>jks. No, my point is that some of your ideas are impractical anywhere.
Which ones? I didn't realise I was suggesting anything new. Or anything that wasn't already established practice.
>jks. The FSG are complicated. They are a complicated grid that gives a range of months for certain crimes with various factors such as criminal history taken into account. They largely eliminate judicial discretion. They no not reduce the ability of prosecutoers to leverage ploea bargains with their charging policies. They result in much longer sentences for a wide variety of crimes.
So they eliminate judicial discretion, but afford unlimited discretion to the prosecution to determine sentence. What part do judges play in these trials, they seem superfluous?
And when you refer to prosecutors leveraging plea bargains, I assume you mean extorting guilty pleas by threats of disproportionate punishment otherwise?
> >Yours in support of totalitarian represssion,
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>I'm not sure a police state, which you seem to be defending, i
>
>I won't bother to ask you to stop puting words in my mouth.
Your words, above, were to the effect that you are in support of totalitarian repression. I was defending you against your own self-accusation, pointing out that though you seem to be defending some aspects of a police state (the undermining of an independent judiciary) I didn't think it was fair to characterise this as support for totalitarian repression.
> I'm a passionate civil libertarian. If you think that makes me a defender of a police state, God bless you.
I didn't sneeze, what's with the "God bless you" business?
>Anyhow, what's the basis of that challenge? Clearly it is medieval and absurd to stipulate life prison sentences for minor non-violent offenses, but we have already established that California is a state governed by (and presumably populated by as well) deranged cowboy psychos, so this outrage somehow comes as no surprise.
>
>jks. You seem to confuse California with Texas. The challenge is that it violates the Eight Amendment prohibition on grossly disproprortionate punsihmenr.
Thanks. As you can see, I'm as unfamiliar with the US constitution as the population of California. If grossly disproportionate punishment is banned then I suppose life imprisonment for minor property offenses is illegal. I have a fantasy of the legislators guilty of this breach being arbitrarily sentenced to a mandatory minimum life prison term. (To illustrate the concept of proportionate punishment.)
Texans are just cowboys, as thick as two short bricks, some of them. (In a loveable sort of way.) But I don't know if they are deranged psychos as well. Though it might just be that, unlike Californians, they don't go out of their way to boast about it, so I haven't noticed.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas