As befits an administration that exalts leftist politics over law enforcement, the Obama administration has been plagued by several “revolts” by its law enforcement arms. When President Obama nominated Debo Adegbile, who led an ideologically-based defense campaign for a convicted cop killer, the FBI Agents Association balked. When Attorney General Holder came out in favor of legislation that would drastically cut back on mandatory minimum sentences for drug pushers, the National Association of Assistant United States Attorneys balked.
Now, the Obama administration’s Drug Enforcement Administration administrator, Michele Leonhart, is speaking out against the same pet Holder legislation. The Huffington Post reports that during testimony last week before the Senate Judiciary Committee a certain “farmer from Iowa” asked Leonhart about the role of mandatory minimums in drug cases. She responded:
Having been in law enforcement as an agent for 33 years, [and] a Baltimore City police officer before that, I can tell you that for me and for the agents that work for DEA, mandatory minimums have been very important to our investigations. We depend on those as a way to ensure that the right sentences are going to the … level of violator we are going after.
Leonhart has clashed with the Obama administration on other drug related matters, as well:
Leonhart has already reportedly slammed the president behind closed doors for comparing weed to alcohol, and has said that the legalization of marijuana in Washington and Colorado — which the Obama administration allowed to move forward — has only made DEA agents “fight harder.”
She’s also suggested that gangs are taking over in Washington and Colorado in the wake of marijuana legalization, even as Holder has said he’s “cautiously optimistic” about how things are going in those states.
In Holder’s case “cautiously optimistic” is probably a euphemism for “doesn’t give a damn.”
The lightening of sentences for drug offenders is another front in the war on standards, a war the success of which means major American decline. As Bill Otis puts it:
How does a civilization choose decline? In many ways, one of which is by deciding to go easier on its criminals.
With serious consideration of slashing even minimum drug penalties, attacks on any imposition of the death penalty, clemency for heroin pushers, dumbed down sentencing, psychobabble defenses, and the ubiquitous snarl of “racism!” to banish any thought of accountability — decline is what America, with its current enervated and morally blase’ Administration, is choosing.
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