Reply to AP: Biden will not stop override of DC crime laws

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I know some will complain about DC Home Rule issues, but I do think the US Congress has a responsibility to protect citizens visiting from outside of DC to see the sights or to do a Capitol Hill visit.  A safe environment is more important than woke progressive politics in Capitol city.[/quote]

+1 Exactly--thank you!![/quote]

Explain the correlation between an updated criminal code that goes into place in three years and tourist safety. I'm very curious[/quote]

Does there need to be a correlation?  The fact that the revisions would not take effect for several years does not make it any less stupid.  If the DC Council wants to be treated like a serious institution, then they should act like one.  Carjackings, street robberies, etc. are out of control around here.[/quote]

Please explain how these changes would lead to more car jackings, street robberies, etc. And please read through this before you give the tired excuses about "lowering sentences"

https://wamu.org/story/23/01/27/dc-criminal-code-overhaul-details/[/quote]

The point of lowering the maximum sentence is to decrease leverage, which decreases the likelihood of punishment, which increases the rates.  And I'm sorry, 4 years for carjacking is just too little. It's a serious, dangerous, invasive crime. Nobody "accidentally" or innocently carjacks such that they deserve a break.  There is no nicer form of carjacking.

Also I'm not really an "optics" person, but the optics of focusing on decreasing carjacking sentences (even if you just believe it is on paper) when we are in the middle of a carjacking epidemic just looks clueless.  [/quote]

The current maximums are almost never actually what anyone is sentenced to, though. The point of lowering the maximum sentence was to make it so the law reflected what judges are actually sentencing defendants to. And anyway, most of the bill was doing things like defining the elements of crimes (which is helpful for prosecuting them!) and adding various degrees of crimes so the worst offenders could be treated more harshly.

No question that the supporters of the law blew the "optics" of it all, though.[/quote]

The council could have passed all the stuff like defining the elements of a crime and getting rid of outdated laws and whatnot -- i.e., 90 percent of the bill -- without the other stuff that drew all the attention, however. Congress wouldn't have noticed it, and it would have become law. But instead, it did what it did and now they all look like tin-earned political clowns who also most likely doomed their chances of ever advancing any higher in Democratic circles (I know Charles Allen has some really big delusions of grandeur about his political career, because he's not shy about talking about them; those dreams are now 100 percent dead, because he's a pariah now).
[/quote]

No one in D.C. politics could possibly hope to advance any higher in Democratic circles before or after this vote — the top elected office in the city is mayor, you can't become a governor, we don't have senators, and we only have one non-voting House seat (which Charles Allen is not about to defeat Eleanor Holmes Norton for). [/quote]

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