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You are here: Home / Politics / War On Drugs / The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs / Paey Interview

Paey Interview

by John Cole|  November 22, 200711:59 am| 44 Comments

This post is in: The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs, Outrage

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And if the previous story did not piss you off enough, this surely will. Read Radley Balko’s interview with Richar Paey, who was convicted of drug trafficking for his own legally prescribed pain treatment, given a 25 year mandatory minimum sentence, and then promptly hooked up to a morphine pump in prison to give him FAR MORE painkillers than he was convicted of “trafficking.” A sample:

reason: You mention getting transferred to Butler Lake, the maximum-security prison across the state, several hours further away from your family. That transfer happened shortly after your interview with John Tierney of the New York Times. Do you think the transfer was retaliation—punishment for talking to a journalist?

Paey: That’s what I was told. That’s what a friendly prison nurse told my wife after the interview. And just after the interview, one of the prison officers who was on good terms with me told me that the guard who sat in on my interview with Tierney had gone to his captain about writing me a disciplinary report—which is the first step toward sending someone to solitary. He said I had said thing in the interview that I shouldn’t have said, and that they were going to act on it. There are designated “transfer days” when they move inmates between facilities. About two weeks later, on a day not scheduled to be a transfer day, the sergeant came up to me at around midnight and told me to pack my things. I was being shipped out to Lake Butler. They had no explanation. I couldn’t decline the move. It wasn’t medical in nature.

The move was tough. The sun was up by the time they moved me. It was of those insufferable July days. The van they transfer you in has no air conditioning, and only the driver’s window opens, and only about an inch. So I’m dying in the back of the van, strapped down in my wheelchair in this suffocating heat, where you can’t move, and there’s no air circulating. I ended up falling over, and they had to drive back and do it all over. They ended up taking me an ambulance a few days later.

reason: You say you were put in solitary confinement at Lake Butler. Was that for your health—to keep you from other inmates? Or was that punishment, too?

Paey: Laughs. When I got up to Lake Butler, they didn’t know why I was there. They had no paperwork on my transfer. This is going to sound absurd. Even now I find it difficult to believe. But when my wife Linda began calling the Department of Corrections about my transfer, they told her that a particular doctor had ordered my transfer. Linda called this doctor, got her on the phone. The doctor looked at my transfer order and said, “I didn’t sign that. I don’t know who signed that. Somebody used my signature stamp to sign that. I had no part in this transfer.”

Now, what’s going on, here? I’m being moved out of my permanent camp, which is close to my home and family, I’m being moved to the Siberia of the Florida corrections system, and they put me in solitary confinement once I got there. And nobody knows who authorized it? And the doctor the paperwork says ordered it says she never ordered it? So where do you go from there? What do you do?

This is the toxic combination of a lack of accountability, an authoritarian mindset, a disregard for human suffering (while getting ourselves worked into knots about embryos), an unwavering faith that our justice system is “good” (think about this the next time people are talking about the death penalty), a lack of transparency, a general erosion of your civil liberties, and the hysteria of the drug wars. Add in the profound political cowardice of politicians in both parties who always want to look “tough on crime,” and this is what you get- Turkish prisons in middle America.

And I mean no disrespect to Turkish prisons.

This country is so majorly screwed up right now, it is hard to figure out where everything went so wrong. I would start assigning blame at the drug war and with the big money to be made building prisons. Things are so out of control right now I am honestly shocked there is not rioting on a daily basis. maybe things have just been screwed up for so long that people are used to it by now.

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44Comments

  1. 1.

    capelza

    November 22, 2007 at 12:54 pm

    This case is a travesty, from the DA on down.

    And from the same state where Rush Limbaugh was doctor shopping for oxycitin, a man with a perscription! is in prison for 25 years. That’s not a partisan slam at Rush either. A celebrity gets away with something criminal, some poor schelp…solitary in a maximum security prison for…again…a prescribed drug.

  2. 2.

    Conservatively Liberal

    November 22, 2007 at 12:56 pm

    Nobody cares because it is not them or their relative who is going through this. If the situation arises and it is someone they love who is going through this, you get these stories in the news and they drop off the radar after that.

    Nobody cares. Politicians have to use every angle to get in to (and stay in) office, and drug offenders are just one of the mules they whip to death in doing so. The grand slam of win-lose situations. A win for the pol, a loss for the wrongly imprisoned.

    Outsourcing prisons is wrong. It should be the responsibility of the government and them alone who are responsible for incarceration. I am a daily pain medication user, and will be for the rest of my life. I have had nothing but problems with my insurance over it, even having one of the case workers call me a ‘junkie’ and my doctors ‘dope dealers’. Never mind the seventeen operations on my neck and arms.

    I am so sorry to hear of his misfortune, and if I could do something about it, I would. That is the problem. I am only one person, and it is going to take a lot of pressure to get the pols to bend the right way on this issue.

    It ain’t gonna change any day soon. And that is just wrong.

  3. 3.

    Zifnab

    November 22, 2007 at 1:03 pm

    This country is so majorly screwed up right now, it is hard to figure out where everything went so wrong. I would start assigning blame at the drug war and with the big money to be made building prisons. Things are so out of control right now I am honestly shocked there is not rioting on a daily basis. maybe things have just been screwed up for so long that people are used to it by now.

    This, ultimately, has nothing to do with the drug war. That’s pretty clear. Throwing a guy in prison for 25 years because he was on painkillers has about as much to do with Columbian drug smuggling or Vietnamese heroine trafficking as parking tickets have to do with roadside bombs. People can create and enforce laws – even vice crimes – without being reduced to this sort of absurdity.

    But there’s no accountability in this system. To take a page from Paul L (god help me), its comparable to the Duke Lacross Rape scandal. Who was the prosecutor answering to before the story went national? Where was the oversight? Where was the police? The crime lab? A sensible doctor? A rational judge? A defense attorney who could have fought this by the books, without turning it into a political affair?

    Transparency does a lot to bring honesty to a case. Duke was a travesty in part because you had a DA looking to make headlines for his political career, and in part because the community was looking for revenge – for all the black persecution stories – rather than actual justice. So good cases beget good cases and bad beget bad.

    But, seriously, how do you fix a system when it feels like every safety valve is broken? What a giant waste of… money, manpower, damn near everything.

  4. 4.

    Ian

    November 22, 2007 at 1:04 pm

    To their credit, Turkish prisons are much smaller.

  5. 5.

    Libby Spencer

    November 22, 2007 at 1:05 pm

    I’ve been following this case almost from the day he was arrested. It’s truly the grossest miscarriage of justice I’ve ever seen and the hell of it is, he endured this unjust sentence because he refused to plead guilty and take a deal because he was innocent.

    Everyone knew he was innocent, but the jury was forced to convict him of trafficking under the insane drug laws simply because he possessed the amount of the drug that was medically necessary to cope with his pain. There was not one shred of evidence that he ever so much as gave a single pill away, much less sold any.

    This is why I keep telling people, even if you’re not a drug consumer, the war on some drugs affects us all. Those are your tax dollars that were pissed away for all those years keeping a man who presented absolutely no danger to society in prison. And he’s just one of all too many who don’t deserve to be in jail.

  6. 6.

    cleek

    November 22, 2007 at 1:22 pm

    what do you expect from a country addicted to demagoguery ?

  7. 7.

    jcricket

    November 22, 2007 at 1:27 pm

    Ugh – yet another horrible story from Radley about the negative impacts of our misguided “war on drugs”. And the other commenters are right, no one wants to take on the issue because it’s electoral suicide.

    Americans are fucking idiots, in that they believe our current drug war approach is working. Well, I guess it is working, if the intent was to create a massive network of prisons and a new generation of criminals along with massive increase in drug trafficking.

    The worst thing Radley writes about is the whole “SWAT-ification” of the police. I simply can’t believe what we’re turning into.

    Canada seems to be getting it right these days, at least in some of the provinces. Safe injection rooms, needle exchanges, legalization of marijuana possession, mandatory rehab instead of jail, etc. I wonder if we’ll ever come around – maybe state-by-state.

    Of course there is one party that seems intent on ratcheting up the rhetoric and eliminating “state’s rights” when it comes to drug policy (and end-of-life decisions). Ahem.

  8. 8.

    Matt

    November 22, 2007 at 1:37 pm

    Corrections officers are probably pettier and more sadistic than cops even.

    Hell, from Portland again: http://www.portlandtribune.com/news/story.php?story_id=118911391052032000

  9. 9.

    Peter Johnson

    November 22, 2007 at 1:49 pm

    The law is the law. You might disagree with whether or not what he did was criminal, but under the law it is. But then again, I’ll be a lot of you thought Bill Clinton shouldn’t be prosecuted for perjury even though he clearly lied before a jury.

    I favor legalizing drugs. But I don’t favor freeing convicted felons from jail.

    Is this so hard to understand?

  10. 10.

    ThymeZone

    November 22, 2007 at 1:56 pm

    It’s a common story. If you live in Arizona, you can read stories like this all the time coming from our local jail system, run by dictator and self-serving asshole Joe Arpaio (“america’s Toughest Sheriff”).

    If you are sick, mentally ill, without resources, powerless, you are more and more disposable in this country. The powerful have no use for you, unless they can climb up on your back.

    Sooner or later, when the people have had enough, they will fight back.

    You might disagree with whether or not what he did was criminal

    No, there’s no disagreement on that score, it’s a false issue based on deceptive use of language. Doing something that is against the law is not criminal. Criminality is about harming others in order to help yourself. This person doesn’t want to harm anyone. The criminals here are the drug police and officials who will use the powerless to advance their own agendas at his expense.

    Is this so hard to understand?

    What you say is easy to understand, but it’s also dead wrong.

  11. 11.

    slippytoad

    November 22, 2007 at 2:04 pm

    The law is the law.

    It’s a stupid law, and stupid laws should be protested. Especially when they’re applied randomly or only to people who are defenseless. The same law got Rush Limbaugh slapped on the wrist.

    You might disagree with whether or not what he did was criminal, but under the law it is. But then again, I’ll be a lot of you thought Bill Clinton shouldn’t be prosecuted for perjury even though he clearly lied before a jury.

    He was. It was called impeachment. But he should never have been asked about a private consensual act of sex in front of a jury. There’s no law against it. Stupid.

    I favor legalizing drugs. But I don’t favor freeing convicted felons from jail.

    I want to see you defend the treatment of this gentleman in concrete terms. Did what he was doing cause concrete harm to society. Or not? Yes, or no. That is what the law is about.

    Is this so hard to understand?

    I am not sure what you understand, but morality isn’t it evidently.

  12. 12.

    Libby Spencer

    November 22, 2007 at 2:06 pm

    But I don’t favor freeing convicted felons from jail.

    Even if they’re wrongly convicted? I have to leave for dinner now but google, Tulia Tom Coleman, and when you’re done with those links, try these fake busts, also in Texas — based on paid informants.

  13. 13.

    Far North

    November 22, 2007 at 2:07 pm

    The “drug war” is tied with the refereeing of the Iraq civil war as greatest waste of our country’s resources

  14. 14.

    slippytoad

    November 22, 2007 at 2:14 pm

    Peter, I just read the whole article (having only read the summary before) and I have to say if you’re going to defend the prosecution and imprisonment of Richard Paey, you may need something solid to defend yourself with.

    This story is disgusting. There is no credible defense. You’re a complete bone-headed cretin for even trying.

  15. 15.

    John Cole

    November 22, 2007 at 2:15 pm

    The “drug war” is tied with the refereeing of the Iraq civil war as greatest waste of our country’s resources

    Nonsense. In terms of longterm damage, the drug war is far, far worse. The iraq war will eventually end, if for no other reason than our military will break. And, at least a sizable portion of the country and our elected representatives claim to be in favor of ending the Iraq war.

    The drug war has set the stage for many of the debates we are having today (is there anyone who thinks we would be having the current domestic surveillance debate if we had not become numb to the abuses on the citizenry done in the name of stopping drugs?), and has done irreparable damage.

    The war on drugs has been far, far worse.

  16. 16.

    RSA

    November 22, 2007 at 2:29 pm

    I favor legalizing drugs. But I don’t favor freeing convicted felons from jail. Is this so hard to understand?

    Presuming you favor freedom of speech, I wonder if you feel the same way about the Chinese bloggers who were convicted and sent to prison for criticizing their government? They were breaking their laws, after all.

  17. 17.

    Peter Johnson

    November 22, 2007 at 2:42 pm

    Even if they’re wrongly convicted?

    Define “wrongly”. If you mean that there was an error in how the person was prosecuted — misplaced evidence, gross defense incompetence, etc. — then the person should be granted a new trial. If they just broke a law that you, in your infinite wisdom, don’t agree with, then they should server their sentence whether they’re Bill Clinton or a Rockefeller era drug offender. They knew what the law was when they broke it. Don’t do the crime if you can’t do the time.

  18. 18.

    MobiusKlein

    November 22, 2007 at 2:47 pm

    Peter, the Law must serve Justice, not the other way around.

    If a law hinders justice, then it is the law that must change.

  19. 19.

    jcricket

    November 22, 2007 at 3:21 pm

    Nonsense. In terms of longterm damage, the drug war is far, far worse.

    Gotta disagree, they’re at least equal.

    The drug war has definitely done all the bad things you say, and it’s an ongoing disaster of epic proportions for minorities (and us all, really) within the US.

    But the Iraq war is equally bad. Not just counting the dead coalition soldiers, dead Iraqis, 10s of thousands of permanently injured US soldiers now back home or even the hundreds or thousands of illegaly detained and tortured innocents. What’s really pernicious about the Iraq was is the damage to the reputation of the United States, which will reverberate for decades in increased global instability due to a lack of international cooperation on terrorist-hunting related police activities.

    Do you think with all that’s happened in Iraq anyone’s going to believe us when we say “Hand over those citizens of yours, we swear these people are guilty of terrorism?”

    And think about the impact on geopolitical debates that matter besides terrorism – North Korea, Iran, other rogue states, dealing with Russia’s economic instability, etc. It’s going to be a long, long time, and take a complete 180 on the way we’ve been acting “unilaterally” (a la Bush) before America is able to wield the same kind of global authority it had right after 9/11.

  20. 20.

    jcricket

    November 22, 2007 at 3:31 pm

    John – to address your other point, it is true that at least the Iraq war will end (although who knows by when, and what other “GW-approved” activities will still be going on under the guise of terrorism fighting). The drug war shows far fewer signs of abating, and that is a shame.

  21. 21.

    numbskull

    November 22, 2007 at 3:40 pm

    Peter Johnson is clearly under 16. He’s never experienced real life.

  22. 22.

    Peter Johnson

    November 22, 2007 at 3:57 pm

    Peter Johnson is clearly under 16. He’s never experienced real life.

    I guess your experience sitting around a Starbucks in New York or Boston trumps mine starting my own business and raising four kids out here in flyover country.

  23. 23.

    numbskull

    November 22, 2007 at 4:23 pm

    Damn. He spawned.

  24. 24.

    wasabi gasp

    November 22, 2007 at 6:34 pm

    Privatization. Earnings Growth. Lobbyists. Prison Stocks.

  25. 25.

    The Other Steve

    November 22, 2007 at 6:39 pm

    alternative source for story

    I just don’t trust reason.com, they have a history of being hyperbolic and without actual reason.

  26. 26.

    Slippytoad

    November 22, 2007 at 8:06 pm

    I guess your experience sitting around a Starbucks in New York or Boston trumps mine starting my own business and raising four kids out here in flyover country.

    Peter, you’ve still not explained in what way the treatment of this man can be squared with the precepts of a free society or rule of law. Where was it shown that he was harming others?

    I don’t give a shit about your “business” experience, and I’ve raised two kids myself. Like the movie says, any butt-reaming asshole can be a father. What does that make you?

  27. 27.

    bluesngr

    November 22, 2007 at 10:01 pm

    Wow, when you read 60 Minutes report, you certainly see why they went ahead with the prosecution: the doc lost track of what he’d prescribed and freaked out at the risk of losing his license and being criminally prosecuted, the patient relying on an out of state doc who wants to reassure him of having enough meds to kill the constant pain, and the patient wanting to make sure he had horded enough meds to feel secure from unrelenting pain, and doc’s prescriptions in his house, some faxed. Whether or not he photocopied any seems irrelevant when they have the pharmacists saying the doc confirmed the prescriptions.

    Having our courts and choked with drug cases, some elicit, some prescription, is an awfully ridiculous waste of time and lives. I can see a jury voting to convict when the laws define trafficking as possession of a particular quantity. Undoubtedly he had that quantity. But how obviously absurd.

    Peter’s statement “If you mean that there was an error in how the person was prosecuted—misplaced evidence, gross defense incompetence, etc.—then the person should be granted a new trial” is obviously a facile dismissal of something more than he cares to think about it, and I suspect he owns a Starbucks and hates his customers who seem to have nothing better to do all day than sit around in their Birkenstocks making him rich. Of course there was obvious prosecutorial abuse, but only insofar as the laws Paey was convicted under invite that–on the worry that somebody might be using opiates which in itself defines the person as a menace to society. By Peter’s logic, the outcome, that Paey made a convincing case that he was victimized by both the law and the prosecutor using it, shouldn’t be freed without a new trial under the identical conditions under which he was convicted the first time. Peter is saying there shouldn’t be parole boards, commutation, or pardons. The tough drug laws did exactly what in this case? Dissuaded a man in permanent and chronic pain to seek help? The medical community should have told him to suck it up?

