] Attorney General John Ashcroft on Monday ordered federal
] prosecutors to come down harder on criminal defendants,
] instructing them to seek maximum penalties and to limit
] the use of plea bargains.

I can't beleive I didn't hear about this for a week!

Dude, it totally makes sense... all criminals are terrorists. They're trying to undermine the fabric of good, clean, wholesome American society.

I move for one punishment for all crimes -- decapitation. That's right. Hack a computer that's not yours? Decapitation. Have an ounce of weed and a couple of baggies? Decapitation. Question authority, er, i mean, inflame opponents of the U.S. and corrupt the youth? Decaptitaion.

Also, seriously, we need to send a message to all the terrorist kids theiving intellectual property after school that we will not tolerate their actions and that they are responsible personally for the deaths of 9/11/2001.

Honestly, criminals are broken anyway, and you can't fix them, so cap 'em and make life better for all the good, law abiding sheep of the country.

My favorite part of this is the following :

[ "You want uniformity," Mercer said. "You don't want ]
[ someone's viewpoint or philosophy determining the ]
[ outcome. What we are after is eliminating disparity ]
[ from place to place and defendant to defendant when ]
[ the crime is the same." ]

Yeah, we should totally take the human element out of it. Breaking the law is breaking the law, and there's no difference between situations. Sentencing should be handled by a computer. Talk about uniformity. And while we're at it, we don't really need juries or lawyers either. I mean, you wouldn't be in court if you hadn't done anything wrong, right?

Federal prosecutors to seek maximum penalties