Sentencing guidelines and drugging the public

Drug WarRant has several good posts up this morning. Pete alerts us to a new mandatory sentencing scheme. Senselessbrenner proposes horrible new sentencing bill gives the details on, "Defending America's Most Vulnerable: Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act of 2004 sponsored by House Judiciary Chair Jim Sensenbrenner." This is really evil folks and seeks to only to incarcerate more non-violent consumers without any chance of probation of sentencing based on judicial discretion.

He also posts on the Judge Young's courageous decision this week criticizing the federal sentencing guidelines that already exist. Now Judge Young sits in my jurisdiction and in fact has been the judge in many of my firm's cases. This man is a very conservative jurist and for him to make this kind of statement in a 174 page decision speaks volumes for the current sorry state of our legal system.

Also check out George Bush's latest scheme to screen the entire population of the US for mental illness. It wouldn't be such a bad idea, if he would demonstrate it's usefulness by having himself and his cabinet screened first, unfortunately Pete delivers the evidence that this is just another thinly veiled scheme to promote pharmaceutical drugs and facilitate the pharma companies obscene profits.

Meanwhile of course they plan to continue spending almost 40 billion of your tax dollars on their war on some drugs. Those would be the ones the pharmas don't make a profit on.