The House-Senate Conferees met today on the Feeney Amendment. The news is not good. Senator Kennedy submitted a secondary amendment to strike the Feeney provisions altogether and direct the Sentencing Commission to study departures. That failed on a strictly party line vote, with all Democrats voting in favor and all Republicans voting against it.

Hatch and Sensenbrenner submitted an Amendment. They are presenting it as a compromise amendment that only limits prevention of downward departures to sex cases with minor children and merely requires the Commission to study other departures. It's not true. We've seen a preliminary point-by point-analysis prepared by two pre-eminent legislative analysts. We can't publish it yet because it's not in final form and we don't have the authors' permission. We hope to have a final analysis from them tomorrow and will reprint it here.

Here's what we can say for now. The Hatch-Sensenbrenner Amendment Retains Much of the Underlying Feeney Amendment and Dramatically Limits Departures in All Cases. In fact, the Amendment directs the Sentencing Commission to amend the guidelines and policy statements "to ensure that the incidence of downward departures are [sic] substantially reduced." There's a lot more, stay tuned.