my gawd - "li, thank you!1" michael douglas to liberace nt

[UTUSN]

[nolabear]

1. Well, yeah. What was that about his son, though?

"I hope they'll let me see you soon"?

[rug]

2. He's in solitary.

[orleans]

4. i just googled this, i didn't know anything about it.

two years in solitary? omg! for a non violent offense?
we're fucking crazy.

[handmade34]

6. yup... fucking crazy

"...Continued Douglas: “Obviously at first, I was certainly disappointed in my son. But I’ve reached a point now where I’m very disappointed with the system. And as you can see from what Attorney General Eric Holder has been doing regarding our prison system, I think things are going to be revived, regarding nonviolent drug addicts. My last comment on that is the United States represents 5 percent of the world’s population and we have 25 percent of the world’s prisoners.”

one reason I like "Orange is the New Black"... the woman (Piper Kerman) whose book it is loosely based on, is doing much work towards informing people of the 'broken system'

also privatizing the system is creating much dysfunction

[orleans]

11. i'm wondering when did this shit start? under bush?

how long does it take to straighten this out?

growing up one of the big things i heard about was never screw up (with drugs or anything else) in mexico because, as word had it, you'd languish in their prisons. apparently the US thought that was a really good idea.

this story really blows me away.

[handmade34]

12. very convoluted history...

over simplification, but...

1980 Supreme Court said it was constitutional for Texas to maintain a 3 strikes law and everything went downhill from there...

Nixon had started the war on drugs but at that time most of the money went to treatment... Reagan came into office and mangled the Mental Health Law that Carter had put in place... and the money for the war on drugs went from treatment to law enforcement...

"The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 was the first major law of the War on Drugs passed by the U.S. Congress. Among other things, they changed the system of federal supervised release from a rehabilitative system into a punitive system. The 1986 Act also prohibited controlled substance analogs. The bill enacted new mandatory minimum sentences for drugs, including marijuana..." (from wikipedia)

The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 is where the great disparity of crack/coacaine sentencing came into being...

...finally The Fair Sentencing Act of 2010 signed into law by President Obama on August 3, 2010 began to alleviate some of that and now Eric Holder (and even Rand Paul) are calling for no more mandatory sentencing...

FAMM is a good source of information... http://famm.org

[UTUSN]

3. he also mentioned his "wife catherine" nt

[Tuesday Afternoon]

5. I hate I missed that.

[UTUSN]

7. Here 'tis!1 He crammed STUNNING into two minutes on so many topics!1

Even before he got up there, the presenters read off something about somebody with "bipolar disorder" (not referring to Catherine Z-J). Then Michael won and fairly much sexually harassed Matt DAMON with a series of jokes -- "this award is a two hander. Which half do you want, top or bottom?!1 Top, that's what I thought!1" -- then he thanked "my wife Catherine" and mentioned all his children, ending with hoping he will be allowed to visit his imprisoned son soon. And ended the whole thing by pointing the Emmy at the ceiling and saying, "Lee, thank you!1" Just mesmerizing!1

[Tuesday Afternoon]

8. Class Act, really. funny and sincere and heartfelt. thanks for the clip

[Aristus]

9. He's looking more and more like his Dad all the time.

A fine classy father and son duo...

[mnhtnbb]

10. Remarkable resemblance to his dad.