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THE “Taking Back Our Streets Act”—the crime-fighting plan in the Contract with America— was cobbled together from old Republican proposals intended to marginally improve bad legislation in the old Democratic Congress. A truly new Republican bill would terminate destructive federal activism by devolving power to “the States respectively, or to the people,” in the words of the Tenth Amendment, whereas the actual GOP bill piles conservative activism on top of the existing mess.

Consider an example. Subsidized by federal dollars, lawyers in so-called Capital Resource Centers clog the federal courts with death-penalty appeals. Instead of repealing the subsidies, the Republican bill doubles the spending by sending an equal amount to prosecutors. If the Federal Government butted out instead, the ten-year delays in executions would plunge, a deterrent effect would begin to assert itself, thousands of appeals would vanish, and meritorious appeals would still find voluntary support.

MR

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Morgan O. Reynolds

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THE “Taking Back Our Streets Act”—the crime-fighting plan in the Contract with America— was cobbled together from old Republican proposals intended to marginally improve bad legislation in the old Democratic Congress. A truly new Republican bill would terminate destructive federal activism by devolving power to “the States respectively, or to the people,” in the words of the Tenth Amendment, whereas the actual GOP bill piles conservative activism on top of the existing mess.

Consider an example. Subsidized by federal dollars, lawyers in so-called Capital Resource Centers clog the federal courts with death-penalty appeals. Instead of repealing the subsidies, the Republican bill doubles the spending by sending an equal amount to prosecutors. If the Federal Government butted out instead, the ten-year delays in executions would plunge, a deterrent effect would begin to assert itself, thousands of appeals would vanish, and meritorious appeals would still find voluntary support.