More Booker reports from the front lines

There have been surprisingly few major district court Booker rulings of late, but newspaper stories continue to provide a window on the post-Booker sentencing world.

For example, this story from Detroit quotes from local judges and reports on a number of cases impacted by Booker; this story from Baltimore reports on fraud sentencing which apparently included a small departure though still resulted in a two-year prison term; this story from Peoria reports on a drug sentencing which apparently included a small variance though still resulted in an 11-year prison term.  (These latter two stories reinforce a point I flagged here about the challenge of accurately reporting post-Booker sentences that are still "tough" even though they involve a downward departure or variance.)