Liptak...

On a more serious note, here's a smart Adam Liptak piece about the federal sentencing guidelines. It suggests that even wtih Booker and FanFan, federal judges are likely to follow the guidelines. He delivers a number of interesting compliance statistics concerning state systems that use an advisory system. Of course, when he delivers a bit of bad news about the Feds--citing a low compliance in Arizona, he fails to mention WHY that district is so regularly below the guidelines: The federal docket in AZ has a highly disproportionate number of imigration cases. And as Liptak should know, (and as he should have pointed out,) enforcement of the immigration laws varies substantially between 'normal' jurisdictions and border states--this is a product of the inexhaustable supply of potential criminal defendants streaming across the border--border states understand that you can't actually just lock everyone up for a decade for illegal re-entry...