... Senator Obama would appoint liberal activist judges and supply them with greater sentencing discretion. I will appoint judges who will strictly interpret our Constitution. Senator Obama's judges would coddle criminals. I will appoint judges who will hold criminals accountable.
McCain is clueless in labeling Obama as soft on crime. As I've written repeatedly during the past 18 months, Obama has not been progressive enough on crime issues. And Joe Biden (see here, here and here) never met a crime bill or a funding proposal for law enforcement he didn't like and adapt as his very own. (More here and here.)
Does McCain think it's just coincidence or a mistake that police unions around the country endorse Obama-Biden?
Which just goes to show how much worse McCain would be. McCain wants to keep living in the 90's and maintain that decade's failed tough-on-crime policies that cost the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars and cost non-violent offenders years of their lives.
He can't understand that we need to be smart about crime, not just tough on crime. McCain won't only not end the disparity and unfairness of mandatory minimum sentences, he'll add more of them and appoint judges who will refuse to deviate from them when justice requires.
Obama/Biden are not be as progressive on crime issues as they should be. They certainly aren't "liberals" or "soft" on crime. But they are far more reasonable than McCain and at least are educated about the topic.
While not sufficient in my view, at least Obama and Biden will fight for the constitutional rights of the innocent and look at alternative means of punishment for non-violent offenders. McCain won't even do that. He's a lock 'em up, throw away the key kind of guy and makes no bones about it.
More examples of Obama's crime positions taken from his Senate website:
Senator Obama cosponsored the Combat Meth Act, which provides more money for fighting methamphetamine (meth), tightens controls on the sale of meth ingredients, and provides assistance to the children of meth abusers. The legislation would limit access to cold medicines containing pseudoephedrine, the primary ingredient used to make methamphetamine. This bill passed the Senate and became law in the 109th Congress.
...Senator Obama has supported greater funding to fight meth through the use of Byrne Justice Assistance Grants.
Senator Obama cosponsored Dru's Law which creates a nationwide sex offender database and requires greater monitoring of sex offenders upon their release from prison. The bill passed the Senate in July of 2005. This legislation was incorporated into a larger bill, the Adam Walsh Child Protection Act, which Senator Obama supported and which has been signed into law.
He also cosponsored the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act. This bill increases the penalties for sex crimes against children under the age of 12 and creates a national Internet site known as the National Sex Offender Public Registry. The bill would also provide grants to local law enforcement to assist in preventing and investigating sex crimes against minors.
Senator Obama is a cosponsor of the KIDS Act, which requires convicted sex offenders to provide their Internet identifiers, such as e-mail addresses and instant message addresses, for inclusion into the national sex offender registry.
Obama describing his record on crime to the Chicago Tribune in 2004 (10/8/04):
"I voted for, or co-sponsored myself, over 100 bills that strengthened criminal penalties for everything ranging from sex offenders to drug dealers to domestic violence abusers," he said. "It would be very hard to argue, if you look at the totality of my record, that I somehow have been soft on crime. ... Those who have tried to paint me recently as being too liberal are some of the colleagues I worked most closely with. They never held that view until election season."
If Obama and Biden are soft on crime, can you imagine the reactionary, repressive policies McCain would create? McCain, who even bailed on his signature issue, torture.
There's only one way to prevent a criminal justice travesty on November 4 and that's to vote against John McCain. Not just because he's a blowhard on crime but because he's clueless, ill-informed, out-of-step and a throwback to the failed policies of yesteryear.
