In remarks she made at a legal convention in August, Lynch lauded Holder’s creation of a Racial Disparities Working Group, which she said was aimed at identifying policies that result in “unwarranted disparities within criminal justice and to eliminate those disparities as quickly as possible.”
Lynch continued: “From the reduction of the use of solitary confinement, to the expansion of the federal clemency program, to our support for the retroactive reduction of penalties for non-violent drug offenders to the reduction in the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine, we have worked to improve our criminal justice system in furtherance of our human-rights treaty obligations.
“We look forward to the future and the opportunity to do even more,” Lynch added.
She expressed support, for example, of Holder’s drive to restore voting rights to convicted felons.
In April, the Justice Department announced six new guidelines for presidential pardons that will drastically broaden the number of those eligible among the prison population of non-violent offenders.
The new guidelines will make it easier to pardon offenders convicted of long drug offenses under laws that were stricter at the time of conviction.
Grant Proves Government Is More Worried About Ebola Than It’s Letting On
The Pentagon in July awarded an $8.5 million grant to a pharmaceutical company to develop a vaccine against an aerosol version of Ebola, highlighting once again government fear that the virus could go airborne.
The grant was awarded to Baltimore-based Profectus BioSciences Inc. by the Department of Defense through the Medical Countermeasure Systems-Joint Vaccine Acquisition Program, or DOD/JAP.
An October 31 press release on another matter, a more recent $9.5-million grant for an Ebola vaccine, contained information about the July grant for a vaccine for aerosolized Ebola and Marburg viruses.
Reads the release: “In July 2014, Profectus BioSciences and the GNL were awarded a 3 year $8.5M grant from the DOD/JVAP to support development of a lyophilized trivalent VesiculoVax™-vectored vaccine to protect against all major strains of Ebola and Marburg viruses delivered as aerosols.”
The release said the “lyophilized trivalent vaccine is being tested in both pre-exposure and post-exposure studies to confirm protection of non-human primates from aerosol exposure to Ebola and Marburg viruses.”
Profectus BioSciences did not return KleinOnline phone and e-mail queries seeking comment on the vaccine development.
The firm’s president, Jeffrey Meshulam, further did not reply to an e-mail seeking comment.