Vin Suprynowicz

The U.S. Sentencing Commission is supposed to see to it that defendants receive uniform punishments for similar crimes.

And while the Constitution gives Congress itself little responsibility for setting criminal penalties — domestic crime was supposed to be the concern of the states — it too, operates under a presumption that prison sentences should be reasonable and substantially equal.

For the past 20 years, both bodies have been failing miserably at meeting this standard in the “cocaine” theater of their proudly declared “War on Drugs.”

Although the “rush” experienced by drug users smoking cocaine processed into “crack” is reportedly more intense, the drug is chemically similar to cocaine consumed as a powder.

But — responding to one of those “drug of the year” panics which regularly assure us the republic has never faced a threat so dire as this year’s epidemic of marijuana, smack, speed, China White, crystal meth, black tar, “Angel dust,” crack, Oxycontin, Ecstacy, or whatever — Congress in the 1980s wrote into law a mandatory minimum five-year prison sentence for trafficking as little as 5 grams of crack cocaine — while such a sentence is triggered only when a user or dealer of powdered cocaine is found in possession of 100 times as much.

Since more than 80 percent of federal defendants sentenced in crack cases are black, while just over a quarter of those convicted of powdered cocaine crimes last year were black, this has had a predictably unbalanced impact on the racial profile of America’s prison population. More »

Apparently running short of local issues in this Grinchtide season, the exalted New York Times on Sunday turned its editorial attention to the Southern Nevada Public Land Management Act.

As cornucopias go, it is hard to top what has been happening in Nevada,” wrote the Timesmen, as Christmas carols and popcorn-sated pigeons wafted up toward their gray-tower windows from Times Square, far below.

Local governments have been cashing in on the sale of federal lands to spare their taxpayers the tab for a raft of amenities that include parks and shooting ranges,” The Times continued. “That’s right: the federal government has auctioned off thousands of acres in the last decade under an unusual law that channels most of the proceeds into an account set aside for projects in Nevada… The obvious question is why federal lands should be tapped like some desert ATM, forcing taxpayers in the 49 other states to subsidize the booming regional growth around Las Vegas,” the Timesmen note.

One of the main rationales for the program was to acquire and protect environmentally sensitive tracts of land in private hands, but only 15 cents of every dollar has gone toward such projects. … The big losers are taxpayers everywhere else, few of whom even know about this one-state bonanza. … Nevadans have every right to have boccie and tennis courts. But it is not clear why the federal government should sell off chunks of the nation to pay for them.” More »

Some teachers have written in, challenging my assertions about what currently gets taught in the government youth propaganda camps (“public schools”).

“I’m surprised to learn I’ve been teaching all this propaganda promoting the merits of collectivism or whatever else Suprynowicz accuses me of,” reads a typical missive. “I’ve reviewed my curriculum and I can’t find that stuff in there anywhere. I teach …” whereupon the writer typically inserts “English,” “history,” “algebra,” or whatever.

It’s hard to tell whether the open face of guileless innocence assumed by these scriveners is real or feigned. So I won’t try. Instead, let’s propose a small experiment which any curious party could undertake to test my premise.

Gather up any representative sampling of high school upperclassmen or recent graduates. Tell them that to defend our country, the Congress has decided we need a new fleet of aircraft carriers that will cost $500 per American. This is to be funded by an income tax which requires one multi-millionaire like Bill Gates to pay $2,500, five average Joes earning better that the national median paycheck to pay $500 apiece, and thus allows four guys whose incomes are way below average to pay nothing at all. Does this represent “everyone paying his fair share”? More »

Howard Hawks’ “Red River” isn’t just any Western. It was the last movie playing in the small-town Texas theater in the Peter Bogdanovich/Sybil Shepherd film (from the Larry McMurtry novel) “The Last Picture Show.” It was Montgomery Clift’s first – and many say John Wayne’s best – film.

And how does novelist Borden Chase’s quintessential American tale of the first great post-Civil-War cattle drive begin? Wayne’s Tom Dunson and Clift’s Matt Garth start one of the great Texas cattle herds with one bull and one cow and all the land between the Red River and the Rio Grande – land which they simply grab.

Two Mexican pistolleros show up, early in the film, to tell the man and boy they can camp on the land while they pass through, but they can’t stay, because the land belongs to a wealthy Mexican who lives far to the south.

“That’s too much land for one man,” Wayne declares.

One of the men says it’s his job to deal with such attitudes. Wayne cements his claim by killing him.

The Wayne character justifies this act by asserting that the Mexican Don Diego just stole the land from whoever was there first – “Indians, I’m guessing.”

But things have changed since 1851. You can’t grab a nice-looking piece of land in America today just because the owner has left it vacant.

Or can you? More »

The Senate blocked the current $286 billion farm subsidy bill Friday, “a blow to farm-state lawmakers who wanted to give their constituents expanded subsidies before next year’s elections,” The Associated Press reports.

President Bush has threatened to veto the pork-laden spending measure, saying it’s too expensive and would hand wealthy farmers too much tax loot.

