Jurists and civil rights organizations have long complained that the commission's guidelines mandate more stringent federal penalties for crack cocaine offenses, which usually involve African Americans, than for crimes involving powder cocaine, which generally involve white people. The chemical properties of the drugs are the same, though crack is potentially more addictive.

Panel May Cut Sentences For Crack
Thousands Could Be Released Early

By Darryl Fears
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 13, 2007; A01

 

An independent panel is considering reducing the sentences of inmates incarcerated in federal prisons for crack cocaine offenses, which would make thousands of people immediately eligible to be freed.

The U.S. Sentencing Commission, which sets guidelines for federal prison sentences, established more lenient guidelines this spring for future crack cocaine offenders. The panel is scheduled to consider today a proposal to make the new guidelines retroactive.

Should the panel adopt the new policy, the sentences of 19,500 inmates would be reduced by an average of 27 months. About 3,800 inmates now imprisoned for possession and distribution of crack cocaine could be freed within the next year, according to the commission's analysis. The proposal would cover only inmates in federal prisons and not those in state correctional facilities, where the vast majority of people convicted of drug offenses are held.

if you were still in China you would be working in a factory for 14 hours a day with only limited bathroom breaks!”

A man suspected of Mahdi Army activity is detained during a recent raid in Baghdad. General David Petraeus has singled out Ghazaliya,a mostly Sunni district in the western part of the city, as an area where the military has made progress. Photograph by Johan Spanner



by Jon Lee Anderson

Joint Security Station Thrasher, in the western Baghdad suburb of Ghazaliya, is housed in a Saddam-era mansion with twenty-foot columns and a fountain, now dry, that looks like a layer cake of concrete and limestone. The mansion and two adjacent houses have been surrounded by blast walls. J.S.S. Thrasher was set up last March, and is part of the surge in troops engineered by General David Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq. Moving units out of large bases and into Joint Security Stations—small outposts in Baghdad’s most dangerous districts—has been crucial to Petraeus’s counterinsurgency strategy, and Thrasher is now home to a hundred American soldiers and a few hundred Iraqis. This fall, on the roof of the mansion, amid sandbags, communications gear, and exercise equipment protected by a sniper awning, Captain Jon Brooks, Thrasher’s commander, pointed out some of the local landmarks. “This site was selected because it was the main body drop in Ghazaliya,” he said, indicating a grassy area nearby. “There were up to eleven bodies a week. Most were brutally mutilated.”

The Mother of All Battles Mosque, with its unmistakable phalanx of minarets shaped like Scud missiles, is nearby. Saddam Hussein hid in Ghazaliya during the American bombing in the first Gulf War, and built the mosque to show his gratitude to the neighborhood. (“Ghazaliya used to have—still does—a lot of retired Saddam military people,” Brooks said.) In April, 2004, wounded gunmen taking part in the battle for Falluja took refuge in the mosque. Ghazaliya borders the eastern edge of Anbar province, the center of the Sunni insurgency, and it became a strategic gateway to Baghdad for insurgents and foreign jihadis. On a previous visit to Ghazaliya, in December, 2003, I had met insurgents at a safe house in the neighborhood. They told me that they were intent on killing Americans. Since those days, with few exceptions, Ghazaliya had been a no-go area for Westerners, including journalists, who ran the risk of being kidnapped and killed. American patrols in Ghazaliya were regularly ambushed.

When the hydraulic rear hatch of the Bradley opened, I saw Iraqi and American soldiers running here and there, shouting, guns drawn. I followed some soldiers into a house. In the kitchen, a young American in full combat gear was bending over a man who was lying face down on the floor. The soldier cursed as he struggled to tie the man’s hands behind his back with plastic handcuffs. A couple of half-eaten plates of food were on a table, along with a mobile phone, which rang repeatedly. In an adjacent room, another prone man was being trussed. A teen-age Iraqi, the younger brother of the two men, entered the kitchen and began to object; the American soldier handcuffed him as well. Pushing the teen-ager’s face toward the floor, the soldier shouted, in English, “Shut the fuck up! Move your fucking head!”

A middle-aged woman in a flower-patterned smock emerged, sobbing, as the three brothers were moved outside. They were made to kneel, their cuffed hands behind their heads. A masked Terp held a photograph up next to each of the men’s faces. As American soldiers inspected the teen-ager, who had peach fuzz on his chin, one muttered, “This isn’t Muttonchops.”

The economic costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are estimated to total $1.6 trillion -- roughly double the amount the White House has requested thus far, according to a new report by Congress' Joint Economic Committee.

