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Comment by danschumann | Hacker News Reader

I think weed should be legal. I also think Sessions should enforce every law, lest he pick and choose what is illegal and what is not, thus becoming the most powerful law-maker ( or unmaker ) in the land.

Passing a law is the act of the legislative, and repealing a law is too. If he does not enforce all the laws, he basically is seizing the power of congress and repealing those laws, for his term.

Imagine Sessions chose not to enforce every law. He could choose to stop enforcing tax laws to people from his home state. No. He has to enforce every law.

It is congress's job to repeal the stupid law, and I hope they do, especially if this creates more pressure for them.

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Unfortunately that's not how it works, at all. Especially when there are legal conflicts between the state and federal governments like this. There are so many laws on the books, many of them horribly outdated, and legislatures are overworked / grid locked. Often, the only way for us to have a working body of law that makes sense is for the government to simply stop enforcing the outdated ones.

In the case of the Obama era Pot rules, the federal government had basically said "Rather than enforce our unilateral law, we're going to allow individual states to decide how they feel and only enforce the prohibition in states that continue to request it." Which makes perfect sense. Once enough states had legalized it, it would create momentum to legalize it on the federal level. It made perfect sense for the federal government to get out of the way and let that process play out.

Enforcing the federal law in states that legalize it is just going to set up a battle between those states and the federal government, with a lot of very costly court cases and headaches for the various agencies tasked with enforcement.

Yes, the government has some prosecutorial discretion, the legal limits of which are uncertain. But there is no legal ambiguity or conflict as to federal government's authority to enforce drug laws (as I originally read your post to suggest, though perhaps you have edited it?). Federal law is supreme and the Supreme Court has already ruled on this particular issue, going so far as to allow the punishment of someone who was growing marijuana in his backyard for personal use in compliance with the state medical marijuana law. The feds could legally walk into a recreational pot shop and arrest all the employees and customers, and legal arguments to the contrary wouldn’t really go anywhere.

But it’s worth noting that they can no longer do the same thing to medical marijuana dispensaries and patients because of the relatively recent Rohrabacher–Farr amendment in the federal budget that prohibits spending money on enforcing federal drug laws against medical marijuana programs that are compliant with state laws.

Correct, and in specific, the supremacy clause of the constitution guarantees that federal law overrules state law. I don't see any state AG's having much luck suing the DoJ against this as it is clear as mud:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supremacy_Clause

> against this as it is clear as mud:

Mud is opaque. The phrase "clear as mud" means "not clear at all", or "baffling".

(I only point this out because there are peoplereading HN with English as a second language, and some of them are interested in idiom. I don't care how you use language, and I'm not trying to "correct" you.)

Unless sarcasm is intended

Yep, though I do disagree with the logic of the Supreme Court case I mentioned. The federal government argued it was a legitimate exercise of Congress’s constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce. But growing weed in your backyard for personal use is clearly neither interstate, nor commerce. Alas, the commerce clause has been widely abused in many similar ways with the Supreme Court’s blessing.

That's only half the picture. There's also the 10th Amendment, which says that powers not delegated to the feds belong to the states or the people. Federal drug laws rely on the interstate commerce power, even though they also regulate conduct that is sometimes purely intrastate and/or purely non-commercial. The most natural reading of the Constitution is that the feds have no authority here. The Supreme Court disagreed in Wickard and Raich, but Wickard was poorly reasoned rationalization for political purposes and Raich does not stand except by relying on Wickard.
I mean, for all practical purposes, the feds will do what they want. But if you're going to cite the text of the Constitution, the feds are breaking the law here. It takes case law to justify what they're doing, not just the text.
Just a thought: Why did alcohol prohibition require a constitutional amendment but drug prohibition didn't?

I'm all for a faithful reading of the Constitution, and I agree that the federal government has overstepped the intended bounds, but it's ultimately irrelevant. For legal purposes, the Constitution is whatever the Supreme Court says it is. If you want them to be more faithful to the original meaning, appoint judges who feel the same way.

> Just a thought: Why did alcohol prohibition require a constitutional amendment but drug prohibition didn't?
Prohibitionists wanted an amendment because at that point in time, no amendment had ever been overturned.

A properly-ratified amendment cannot be overturned, unless it decreases a state's share of the votes in the Senate without its consent. There are at least two reasons prohibitionists sought an amendment:
1) The Supreme Court at the time did not take the expansive view of the Commerce Clause that it has today, so it may very well have declared a federal prohibition law unconstitutional.
2) The amendment didn't give Congress the power to ban alcohol, it banned alcohol. That meant that legalizing alcohol required another amendment. This was a huge win for the prohibitionists.

