At least 20 states, both red and blue, have reformed their mandatory-sentencing laws in some way, and Congress is considering a bipartisan bill that would do the same for federal crimes.
John will be 72 years old by the time he is released, and his three young children will have grown up without him. The informant, who had a long history of drug offenses, was more fortunate -- he received a reduced sentence of just 18 months, and is now free. In the movie Gattaca, in the not-too-distant future, eugenics is common and DNA plays a primary role in determining your social cla**.
Due to frequent screenings, Vincent faces genetic discrimination and prejudice. The only way to achieve his dream of being an astronaut is he has to become what's called a "borrowed ladder. Under President Obama, the ranks of America's poor swelled to almost 1 in 6 people last year, reaching a new high as long-term unemployment left millions of Americans struggling and out of work. By sixth grade, Ronald Hola**ie was failing most of his cla**es, but through school choice he was able to attend a Catholic school in the D.C. area. There, he learned that he had a natural gift for composing music, but before that, his reading level was so low that he had struggled to write lyrics. This prosecution also reveals the risks of federalizing criminal law. Observers have long warned against allowing the federal government to encroach on the traditional state function of enacting and enforcing general criminal laws. Here, the federal government, through the Lacey Act, claims to enforce foreign laws against foreign and U.S. citizens. These regulations were not made by the U.S. Congress or by some executive agency, but by a foreign government with unfamiliar procedures. If the government of Honduras had actually believed these regulations to be valid, they were free to bring charges. Instead, the U.S. government prosecuted a case on what turned out to be bad law.