Former prez regrets not ending crack/powder disparity

Former President Bill Clinton said he regrets not bringing an end to the disparity in sentencing between offenses for crack and power cocaine during his administration.

“I regret more than I can say that we didn’t do more on it,” he said last week during a keynote address last week at a University of Pennsylvania symposium commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Kerner Commission report on the causes of racial disturbances in the 1960s, according to a USA Today report. “I’m prepared to spend a significant portion of whatever life I’ve got left on the earth trying to fix this because I think it’s a cancer,” he said, referring to the disparate impact the sentencing imbalance has had on blacks.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission reduced, but did not eliminate, the difference in the mandatory sentencing guidelines for crack and power cocaine offenses, and the revised guidelines went into effect retroactively on Monday.

Hume on presidential linguistic skills

Here is Fox News’ Brit Hume speaking to DRI conference goers on the eloquence of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush:

“If I was in trouble – I mean really bad trouble, and I could have anybody in the world representing me . . . and I say this to a room full of lawyers, I’d want Clinton,” Hume said. “I sort of feel like he could make a jury believe anything.”

As for the current president: “President Bush has had some confrontations with the English language . . . and the English language has won.”