Covering the AG’s latest push for a Booker fix

This new AP article discusses the recent speech by AG Gonzales (discussed here) that pushes for a Booker fix as part of a violent crime initiative.  Here is the start of the article:

The Bush administration is trying to roll back a Supreme Court decision by pushing legislation that would require prison time for nearly all criminals.  The Justice Department is offering the plan as an opening salvo in a larger debate about whether sentences for crack cocaine are unfairly harsh and racially discriminatory.  Republicans are seizing the administration’s crackdown, packaged in legislation to combat violent crime, as a campaign issue for 2008. 

In a speech June 1 to announce the bill, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales urged Congress to re-impose mandatory minimum prison sentences against federal convicts — and not let judges consider such penalties “merely a suggestion.”  Such an overhaul, in part, “will strengthen our hand in fighting criminals who threaten the safety and security of all Americans,” Gonzales said in the speech, delivered three days before the FBI announced a slight national uptick in violent crime during 2006.

Judges, however, were livid over the proposal to limit their power.  “This would require one-size-fits-all justice,” said U.S. District Judge Paul G. Cassell, chairman of the Criminal Law committee of the Judicial Conference, the judicial branch’s policy-making body.  “The vast majority of the public would like the judges to make the individualized decisions needed to make these very difficult sentencing decisions,” Cassell said.  “Judges are the ones who look the defendants in the eyes. They hear from the victims. They hear from the prosecutors.”