Senator who said US has an "under-incarceration problem" worried about "harm" from charging Trump

[ck4829]

Washington, D.C. — Senator Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) released the following statement after former President Donald Trump was indicted by a federal grand jury:

“Never before in American history has the party in power targeted a former president with criminal charges. Such an unprecedented step should not be taken lightly. But the left-wing prosecutor in New York City reportedly has charged President Trump with a convoluted legal theory already rejected by his predecessor and the Department of Justice. I hope that the courts dismiss the indictment as a matter of law, and I urge the prosecutors pursuing President Trump to carefully consider the harm caused to our republic if flimsy charges against former presidents become a new common practice in our politics.”

The very same Senator Tom Cotton...

GOP Sen. Tom Cotton is once again dragging out one of his favorite lines: The United States, Cotton believes, simply needs more prisoners.

On Wednesday, in response to a report about rising homicide rates, Cotton tweeted that the U.S. “absolutely has an under-incarceration problem.” It was the second time he posted to social media about it in 24 hours.

The U.S. has the highest incarceration rate in the world, with more than 2 million people in prison and nearly 700 out of every 100,000 people in jail as of 2018, according to the Prison Policy Initiative.

“If anything, we have an under-incarceration problem,” Cotton said in a speech at the conservative Hudson Institute think tank in May 2016. In 2015, the murder rate was 4.9 murders per every 100,000 people, according to FBI statistics—one of the lowest rates on record.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/88n44p/tom-cotton-will-not-shut-up-about-putting-more-people-in-prison

Aren't we solving Tom's problem? What gives?

[orangecrush]

1. K&R

[Probatim]

2. I can give him a few recommendations for incarceration...

[patphil]

3. Jack Smith will help fix our "under-incarceration problem".

Senator Cotton should be grateful to have him on the job.

[brush]

4. What a right wing a-hole. Not enough people in jail for his tastes.

Perhaps we add the orange blop to the jailed list?

[dchill]

5. Tom Cotton is a well-known loon.

[OAITW r.2.0]

6. We do have a "under-incarceration problem"

Need a lot more incarcerations of rich Republican OC pols. Trump is a good start....the rest will be easier once the Boss is convicted and jailed.

[Caliman73]

7. Aren't we solving Tom's problem? What gives?

We aren't putting enough of the people Tom looks down on (Black, Brown, or Poor) into prison, AND we are trying to put one criminal, with an extensive history of criminality in prison for doing what Conservatives love to do, abuse their power.

That is unacceptable to Cotton.

Instead of putting more people in prison, we should actually be working to mitigate the conditions that facilitate people choosing crime as a means to meet their Needs/Desires but Conservatives do not want that at all. They live in a world of punishment for those who deserve it (said, Black, Brown, and Poor people) and impunity for the powerful (at least the Conservative powerful).

The actual harm from charging Trump would be that someone who actually broke the law USING the power of the presidency will actually be held to account.

Conservatives want people to believe that this is a partisan attack on Trump, because they only have partisan motives themselves. What is important to most Conservative politicians these days, is gaining and holding on to power. They do not care about public service, about integrity, or about governing. They haven't cared about those things for a LONG LONG time. They continue to project their own motives onto the Democrats. While I am sure many of us want to see Trump face justice, and it may be a visceral and emotional thing, the reality is that if we are "A Nation of Laws, not of men...." then we absolutely have to hold the most powerful people to account. They should have a higher standard by which they are judged, not some stupid immunity. We extend the office a certain leeway because conducting the business of State can get into some VERY gray areas. This is not what happened here. This is not what happened with Trump. Trump is a crook and has been all of his life. He lied and ran afoul of laws trying to get into office, and then continued to break the law using the power of the office as a "get out of jail free" card.

The worst thing about Cotton and his ilk is that most of them actually know this, but they don't care.