> A properly-ratified amendment cannot be overturned
GP probably meant “repealed” rather than “overturned”.

> Just a thought: Why did alcohol prohibition require a constitutional amendment but drug prohibition didn't?
It probably didn't; the Wartime Prohibition Act was passed before the 18th Amendment was ratified and generally viewed not to require the amendment; this was never tested because by the time it went into effect, the amendment had been ratified.
The Amendment made prohibition a permanent policy as long as it wasn't repealed—which at that point was unprecedented—and was considered valuable for that reason.

Yes, but constitutionally, does the federal government have the power to make pot illegal. They certainly didn't in the early 1900s when they first tried, thus their stamp act work around.

The fist portion of parent's post is perhaps controversial, but it's not necessarily mistaken. The scope of the executive's power to purposefully under-enforce laws is a bit of a constitutional conundrum. Even among the cases on this topic that have made it to SCOTUS, the opinions were pretty well split and no clear doctrines were handed down. Also, most historical examples of this use of executive power were not tested by the judiciary. So, the issue is murky at best.
The second portion of the parent's post is categorically not mistaken. If you've ever lived in a deep red state, you know that AGs are more than willing to spend millions of taxpayer dollars on a hope and a prayer to try and defend blatantly incorrect legal theories. Just because there's no hope of winning a court case doesn't mean that state AGs won't waste millions trying.

Yes, the limits of prosecutorial discretion are legally murky. What I'm referring to is the legality of enforcing a valid federal law that conflicts with a state law; there is no question whatsoever that the federal law is supreme and may be enforced.
As for grand-standing state AGs, that's not just a red state thing. A few examples come to mind from recent months alone. Look at the Washington State AG, filing all sorts of clearly losing political lawsuits, e.g. suing a motel for sharing guest-list information with the federal government, on the theory that it violates state consumer protection law. Or look at the various state AG's who are hopelessly suing over the net neutrality repeal. These are losing cases, filed as a red meat for their electoral base.

Contrary to the idealistic view courts do not simply judge cases on the merits and the law but most definitely do take into account practical concerns about enforceability and public opinion.
Courts will generally not make rulings that undermine their own authority, so if they see that their ruling will be ignored anyway, that does shape their opinion.
After many state referendums legalizing cannabis, especially in western states which are already hostile to the federal government, the Supreme Court would think long and hard about the potential constitutional crisis that could arise from going against the popular will on this issue.
I expect they will find some new justifications for a more nuanced approach if the issue is put to them again.

> There are so many laws on the books, many of them horribly outdated, and legislatures are overworked / grid locked. Often, the only way for us to have a working body of law that makes sense is for the government to simply stop enforcing the outdated ones.
Normalising this is a dangerous precedent. It leads to the situation where every citizen is technically a criminal according to the letter of the law, but it's not enforced as long as you don't stand out. But as soon as you annoy someone in government, they can choose to arrest and imprison you.

> Normalising this is a dangerous precedent
Not really, and even if so, we are a few centuries too late to do anything about it.
Having unenforceable laws in a necessity of how the legal system works. If a law is ruled to be unconstitutional it does not magically get removed from the books. That requires legislative action, but why waste time in the legislature on something with no practical effect?

That is different, such laws are unenforceable because they have been ruled to be so by a court. The problem is with laws that are unenforced, but are still enforcable. If the situation of having unenforced laws becomes normalized, then legislatures will indeed not "waste time" removing them, and such laws will be only unenforced until some official decides they don't like you.

I doubt that people whose lives/finances have been ruined defending themselves against vindictive/overzealous prosecutors and litigious citizens would agree that this is not a dangerous precedent. Being dragged through the courts based on outdated or unreasonably applied laws can ruin a person's finances or reputation even when they successfully defend themselves.
The minors on trial for sex crimes for sending nude pictures of themselves, as well as innovative business being stifled buy outdated protectionist regulations, may also have something to say about it.
Outdated, unreasonable, misinterpreted, and in some cases know unconstitutional laws, can be used as tools to attack and harass.
The fact the Constitutional action is not being taken to remove these laws and regulations from the books is not an argument for them to continue existing, but rather an argument for the need to change how the government operates in regards to updating and clarifying the law.

