Insightful commentary on the Sensenbrenner flap

In today’s San Francisco Chronicle, Debra Saunders has this thoughtful commentary about the remarkable letters that House Judiciary Chairman James Sensenbrenner wrote to the Chief Judge of the Seventh Circuit and AG Gonzales concerning decisions in a drug sentencing case.  (Background and commentary on this matter are linked below.)  Here’s a taste:

After years of pushing through draconian mandatory-minimum sentences that often force judges to sentence low-level, nonviolent, first-time offenders to years, decades even, behind bars, Sensenbrenner has made himself a grand inquisitor, free to challenge any legal decisions that don’t work for him….

Meanwhile, you have to wonder why a member of Congress felt free to hector the judiciary and executive branches. It’s not enough for him to write laws.  Now he wants to oversee how cases are tried and make sure that sentences for first-time offenders are long enough….

It’s easy for Washington to enact long sentences.  Unlike judges, House members never have to look into the faces of the accused.  They never have to worry if a person who is easily redeemable will lose her young adulthood to prison.  They don’t have to see the humanity they lock up. And so they lose their own humanity.

Prior posts:

• Sentencing from the halls of Congress
• What should be done about Sensenbrenner’s letter?
• A plain error irony in Sensenbrenner’s letters
• More buzz about Sensenbrenner letters
• More criticisms of Sensenbrenner’s “oversight”