Before now, nothing impressed me about Senator Jim Webb other than that he was less worse than George Allen of macaca-gate infamy.

On March 26, 2009, Webb introduced the National Criminal Justice Act of 2009. It is good that more people than criminal defense lawyers and ACLU types are publicly proclaiming how much of a failure is the nation’s criminal justice system. I am at a computer right now that will not display the pdf links to the National Criminal Justice Act and Webb’s article on the topic in Parade, which ordinarily is not the pillar of high journalism, but there is an exception to most rules. Here are two links about Webb’s initiative:

– A webpage on the Act with links to the Act, Webb’s Parade article, news coverage and more.

– Ryan Grim posts at Huffington, including his following view: "Obama’s selection of Joe Biden to be vice president removes from the Senate one of the most vocal advocates of a hard-line crime and drug policy. Biden authored many of the laws that have led to the current prison situation."

The recipe I continue urging to fix the broken criminal justice system includes shrinking it substantially through such approaches as legalizing marijuana, heavily decriminalizing all other drugs, eliminating mandatory minimum sentences, eliminating the death penalty, and eliminating per se criminal blood alcohol level contents for drunk driving cases.