>Often, the only way for us to have a working body of law that makes sense is for the government to simply stop enforcing the outdated ones.
Fairly enforcing every law on the books regardless of a person's income or gender and ending plea deals, which would tie up the court systems, would create a disaster. But it is something we need, because the law as is, where everything is illegal and the police target whomever makes them mad is even worse of a disaster. (Yes, police do consistently enforce some laws, like no murder, but there are far too many laws on the books police pick and choose to enforce as it suits their prejudices).
>with a lot of very costly court cases and headaches for the various agencies tasked with enforcement.
Sounds good to me. When those agencies are so low on budget they can't enforce the laws and people get sick enough of the status quo they elect law makers who'll actually remove bad laws, then we will end up better off.

I agree with you, but it's interesting to see the "worse-is-better" philosophy applied outside of tech.
I would hope that most readers of HN who build systems for a living see the value in your argument of separation of concerns and clear interfaces: Congress makes laws, executive branch enforces those laws, states make their own laws within the latitude they have.
That said, in life like in software, when subject to resource constraints and a deadline, it's so much easier to just slap in some hardcoded conditions or let this module take on a little more responsibility than it should. I think that's what happened here in the Obama era, and like C, we had a pretty good outcome from it. But again, like C, if we let it fester too long it can cause no end of pain down the road.
So I'm actually happy with this outcome - Obama hacked in a proof of concept that seems to be working, and Sessions (though perhaps not his intention) is tackling the tech debt. I don't see this going any way but marijuana being legalized federally down the road.
(All that said, the current "system" is not great in terms of separation of concerns. It's my understanding that Congress didn't say marijuana should be illegal, but the DEA, right? The DEA should totally have no say over it.)

As a U.S. Attorney in Alabama in the 1980s, Sessions said he thought the KKK "were OK until I found out they smoked pot.”
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/12/jeff-session...

> It's my understanding that Congress didn't say marijuana should be illegal, but the DEA, right?
Incorrect. While the Attorney-General can add or remove drugs from the scehdules established under the Controlled Substances Act based on the criteria in the Act, with advice from the Secretary of Health and Human Services (in practice, as I understand, this is delegated largely to the DEA in DoJ supported by the FDA in HHS), the initial scehdules were set by Congress, and it is Congress that initially placed Marijuana in Schedule I, from which it has not been moved, when the Act was passed.

By your logic, Sessions should be directing police officers everywhere to harshly enforce all traffic signs, to harshly enforce jay walking laws, and to go bust every small poker game for illegal gambling. Enforcing all our laws with equal effort is a massive waste of resources. Plus, we still have a lot of fairly crazy old laws on the books that no one cares to enforce. It took until 2003 for the Supreme Court to say laws against sodomy were illegal. We don't want to rely on congress to choose which laws to enforce, we want to rely on smart and empathetic prosecutors. Unfortunately Sessions does not seem very empathetic.

As an example, Kansas tried to pass a law about firearm suppressors. If it was made in Kansas and strictly used inside Kansas, it would be legal. This ended in the unfortunate federal conviction of a few men.
http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article126014...
Selective enforcement is very terrible indeed. I have my doubts Trump will go after weed farmers, I think he might press Congress however for a solution.

That's nice in theory, but there are so many laws on the books and limited resources, any executive branch has to choose what laws to go after.

What's nice in theory is having net neutrality established through legislation rather than regulation. Same thing here.
I cringe a little every time something I might want gets implemented merely through the benevolence of those in power because those people change.
This should be decided through legislation, or possible through judicial neutering of the commerce clause. But the commerce clause knows no bounds thanks to the decisions made regarding the ACA, so here we are.

Why just marijuana? Why not every drug? In fact, why is possession of anything a crime?
We already have laws about improper storage of hazardous materials. Possession of anything should be legal. Now distribution and sale is a trickier subject but pretty easy as well. As long as you don't misrepresent what you're selling, it should be legal as well.
If we are for a small government, we have to walk the walk.

Unfortunately the loudest in this country are definitely not for small government. If it wasn't for the crooked party system, we might have a President right now that wants the government to take everything and make every decision for you. Those Trudeau wrong think laws are making their way into New York, it's just a matter of time.

> In fact, why is possession of anything a crime?
Child pornography. Do you want possession to not be a crime?
This is one of the most fascinating cases since it is one of the core limitations of free speech. Richard Stallman actually has some very interesting and very controversial arguments about this in regards to speech.

I think the government has gone way overboard on sentencing of having a video, as abhorrent as it may be. If you can take the morality out of it.

I'm fairly confident that the "anything" in GP refers to the concept of "any substance", as in flour, butter, chunks of metal, kilo of coke, some amount of olive oil, etc. Y'know, the usual stuff, not something like your example.

Should possession of 100 lbs of weapons grade uranium be a crime?

Nuclear weapons can hurt other people. Me using drugs can only hurt me.

> Me using drugs can only hurt me.
Only if you exist in isolation from the rest of the world, surely. Otherwise there's family, friends, anyone you might hurt whilst under the influence (verbally, physically, etc.), and that's ignoring the indirect effects of the drug trade.

I can hurt them being sober too.
If I'm willingly taking a mind-altering substance, then I'm 100% aware that I can be prosecuted if I were to hurt bystanders. Yet I don't see why I should be prosecuted merely for taking the substance if I take the necessary precautions to not hurt people.

> Should possession of 100 lbs of weapons grade uranium be a crime?
Not that I know much about these things but from a distance I don't think possession should be a crime even in this case. Of course, you need to follow proper procedure to store it.
I am more concerned with where they obtained the said material, who supplied it to them, who produced it and so on.

Police officers can choose whether or not to enforce a law.
Someone is driving 50 in a 35 mph zone. Police officer’s radar says it, the gun is calibrated, and it’s illegal to do that.
Police officer pulls that person over, then after a little chat, decided to let them go with a warning.
Presumably the reason for letting someone go is because they feel the penalty imposed by the law is too stiff in this case. Okay, then how about we reduce the penalty?
I guess I’ve always been confused why officers are allowed to do this, and unsure if this is wise.

That's still enforcing the law. Not enforcing the law would be witnessing the person driving 50 in a 35 zone and doing nothing.

First five minutes of criminology 101 "Law Enforcement vs Policing"
Law Enforcement means replacing that cop with a very small shell script hooked up to a red light camera style radar gun and a ticket printer. Policing is a somewhat more nuanced human task.
With a side dish of the Peelian Principles that define the difference between an occupying military light infantry force and a police force
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peelian_principles
So Peelian interpretation #2 its a speed trap intentional or unintentional
Peelian principle #4 if the cop was in anyway legitimately disrespectful the ticket should not be written.
Peelian principle #6 there is a diversity in humanity such that the law (aside from mandatory minimums) has always specified "up to". Its a very medical doctor Hippocratic oath like outlook of first do no harm, do the minimum necessary act to get the result.
Peelian principle #9 realistically there is no way to prevent speeding while driving the pregnant wife in labor to the ER, so why bother with a retributive ticket? Turn on the lights and escort them to make it safer, maybe. On the other hand business as usual idiot woke up late trying to speed to work to catch up, that can be permanently cured by a retributive ticket. Principle 9 is the logic behind how we treat medically impaired driving ; intentionally getting drunk equals ticket, having a heart attack means no ticket, although in an authoritarian law enforcement philosophy both are equally hazardous driving situation for the general public.
To some extent pot legalization is a classic law enforcement vs policing argument. By Peelian principles individual use while not endangering the public should never, ever, be enforced anyway regardless of law. By definition MJ can't be a hazard to yourself or the public as long as you're not driving or operating heavy machinery, so its simply not a police issue. Kinda like how some people argue immigration law enforcement is not a Peelian police issue.

> I also think Sessions should enforce every law, lest he pick and choose what is illegal and what is not, thus becoming the most powerful law-maker ( or unmaker ) in the land.
Setting prosecutorial priorities is an important executive branch function, both in terms of resource management and in terms of avoiding injustice; criminal laws are not designed to be applied by automatons, and executive officials are not doing he job they are paid to do if they act like blind automatons in applying them.

> Sessions will instead let federal prosecutors where pot is legal decide how aggressively to enforce federal marijuana law, the people said.
He's pushing the choice to whether "to defend every law" down to regional federal prosecutors. Prosecutors always decide what laws to enforce by deciding how to allocate their scarce resources. This is an established legal custom called "prosecutorial discretion."

Prosecutional discretion is legalized bigotry. The legal system has a strong history of allowing sexist, racist, and classist thought to drive how laws are enforced. Any fair or just system would allow no such discretion.

I agree that prosecutorial discretion allows racism and other prejudice to be reflected in enforcement. However, every practical system will have prosecutorial discretion because resources are always limited.

