks
No surprise to me that Scooter goes free.
Next up, here comes the reinstatement of the military draft, just in time to supply the next president with the troops (s)he’ll need to stay in Iraq longer than the end of his term and no choice in the matter.
i’m sure this and all the rest of the blundering neocon policies to come are all along the lines of “Since Bush’s poll numbers are this low and there’s no backlash from the American people (like protesting en mass outside the White House until he changes his policy), Bush can continue to do whatever he wants.”
Notice even the defection of high-ranking Repubs in Congress over the war isn’t changing anything.