Word: cracked
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...Sentencing Commission, which was created in 1984 to help ensure that people convicted of similar crimes end up with similar prison terms, has finally shortened its recommended penalties for crack cocaine. Crack offenders have traditionally been treated more severely than those caught with powdered cocaine, a disparity that has weighed heavily on the minority community: last year 82% of crack offenders were black, while 72% of powder-cocaine offenders were white or Hispanic. The new federal sentencing guidelines, which took effect Nov. 1, are expected to drop the average prison term for crack offenders from a little over 10 years...
...these changes in no way affect the mandatory minimum sentences Congress set in the '80s for drug trafficking. Back then, crack cocaine was associated with inner-city violence and drug-addicted babies, while the powdered version of the drug was considered yuppie nose candy. Congress cracked down so hard on crack that users who get caught with five grams of the stuff - about five Sweet'N Low packets' worth - get a minimum of five years in prison, which is more than the statutory maximum for simple possession of any quantity of powder cocaine, heroin or any other controlled substance...
...also wants Washington to use its influence with Iraqi Kurdish leaders in northern Iraq, who nominally control the region from which the PKK is operating, to crack down on the guerrillas. A failure to do so could lead Turkey to send its own troops across the border in pursuit of the PKK, an outcome that the U.S. wants to avoid not only because Iraq is ostensibly America's ally as well but because the Iraqi Kurds are that war-torn nation's only economic success story. Any large-scale movement of Turkish troops into Iraq raises the chances...
...revisionist (and unofficial) Zhou Enlai: The Last Perfect Revolutionary, now available in a translation by Peter Rand and Lawrence R. Sullivan. "He is like a valuable antique in people's living rooms," Gao says. "If you tell them that it's fake or that it has a crack in it, they cannot accept...
...only crack these people will ever acknowledge in a Sox player. As a Minnesotan exiled to this East Coast Elba, I was at best an agnostic in Red Sox Nation - a non-believer who found the franchise and its fans a little too precious. The local liquor stores carry "Schilling Chardonnay" and "Manny Being Merlot." In my days as a sportswriter, I had nosed the bouquet of many a Sox player, and never thought of pairing one with Brie...