via thehill:
Senate Republicans are trying to put the squeeze on Democrats ahead of an expected vote on legislation next week that would undo parts of a District of Columbia crime bill.
The bill would eliminate most mandatory sentences, lower penalties for a number of violent offenses, including carjackings and robberies, and expand the requirement for jury trials in most misdemeanor cases.
The legislation was unanimously approved by the D.C. City Council, which then overrode a veto by Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser in an overwhelming 12-1 vote.
The GOP House passed a resolution of disapproval that would block the implementation of the law. It’s that resolution the Senate is expected to vote on next week — and it is likely to pass despite the Democratic Senate majority and the party’s usual support for D.C. home rule.
At least Republicans got to “squeeze” this time instead of “pounce.”
More seriously, on DC’s Democrat-enabled shoddy home rule, Republicans are acting like the only adults in DC — and yet The Hill’s Al Weaver frames it as a bind the GOP somehow put the Dems in.
LIFE IN THE BLUE ZONES: Bob McManus: Black Democrat DA tells the truth on crime, but progressives won’t listen.
David Soares is district attorney of Albany County, NY — where politics is paramount, where facts seldom matter, and where apostasy isn’t tolerated.
No surprise, then, that Democrat Soares — an eloquent contrarian — is on the outs in the Democrat-dominated capital city.
Soares is black, which historically wasn’t an asset in his county’s Irish-Catholic, machine-dominated political environment.
He was elected DA in 2005 with the backing of the noxious disruptor George Soros — much to the dismay of local safe-streets advocates.
But Soares takes his oath of office seriously. He most certainly is no Alvin Bragg — a Soros acolyte so caught up in hard-left, racialized ideology that he might just as well be the local public defender.
Indeed, Soares was among the first to warn against the now-notorious criminal justice “reforms” in 2019.
h/t SG