December 23, 2017

The secret backstory of how Obama let Hezbollah off the hook

from Politico: An ambitious U.S. task force targeting Hezbollah's billion-dollar criminal enterprise ran headlong into the White House's desire for a nuclear deal with Iran.

Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption   Defense Versus The War Machine

Cops kill 7-year-old boy while executing unarmed woman in a neighborhood full of kids

from TheFreeThoughtProject: Multiple deputies opened fire on an unarmed woman in a neighborhood full of children on Christmas break and they killed a 7-year-old boy.

Police State America    The Government is Not Us

VIDEO: The Vision of Harry Browne

from LibertyPen/YouTube: From C-Span (2000), former Libertarian presidential candidate Harry Browne shares his philosophy on the gun rights, affirmative action, taxes, Social Security, drug laws and other political topics.

Individual Liberty: America's First Principle   2nd Amendment Assaults

Rand Paul: Obama administration against Trump might be 'worse than Watergate'

from WashingtonExaminer: Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., argued Thursday that senior Obama administration officials might be guilty of trying to keep President Trump from getting elected last November.

Politics and Other Official Acts of Corruption   The Government is Not Us

The trillion dollar welfare program

from FFF: What is especially significant about fiscal year 2017 is that total outlays of the Social Security Administration (SSA) exceeded a trillion dollars for the first time

The Welfare State: Promoting Dependency

The myth of the playground pusher

from Reason: In Tennessee and around the country, "drug-free school zones" are little more than excuses for harsher drug sentencing.

The War on Unapproved Voluntary Exchange

Justice Is A Result, Not Just A Process

Latest Update: July 29, 2017

Jurors have power to judge evidence and the law itself
Senators from the right and the left come together for criminal justice reform

Civil asset forfeiture: where due process goes to die

Jurors convict man for informing jurors about jury nullification

Trial begins for man accused of spreading the word about jury nullification

When they nullify the law, jurors are just doing their jobs

A law professor explains why if you are innocent, you should NOT talk to police 

•VIDEO: Jury Nullification - The Law You Won't Be Told

Let's Hope For Jury Nullification: Prosecutor Wants Man To Serve 20 Years In Prison For Stealing $31 Worth Of Candy

by Josie Duffy.    What if justice was a result and not just a process? Louisiana has the dubious honor of being the most incarceratory state in the world's most incarceratory country. In New Orleans, Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizaro has been hailed as a reformer—organizations like Court Watch NOLA and others have publicly    ... MORE

VIDEO: The Drug War, Mandatory Minimums And Reason

Jacob Sullum: 2 Ranchers, 2 Fires, Too Long Behind Bars

The injustice of mandatory minimums.        The occupation of buildings at Oregon's Malheur National Wildlife Refuge by a group of armed and disgruntled ranchers has brought national attention to a case that illustrates the injustices wrought by mandatory minimum sentences. The men who took over the buildings on January 2, led by Nevada   ... MORE

Absurdly Harsh Penalties Sparked Oregon Rancher Protest

by Jacob Sullum.      As Ed Krayewski noted yesterday, the armed men who are occupying an office building at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon broke off from a demonstration protesting the sentences received by two ranchers, 73-year-old Dwight Hammond and his 46-year-old son Steven, who in 2001 and 2006 set fires on their own  ... MORE

Mandatory Minimums Don't Prevent Crime

by Kristie Eshelman.        You would think that the threat of longer sentences should reduce the amount of crimes being committed. After all, it’s a basic law of behavior that people respond to incentives, so harsher punishments should serve as a deterrent to potential criminals. Unfortunately, decades of experience have taught us that this     ... MORE

VIDEO: Mandatory Minimums In 60 Seconds

Jordan Richardson: A Serious Problem In Our Legal System

Justice is a result, not simply a process.       A life sentence. For Sharanda Jones, a first-time, nonviolent cocaine offender, it wasn’t sinking in. “I was numb,” she remembers. “I was thinking about my baby. I thought it can’t be real life in prison.” Having grown up in a disadvantaged family, Sharanda started working at the age of 14, later opening ... MORE

VIDEO: Stossel - How Government Policies Hurt The Poor

VIDEO: Mandatory Minimums - Why Liberty?

VIDEO: How The War On Drugs Betrayed America

Why Should Non-Criminals Care About Justice Reform?

by Julie Borowski.  Criminal justice reform has been a hot topic lately. It’s something that both Republicans and Democrats can find common ground on. However, I get the sense that many Americans aren’t convinced that it would benefit them personally.  Most of us are probably law-obeying citizens whom would never dream of being involved in illicit    ... MORE

Tim Mak: He’ll Rot For Pot: 55 Years For Weed

Koch brothers seek reform.      A father of two was sentenced to 55 years in jail for selling pot. The Koch brothers want to help set him free and make him the face of their new campaign for criminal justice reform. Weldon Angelos could have hijacked a plane and spent less time in jail. But due to mandatory sentencing laws, the father of two was      ... MORE

Jed S. Rakoff: Why Innocent People Plead Guilty

And why does the system promote such?     The criminal justice system in the United States today bears little relationship to what the Founding Fathers contemplated, what the movies and television portray, or what the average American believes. To the Founding Fathers, the critical element in the system was the jury trial, which served   ... MORE

Jeff Mizanskey Is Serving Life in Prison for Marijuana

by Aaron Malin.    Rapists and murderers come and go, but he's there for the duration. As I prepared to leave home for my interview with Jeff Mizanskey I looked up the address of the prison where he is held. In disbelief, I typed the characters into the GPS on my phone: 8200 No More Victims Road. Jeff Mizanskey is serving a life sentence without   ... MORE 

VIDEO: John Stossel - Mandatory Minimums

Jacob Sullum: Must Conservatives Be Cop Lovers?

Rand Paul challenges his fellow Republicans.     Running for the U.S. Senate in 2010, Rand Paul became known as that crazy right-winger who expressed reservations about the Civil Rights Act of 1964. But in the last two years, the Kentucky Republican has emerged as his party's most passionate voice on criminal justice reform, explicitly       ... MORE

Jacob Sullum: Why Prosecutors Love Mandatory Minimums

Prosecutorial power hinders justice process.   In 1996, when he was the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Eric Holder urged the D.C. Council to reinstate mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenses, which it had abolished in 1994. Two decades later, as an attorney general who has repeatedly criticized "draconian"       ... MORE

VIDEO: The Injustice Of Mandatory Minimum Sentencing