"President Obama Has Earned Our Disapproval" The Atlantic, Nov 2014

[Cha]

18. "Holder's Legacy: Steering Away From the Drug War" and It's not all bad.. but, I understand there

are those who are invested in the failures of the Obama Admin.. I'm just not buying what they're pushing.

Holder's accomplishments include:

-- Calling on policymakers at all levels to find ways to reduce the number of people behind bars.

-- Supporting efforts in Congress and the U.S. Sentencing Commission to reduce punitive sentencing.

-- Supporting policies that made the sentences of thousands of prisoners shorter and fairer

-- Changing how the Justice Department charges people to reduce the application of draconian mandatory minimum sentencing.

-- Establishing guidance allowing states to legalize and regulate marijuana with less federal interference.

-- Establishing guidance to make it easier for banks to deal with state-legalized marijuana businesses.

-- Promoting efforts to re-integrate formerly incarcerated individuals into society and eliminate barriers to successful re-entry.

-- Working to end the "school-to-prison pipeline", including working with the Departments of Education to scale back "zero tolerance" school discipline policies.

-- Advocating for the restoration of voting rights for the formerly incarcerated.

-- Urging federal law enforcement agencies to identify, train and equip personnel who may interact with a victim of a heroin overdose with the overdose-reversal drug naloxone.

MOre
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bill-piper/eric-holder-resignation-drug-war_b_5883950.html

"Federal prison population drops by roughly 4,800"

WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal prison population has dropped in the last year by roughly 4,800, the first time in several decades that the inmate count has gone down, according to the Justice Department.

"In a speech Tuesday in New York City, Attorney General Eric Holder said the Justice Department expects to end the current budget year next week with a prison population of roughly 215,000 inmates. It would be the first time since 1980 that the federal prison population has declined during the course of a fiscal year.

snip//

In August 2013, for instance, he announced a major shift in sentencing policy, instructing federal prosecutors to stop charging many nonviolent drug defendants with offenses that carry mandatory minimum sentences. More recently, the Justice Department has encouraged a broader swath of the prison population to apply for clemency, and has supported reductions in sentencing guideline ranges for drug criminals that could apply to tens of thousands of inmates.

http://bigstory.ap.org/article/6a62f3a9cf80460e99f5c4eb85dfee65/federal-prison-population-drops-nearly-5000

Eric Holder Takes Another “Historic Step” Toward Ending The Drug War, Advocates Say

For the first time, advocates of ending mandatory sentences for drug criminals say, Holder was attacking a central tenet of those who fight to preserve the lengthy mandatory sentences. Supporters say mandatory-minimum sentences help induce drug offenders into cooperating with prosecutors and, the theory goes, lead to the nabbing more drug offenders.

The speech was a big deal, said Families Against Mandatory Minimums.

Price’s spokesperson, Mike Riggs, was more direct.

“It’s pretty damn historic,” he said

MOre..
http://www.buzzfeed.com/evanmcsan/eric-holder-drug-sentences#

All that on the list sounds like a page out of the greenwald-snowden playbook. Conveniently overlooking all the Good that has manifested these last 6 years.