Has Obama Set Loose a New Willie Horton?

Well, Democrat-leftists are the party of Willie Horton, so yeah.

At Politico, "Advocates on both sides of the sentencing reform movement are carefully watching the reentry of 6,000 federal prisoners released this weekend":

President Barack Obama is hoping there’s no Willie Horton among the 6,000 inmates being released early from federal prison.

Reducing the prison population is a key part of Obama’s push for criminal justice reform in his last year as president. He sees it as a way to repair broken communities and spare taxpayers the cost of housing low-level criminals. A bipartisan coalition in Congress is on board, too.

But the mass release set to be completed Monday will test the resolve of this new consensus heading into an election year. The infamous Willie Horton ad is on the minds of activists on both sides: They haven’t forgotten how the grainy, black-and-white mug shot of a bearded black man helped sink Michael Dukakis’ 1988 presidential campaign. As Massachusetts governor, “he allowed first-degree murderers to have weekend passes from prison,” said a voice-over, before describing how Horton kidnapped a couple and raped the woman while out on furlough.

The people released from Friday through Monday are not first-degree murderers — they’re low-level drug offenders, and almost a third are immigrants just headed for a different, predeportation detention — but opponents of sentencing reform are already looking for the next Horton.

“We’re fooling the public when we tell them we’re releasing nonviolent drug offenders,” said Steven Cook, head of the National Association of Assistant U.S. Attorneys, who says downward trends in crime are thanks to the current system of tough sentences...

This is not good. "Non-violent criminals" are a leftist media myth.

Crime's already going up with the Black Lives Matter's "Ferguson effect." It's going up more. A lot more.