John Doolittle: “I strongly support the DeLay amendment. I think it is a great amendment, and I hope that it survives unscathed through…”

“I strongly support the DeLay amendment. I think it is a great amendment, and I hope that it survives unscathed through both Houses of the Congress. This deals with the most fundamental obligation of government, the reason we pay all of the huge amount of taxes that we are having to pay these days. That is, it is the job of government to restrain men from injuring one another, to quote Thomas Jefferson. It is just unconscionable that these liberal judges, unelected by the people but in office for life, have taken it upon themselves, in some cases, to inflict this kind of injury upon a community. Think of the thousands and thousands of lives that have been ruined, in many cases, or severely impacted in others, by the types of crimes that have been committed. We did a study in our State legislature years ago, and it was a pretty established fact, as a result of the study, that two-thirds of the forcible-sex felonies are committed by repeat offenders, so that by dealing with this population and incarcerating them for long periods of time, we would dramatically reduce this type of crime. Indeed, that has been the case. In California and other States where they have had mandatory sentences and where they have long terms, we have spent an awful lot of resources in California locking people up, and we have overcrowded those prisons as much as we could, and I am glad that we have, because it has made our streets safer.”