Thank you for posting the pro-Obama articles others don’t.
Larry ping.
But, have you met Buster McDermott?
Am I missing something? Where or when did Sinclair claim the encounter with the “young person” was at a campaign youth event? Could he not be referring to a one-on-one encounter at some other earlier date?
I think it stretches it a bit to claim “debunking” based on a record of when he first had a TV talk with a bunch of kids. I would think it would be very reasonable to “test” youth interaction long before going on TV in front of the nation. Obama probably talked to hundreds of kids prior to the TV talk.
I am not saying I believe Sinclair but I have seen this sort of democratic “nip it in the bud”, “sweep it under the rug quick”, “attack the messenger” strategy before.
I think there should be a lot more evidence provided before dismissing Sinclair as a “Time Traveler”.
When I'm President, we will no longer accept the false choice between being tough on crime and vigilant in our pursuit of justice. Dr. King said it's not either-or, it's both-and. We can have a crime policy that's both tough and smart. If you're convicted of a crime involving drugs, of course you should be punished. But let's not make the punishment for crack cocaine that much more severe than the punishment for powder cocaine when the real difference between the two is the skin color of the people using them. Judges think that's wrong. Republicans think that's wrong. Democrats think that's wrong, and yet it's been approved by Republican and Democratic Presidents because no one has been willing to brave the politics and make it right. That will end when I am President.
I think it's time we also took a hard look at the wisdom of locking up some first-time, non-violent drug users for decades. Someone once said that "...long minimum sentences for first-time users may not be the best way to occupy jail space and/or heal people from their disease." That someone was George W. Bush - six years ago. I don't say this very often, but I agree with the President. The difference is, he hasn't done anything about it. When I'm President, I will. We will review these sentences to see where we can be smarter on crime and reduce the blind and counterproductive warehousing of non-violent offenders. And we will give first-time, non-violent drug offenders a chance to serve their sentence, where appropriate, in the type of drug rehabilitation programs that have proven to work better than a prison term in changing bad behavior. So let's reform this system. Let's do what's smart. Let's do what's just.
Young people doesn't necessarily mean high school students and while not discussing his own drug use, he certainly is addressing the issue in this speech. Was it televised? Not sure, but it was on YouTube. You remember Howard University right? That is the one where Rev. Wright made his famous sermon blaming America for starting the AIDS.