Meet your new thread, same as the old thread.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

The U.S. Sentencing Commission recently decided to (slightly) reduce the over-inflated prison sentences for crack-cocaine crimes, which are punished far more severely than equivalent powder-cocaine crimes—an illogical disparity that does little but needlessly bloat our prisons. Then, yesterday, the commission voted unanimously to apply those reduced sentences retroactively, affecting some 20,000 current inmates. It's a modest chink in the incarceration state, but hey, it's something.

Now, Barack Obama had favored making the guidelines retroactive—after all, if crack penalties were absurdly high, then they were absurdly high for people already convicted. But Hillary Clinton, quaking at the thought of Rudy Giuliani saying mean things about her, opposed retroactivity. And now her campaign is attacking Obama on his stance, although Marc Ambinder serves up some sweet, sweet caveats:

• Campaign aides have said that Obama's support for retroactivity in drug sentences would kill him with tough-on-crime white independents. But the Supreme Court, in a 7 to 2 decision yesterday that included Antonin Scalia, endorsed the view that judges could ignore sentencing guidelines when handing down prison terms for distributing crack versus powder cocaine, and a Bush administration panel today voted seven to nothing to impose retroactivity.

It's an inspiring campaign theme: Hillary Clinton—to the right of Antonin Scalia on a drug war that's cost $500 billion with nothing to show for it.

Bradford Plumer at TNR