Iraq, Afghan War Costs Are $1.6 Trillion

problems of daily living cannot be solved with a pill

Old Story, Updated: Better Living Through Pills

Twenty-three-year-old Jack Ford—who frequently hosted notable visitors at the White House—poses for a Polaroid portrait on the South Portico’s Truman Balcony with his guests Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger.

“Growing up in Washington, we had always been in the public eye to a certain degree. And when Dad became president, I was determined to just go on with my normal life. But I soon realized that going from son of the minority leader to son of the president was a huge shift.” —Jack Ford 



On a historic trip to Japan in November 1974—the first by any sitting U.S. president—President Ford is entertained by geisha at a state dinner in Kyoto.

The Liberation of Francis Ford Coppola” (December), Bruce Handy profiles the legendary filmmaker as he prepares to release Youth Without Youth, his first picture as a director in a decade—and one of the most audacious in his entire filmography. The movie, which stars Tim Roth and is adapted from a Romanian novella, is dense and at times surreal. Prominent among its many themes are the questions of measuring a life’s work, coming to terms with—or rejecting—the personal sacrifices one makes for one’s career, and suffering the pain of unrealized ambitions. In these outtakes from their conversations, conducted on the grounds of Coppola’s impossibly picturesque estate and vineyard in the Napa Valley, the director talks to Handy about parallel issues in his own life. To read “The Liberation of Francis Ford Coppola,” pick up the December Vanity Fair.

It’s very hard today. My daughter [Sofia Coppola, the director] now has a cute little baby, and she’s in Paris, and my son [Roman, also a filmmaker] is in L.A. It’s sort of a little sad that, you know, I have this ... [Gestures out toward his vineyards and estate.] I mean, you can’t believe how beautiful this estate is. There are places on it that are breathtaking, and it’s [nearly] 2,000 acres. And to have my kids, my grandkids here—but I don’t. It’s partly because my kids have been so successful. My wife always tells me that, because I lament: “Where are my kids? Where are my grandkids?” And my wife says, “Well, you gave them a wonderful thing. Aside from everything else you’ve given them, you’ve given them the livelihood that they can go and pursue their own lives.” You know, parents who empower their children, ultimately their children leave. [Laughs.] But you can be satisfied, you can be happy you did that. Better than kids who are hanging around, sort of dependent on you or something. My kids are not like that.

photographs by Alexi Lubomirski 



Padma

Javier Bardem, Celluloid’s Conquistador 

Thanks to career-making appearances in Bigas Luna’s Jamón, Jamón and Pedro Almodóvar’s Live Flesh, along with his 2000 Oscar-nominated performance in Julian Schnabel’s Before Night Falls, Javier Bardem’s profile has only grown as his parts have become darker and more challenging. Coming up: a role in Steven Soderbergh’s Che and a chance to play notorious Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar in the much-awaited Killing Pablo, directed by Joe Carnahan. There’s no containing a talent, or spirit, as large as Bardem’s—just take a look at Bruce Weber’s pictures. 

Ricky Butler 

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BibliOdyssey: Amazing Archival Images from the Internet 
VIA : --> The Art of Amy Crehore

Deja Vu Waltz" Painting by Amy Crehore

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"Deja Vu Waltz" by Amy Crehore copyright 2007, oil painting on stretched linen, 24"x24"

Radiohead to Sell an ‘In Rainbows’ CD

After distributing digital downloads of its new album, “In Rainbows,” last month, in many cases free, the British rock band Radiohead said yesterday it would begin to sell a version on compact disc through an independent label on Jan. 1. As previously reported, the band will sell the album in an arrangement with ATO Records and a related spinoff label, TBD Records. Representatives of the band, which is fronted by Thom Yorke said yesterday that ATO planned to seek radio airplay for two of the album’s songs, “Bodysnatchers” and “Jigsaw Falling Into Place.” Questions about the prospects for selling a CD version of “In Rainbows” have lingered since the band let fans name their own price — even nothing — for downloading the album from a Radiohead Web site, inrainbows.com. So far, the band has declined to detail how many copies were distributed, or for what price, and has disputed a recent outside study suggesting that more than a million copies were downloaded. (The price of the CD has not yet been set.) The shift to an independent label comes after Radiohead fulfilled its long-term contract with the music giant EMI Group. EMI said last week that it planned to package Radiohead’s six previous studio albums and a live album in a CD box set, and in other formats, for sale on Dec. 10