Whatever Happened to Civil Liberties?

Matt Welch | August 28, 2008

Words and phrases not found in the 94-page Democratic Party Platform:

drug war
war on drugs
Fourth Amendment
gambling
poker
marijuana
cocaine

Well, they might not want to talk about crack, but they're all fired up about what they'll "crack down" on:

we will crack down on speculators who are driving up prices

beyond the natural market rate. [...]

we will crack down on fraudulent brokers and lenders and invest in financial literacy. [...]

We will crack down on predatory lenders and make it easier for low-income families to buy homes. [ed note: nice twofer!] [...]

We will...crack down on [poppy] trafficking and corruption [in Afghanistan]. [...]

[We will] crack down on cross-border insurgents [between Afghanistan and Pakistan]. [...]

And we need to crack down on employers who hire undocumented immigrants. [...]

we will crack down on men who avoid child support payments and ensure those payments go directly to families instead of bureaucracies.

Was it that long ago that at least some Democrats cared about the horrific consequences of the Democratic Leadership Council's tough-on-crime wave of the 1990s? Well, at least they're taking a bold stand on the death penalty:

We believe that the death penalty must not be arbitrary.