Except, Congress's ability to create a never-ending stream of new laws seems to be limitless. Maybe we should require a 3/4 majority and "slow" process to create a law but only a 1/4 minority and fast track needed to repeal one.

IMO that's the correct answer. The only reason it was flourishing was due to lack of enforcement of federal law. It needs to be addressed at the federal level or there needs to be a clear method for states to veto/nullify/ignore federal laws that they feel overreach.
I can't remember the procedure, but isn't there some method for a state to nullify a federal law that it disagrees with?

Uh, some states tried to use the concept of nullification to keep slavery around and failed. Not exactly a shining endorsement..
edit: It's important to learn about history.

As mentioned before, slavery was legal during the antebellum period, and Lincoln never publicly said he would abolish it (until he did). The political theory though is if new states are required to be slave-free, then the South would end up being suffocated by anti-slave votes over time.
It's an interesting time to try to understand.

There is a method for states to nullify federal laws they disagree with; the last time we tried it, though, the side effects were a bit undesirable.

Slavery was not against federal law when that happened. It only happened much later toward the end of the war with the 13th amendement.

As an aside, if you believe the Emancipation Proclamation to be legally binding, slavery was legal in the North longer than it was in the South.

That would be equivalent to an executive order, I’m not sure if you could call it a law, more like a regulation. But maybe things were a bit different back then.

It was, but the South had seceded, so they considered themselves a separate country with a separate (albeit hastily constructed) government, so executive orders don't apply to other countries. The legality of secession wasn't even decided until after the war, so it was a bunch of murky legal territory.

Executive orders as military directives definitely applied to the south specifically because it was a different country. The president is command and chief after all. If we considered the south a part of the USA, it would have been much murkier.

Was it ever decided?

Yes, sort of. After the end of the war, it was ruled unconstitutional (by SCOTUS), but only applied to 1869 onward. (perhaps meaning it was legal in 1861). The actual ruling is still being debated.
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/2056/was-the-sec...

That is a very interesting read

Yes, the 2nd Amendment, however that tends to not work so well.

No, outside of secession, there is no way for states to nullify federal law. This is why the federal government should be extremely limited in its dealings, the rest remaining with the state and local authorities.

You'll get an infinite number of snarky comments about the War of Northern Aggression back in the early 1860s but the more modern answer is yes states have taken cases to the Supreme Court with highly mixed results WRT nullification of laws. Its not really the kind of thing where historical batting averages have any influence on next weeks attempt, but historically I think individuals have scored slightly better with the Supreme Court than states have. Its also very fuzzy to categorize when the court case technically involves a private citizen who merely happens to be the states attorney general as his day job, is that a win for the state or just a win for some dude?

I agree regarding enforcement of every law, but I would also point out that the federal drug laws — like other laws still on the books which are not enforced — are unconstitutional, and thus that he has a responsibility given his oath of office to refrain from enforcing them.

No. The executive branch does not have the power to strike down laws it sees as unconstitutional. That is the power of the courts. The executive should follow the laws as written.

If two laws contradict one another, the executive must make a determination which to follow; it cannot follow both. It could choose to follow the newest, or the oldest, but fortunately the Constitution itself spells out the precedence of the laws: 'This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.'
The Constitution takes precedence over federal law, and the executive must refrain from executing a law which is unconstitutional.

This is a deeply naive view of how government works. The exclusive domain of the purse string rests with the legislature, that is in the constitution. If the legislature makes something illegal, but they do not fund enforcement, and the president signs that into law, there is nothing the executive can do to get more money for enforcement, they simply can't enforce it. And there are all kinds of examples of this.
Enforce every law is just nonsense talk. Absolutely they pick and choose what to enforce and what not to enforce. It's all a resource allocation, and ideology and politics determines a lot of how it gets allocated, which is why elections matter.

I feel the same way. Passing 'laws' (maybe decrees is a better word?) through the Executive Branch and even a memo in this case just sets up horrible precedent, as well as being temporary.
In a perfect world, this would actually ignite the public to the point where the Federal Government is forced to actually remove Marijuana from the banned substance list. Republicans aren't so against it today where they wouldn't be able to get it in through a compromise bill of some sort.

