Dick was in town Thursday. I know, everybody who's stuck with the moniker "Richard" basically gets to suffer at the hands of the Beavis crowd, but I figured Richard Thornburgh had earned it.
Bush's former attorney general dropped into our little law school on the prairie to say a few words about his tenure at the Dept. of Justice. He was, after all, the man who gave his prosecutors precious little leeway in charging criminals back in the late 80s, putting real teeth in the "War" on Drugs. Now, Dick tried to sell us on his past support for the Americans With Disabilities Act, a civil rights masterpiece, but I wasn't buying.
I knew Dick's efforts, combined with a Congress full of people hell-bent on proving they're more anti-dope than the next guy, helped create a statutory scheme in which, if you know what kind of car your local crack dealer drives, you're basically going to federal prison.
And none of this cozy-up-to-your-cellmate-until parole mamby-pamby stuff, either. No, in Dick's World, mandatory minimum sentences mean you're in with the hardcore boys (you know, three strikes and youre out? But that's another era.) and you're in for at least 5 years, in some cases 20.
Dick probably thought it was safe to come into a small midwestern state where all three branches of government are controlled by the Christian Coalition. (they go by "Republican Party" elsewhere. I don't think they bother with the distinction here.) Dick probably thought that after Waco, Ruby Ridge, the Freemen, Oklahoma City and the Clinton scandal du jour, his time at Justice makes Janet Reno appear just this side of John Mitchell on the AG popularity meter. (I think Reno & Mitchell shared a cigar brand. HIGH LEVEL CONSPIRACY! I'll have to fact-check that.) So, Dick trotted in, sporting his best tweed and preppy brow wrinklings.
Dick wasn't safe in Iowa, though, because I was in a bad mood and tired of the inane questions lobbed in by my peers. I could feel that little spark of adrenaline newspaper reporters get just before they spring the trap on some poor slob whose misfortune it is to be standing behind a microphone at the wrong time. I knew better than to let loose, but it had been so long. (Is there a support group for any of this?)
"Mr. Thornburgh," I said. "When prosecutors use leeway for potential defendants and do a sentence bargain based on information provided by that person, aren't they doing the right thing by letting the street user go and concentrating on the bigger fish? Aren't those decisions just good lawyering?" I asked.
The question was a direct hit on the policies that made Thorburgh a big name in federal criminal law. Here's where the thing breaks down and gets strange. I would write in that I had taken a shot of mescaline but that would be infringing on a trademark and a also a blatant lie. So, I must tell you:
Thornburgh came out AGAINST the mandatory minimums, and while he defended his own policies, he said the minimums imposed by Congress had wreaked havoc upon them -- which is true.
Not to be deterred, I tried to skewer him as former head of INS, asking him what he thought about California's little immigration proposal. He called it "beyond the pale" and expressed deep misgivings about U.S. immigration policies working at all -- which is the correct answer!
Ronald Reagan would turn over in his -- wait, make that Nixon or somebody. What was Thorburgh doing? Having his way with a lonely liberal on a cold January night? If so, shame on him, and shame on me for buying into it.
Or, possibly, he's running for President, testing Iowa's waters. If so, and here's where it gets really interesting -- Dick is going to run as a pro-immigration, anti-tougher sentences, pro-ADA candidate . . . in the GOP.
Poor Dick.
John Hedgecoth takes up a seat almost every day at the University of Iowa College of Law, where his three year old car is among the dumpiest in the parking lot. And 50,000 miles, Omigod. No dittoheads were harmed in the writing of this piece.