For nonviolent offenders facing years, decades or even life in prison, “live free or die” takes on a whole different meaning.

New Hampshire has a low and stable crime rate, but its prison population is a different story. Between 1999 and 2009, the prison population increased 22 percent, and annual state spending on corrections doubled to more than $100 million. This reflects disturbing trends nationwide.

As home to the first-in-the-nation primary, New Hampshire will play a critical role in shaping the national debate over criminal justice reform. Pressing presidential candidates on the issues can help make the dream of a “second chance” a bipartisan reality.

It was just over 60 years ago that the tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy were repudiated when he was censured by the Senate in December 1954. Ever since then, McCarthyism — the reckless hurling of accusations at adversaries so as to destroy their reputations — has been considered one of the lowest forms of political behavior and one liberals love to crusade against.

But McCarthyism isn’t limited to one party or ideology. And if liberals have any sense of self-awareness they will recognize the tactic has returned and is growing in their back yard.

Harry Reid, the top Democrat in the Senate, was asked by CNN’s Dana Bash this week if he regretted his 2012 accusation on the Senate floor that GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney “hasn’t paid taxes for ten years.” Reid presented no evidence at the time and claimed he didn’t need any: “I don’t think the burden should be on me. The burden should be on him. He’s the one I’ve alleged has not paid any taxes.”

Reid’s response in the interview was fascinating. When asked by Bash if his tactic was McCarthyite he visibly shrugged on camera, smiled, and said “Well, they can call it whatever they want. Romney didn’t win, did he?” White House spokesman Josh Earnest refused to criticize Reid for his comment because it “was three years old,” when in reality Reid’s televised reveling in it was only three days old.

Conservative thought on campus these days is rare, though for some it’s still not rare enough. Witness the growing campaign by politicians, unions and environmentalists to intimidate into silence any academic or program that might challenge liberal ideology.

Congressional Democrats have grabbed most of the attention here, with their recent attempt to cow climate skeptics. Richard Lindzen, an emeritus professor of meteorology at MIT and a Cato Institute scholar, earlier this month described in these pages how House Rep. Raul Grijalva was targeting seven academics skeptical of President Obama’s climate policies, demanding documents about their funding and connections. A trio of Senate Democrats is working to muzzle more than 100 nonprofits and companies that have questioned the climate agenda, with a fishing expedition into their correspondence.

Largely unnoticed is that the congressional climate crusaders didn’t come up with this idea on their own. For several years a coalition of liberal organizations have been using “disclosure” to sully the names of conservative professors and try to shut down their programs. Their particular targets are academics who benefit from funding from the Koch Foundation, which has for decades funded free-market professors and groups on U.S. campuses.

Nothing infuriates the left more than the generosity of David Koch, he of the notorious Koch Brothers, who keep on pursuing both activist conservative politics and pure philanthropy.

Three dozen scientists, joined by groups like the Sierra Club and Greenpeace, are demanding that all science museums cut ties with any people or firms that, like the Kochs, “profit from fossil fuels.”

More: They want David Koch kicked off the boards of the Museum of Natural History in New York and of the Smithsonian — to which he’s given $70-plus million.

Why? The Koch brothers also fund groups that question the political consensus on climate change — so their money is “tainted.”

Now, both museums say they have no intention of booting Koch or anyone else. They also note that permanent exhibits he’s endowed at the Smithsonian specifically address the impact of climate change.

Anderson Cooper 360
Koch Industries General Counsel Mark Holden and CNN Political Commentator Van Jones discuss the importance of criminal justice reform.

Mark Holden wants you to love the Koch brothers
https://www.yahoo.com/politics/mark-holden-wants-you-to-love-the-koch-brothers-114509971631.html
By LIZ GOODWIN
Yahoo! Politics

Over lunch in the gleaming “Café Koch” cafeteria, Holden said he thinks Charles Koch’s distaste for the spotlight and for showboating of any kind prevents him from taking more credit for his considerable philanthropy and empire-building.

“He should be celebrated, in my opinion,” Holden said. “Like Ford, Rockefeller, Steven Jobs, Carnegie — you know what I’m saying?”

Cohlmia, the head of public relations, agreed. “He is an American hero and an icon, and we want people to know,” she added.

Holden and others who work with Charles Koch believe that his Midwestern distaste for claiming credit has fueled his vilification — and that if people understood his views and his accomplishments, the negative mythology would mostly disappear.

On Tuesday, the industrial conglomerate run by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch sent a letter to Congress urging lawmakers to oppose the reauthorization of this obscure, 80-year-old institution, which otherwise will expire at the end of June. Signed by Philip Ellender, the president of Koch’s government affairs arm, the letter signals the start of a Koch lobbying effort aimed at shuttering the New Deal-era agency. The Ex-Im Bank has been living on borrowed time since September, when Congress temporarily extended its charter. But now Koch Industries wants Congress to eradicate the agency for good.

“The Ex-Im Bank is yet another example of the government intervening in the market to pick winners and losers,” Ellender writes. “It confers benefits granted by the American people as a whole to a small number of well-connected corporations. It socializes the risk of economic activity while benefiting relatively few companies.”

Democratic officials are second-guessing the party’s obsession with attacking … Koch …, saying it bears some of the blame for last year’s devastating election losses as the focus on the conservative billionaires diluted a party message already struggling for clarity.

Doubts about the relentless attacks on … Koch … surfaced as the Democratic National Committee held its annual meeting Thursday in Washington, where state party officials from across the country mulled what went wrong in 2014.