“It doesn’t hurt to show that you
actually care. This is a statement that is not just symbolic, but actually
shows that you care about people. It doesn’t hurt to show some empathy.”
That was Sen. John Cornyn’s
(R-Texas) in
the New York Times, endorsing legislation that will
result in the early release of thousands of federal prison inmates.
Cornyn, whose sense of empathy must
have developed at Washington, D.C. cocktail parties, should prove he truly
cares for people whose neighborhoods have been ravaged by drugs and violent
crimes by moving to those one of those neighborhoods so he can see for himself
the impact of releasing early thousands of hardened drug kingpins and violent
criminals back on to the streets of America.
Cornyn’s ‘empathetic’ conscience
needs to meet the reality of the street, where a
77 percent recidivism rate amongst released prisoners is the norm, with 25 percent of those crimes being violent and nature.
This is something Cornyn would have been acutely aware of when he was an
Associate Justice to the Texas Supreme Court as well as the state’s Attorney
General who once famously
argued that Texas’ death penalty law should be the model for the nation.
A truly empathetic response is to
protect neighborhoods and not to release criminals en masse. And the best
action that Congress can take is to reject any legislation that releases
thousands of criminals early.
What is truly remarkable is that
while in the Senate minority, Cornyn
argued vociferously against early criminal release in 2011 in a letter when the
sentencing commission implemented retroactive sentencing reductions of the Fair
Sentencing Act of 2010.
And again in
2014 when the Smarter Sentencing Act of 2014 was proposed, the precursor of the
current legislation, Cornyn objected citing the
nation’s “historic heroin epidemic” and warning of tens of thousands of
“additional murders, rapes, robberies, aggravated assaults, burglaries, thefts,
auto thefts, and incidents of arson.”
If anything, the rise of the use of
heroin has become more endemic since 2014, and the streets more dangerous.
What’s more in that same letter, Cornyn wrote this about these same drug traffickers
that he would release early today, “The notion that drug traffickers are
non-violent is simply incorrect.”
Cornyn continued, “Among other
factors disputes over money cannot be settled with a lawsuit. Violence and
threats are the norm.
It is impossible to reconcile
Cornyn’s new-found empathy for hardened criminals with the clear facts of his
2010 and 2014 letters where he took exactly the opposite stance against early
criminal release.
Just
in Dec. 2015 on the Senate floor
Cornyn called the opportunity to let more prisoners go early “magical.”
Magical?
An enterprising reporter might ask
about his newfound faith in the good will of violent drug kingpins who he
apparently now thinks should be put back on the streets of America. When did John Cornyn’s empathy
switch from the victims of the destruction of families, friends and communities
to the purveyors of death resting safely in federal prison? What happened to
John Cornyn?
Rick Manning is the President of
Americans for Limited Government.
http://netrightdaily.com/2016/02/sen-john-cornyn-mass-criminal-release-shows-empathy/
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