This is excellent news for the future of crime policy if it's true:

“The political climate has shifted,” said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, a nonprofit organization for criminal justice reform. “Democrats and Republicans both embrace a more evidence-based approach to public safety that looks at programs and policies that work.”

It's not so true of John McCain.

In a speech before the National Sheriffs’ Association this year, Mr. McCain ... called for tougher punishment for violent offenders and appeared to disagree with Mr. Obama’s contention that the prison population is too high. ... Mr. McCain also favors tougher sentences for illegal immigrants who commit crimes and more federal money to help local agencies detain them.

The Department of Corrections budget doesn't seem to be one of those McCain wants to cut. [more ...]

They just don't know when to stop. Guantanamo prosecutors wanted a sentence of 30 years to life for Salim Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's driver. A military jury gave him 5 1/2 years, 5 years of which he's already served. The prosecutors should have taken that slap in the face gracefully. Instead, they asked the military judge to reassemble the jury to resentence Hamdan. They argued that the judge should not have instructed the jury that Hamdan would receive credit for time served because the judge has no authority to award that credit to an enemy combatant.

The prosecutors want the five years and one month Hamdan has already served to be "dead time" -- time a prisoner spends in custody that never gets credited to any sentence. They wanted to argue to the jury that Hamdan should serve an additional 5 1/2 years. But the jury already decided that Hamdan should be done with his sentence at the end of the year. There's no reason to put him in jeopardy of a longer sentence. The presiding judge appropriately denied the prosecution's latest shameful effort to save face.

Correction: The defective battery chargers in the nation's missile silos have not all been replaced. But they're working on it.

original post:

A defective battery charger caused a fire at a nuclear missile silo near Cheyenne, Wyoming last spring, a mishap that is only now being reported "because of the complexity of the investigation." The fire burned for about two hours, finding as fuel (among $1 million of other property) a shotgun and a box of shotgun shells.

A shotgun is a standard security weapon at missile silos.

As formidable a security device as a shotgun might be in thwarting the theft of a Minuteman III missile, there was nobody at the launch site to fire the shotgun, or to save it from the fire. The launch site is unmanned. Five days passed before the Air Force noticed (while investigating a trouble light) that there had been a fire. How secure does that make you feel?

[more ...]

After lawyers made their arguments yesterday in federal court in the lawsuit challenging the purging of tens of thousands of Colorado voters from voter registration lists, U.S. Senior District Court Judge John L. Kane, Jr. declared he would take the matter under advisement. Shortly before he returned to rule, the parties reached a settlement. The result is that those who who were purged will be able to vote and their credentials will be checked afterwards. If they are eligible to vote, their vote will count.

Under the agreement, voters removed from the rolls will be permitted to cast provisional ballots, and those ballots will be counted unless election officials can prove the voters were not eligible. To strike such ballots, county election officials must conduct an extensive records review on each one, a decision that must then be reviewed by Mr. Coffman’s office.

More...

Is it true that Barack Obama might want Rahm Emanuel to be his chief of staff? "[O]fficials" told reporters today that Obama's campaign approached Emanuel. Who are these officials? They are "Democrats who ... spoke on condition of anonymity" because "they were not authorized to be quoted by name."

An aide to the congressman, Sarah Feinberg, said in an e-mail that he "has not been contacted to take a job in an administration that does not yet exist. Everyone is focused on Election Day, as they should be."

On the other hand: [more ...]

Among the more notable findings in today's New York Times/CBS News poll is that 59% of voters say Gov. Sarah Palin is not qualified for the job of Vice-President. On October 8, it was 50%.

All told, 59 percent of voters surveyed said that Ms. Palin was not prepared for the job, up 9 percentage points since the beginning of the month. Nearly a third of voters polled said that the vice-presidential selection would be a major factor influencing their vote for president, and those voters broadly favored Senator Barack Obama.

As to how his choice of Palin has damaged McCain's image: [More...]

Their latest poll:

With less than one week until Election Day, Barack Obama maintains a clear lead over John McCain in the presidential race, a new CBS News/New York Times poll suggests. The Democratic nominee now leads his Republican rival by 11 percentage points, 52 percent to 41 percent, among likely voters nationwide.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

In marked contrast to other polls, the WaPo/ABC tracking poll has been incredibly consistent, Obama has led by 8 or 9 for a week now. Today he leads by 52-44.

The tale will be told on Election Day, but if this poll is accurate, you could argue that these last 2 weeks of campaigning have had no effect at all.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

May I present the new Joe Lieberman, Bob Kerrey:

By my lights, the primary threat to the success of a President Obama will come from some Democrats who, emboldened by the size of their congressional majority, may try to kill trade agreements, raise taxes in ways that will destroy jobs, repeal the Patriot Act and spend and regulate to high heaven.

This is where Obama's persona is invaluable. He can withstand the arguments and pressure of the liberal wing in the Democratic caucus if, once elected, he is guided by the best instincts he has displayed on the campaign trail.

Bob Kerrey, the new Joe Lieberman. What a loser.

By Big Tent democrat, speaking for me only

Greg Sargent reports:

Bill [Clinton] will be cheered by the speech Obama gave moments ago in Sarasota, Florida, where he basically said that a vote for him was a vote for a Bill Clinton economy. Here's what he said:

The average working family is $2,000 dollars poorer now than when George Bush took office. When Bill Clinton was president, the average wages and incomes went up $7,500 dollars. So I've got an economic plan that is similar to Bill Clinton's and Senator McCain's got an economic plan similar to George Bush's. Look and see what works and what doesn't.

True enough. Obama should have been saying this earlier though.

By Big Tent Democrat, speaking for me only

Your turn.

Matt Yglesias writes:

When you listen to white people talk about Barack Obama, talk of “uniting the country” is almost universally taken to mean some kind of gesture toward bipartisanship or postpartisanship. . . . But when I’ve heard Obama’s black supporters, the ones from the grassroots like the man in the video rather than the “official” black political leadership, it always sounds to me like they’re hearing a very different message. Uniting the country means, to them, something more like bringing African-Americans into the mainstream of American politics. An Obama presidency would be a stark contrast to the rhetoric of the “real” America — which is basically defined as the part where everyone is white — versus the unreal America comprised of non-whites and the white people who deign to live near them. Of course to some extent any Democratic Party electoral coalition represents a rebuke to that way of thinking.

(Emphasis supplied.) More than "to some extent." The coming landslide for the Democratic Party coalition is indeed a rebuke of the racist notion of the "real" America. It is the manifestation of the Emerging Democratic Majority Texeira and Judis predicted 8 years ago. More . . .