Ross Ulbricht - ThisIsCommonSense.org

“If you vote for me,” President-elect Donald Trump promised the delegates at the Libertarian Party national convention last May, “on Day One, I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht to time served.”

That is eleven years so far. “We’re going to get him home,” insisted Trump.

Mr. Ulbricht, a libertarian cause célèbre, was sentenced in 2013 to double life terms, without parole, plus 40 years.

So, who did he kill?

At 26 years of age, Ulbricht created the Silk Road online platform, “an anonymous e‑commerce website.” Used by some folks, certainly, to trade in drugs and other illegalities.

On a Change.org petition urging presidential clemency (which I’ve signed), his mother explains: “Ross is a first-time offender” and “an Eagle Scout, scientist and peaceful entrepreneur,” who faced only “non-violent charges at trial. He was never prosecuted for causing harm or bodily injury and no victim was named at trial.”

That’s why she and many of us simply cannot stand the idea that now 40-year-old “Ross is condemned to die in prison.”

Dudley Do-Right — no. Trump to the rescue!

Indeed, it was a very smart political move, courting the Libertarian vote both by showing up and, specifically, by pledging to free Ross Ulbricht. Libertarians suddenly had a tangible reason to support Trump.

Will Trump keep his word? “I do think he’s going to free Ross Ulbricht,” Libertarian Party Chair Angela McArdle told Robby Soave on his “Rising” program.

I think so, too. I sure hope so. It would be refreshing to see the awesome power our Constitution gives the president to pardon crimes and commute sentences used for someone deserving of mercy.

Rather than someone escaping justice.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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As I worried, this weekend, about Dr. Annette Bosworth, and her future sentencing for the “felonies” (minor infractions) she committed in South Dakota, others were similarly anguished about Ross Ulbricht.

A judge just gave him two life sentences in prison for setting up the “Dark Web” anonymous trading service “The Silk Road.” He begged for leniency — “just give me my old age,” the 31-years-old pled — but District Judge Katherine Forrest proclaimed “lawlessness must not be tolerated,” judging Ulbricht “no better a person than any other drug dealer.”

According to the BBC, “Prosecutors say that six people who died from overdoses bought drugs via the site and that such untraceable deals earned Ulbricht at least $18m.” This is supposed to make us hate him as a “drug dealer.”

Which he wasn’t. He set up a trading website — albeit a no-tax, black-market one. The actual trades were the responsibility of the traders. Like on eBay. Emptors caveated, knowing what they were doing.

Curiously, his site could only be accessed using software produced by the U. S. government. Using the judge’s rationale, maybe the federal government should be tried?

Some would say that drug overdoses are the responsibility of the drug users — but more to the point, the main factor in illegal drug overdoses remains their illegality. Not given the sunshine of a legit market, actual dosages are hard to manage: producers don’t usually bother with consistency, immune as they are to the reputation aspects of legal markets, not to mention any regulation or tort law influences that affect legal products’ safety.

In reality, those six deaths are more a result of the government than Mr. Ulbricht.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob

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