the irony of those conservative judges and ullr arrives...

I have always struggled with uber-conservative candidates for the US Supreme Court. on one hand, their overall stance can be horrifying and a complete perversion of the constitution. unfortunately, they also happen to have proved themselves to be some of the only ones that get it right when it comes to criminal law...hence my conundrum. once again a court that many expect to throw civil liberties and constitutional rights out the window has proved that when it comes to protecting the criminal process, frightening right wing nutjobs in robes can get it right.

for years the federal sentencing guidelines have been destroying the criminal process. by binding the hands of judges the sentencing guidelines have ensured that we continue to move closer and closer to an all-out police state, adding longer and longer sentences unnecessarily to ensure that a ridiculous percentage of our population (and a frighteningly large percentage of certain minority populations) sits behind bars - despite our supposed "free" society. the most blatant wrong over the years has been the extreme disparity between sentences the guidelines support for cocaine versus crack. perhaps because the wealthy white men that wrote the guidelines and voted them into law are much more likely to do cocaine and poor minorities in the inner city are much more likely to use crack, the guidelines consider crack to be approximately 100 times worse than cocaine. finally, the supreme court has recognized that this is complete bullshit and sentencing judges can look at this pathetic racism when fashioning a sentence for someone caught with crack that is closer to that suggested if they happened to be caught with the same substance in a different form.

the supremes took another big, yet obvious step, with the guidelines. a few years ago the court declared that the guidelines violated the right to a jury trial (something that was rather intuitive to anyone who bothered to examine the basic meaning of the bill of rights)...today they took that to its logical conclusion. since the supremes struck down the mandatory nature of the guidelines, some of the circuit courts (appeals) tried to get around the clear decision of the supremes by declaring that a sentence that departed from the guidelines was per se unreasonable, and thus unconstitutional. unfortunately, every sentence overturned as "unreasonable" was below the guideline range...if you happened to be sentenced above the guideline range, the courts would uphold it in a heartbeat. today the supremes slapped those fools around (including the 10th...not that I am bitter towards those two-faced space queens on their high horses) and told us all what we already knew...if the guidelines aren't mandatory that means they aren't mandatory. when the statute says 5 to 40...the judge can go 5 to 40. imagine that...the law means what it says...who would've thunk it.

in another case, we learned again that mandatory sentences have gone too far and will be chipped away when possible. in a case involving a mandatory sentence for "using a firearm in connection with a drug offense" the supreme court went further than even I imagined. take a gun in exchange for drugs...that ain't use. for years the courts have been screwing people involved in small-time drug deals because a gun was somewhere near the scene. now that is all into coming into question. now the supremes have said that "use" means "use." again...it seems rather fucking obvious, but the courts have been fucking it up for years...and it took some uber-conservative justices to set the record straight.

so yea...I'm torn with these folks - in just about every area but what I spend my life doing they get it wrong. in my field...they get it right more than not. if only we could have one court for criminal appeals and one for everything else...

along with this good news...ullr has arrived. the mountains are getting hammered with more storms on the way, opening day is less than four days away, and the steeps will be open. the cat is lying before the furnace toasting herself. I spent the night with some of my favorite people listening to good music. the skies are grey with no blue in sight. the holidays are approaching. I'm eagerly awaiting news from new york. all in all, things are going well...and despite their best attempts to destroy everything that is great about this world, I have hope...or maybe its just the beer.

we will live like our ghosts will live...