But Senate Agriculture Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, speculated on the floor Friday that the White House has been actually pressuring Republicans to stop the bill because President Bush doesn’t want to veto legislation that’s so popular in the farm states.
“I certainly hope the situation is not a deliberate, or orchestrated, attempt to stop the farm bill dead in its tracks,” Harkin said.

We should only wish. More »

Most states will issue a form of driver’s license to those who are barred from driving, either legally or due to some physical impairment. These documents bear a prominent notice that they do not authorize the bearer to actually drive a motor vehicle. Some wags call them “walkers’ licenses.”

To those unfamiliar with American culture, this must seem absurd. Why would citizens who have no intention of operating a motor vehicle apply to their local Department of Motor Vehicles for a driver’s license that says they cannot drive?

More »

Imagine with me that you opened your newspaper today and found the following story:

“NORCO, Calif. (AP) — More than 1 million sheets of paper, a cache of unregistered books and a tunnel were found at a man’s home after a fire that forced a neighborhood evacuation, authorities said Friday.

“Crews worked to fortify the tunnel to ensure it was safe. It appeared to be at least 10 feet deep and led into a back yard, authorities said.

“The man tried to run back into the house after firefighters arrived and had to be restrained by sheriff’s deputies, Riverside County sheriff’s Deputy Juan Zamora said.

“After the blaze was extinguished, crews discovered shelves of manuscripts, pamphlets, magazines, and both fiction and non-fiction books, many without government registration cards or tax stamps.

“On Friday, sheriff’s deputies and agents from the federal Bureau of Books, Documents, and Religious Paraphernalia combed the house for evidence. More »

Within living memory, Southern Nevada high schools had rifle ranges and competitive shooting teams. Kids brought their .22s to school; no one thought much about it.

Up until 1989, Nevada had no restrictions on teachers carrying weapons in the schools, according to state Sen. Bob Beers. To this day, teachers can do so with the permission of a school’s principal, he says, while California, Oregon and Utah manage fine without even that restriction.

Yet Sen. Beers now seems to have stirred up a swirl of controversy by merely proposing that Nevada schools be taken off what he calls the list of ”easy terror targets” by again “allowing” teachers to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms.

From the response in some quarters, one would think the senator is proposing that teachers be encouraged to shoot any young person who forgets his homework. Yet there have been no reported incidents of teachers harming their students in jurisdictions where they regularly go armed, such as Israel. More »

From my last name, a lot of folks wouldn’t think half my ancestors were English — Clarks and Bishops and Higginbothams, some active in the emancipation movement as much as three centuries ago.

Digging through the family archives, I find a yellowed letter to one Zebulon Clark, penned in 1767 — more than half a century before the abolition of chattel slavery in Britain and the possessions. The letter responds to an abolitionist pamphlet penned by my ancestor a short time before:

“Zebulon Clark contends the chattels have a right to the fruits of their own labors. Perhaps he doesn’t take sugar in his tea, wear cotton clothing dyed with indigo, or make use of any of the other marvellous products made possible by our modern commerce.

“The institution of chattel slavery, so necessary to such commerce that history shows us no example of it succeeding under any other circumstance, has done nothing for Mr. Clark, he would have us believe. It has not provided him with the exotic foodstuffs that have revolutionized our cuisine.

“The use of ‘the press’ to round up miscreants and idlers, thereupon requiring them to crew his majesty’s ships under humane conditions and at reasonable pay, has not protected the sea lanes so that Mr. Clark can enjoy all the benefits of free trade on seas swept free of pirates, he would have us believe.

“Meantime, in an even more extravagant flight of fancy, he asserts that (once set free) these chanting, superstitious Africans would immediately become literate men of commerce, able to maintain the plantation industry without European help or oversight. More »

Last week, the Nevada Senate’s Transportation and Homeland Security Committee voted 5-2 to approve Senate Bill 61, which would allow “limited” use of robot traffic cameras to write tickets to Nevada red-light runners “on a pilot basis.” That vote forwards the measure to the Senate floor.

The vote wasn’t even as close as the 4-3 vote to make “not wearing a seat belt” a primary offense — in violation of the compromise under which the Legislature some years back made “not buckling up” a crime, but only on condition that police couldn’t pull us over for that reason alone.

Sen. Maurice Washington, R-Sparks, joined in opposing that one, correctly arguing it gives police too much power to stop cars at random, which can facilitate “racial profiling.” Sen. Washington, who is black, says it’s happened to him.

Under the proposed two-year “pilot program,” SB 61 would theoretically allow the courts to dismiss robot red-light tickets if the registered owner of the vehicle could prove he or she was not the driver (as is the case about 28 percent of the time.) But only after paying the value of his or her ticket as a “bond” and going to court three or four times, of course.

The “pilot” program would also prohibit payments to camera contractors (who actually develop the film and decide who gets ticketed, reportedly discarding photos of the police, lawmakers and judges who keep the system funded) based on the number of citations issued — for now. More »