...Back in his first congressional race in 1976 he vowed to push for tough minimum mandatory sentences, well before this abuse of the separation of powers became a staple of posturing "crime-fighters" in the 1980s. As vice president Gore has pushed for block grants for prison expansion in the states, with the proviso that such federal grants will only be issued if each state ensures that prisoners serve at least 85 per cent of their sentences.
Al Gore enthusiastically supported expansion of the federal death penalty to cover over 60 new crimes including some not involving murder. He has also been part of the administration that put through the Counter-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, virtually shutting the door on the right of prisoners on Death Row to appeal to the federal courts. In terms of ensuring more people will get executed, Gore's record is worse than Bush's.
Gore is, after all, the man who wants to cover America with, in his own words earlier this year, "a blanket of blue" meaning 50,000 more semi-trained, trigger-happy cops out on the street like the ones who blew away Amadou Diallo and who were recruited to the Ramparts division in Los Angeles to wage war on youth gangs....
The crime rate drops and the prison population climbs, largely because of the war on non-violent drug users. Want to listen to Gore on this? "We have to insist on more prison time for those who don't break the habit."
[Tipper Gore's Parents Music Resource Center (PMRC)] called for an X to be put on records that contained profanity, violence or sexually explicit lyrics, including "topics of fornication, sado-masochism, incest, homosexuality, bestiality and necrophilia." The inclusion of homosexuality harked back to Al's comment in 1976 as he campaigned for Congress that he considered homosexuality to be "abnormal" behavior.
The National Partnership for Reinventing Government, overseen by Gore, was denounced last year by the national legislative review committee of Blacks in Government as having been "generally silent about fairness and equality issues" and as having had "a devastating impact on federal government workers, particularly racial minorities."
Last modified: 2 November 2000
http://www.debatethis.org/gore/humanrights/