So slightly fewer less black defendants will go to prison for possession of crack, while white cocaine users continue to slip away under a much higher standard. Are we supposed to applaud?

WASHINGTON — Legislation approved by the Senate on Wednesday would significantly reduce the disparity in sentences handed out to those convicted of crack and powder cocaine.

Currently, a person convicted of crack cocaine possession gets the same mandatory jail time as someone with 100 times the same quantity of powder cocaine. That 100-1 ratio has been particularly hard on the black community, where convictions on federal crack laws are more prevalent.

Under the measure, approved by a voice vote, the ratio would be reduced to 18-1.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who worked out the legislation with Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans, said he had initially wanted a straight 1-to-1 ratio, but that the final product was a good bipartisan compromise.

Jeralyn from TalkLeft:

This sucks. It takes 500 grams of powder to trigger a 5 year mandatory minimum penalty. Under current law, it takes 5 grams of crack. Now, 28 grams of crack will do the trick. So an ounce of crack will carry the same penalty as almost a pound of crack (500 grams is 1/2 kilo, a kilo is 2.2 pounds.) And 280 grams of crack (10 ounces) will trigger the 10 year mandatory minimum penalty while 5 kilos of powder are required.

Worst of all, the bill is not retroactive and the reduction won't help anyone who has already been sentenced.

[...] The unfair law has been in effect for 24 years. 75,000 people have been sentenced under it. Today, once again, the politics of compromise triumphed over principle, fairness and justice.

Congress and President Obama do not get to say they "fixed the problem." This bill doesn't fix the problem, it only reduces it.

The bill is here. It now goes to the House.

All we needed was a bill that eliminated the words "cocaine base" from the federal criminal code and eliminated the mandatory minimum penalty for mere possession. The House Judiciary Committee passed such a bill, Bobby Scott's H.R. 3245, last July. The Senate refused to follow suit.

Instead, we get another crime bill with increased penalties and no equalization of crack and powder penalties. While the reduction is an improvement, the bill is a big disappointment and the lack of retroactive application is inexcusable.

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(Time for a conscience check)

With the current situation of racist rants, lunatic fringe incitements and the never-ending realm of fear, I thought it might be a good idea to offer a few words from Dr. Martin Luther King, from one of his Massey Lectures recorded for The Canadian Broadcasting Company in 1967. This one is entitled "The Impasse Of Race Relations".

Dr. Martin Luther King: “I would submit two sentences written a century ago by Victor Hugo. ‘If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness'.”

I can think of several people causing the darkness right at this moment. And they are being paid handsomely for it.

In yet another of a series of provocative acts, North Korea sentences those American journalists to a labor camp for unspecified "grave acts." In the meanwhile, the U.N. Security Council is considering new sanctions against the nation, while North Korea promises any such move will be met with "extreme" measures:

TOKYO, June 8 -- A North Korean court sentenced two U.S. journalists to 12 years in a labor camp Monday, as the government of Kim Jong Il continued to ratchet up tension with the United States and its neighbors.

Laura Ling and Euna Lee, television reporters detained in March along North Korea's border with China, received harsher sentences than many outsiders had expected. But several experts in South Korea predicted that talks will begin soon to negotiate their release.

As tensions rise, the Obama administration hints it's considering seizing North Korean weapons shipments:

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration signaled Sunday that it was seeking a way to interdict, possibly with China’s help, North Korean sea and air shipments suspected of carrying weapons or nuclear technology.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met Friday in Washington with Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan of South Korea.

The administration also said it was examining whether there was a legal basis to reverse former President George W. Bush’s decision last year to remove the North from a list of states that sponsor terrorism.

The reference to interdictions — preferably at ports or airfields in countries like China, but possibly involving riskier confrontations on the high seas — was made by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. She was the highest-ranking official to talk publicly about such a potentially provocative step as a response to North Korea’s second nuclear test, conducted two weeks ago.

While Mrs. Clinton did not specifically mention assistance from China, other administration officials have been pressing Beijing to take such action under Chinese law.

Speaking on ABC’s “This Week,” Mrs. Clinton said the United States feared that if the test and other recent actions by North Korea did not lead to “strong action,” there was a risk of “an arms race in Northeast Asia” — an oblique reference to the concern that Japan would reverse its long-held ban against developing nuclear weapons.

So far it is not clear how far the Chinese are willing to go to aid the United States in stopping North Korea’s profitable trade in arms, the isolated country’s most profitable export. But the American focus on interdiction demonstrates a new and potentially far tougher approach to North Korea than both President Clinton and Mr. Bush, in his second term, took as they tried unsuccessfully to reach deals that would ultimately lead North Korea to dismantle its nuclear arsenal.