Pointing to a wave of violence in Baltimore, Hillary
Clinton said Wednesday that the nation's criminal justice system has
gotten "out of balance" and must be restored through steps such as the
use of body cameras by every police department in the country.
"It's time to change our approach," Clinton said in her first major
policy address since launching her presidential campaign earlier this
month. "It's time to end the era of mass incarceration."
Clinton spoke in the days after violence and protests have swept
through the streets of Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray, a
25-year-old black man who suffered a spinal-cord injury while in police
custody. Clinton condemned those instigating further violence, saying it
disrespected the Gray family and only compounded the tragedy.
"The violence has to stop," she said.
In a speech at Columbia University, Clinton spoke of protests over
policing in Ferguson, Missouri; Charleston, South Carolina; and in New
York, and repudiated policies dating to her husband Bill Clinton's
presidency that lengthened prison terms while putting more officers on
the streets. "We need a true national debate about how to reduce our
prison population," she said. "We don't want to create another
incarceration generation."
She voiced support for alternative punishments for lower-level
offenders and the need to address substance abuse and mental illness,
which she said came up repeatedly during her recent campaign trips to
Iowa and New Hampshire. Clinton also cited what she described as an
"unmistaken and undeniable" pattern of violence against unarmed black
men in the country and the unfairness of black men being more likely to
be stopped and searched by police officers, charged with crimes and
sentenced to longer prison terms.
Let's see if we can contextualize this for you: You already know
that the Clinton Foundation failed to report tens of millions in
foreign donations in their tax documents, a revelation that has forced
the organization to re-file at least five years' worth of returns. You
also already knew that some of those many undisclosed donations (which
violated Hillary's transparency pledge) were related to a troubling transaction in which (a) the Russian government obtained the rights to a large chunk of US uranium interests, (b) investors and magnates connected to the deal profited handsomely, (c) the Clinton Foundation (and the Clinton themselves) pocketed millions, and (d) Hillary's State Department signed off on the whole thing -- before "repeatedly breaking" promises to mitigate national security concerns. Bloomberg and Fox News are reporting that a Clinton Foundation-tied group led by a man at the center of the uranium deal didn't disclose more than 1,000 foreign donors:
