War on Drugs 6 | ***Dave Does the Blog

Potpourri with minimal politics

Rounded Corners – generating boxes with rounded corners using CSS. Spiffy! Attention iTunes Users – And this is why, ladies and gents, I never update iTunes as soon as the…

Rounded Corners – generating boxes with rounded corners using CSS. Spiffy!
Attention iTunes Users – And this is why, ladies and gents, I never update iTunes as soon as the little popup suggest I do so. Apple continues to tarnish its reputation.
The Definition of Theistic Rationalism – An interesting and fairly accurate description of how most of the Founding Fathers dealt with religion. There was actually a fairly wide spectrum of faith and theology that they held to, but, as a rule, this model works.
Dead Sea Scroll in Stone published in English for the first time… – Very cool, and long overdue.
Book of breast-like objects – For those with one-track minds (ahem).
Debunking an Autism Theory – NYTimes.com – And, tragically, kids have ended up being harmed by fear-haunted parents keeping them from taking valuable vaccinations.

Slate reviews adult diapers – Not surprisingly, just as parents can cite and debate the relative merits of various baby diapers, so, too, are not all adult diapers made equal. Laugh while you can, people …
OPM opposes proposal for 4-day workweek – FederalTimes.com – Should the Federal Government adopt a 4-day work weak? Hmmmm … maybe that could start a trend …
U.S. Army Hooks Up With Sears – What knucklehead decided that using a real unit’s insignia was appropriate for a Sears clothing line? I don’t care what royalties it brings — think about what it means to the past and present members of that unit.
BB&B Responds To Customer Complaint Over 911 Debacle… – Good heavens, an actual apology? Color me impressed!
Video: The History Of Maxwell House Shrinkage – This goes right with the “Skimpy Peanut Butter” posts of a few days ago.
Hot Beef Sundae – Um … no.
Bacon Vodka – Again, no. Really, no. As much as I like bacon (and can tolerate vodka) … no. Though, I suppose, if you’re into that sort of thing, it probably would be faboo in a Bloody Mary.
“A Culture Of Ethical Failure” and Illicit Sex By Government Officials Probed – Today’s big scandal, giving new meaning to the phrase, “the public was screwed by the energy companies.” This is getting a lot of play here in Denver, where some of the bad actors were.
New York Times on Salvia Divinorum – It’s fascinating to see a completely new intoxicant appear in society, once that’s highly potent but quite short-lived, has potential pharma applications, hasn’t caused much in the way of documented injury (compared to, say, beer) — and the first impulse of every legislature is to criminalize it.
DC-area mayor whose dogs were shot dead in botched… – Click through the top link to get the original story. Sadly, hardly the only time something like this has happened, or that innocents have been victims of the War on Drugs. I hope someone gets their kevlar sued off of them.

And, finally, for the End of the World: Large Hadron Collider hasn’t sucked us into a black hole … … yet. After all, they only fired a single proton stream. They haven’t yet actually collided anything …

Making the world safer, one disgruntled volunteer at a time

Imagine that — gratuitously treat people as as-yet-uncaught criminals, and they get all huffy and stomp off. Levy County’s public libraries are struggling to get books checked out or reshelved…

Imagine that — gratuitously treat people as as-yet-uncaught criminals, and they get all huffy and stomp off.

Levy County’s public libraries are struggling to get books checked out or reshelved because retirees who usually handle many of those chores have balked at a requirement that they “pee in a cup” as part of a mandatory drug test for all county volunteers.
“It’s not like we are a high-risk group for coming in drunk or high or stoned or whatever,” said one volunteer. “This is just a common-sense issue – why are we spending tax money to test 75-year-old grandmothers for marijuana? We should be using that money to buy more books and computers.”
The situation has gotten to the point where the pool of 55 volunteers has dwindled to two and the number of hours worked by volunteers in the county’s five libraries plunged from 330 in September 2005 to 11 this September, according to county library records. None of the former volunteers contacted by The Sun wanted to be publicly identified in a story about drug-testing.

Why, the nerve! They should be bloody grateful to be volunteers, especially when they can be certain none of their other volunteers are reefer addicts! And just because they’re being told to drive to another town and pee in a cup within hearing distance of a tester (to make sure they aren’t smuggling in “clean” urine in their attempts to volunteer for library work) doesn’t mean their dignity is affronted. It just means they’re not trusted until proven “clean.”

County officials said they realize that some people may find the test intrusive. “But our public risk management insurance says we should treat volunteers no differently that any other employees,” said Levy County Coordinator Fred Moody. “This is just the days that we are in and we know that there are some people who aren’t happy about this, but it is something we are requiring if anyone wants to volunteer.”
Moody said the drug-testing as well as background checks required for library volunteers are identical to what is required of all county employees and volunteers, including dozens of unpaid firefighters and hundreds of Community Emergency Response Team members from among the 36,000 county residents.

Right! And if they don’t like it, well, they can just darned-well … leave …

(via J-Walk)

Ballot propositions for Colorado

Got my Colorado ballot proposal book the other day. Here’s what I think. Your mileage may (will almost certainly) vary. Amendment 38: Petitions: The thrust of this amendment is to…

Got my Colorado ballot proposal book the other day. Here’s what I think. Your mileage may (will almost certainly) vary.

Amendment 38: Petitions: The thrust of this amendment is to make it easier to use the petition process to get proposals on the ballot. It also expands the petition process from beyond city/state to include school districts, special districts, counties, etc.

I’ll be honest in saying that I tend to mistrust the petition process. I think it’s good that it’s there, as a safety valve versus our elected representatives, but willy-nilly petitions rarely make good public policy, and expanding the process to school districts, special districts, every nook and cranny, only spreads the craziness that a disaffected minority can wreak. Further, under the bill (as analyzed) no elected official will be allowed to discuss any petition proposals once the petition forms
are ready for signatures. Huh? Present law now at least restricts public officials to provide factual information about such proposals, but this proposal seems to change that. It also extends the petition signature gathering process, and if you don’t get your signatures in on time, you can roll them over to the next year (whether the person involved has changed their mind or not). And petition proposals can force an election every year, not just even numbered years.

There are some good things about this measure. Cleaning up and standardizing some processes makes sense. I like (as in California) the opportunity for proponents and opponents to speak out on the measure (alongside the state analysis); sometimes the messenger is as significant as the message.

But not only does the proposed constitutional amendment make it easier to put forward ballot proposals, the proposal also turns petition proposals into quasi-constitutional amendments. They’re statutory, but they can only be changed by the governing bodies with voter approval. Well, yeah, it’s really annoying when an elected official buys into effectively overturning a successful citizen ballot measure. But the recourse there is to vote the bums out, or let them defend their actions. Turning petition proposals
into sacrosanct law, untouchable without another petition or ballot measure, makes government way too inflexible (or simply calls for a lot of court challenges as to whether law X is actually overturning a substantial amount of law Y.

My vote: No.

Amendment 39: School District Spending Requirements: Nobody likes to hear that their school district money is going to pay fat cat superintendents or school board member junkets to Mazatlan. But this proposal enshrines in the state constitution how school districts spend their money by individual programs — which things must be part of a minimum 65% of the expenditures, which need not.

I will confess that I don’t much care for constitutional amendments. Granted, the state constitution serves a different role than the federal — but it should still be reserved for significant issues. Instead, it tends to be used in petition processes to stick things out there that can’t be easily addressed or changed by the elected legislature. To my mind, codifying spending priorities for school districts doesn’t rise to that level.

The problem with such micro-management, even if not done for some covert purpose (reducing certain controversial services) is that it doesn’t provide the spending flexibility that districts need. In a district that has high transportation costs (think of a far-flung district with a lot of school busses), you’re going to be SOL — bus drivers and transportation are not a priority item (and so have to find a slice of that other 35%). Neither are nurses, food service, or building maintenance.

School boards are locally elected. If they’re not maintaining good budgetary control, the point of their being elected is that they can be unelected. But having the state constitution control overall district budget proportions just sounds like a bad idea to me.

My vote: No.

Amendment 40: Term Limits for Supreme Court and Appeals Court Judges: I’m a huge fan of an independent judiciary, whose members are minimally beholden to political pressures of the moment, who don’t have to worry about how their decisions are going to possibly offend current political groups or affect future employment.

Adding term limits (another practice I disagree with) to judges does nothing except make judges more sensitive to the political fall-out, and give people unhappy with judicial decisions on high cases, a chance to wait for a few years to have another shot at it. Especially since, given how supreme court justices are currently clumped, it would mean a majority would be reappointed by whomever is governor in 2009 (and every ten years thereafter).

That’s just not good sense. My vote: No.

Amendment 41: Standards of Conduct in Government. There’s some good stuff here. Currently ethics investigations of state elected officials are handled by special legislative committees; this proposal would create an ethics panel with a nice distribution of members. There’s also some tempting bits about keeping officials out of lobbying jobs for a couple of years.

But the state/lobbyist revolving door, though distasteful, doesn’t seem to rise to the level of needing a state law against it. And this new ethics commission would have purview over everything down to the city level — which sounds to me like a recipe for overload.

I’m tempted, but I’m not tempted enough. My vote: No, maybe.

Amendment 42: Colorado Minimum Wage: This proposal would increase the minimum wage levels in Colorado for both normal and tipped workers to higher levels than the federal law holds, and would then continue to adjust them from there based on inflation.

There are a lot of intelligent people — not just political hacks — who assert that the minimum wage is harmful to the economy, and that it doesn’t serve the populations it’s meant to. For myself, call it my stubbornly liberal streak, but I think if we’re going to have a minimum wage, it should be at a decent level.

My vote: Probably yes.

Amendment 43: Marriage: Enshrines one-man/one-woman marriage into the state constitution.

Bah. My vote: No.

Amendment 44: Marijuana Possession: Legalizes, under state law, possession of 1 oz. of marijuana by adults 21 years of age.

Hmmm. The arguments for (21-year-olds can possess alcohol, and making arrests for a ounce of pot seems ludicrous) are fairly persuasive, and the arguments against (next thing you know, folks will be shooting up heroin! booze is unsafe, too, so maybe we should be talking about stopping people from drinking, instead!) are not.

My vote: Probably yes.

Referendum E: Property Tax Reduction for Disabled Veterans: Reduce property taxes for military veterans with a 100% permanent disability? Hell, yeah.

My vote: Yes.

Referendum F: Recall Deadlines: This bill fits along with legislation passed this year to change how petitions for recalls are processed. It makes it easier to protest a recall petition, essentially, and lets the legislature set some other rules about it.

Hmmmm. The legislature setting the rules of how recalls can be done. Hmmmm. Not really any good enough reasons for it, which seems a reason against it.

My vote: No. Maybe.

Referendum G: Obsolete Constitutional Provisions: Gets rid of some passages that are truly no longer germane. Sure, let’s keep the constitution tidy.

My vote: Yes.

Referendum H: Limiting a State Business Income Tax Deduction: Basically disallows income tax deductions for business to deduct stuff paid to illegal aliens. Because, of course, they’ll admit that they’re hiring illegals. Well, no, actually, it’s either just a “feel good” law, or else it’s a hammer to use on businesses at some later time.

My tendency is to mistrust legislation around illegal immigration (since too much of it tends to be knee-jerk pandering to one or another population), I need to be convinced a lot more.

My vote: No.

Referendum I: Domestic Partnerships: Basically lets same-sex couples garner both the rights and responsibilities of marriage without using the “M” word. This seems like such a just, necessary, and positive thing to do, that I remain amazed that some people find it controversial, let alone personally threatening.

My vote: Yes!

UPDATE: BD’s posting on the same topic made me realize I actually left off two ballot proposals! Yikes! And our one local issue, too!

Referendum J: School District Spending Requirements: A kinder, gentler (barely) Amendment 39 (see above). It’s only a law, not an amendment; there’s a provision for local voters to override it; it includes more stuff (support staff and services) in the 65%; and it requires standardized budget formats for state reporting.

That all said and done, it’s still a bad idea. My vote: No.

Referendum K: Immigration Lawsuit against Federal Government: Requires the state to sue the Feds over enforcement of federal immigration laws. Because (a) it’s so likely to be effective, and (b) we really want to spend $190K/year (estimated) to try it. Feh.

My vote: No.

City of Centennial Referendum 2A: De-TABORize Centennial until 2013: Let’s the city keep excess tax revenue until 2013, rather than having to mail it back to citizens each year. In my opinion, anything that irks Douglas Bruce is worth voting for.

My vote: Yes.

And … this time I think that’s it …

Dumb Filters

If it weren’t that so many schools and libraries are required to use Internet content filters, as opposed to dumb, set-and-forget home users, this sort of thing would be funny….

If it weren’t that so many schools and libraries are required to use Internet content filters, as opposed to dumb, set-and-forget home users, this sort of thing would be funny.

“Internet Filters” updates and expands upon an earlier survey published by the Brennan Center’s Free Expression Policy Project (FEPP) in 2001. The new report describes the effects of CIPA and the deceptiveness of manufacturers’ claims to have improved the accuracy of filters with sophisticated “artificial intelligence” techniques. It then describes nearly 100 tests and studies up through 2006, with hundreds of examples of both deliberate and accidental overblocking.
For instance, one filtering program, SurfWatch, blocked the University of Kansas’s Archie R. Dykes Medical Library website upon detecting the word “dykes.” Cyber Patrol blocked a Knights of Columbus site and a site for aspiring dentists when set to block only “sexually explicit” materials. SmartFilter blocked the Declaration of Independence, Shakespeare’s complete plays, Moby Dick, and Marijuana: Facts for Teens, a brochure published by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

It’s a tough one. How do you keep kids from cruising for free porn (or inadvertently stumbling across it) on library and school computers. Answer: you probably can’t, any mroe than you can keep them from cruising for sex in the fiction and non-fiction sections of the library (or inadvertently stumbling across it, as well).

What you can do is try to reach a compromise between privacy (people may be doing “legitimate” private stuff on a library computer, like checking their e-mail) and publicity (computer areas should be well lit and visible), so that you keep such locations from being the equivalent of darkened peep shows. That’s a compromise likely to please nobody, but it’s the best one possible without engaging in ths sort of futile filtering (and overblocking) described above.

(via BoingBoing)

Supremes cases

Here’s my uninformed (i.e., I haven’t read much more beyond just the news stories) opinions on some of the recent end-of-session flurry of Supreme Court cases: Ten Commandments: Two split…

Here’s my uninformed (i.e., I haven’t read much more beyond just the news stories) opinions on some of the recent end-of-session flurry of Supreme Court cases:

Ten Commandments: Two split (and split) decisions on public display of the Ten Commandments. In decisions sure to displease both absolutist sides (and close enough at 5-4 each to make both sides of any upcoming Justice confirmation froth at the mouth even further), the Court neither outright banned nor outright allowed 10C displays in public buildings. Instead, it provided various factors to consider.In the case of a Texas granite monument at the state capitol, the historical nature of the monument (as well as its presence on the grounds of the capitol as opposed to inside of a courtroom) argued for its retention. It had been in place since 1961, and that seems to have been the deciding factor. While some might argue that the length of time an evil has persisted is no argument to allow it to continue to persist, the passage of time also alters the nature of the offense; clearly, what was seen as a permissible display of state/religious entanglement in 1961 (and over decades afterward) is not necessarily the same as what’s acceptable to do today.
Which was what the Kentucky case seemed to revolve around. They were an attempt to put the 10C into courtrooms today, both the location and timing of which was seen as sending an unacceptable message of religious preference.
Overall, the Court refused to offer an overall rule, but indicated that these things will need to be examined on a case-by-case basis, factoring in history, setting, and intent as to what message such an inscription sends. I’ll need to read more to get a better feel for it, but overall I’m at least not aghast.
Software and Piracy: The court agreed that software companies that produce technology which can be used for piracy and encourage (or do not somehow discourage) such use, can be sued for such piracy. Yeargh. On the one hand, yeah, despite all the legit uses of peer-to-peer, it’s clear that most folks see it as a way to (illegally) swap files, and “hear no evil, see no evil” is a dubious ethical code. On the other hand, not only do I have a visceral dislike for Big Media (even as I shovel dollars in their mouths), but find the idea that one is guilty for what someone else can do with your creation to be … worrisome.
I need to review this one more carefully. I fear, though, that most of the write-ups I read about it will consist of either Jack Valenti crowing or warnings of DOOOOM, and I suspect the reality will be somewhere in-between. On the bright side, the Court didn’t actually rule on the case at hand, only that the defense that “We aren’t committing the crime, therefore we can’t be sued for it” doesn’t apply. It seems that the lower court to which the Grokster case goes will still need to rule on whether Grokster intended that illegal file sharing would be allowed by its software.
Cable Internet: The Court ruled that a lower court was wrong to force the FCC to tell cable companies they must lease their lines for third party cable modem service. Legally (which, of course, is what matters) they may be on solid ground (the Court basically seems to have said that it’s an FCC decision, not a judiciary one), but it means less competition and higher prices, most likely, for cable modem service.
Eminent Domain: The Court ruled last week that local governments can use eminent domain on behalf of private developers, not just for public development — i.e., jobs and tax revenue can represent a “public use” under the Fifth Amendment, if so desired by local communities. While on the one hand, I see eminent domain as something that should be a last resort (and hate to see neighborhoods and older buildings demolished on behalf of Big Development Companies who may or may not come through with promised tax revenues), it’s also a matter of (as Justice Stevens noted) recognizing that it is up to the local communities — the local government as elected by the voters, or even the state government — to make that decision, not the Feds. Federalism is funny in that way.
So, another one where I can see the legal justification, even if the Real World outcome is not what I’d like to see.
Medical Pot: Bottom line, if it’s something that can be sold, it can be sold across state lines, which means that it can be restricted by Federal law under the “interstate commerce” clause. Which means that the Feds can enforce anti-marijuana use laws, even if a state has approved pot’s use for medical purposes. I understand the rationale (which has been used and abused by the Feds almost as much as the “promote the general welfare” phrase), but I’m not thrilled (nor surprised) with the application of it.

And so it goes.

Hoist by their own RFRA

Social conservatives were overjoyed by the passage of RFRA, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, passed by Congress in 1990 to restrict government interference in religious practice. Their idea, of course, was that this would stop the Evil Secularists in Government from blocking Christians from doing their various rituals and practices.

Of course, the bill doesn’t (quite properly) just mention Chistianity. Which leads to amusing bits like this, when non-Christian groups keep insisting that should let them use controlled substances for religious purposes:

The administration is challenging the New Mexico group — O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao Do Vegetal — and its practice of drinking hoasca, a sacred herbal tea that members believe connects them to God. The tea contains dimethyltryptamine, a controlled substance under the Controlled Substances Act and one the administration claims is banned by international treaty. The Supreme Court will decide whether to hear the case, Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficiente Uniao Do Vegetal, No. 04-1084, at its conference Friday.

O Centro Espirita was founded in Brazil in 1961. The tea, hoasca, which in the Quechuan Indian language means “vine of the soul,” “vine of the dead,” and “vision vine,” comes from the Amazon rainforest. Members drink the tea at least two times a month during ceremonies. Approximately 130 members of the church reside in the United States, 8,000 in Brazil. Brazil, a member of the international treaty at issue, has exempted hoasca from its controlled substances list.

But the Bush administration claims that no such exemption should exist in the United States. The administration is arguing that the high court should overturn a November 2004 en banc ruling from the 10th U.S Circuit Court of Appeals that affirmed an earlier injunction prohibiting the administration from enforcing the Controlled Substances Act and the United Nations Convention on Psychotropic Substances.

Ah. Well, the War on Drugs trumps other laws in this case — especially since, again, it’s not a mainstream conservative Christian sect being “inconvenienced.”

Lawyers from Freedman Boyd Daniels Hollander & Goldberg of Albuquerque, N.M., who are arguing for O Centro Espirita, say that the government failed to prove its case under the compelling interest standard. They write that the government “does not fairly summarize the facts” and that evidence shows the tea does not cause health problems or lead to drug abuse.

This is just the type of case in which religious practice should be exempted from government interference, says John Boyd, a lawyer for O Centro Espirita. He draws an analogy between this case and a hypothetical one in which the government reinstitutes Prohibition. “Under [the RFRA], the Catholic Church would be able to say, ‘We have to be able to conduct mass, and we need wine in order to do that,’ ” says Boyd. “The courts would say [that] unless the government can show that it had a genuine compelling interest of preventing the Catholic Church from using wine as its sacrament, then the Catholic Church would prevail under RFRA if it challenged Prohibition.”

[…] Furthermore, lawyers for O Centro Espirita point out in their brief that the government allows certain religious uses of peyote in the Native American Church: “The government has never attempted to explain how it can ask the courts to ignore the [Native American Church’s] possession, distribution, and ritual use of peyote while claiming that [O Centro Espirita’s] similar use of hoasca must be conclusively presumed to be a menace to society.” In 1994, Congress amended the American Indian Religious Freedom Act to say that Native Americans’ use of peyote for ceremonial purposes was lawful and could not be prohibited by law.

The 10th Circuit’s ruling is grounded in the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which protects individuals from governmental interference in the exercise of religion. Congress passed the act after the Supreme Court, in the 1990 case Employment Division v. Smith, affirmed Oregon’s prohibition on Native Americans’ use of peyote and marijuana for religious purposes, ruling that the First Amendment free exercise clause afforded them no protection. And although the Supreme Court struck down part of the RFRA in the 1997 case City of Boerne v. Flores, the act still applies to federal laws such as the Controlled Substances Act.

Under the RFRA, the government must show that it has a “compelling governmental interest” in restricting the religious practice and that the interest is fulfilled in the “least restrictive” way. The 10th Circuit ruled that the government had not proved that use of the tea, which contains 25 mg of DMT per typical serving, would lead to adverse health effects or abuse of the drug outside of a religious context.

That pesky Law of Unintended Consequences rears its ugly head again …

Same song, another verse …

Since all the other problems and threats facing this country have been resolved, I guess the social conservatives have nothing better to do than start reintroducing all their “Stop Those…

Since all the other problems and threats facing this country have been resolved, I guess the social conservatives have nothing better to do than start reintroducing all their “Stop Those Nasty Gays!” Bills (usually titled as “Defense of Marriage” legislation). *sigh*

Saying protecting traditional marriage is the “most significant domestic issue of the decade”, a [Colorado] Republican state lawmaker said Thursday that the Legislature should give voters a chance to vote on a constitutional amendment that would ban gay marriage and civil unions.

Apparently Terri Schiavo (and, I guess, abortion, the war on drugs, and social security) is now Old News. Protecting “traditional marriage” (complete with handfasting ceremonies, dowries, publication of the banns, and droit du seigneur, one assumes) is now the “most significant domestic issue of the decade.” Who’da thunk?

Since I don’t feel like rehashing all the old arguments I’ve made on the subject (though I probably will again before long), allow me to suggest this:

I have no particular gripe against Ms. Lopez, Ms. Spears, or Pitt-Aniston, but surely they do not merit the privileges and protections of state-sanctioned marriage more than mature, committed gay couples. Based on the behavior of these celebrities and at least half of married America, it seems that heterosexual marriage is more of a glass house than a fortress.

It would be refreshing to have a dialogue about what is wrong with heterosexual marriage today rather than what might be wrong with homosexual marriage tomorrow. As our laws currently read, we encourage marriage in the case of heterosexuals regardless of their age, maturity or financial stability. In North Carolina, a 14-year-old child may marry if the girl is pregnant or gives birth.

Let’s be clear: Children under the age of 21 cannot procure alcohol; children under the age of 18 cannot vote; children under the age of 15 cannot drive; but a child aged 14 can enter into a legally binding union with another child in North Carolina — if the girl is pregnant. And it’s the committed gay couples we need to worry about?

… and …

Thankfully, we never amended the constitution to etch the bigoted notions of “separate but equal” or anti-miscegenation into permanent law. If we had, it would have been that much harder to take the critical steps toward enlightened equality that marked much of our nation’s progress in the late 20th century. If we had relied upon archaic notions of “naturalness” — a favorite word used by supporters of the amendment proposed by Forrester and Smith — women would not be permitted to vote, own property or work outside the home today. Constitutional amendments have always been passed in an effort to protect or broaden the rights of American citizens, not take them away.

Yeah. What she said.

(via Jayseae)

“… And That Rhymes with Pool!”

Kid lives in Hempstead, New York, a Long Island town. He owns a shirt, “Hempstead, NY 516,” the latter being the area code for town. School officials in his new…

Kid lives in Hempstead, New York, a Long Island town. He owns a shirt, “Hempstead, NY 516,” the latter being the area code for town.

School officials in his new home are not amused.

According to Jones’ family, which moved from Hempstead to the Atlanta suburb, the school thought the shirt referred to marijuana. Jones wasn’t allowed to return to class until he persuaded school officials to search the Internet for the town name.

“We don’t understand this here kid slang stuff, with all their ‘hep’ lingo and all, but, by cracky, we won’t have no mention of their ‘hemp’ or secret codes in this here school!”

(via Dvorak)

If you liked the War on Drugs …

Volokh has a good thought exercise on what alternative outcomes the DoJ Smut Crackdown will lead to: The crackdown on porn is doomed to be utterly ineffective in its stated…

Volokh has a good thought exercise on what alternative outcomes the DoJ Smut Crackdown will lead to:

The crackdown on porn is doomed to be utterly ineffective in its stated goals of preventing the supposedly harmful effects of porn on its viewers, and on the viewers’ neighbors.
The crackdown on porn will be made effective — by implementing a comprehensive government-mandated filtering system run by some administrative agency that constantly monitors the Net and requires private service providers to block any sites that the agency says are obscene.
The War on Smut will be made effective by prosecuting, imprisoning, and seizing the assets of porn buyers.

[…]So, supporters of the Justice Department’s plans, which do you prefer — #1, #2, or #3? Note that I’m not asking whether porn is bad, or whether porn should be constitutionally protected. I’m certainly not asking whether we’d be better off in some hypothetical porn-free world (just like no sensible debate about alcohol, drug, or gun policy should ask whether we’d be better off in some hypothetical alcohol-, drug-, or gun-free world). I’m asking: How can the government’s policy possibly achieve its stated goals, without creating an unprecedentedly intrusive censorship machinery, one that’s far, far beyond what the Justice Department is talking about right now.

Worth thinking about.

Dirty pool

Regardless of how one feels about the War on Drugs, this kind of crap doesn’t do much to promote respect for the law or the legal system. California medical marijuana…

Regardless of how one feels about the War on Drugs, this kind of crap doesn’t do much to promote respect for the law or the legal system.

California medical marijuana activists are outraged over the arrest last week of two medical marijuana patients who face potential life sentences on federal drug charges after being turned over by local authorities. David Davidson, of Oakland, California and his partner Cynthia Blake, of Red Bluff, California were arrested in a state courtroom in Corning, California on January 13 as they were seeking to dismiss state charges of marijuana cultivation and distribution.
Davidson and Blake, both 53, have doctor’s recommendations to grow and consume medical marijuana under California’s 1996 Compassionate Use Act (Prop. 215). While their defense attorneys were meeting in the judge’s chambers to discuss the case with Tehama County assistant district attorney Lynn Strom, Strom announced that she was dropping the state charges because Davidson and Blake were being arrested in the courtroom on a federal indictment.
[…] “Our attorneys were lured into the judge’s chambers and as soon as the doors were closed, the deputies took us in a car as fast as they could all the way to Sacramento where we spent four hours chained in the county jail and held 24 hours before we could speak to counsel,” Davidson said. “Now I’m facing 10 to 15 years in prison and I’m 53 years old. It’s unbelievable.”

If the county prosecutors didn’t feel they could win the case, merits of the law and arrest aside, they could have made much better arrangements to accomodate federal law enforcement requests than luring the defense attorneys from the defendents. For shame.

(via BoingBoing)

Appealing

The Supreme Court has supported an appelate court ruling that bars the Federal Government from punishing doctors that discuss marijuana with their patients. They did so by refusing to hear…

The Supreme Court has supported an appelate court ruling that bars the Federal Government from punishing doctors that discuss marijuana with their patients. They did so by refusing to hear an appeal from the Bush administration.

The Ashcroft Justice Dept., apparently having all the manpower it needs to fight terrorism and other high crimes, was looking to yank the federal prescription privileges of doctors who recommended medicinal marijuana, which is legal in several states, but forbidden under federal law.

Not that I think it will make that much of a difference in the War on Drugs, but I’m pleased to see this particular battle won.

Don’t they know there’s a war on?

Leaving aside the whole gays-in-the-military thing, some current regulations and guidelines on what will, or won’t, disqualify you as a recruit are … well, damned goofy. I previously related that…

Leaving aside the whole gays-in-the-military thing, some current regulations and guidelines on what will, or won’t, disqualify you as a recruit are … well, damned goofy.

I previously related that my eldest son was nearing a decision to enlist in the Army or the Marine Corps. In a conversation with the Marine recruiter, he said that they can get waivers to approve enlistment if a prospect has used narcotics or smoked marijuana, has a record of repeated arrests, or, in one approved waiver, had one leg literally pinned together with steel rods.
But absolutely no waivers whatsoever are granted for a prospect who has more than six tattoos or has any tattoo that cannot be covered by the recruiter’s hand. Period. It doesn’t matter what the tattoo depicts – gang related, drug related, or a full-color American flag, doesn’t matter.

It gets better. Or worse.

(via Randy)

Ranting and RAVEing

There’s a scene in True Lies where Helen, who’s just discovered Harry is a spy, is asking him under truth serum about his career. HELEN: Have you ever killed anyone?…

There’s a scene in True Lies where Helen, who’s just discovered Harry is a spy, is asking him under truth serum about his career.

HELEN: Have you ever killed anyone?
HARRY: Yeah, but they were all bad.

That line always gets a laugh because, well, as long as you’re just killing bad people, it’s okay, right?

Back a few years, Sen. Joe Biden was attempting to get tough on drug crime, so he crafted the RAVE (Reducing Americans’ Vulnerability to Ecstasy) Act to try to reduce the use of Escstasy and other drugs at raves and similar venues. Basically it did that by making event organizers and venue owners responsible for illicit drug use at their events, if they “knowingly and intentionally” made a venue available for “for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing, or using any controlled substance” — responsible as in $250k or more in civil penalties, up to $500k criminal fine, and up to 20 years in the slammer. The most obvious target, raves, were considered per se by Biden and the DEA as havens for drug abuse, and so it was anticipated (and even crowed by RAVE Act supporters) that this would basically ban raves, since obviously if anyone was caught taking Ecstasy or other drugs there, it was with the tacit consent (knowledge and intent) of the event organizer.

Critics argued that, whoa, all those presumptive knowledge/intent clauses could let the DEA or other law enforcement exercise unreasonable powers, threatening all sorts of dire consequences to people they disliked, no matter what precautions were taken by those people to avoid drugs getting into an event. Just holding the event could be considered intent and knowledge. The criticism was enough that the RAVE Act was never brought up for a vote. But Biden managed to get the legislation slipped in, sans hearing, in conference committee for the AMBER Alert Bill earlier this year.

So why, one wonders, is Biden now so concerned about how his own legislation is being enforced? During confirmation hearings for the new DEA director, Karen Tandy, Biden brought up a case where the manager of an Eagles Lodge in Billings, MT, was intimidated by the local DEA when the facility was going to be leased for a fund-raising concert sponsored by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and Students for a Sensible Drug Policy. The agent basically said that if anyone on the site lit up a joint, the Lodge would be responsible for having had “knowledge and intent.”

The threat of these penalties “freaked me out,” the Eagles Lodge manager told the Drug Reform Coordination Network. She said the DEA agent “didn’t tell us we couldn’t have the event, but he showed me the law and told us what could happen if we did. I talked to our trustees, they talked to our lawyers, and our lawyers said not to risk it, so we canceled.”
Biden pronounced himself “troubled” by this application of his law. He pressed Tandy to explain how she planned to “reassure people who may be skeptical of my legislation that it will not be enforced in a manner that has a chilling effect on free speech.”

I.e., in forcing the cancellation of a political fund-raising event, and in threatening (tacitly, if not explicitly) other such fund-raising events where there is the possiblity that drug use might occur.

*Snort*

That’s the problem with badly written, broadly sweeping laws. You can’t pass them, assuming they will just be applied to “bad” people, or the targets you have in mind. If laws can be abused by law enforcement, they will be, sooner or later, occasionally or systematically. That’s not always a sufficient reason to not pass needed legislation, but it’s certainly a reason to give one pause — and for Biden to now come back and suggest that the fault is not with the legislation he put together and slipped past normal hearings, but instead with the DEA’s enforcement of said law, is disingenuous at best.

The DEA, trying to put a good face on things, has announced new internal procedures to try to prevent enforcement of the law in such a way that would possibly harm businesses where “incidental” drug use occurs. But not only is that just a procedure, not law (which means it can be changed, or even ignored, at any time), but it adds another layer of uncertainty to “knowingly and intentionally” — what will be considered “incidental”? It doesn’t even matter if the DEA is actually going to go after someone — the issue of a chilling effect is whether someone is concerned that they might be gone after if they pursue a particular course, and so decide not to tempt fate.

The question is not whether drugs should be legalized or decriminalized or not. The question is whether this particular law, which lets the DEA infer knowledge and intent from acts that are, themselves, not explicitly criminal, is a crappy one — even if they only promise to enforce it against “bad” people. That they have to promise procedures to keep the law from being enforced against “good” people — to be judged by them — is answer enough to that question.

(via InstaPundit)

Going to pot

Y’know, with the War in Iraq, the War on Terror, and, heck, even the front lines of the War on Drugs, you’d still think Bush and Ashcroft and the DoJ…

Y’know, with the War in Iraq, the War on Terror, and, heck, even the front lines of the War on Drugs, you’d still think Bush and Ashcroft and the DoJ would have something better to do than pursue this case to the US Supreme Court.

They lost a Federal Appeals Court decision that said doctors could not have their federal prescription privileges (which lets them prescribe controlled substances) yanked if they recommended medical marijuana to their patients. Such a recommendation is necessary under California’s MM law.

In the 3-0 appellate decision, Chief Judge Mary Schroeder said federal authorities can prosecute doctors for helping patients acquire illegal drugs, but not for simply giving medical advice that might let a patient obtain marijuana. She said the federal policy clashed not only with free speech but also with the states’ traditional authority over the practice of medicine.
[…] The Justice Department’s Supreme Court appeal argues that a physician’s “recommendation” under California law is the equivalent of a prescription for illegal drugs, an action the government can forbid without violating free speech.
Department lawyers said the federal policy would not penalize a doctor for merely discussing marijuana with a patient — as long as the doctor makes it clear that the drug is illegal under federal law, that federal authorities consider it dangerous and medically useless, and that the doctor is not recommending it.

I have no problems with the first two clauses listed here, but preventing a doctor from recommending something, even if that allows a patient to get a prescription, really does smack of violating free speech.

Glad to see the Attorney General is so zealous at protecting our freedoms …

(via Samizdata)

Security going to pot

With the US on Orange Alert last week, what the heck was the Dept. of Justice doing turning its considerable power on that unquestionable threat to homeland security, bong distributers….

With the US on Orange Alert last week, what the heck was the Dept. of Justice doing turning its considerable power on that unquestionable threat to homeland security, bong distributers.

Yes, that was bong, not bomb.

Operation Pipe Dreams and Operation Headhunter encompassed raids on drug paraphernalia manufacturers, distributors, and their homes. At least 60 people have been arrested for supplying pipes, bongs, and roach clips. They face up to three years in prison and/or $250,000 fines. “This illegal billion-dollar industry will no longer be ignored by law enforcement,” Ashcroft roared on February 24.
And his muscle matched his volume. On the very day that New York state officials announced that they would dispatch 113 vans to detect and combat chemical and biological weapons, Washington arranged a massive attack on this harrowing menace.
“Including federal, state and local officials, our estimate is about 1,200 were involved, just on that day,” Drug Enforcement Agency spokesman Will Glaspy says by phone. Among them, “easily hundreds” of U.S. agents were deployed “about 103 U.S. Marshals alone,” Justice spokesman Drew Wade adds. “It was just exhaustive.” The Feds responsible include prosecutors in eleven U.S. attorneys’ offices from southern California to western Pennsylvania. Rather than guard America’s docks and porous borders from the next Mohamed Atta, Customs and Immigration and Naturalization Service personnel joined the anti-pipe posse.

Give me a break. I mean, no matter how you feel about the War on Drugs, during a time Orange Alert (“high risk” of terrorist attack) you’d expect a bit more law enforcement focus on, oh, terrorism, rather than folks who sell roach clips. The nation can’t shut down during an Orange Alert, obviously, but allocating that much law enforcement manpower to an operation that could easily have been put off for a week or two seems kind of, well, stupid.

Enforcement

Some good observations here on the war on drugs, to wit, the DEA claiming success because it’s changed the rules by which success is measured. At one point, the DEA’s…

Some good observations here on the war on drugs, to wit, the DEA claiming success because it’s changed the rules by which success is measured.

At one point, the DEA’s goal was to reduce drug usage by making drugs expensive, thus cutting demand. But despite massive increases in the DEA budget over the last couple of decades, street prices of heroin and cocaine (adjusted for purity and inflation) are down 80%.

So the DEA simply claims that it’s being successful because it’s arresting lots of drug pushers.

But drug policy isn’t about arresting pushers, it’s about reducing usage. If that’s not happening, then the policy is a failure.

Blame Game

I’ll bet you didn’t realize that the DC Sniper was really the fault of the Army, the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, the INS, societal warping of the…

I’ll bet you didn’t realize that the DC Sniper was really the fault of the Army, the War on Terror, the War on Drugs, the INS, societal warping of the male psyche, and the capricious and unjust nature of our economy and justice system.

Well, you would realize it, if the Man weren’t keeping you down. No, really. Honest. Wait … where are you going? Don’t you want to hear the truth, man? Really! I’m not kidding around here …

(via InstaPundit)

Tick. Tock.

The War On Drugs Clock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock….

The War On Drugs Clock.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.

Glow sticks and chill rooms and water, oh my!

Glenn Reynolds weighs in on why the War on Drugs bodes horribly for the War on Terror. Not being a bureaucrat, I think the Drug War is a terrible model….

Glenn Reynolds weighs in on why the War on Drugs bodes horribly for the War on Terror.

Not being a bureaucrat, I think the Drug War is a terrible model. In fact, I think it’s an argument against creating a Homeland Security bureaucracy at all. If we can’t trust the government to tell a glowstick from a hypodermic needle, then I don’t think we can trust it to tell the difference between an American and a terrorist.
I’m willing to support an invasion of Iraq and of other enemy nations like Saudi Arabia or Syria. I’m not willing to support an approach that will turn the United States itself into an occupied country — something the Drug War crowd has come a long way toward doing on its own.

Of course, the FBI seems to have decided which War is more important — and they’ve chosen the wrong one, based on this letter (scroll down to “Don’t Count on FBI”) in which minor improprieties over two decades ago sidelined someone who potentially had a lot to offer the Bureau’s anti-terror efforts.