Yusuf Salaam gets Ass Handed to Him

I am thrilled to learn that Yusuf Salaam of Selma went down in flames in Tuesday's election. Salaam was beaten by opponent Darrio Melton who has no opposition in the November election.

As a member of the House Judiciary Committee Salaam has been nothing but an ignorant thorn in the ass of ACC for the last 6 years. Here's hoping his replacement will be more willing to listen and might actually read information about upcoming bills that is placed in his/her hands by people who care enough about said bill(s) to make the trek to Montgomery and discuss it with the members of the legislature.

Also glad to see Rep. James Gordon from Mobile go down. He deserved it for sponsoring HB697. Guess touting that you were able to outlaw a substance that no one really knows anything about wasn't a big vote getter this election year, eh Rep. Gordon?

Alabama Prison Numbers on Rise...AGAIN

The Birmingham News is reporting that while the number of state prison inmates declined nationally the number increased in Alabama...mostly due to non-violent drug offenses.

The nation's number of state prison inmates dropped slightly in 2009 -- the first decrease recorded in nearly 38 years -- but Ala­bama's prison population went in the other direction.

According to a report from the Public Safety Per­formance Project of the Pew Center on the States, Ala­bama's jurisdictional prison population -- the number of inmates the state is re­sponsible for housing -- to­taled 31,561 on Jan. 1. That is an increase of 3.5 percent over the population of 30,508 listed on Dec. 31, 2008.

Over the same period, ac­cording to the report, the nation's state prison pop­ulation dropped 0.4 percent, from 1,408,830 to 1,403,091.

Alabama Corrections Commissioner Richard Al­len said his department has been working to reduce its prison population. If the state had not adopted a package of sentencing guidelines several years ago, the population would be even higher, he said.

One problem is that judges and district attor­neys are not using the guidelines as much "as we think they should," Allen said.

According to a Depart­ment of Corrections report prepared for Allen, drug of­fenders made up nearly 34 percent of the 11,729 in­mates who entered the ju­risdictional prison popula­tion in fiscal 2008.

So, 34% of the new entries into the prison system in Alabama were drug offenders. Boy I tell ya, that drug war just works out so magnificently for keeping people from using drugs, don't it?

Why can't legislators grow a pair and stop doing stupid shit like this which only makes the problem worse?