Noticing some notable criminal justice panels at CPAC 2021
As highlighted by this NPR preview, the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) kicks off tonight and concludes Sunday with former Prez Trump giving his first big speech since leaving office. Though there are lots and lots of storylines surrounding this year's CPAC, and I was intrigued to see a few criminal justice reform programs appearing on the CPAC 2021 agenda.
Notably, one theme for various CPAC panels is the Bill of Rights, with Senator Mike Lee slated to give a speech tomorrow morning titled "Why the Left Hates the Bill of Rights... and We Love It." But it is not exactly clear that the CPAC folks really loves ALL of the Bill of Rights: the CPAC agenda has a whole lot more folks slated to speak about those parts of the Bill of Rights that primarily deal with civil rights rather than criminal defendant rights. For example, the Fifth Amendment panel on the first day has four participants focused on "Freedom from Confiscation of Private Property" and nobody speaking about the array of criminal procedure protections also in the Fifth Amendment. Still, it is encouraging to see that there will be these panels on the even Amendments dealing with criminal issues: