John Kuthe wrote:
> https://reason.com/video/2019/01/31/...rd-prosecutor/
>
>
> As she begins her 2020 presidential campaign, Sen. Kamala Harris is
> trying to position herself as a reformer who tirelessly works to
> correct the abuses of the criminal justice system. But the California
> Democrat has one big problem: her long record as a law-and-order
> prosecutor.
>
> Harris's new memoir, The Truths We Hold, makes no mention of her past
> as an old-school drug warrior, a defender of dirty prosecutors, and a
> political opportunist who made life more dangerous for sex workers.
> Harris doesn't apologize for her previous stances, even those she now
> disavows; instead, she's decided to try to convince voters that she's
> always been a progressive prosecutor.
>
> Here are some parts of her record that Harris is hoping you'll forget
> in the run-up to 2020.
>
> HARRIS ON SEX WORKERS
>
> Harris's political rise has been propelled by a yearslong,
> high-profile campaign against alleged sex traffickers. What she's
> actually done is help throw women in jail for having consensual sex,
> while trampling on the rule of law to advance her own political
> ambitions.
>
> Ignoring the pleas of sex workers and human rights advocates for over
> a decade, she fought against campaigns to decriminalize consensual
> adult prostitution in California. As California attorney general, she
> helped lead a statewide program to get truckers to report suspected
> sex workers to police. These policies didn't stop traffickers, but
> they did land plenty of sex workers behind bars.
>
> Harris fought to destroy Backpage.com, a classified ads site that sex
> workers used to find and screen clients, even though she publicly
> admitted that the site's founders, Michael Lacey and James Larkin,
> were protected from prosecution under federal free speech laws. But a
> month before Election Day in her Senate race, Harris went ahead and
> had them arrested anyway, parading them before cameras on pimping
> charges, which were then promptly dismissed by a judge.
>
> When Harris got to Congress, she kept up her crusade, becoming a big
> proponent of the 2018 law known as SESTA-FOSTA. The result was that
> many sex workers no choice but to return to the streets, where
> soliciting clients is considerably more dangerous.
>
> Meanwhile, Harris declined to intervene in a real underage
> sex-trafficking scandal that involved dozens of police and other local
> authorities in the Bay Area.
>
> HARRIS ON PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT
>
> In her memoir, Harris decries America's "deep and dark history" of
> "people using the power of the prosecutor as an instrument of
> injustice," by framing innocent men or hiding exculpatory evidence.
> But during her time as California's top cop, she contributed to that
> history by repeatedly going to bat for dirty prosecutors.
>
> Her office appealed the dismissal of a case in which a prosecutor had
> fabricated a confession to secure a conviction and fought an appeal in
> a case where the prosecutor lied to a jury during trial. In 2015,
> Harris tried to stop the removal of the Orange County District
> Attorney's office from a murder trial after it repeatedly failed to
> turn over evidence to the defense.
>
> Her office even tried to keep a man in jail who had been wrongfully
> incarcerated for 13 years—even after a judge ruled he had proven
> himself innocent—because the man hadn't delivered the proof fast
> enough.
>
> And as San Francisco District Attorney, Harris hid known misconduct by
> a crime lab technician who admitted to deliberately tainting evidence.
> The debacle has since led to the dismissal of hundreds of criminal
> cases.
>
> HARRIS ON THE WAR ON DRUGS
>
> Harris is a former drug warrior who is now refashioning herself as
> pro-legalization. That's a positive shift—but not a reason to rewrite
> the past or ignore the patterns it reveals in her judgment. For years
> after the cultural tide had turned in support of criminal justice
> reforms, Harris continued to support lock-'em-up policies that
> disproportionately hurt minorities.
>
> As California Attorney General, Harris opposed marijuana legalization
> as late as 2014, promoted civil asset forfeiture without a conviction
> as a way to fight drug rings, and sought to more aggressively police
> prescription drug use.
>
> In her new book, Harris reveals that her drug warrior mentality hasn't
> changed; it's just that her emphasis has shifted. Now she's hoping to
> funnel even more funds to law enforcement to "cut off the supply of
> fentanyl from China," and to "reinstate the DEA's authority to go
> after the major pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors."
>
> HARRIS ON MASS INCARCERATION
>
> Harris is now an outspoken critic of America's system of mass
> incarceration, but she's worked hard over the years to lock more
> people up, for longer. And once these people were in prison, Harris
> saw to it that they'd have a hell of a time getting out.
>
> Before her recent about-face, Harris chose not to endorse proposed
> sentencing reforms on the California ballot in 2012 and 2014, and she
> defended the constitutionality of cash bail until 2016.
>
> Harris's office also fought an order to reduce California prison
> populations after the Supreme Court determined the conditions amounted
> to cruel and unusual punishment. Though she later claimed to be
> "shocked" at what they had done, Harris's attorneys argued that
> non-violent offenders should stay behind bars because the state needed
> the cheap labor they provide.
>
> As she blazes her path to the White House in 2020, Kamala Harris is
> trying to rewrite her last chapter. But her record remains as a
> testament to her instincts and priorities when given real
> opportunities for change.
>

Yeah. The only good news is *trump lost* and the asshole is gone.