Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

Part 64(a), some Russian meddling material from F6, these from Thursday, 11/30/17, headed,
Remarks by President Trump in Press Gaggle After 12th East Asia Summit | Manila, Philippines
https://investorshub.advfn.com/boards/read_msg.aspx?message_id=136560385

Third video down

Attorney General Sessions testifies to the House Judiciary Committee

Streamed live on Nov 14, 2017 by House Judiciary Committee Hearings [ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVvv3JRCVQAl6ovogDum4hA , https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVvv3JRCVQAl6ovogDum4hA/videos ]

House Judiciary Committee
Oversight of the Department of Justice
Full Committee
November 14, 2017 10:00 AM
2141 RAYBURN HOUSE OFFICE BUILDING
https://judiciary.house.gov/hearing/oversight-department-justice-2017/ [with this YouTube embedded]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyxDzh5IOV8 [with comments] [also at e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-5IU_xdAIg (title adapted from; comments disabled)]

Goodlatte's intro scathingly critical of Holder and Lynch while praising, among other things, Sessions' crackdown on gun crimes by urging
US Attorneys to use federal sentencing guidelines. On the worth or not of that route, and on the worthiness of Goodlatte's praise, see

Trump’s Promised Crackdown on Gun Crimes Is Coming into Focus
Dan Friedman Jan 27 2017, 7:31am
[...]
Sessions has lavished praise on Project Exile, a program begun in Richmond, Virginia, in 1997 that prosecuted gun crimes using federal sentencing guidelines, and warned those convicted that they would be "exiled" to lengthy stays in faraway federal prisons. The effort, versions of which were later implemented across the country, coincided chronologically with a 31 percent drop in Richmond's murder rate.

But studies have since cast doubt on Project Exile's impact. In a 2003 paper, two University of Chicago professors concluded that the city's gun violence might have fallen at about the same rate without the program; similarly sized cities enjoyed comparable declines in violence, while continuing to handle gun cases through local and state courts.

Steven Raphael, a public policy professor at the University of California at Berkeley who co-authored the study, said it is consistent with other research that has found little evidence that stiffer sentences deter crimes "that already face tough prison sentences."

"States already prosecute felonies committed with firearms, as well as other weapons offenses," Raphael said in an email. "It's not clear that federalizing prosecution adds much deterrence."

Researchers have generally found police presence in high crime areas to be a more important intervention, Raphael said.

Beyond the question of its efficacy, a key challenge for Sessions's plans to step up gun prosecutions may be pushback from affected communities.

David Kennedy heads the National Network for Safe Communities at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. He noted that during the 1990s, fears of violent crime associated with the crack epidemic and sharp increases in homicide helped tough sentencing efforts like Project Exile win public support. But today, Kennedy said he believes Sessions faces a "quite unfavorable social setting" for the approach he appears to be preparing.

In recent years, bipartisan concern has emerged toward the mandatory sentences that have resulted in disproportionately high rates of incarceration for young black men. Sessions's crackdown on individual illegal gun carriers would also likely come in the absence of a similar push against the traffickers who supply them, as the Attorney General nominee has given no indication that he will seek the resources and tools necessary for stanching the flow of firearms in the black market.
https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/wnz5mb/trumps-promised-crackdown-on-gun-crimes-is-coming-into-focus

Mr. Conyer's introduction was more on focus as he struggled through his outline of Republican
denial in the Russian meddling case. Conyers stopped short of his time at 43:13 of the video.