I agree, and taking into account objections / observations raised by other commentors, the most practical method is to stop enforcing outdated laws.
BUT, in the last ten years, we have seen same-sex marriage go from "cops looking the other way" to legitimate laws in many states (37) to a SCOTUS ruling which overturned the ban.
http://www.governing.com/gov-data/same-sex-marriage-civil-un...
And thanks to Obama and the State of Colorado, we have evidence - albeit subject to interpretation - instead of Summer of Love / Reefer Madness conjectures.
At the very least, the Congress should consider amending the meaning of Schedule I to distinguish marijuana from heroin -- a phrase similar to "toxic in large doses." IOW, the danger posed by a drug should have weight in its scheduling.
Schedule I - drugs with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.
https://www.dea.gov/druginfo/ds.shtml

>I also think Sessions should enforce every law
Do you appreciate what that would entail? Laws exists on the books so that when the political class wants someone squashed, they can. They are swinging swords of Damocles above the throats of citizens that are snipped when convenient.

Have you heard of prosecutorial discretion?

I think he has heard of it. He's making a case for how things should be not how things are. And his point is consistent with Socrates, who chose to live in compliance with the law even though it meant his death; and with Lincoln, who famously said "The best way to get a bad law repealed is to enforce it strictly." Not bad company.

Good post. I agree.

You say this as if Sessions is a good-faith actor, when clearly he is not.

I keep seeing this “good-faith” buzzword everywhere lately. It seems that the current political usage is just a way to dismiss any legitimate arguments or actions made by someone who is supposed to be a villain in the narrative.

But remember, Jeff Sessions was denied a federal judgeship in 1986 with the reason being, "He was too racist". Now how racist did you have to be in 1986 to be too racist?!
This is the same guy who in March of 1986 said he would refer to a white civil rights lawyer as (and I quote), "A disgrace to his race." He then went on to refer to the ACLU, NAACP, and National Council of Churches as communist inspired and un-american.
I'd almost argue it is hard to find anything he has done in good faith given his bias towards laws that overwhelmingly target racial minorities.
I say this as a pasty white dude who is appalled by the overwhelming amount of racism in our current executive branch.

>Now how racist did you have to be in 1986 to be too racist?!
About as racist as today. If you want to see what racism really looks like (and not merely bigotry), look to the 60s and prior.

This is really racism too. Just milder then kkk.

Well yes, what Sessions was accused of doing is systemic racism, which IMO is much worse than idiots throwing around pejoratives. Granted, the systemic racism is a lot better overall than it was. I mean lynching was legal, rape was legal, assault was legal and fighting back got your mobbed or worse.
Racism is the belief that a group of people are inferior to another group of people based solely on what they look like. I mean inferior as in inferior beings or sub-human, like a dog. Historically, US racism was particularly nasty. If you are interested, there is an iTunes podcast from Yale on Reconstruction (the whole war era really). The things you hear turn your stomach.
The WW2 propaganda about the Japanese as a dumb people is a good recent example. Of course the Japanese were very fierce and brutal fighters who would rather die than surrender. That's probably not going to get enlistment up though.

I couldn't agree with you more if I wanted to. The internment camps were an abomination and against everything I personally believe the US was originally founded upon. May we remember our folly to never repeat it.

It's interesting that you mention that. On one hand, the war department said the Japanese were dumb and easy to beat, while on the other hand they said they were too dangerous and needed to be confined.

You mean this one? https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-civil-war-and-recons...

Yes. It's very good. I listened to it for the reconstruction part, but ended up listening to the whole thing.

I've been to Selma and Montgomery, AL (google: Edmund Pettus Bridge) and the surrounding museums around it. Sadly, I'm all too familar with this side of the country as I was raised in the south, but not of it (my parents were strongly against racism in all forms).

>In initiating the case, Mr. Sessions ignored allegations of similar behaviors by whites, choosing instead to chill the exercise of the franchise by blacks because of his misguided investigation. In fact, Mr. Sessions sought to punish older black civil rights activists, advisors, and colleagues of my husband, who had been key figures in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. These were persons who, realizing the potential of the absentee vote among Blacks, had learned to use the process within the bounds of legality and had taught others to do the same. Their only sin the committed was being too successful in gaining votes.
Coretta Scott King
https://www.snopes.com/coretta-scott-king-criticize-jeff-ses...

This comment crosses over the line where the thread becomes generically political. We need to resist that here, because there's nothing of value in generically political subthreads—they're all the same. People who want to fight the same fights over and over—and there are valid reasons to want that, obviously—need to do so elsewhere.
Of course the original topic is highly politicized, but at least it was an alloy, not the pure thing, and it's important to preserve that property in the comments.

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