Jacob Sullum asks why the president doesn’t pardon more drug offenders:
[Obama] has implicitly acknowledged that many federal prisoners are serving unjustifiably long sentences. In 2010 he signed the Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced the senseless disparity in penalties between snorted and smoked cocaine. That law, which Congress approved almost unanimously, represents a consensus that crack offenders sentenced under the old rules got longer prison terms than they deserved. Yet it did not apply retroactively, meaning that thousands of crack offenders are still serving sentences that Congress, the president, and the attorney general admit are unjust. In his ABA speech, Holder cited the Fair Sentencing Act as evidence that Obama “strongly” believes our penal system is too big, too harsh, and too indiscriminate. If so, why hasn’t he used his clemency power more than once to shorten crack sentences that virtually everyone now agrees are too long?
The Dish 