Political Quotes

“The gentlewoman from the District of Columbia has just made a very powerful point, which is that on a whole range of offenses under the newly revised D.C. act that they want to overthrow, the criminal law is tougher in Washington, D.C., than it is in the distinguished chairman's home State of Kentucky. On carjacking, on first degree murder, on involuntary manslaughter, the people of D.C. have chosen tougher penalties, but the gentlewoman didn't arrive to denounce Kentucky as soft on crime or weak on crime and say the whole United States Congress has to turn itself into a superlegislature for Kentucky and strike their laws down. That is up to the people of Kentucky. They don't even have a carjacking statute. You have to use armed robbery there, which gets you up to 20 years in prison. In the District of Columbia, they have a specific carjacking statute that could get you 24 years in prison. That is the beauty of the Federal system, which I thought our colleagues supported, the idea that people decide at the local level whether they want tougher laws, as in the District of Columbia, or weaker laws, as in Kentucky. That is up to the people of the States to go offense by offense. I am afraid that my friend and colleague, Ms. Norton, is taking them a bit too seriously because they are not really interested in scrutinizing the actual criminal justice policy. They just want to kick the people of Washington, D.C., around.…”