    I bet Peter’s customers drive Volvos, too.

    People like Peter think we’re wealthy enough to throw lives away like so much trash.

    And yes, I have a hard time understanding why if you think the laws are wrong that people convicted under them should remain incarcerated and stigmatized. Unjust laws are too easy to pass and enforce, as we saw with slavery and Jim Crow, as Hitler promulgated with the Blue Laws, as the Taliban passed and enforced against their citizens. Rising above bad laws is a lot harder. Paey is only one case; he’s been pardoned. I assume the laws are still on the books, and the prosecutor is still on the payroll. Yes, it seems a facile and thoughtless position, and as such, is hard to understand if you are serious.

  28. 28.

    Leo

    November 22, 2007 at 10:30 pm

    Peter, as I’m sure you know, laws can be changed through “political” processes. This is a blog about politics. There is no more appropriate place to question both the content of our laws and how they are enforced.

  29. 29.

    Chuck Butcher

    November 22, 2007 at 11:14 pm

    Minus the costs of enforcement and incarceration, illegal drugs are a lower cost to society than the perfectly legal drug alcohol. Just depends on who the pusher is, I guess.

  30. 30.

    Chuck Butcher

    November 22, 2007 at 11:14 pm

    Minus the costs of enforcement and incarceration, illegal drugs are a lower cost to society than the perfectly legal drug alcohol. Just depends on who the pusher is, I guess.

  31. 31.

    Chuck Butcher

    November 22, 2007 at 11:14 pm

    Minus the costs of enforcement and incarceration, illegal drugs are a lower cost to society than the perfectly legal drug alcohol. Just depends on who the pusher is, I guess.

  32. 32.

    Chuck Butcher

    November 22, 2007 at 11:15 pm

    What happened there??

  33. 33.

    Chuck Butcher

    November 22, 2007 at 11:15 pm

    What happened there??

  34. 34.

    Chuck Butcher

    November 22, 2007 at 11:16 pm

    Jeeze

  35. 35.

    rachel

    November 23, 2007 at 12:51 am

    Crap. Cases like this are why we have executive pardons.

  36. 36.

    Peter Johnson

    November 23, 2007 at 12:59 am

    Cases like this are why we have executive pardons.

    Like Marc Rich?

  37. 37.

    Nancy Irving

    November 23, 2007 at 5:14 am

    If Jebbie were still governor, this guy would still be rotting in jail.

  38. 38.

    Svensker

    November 23, 2007 at 8:48 am

    Peter Johnson Says:

    Cases like this are why we have executive pardons.

    Like Marc Rich?

    The old compelling argument — Clinton did it, too!

    Clinton’s crime in pardoning Rich was compounded when Rich came back to haunt us during the Bush Regime. There, that make you happy now?

  39. 39.

    dr. luba

    November 23, 2007 at 10:24 am

    Like Marc Rich?

    No, like Armand Hammer (financial crimes), Orlando Bosch (terrorist), and a Pakistani heroin trafficker.

    Oh, wait, that was GHW Bush, so it’s OK. Never mind……

  40. 40.

    Pug

    November 23, 2007 at 11:05 am

    I’m sure Peter Johnson also thinks the beating death of a 14-year old on his first day in a Florida boot camp was also fine. After all, he wouldn’t have been there if he didn’t deserve it. The officers were not convicted. They never are.

    That’s how those good red-blooded Americans think in fly over country. Anything done by law enforcement anytime for any reason, or by the government in the name of security is OK with them because they are afraid of their own shadows. That’s why we are where we are today.

  41. 41.

    numbskull

    November 23, 2007 at 11:18 am

    I’m not buyin’ Ol’ Petey’s claim that he has a business and four kids. I mean, what kind of father/businessowner spends all of Thanksgiving, even into the wee hours, posting on BJ? Who has the time for that shit except us latte drinking coastal dwellers?

    Unless, of course, Petey’s kids are all grown, have left home, and don’t visit him on Thanksgiving. Poor, poor Petey. Hey, at least you’ve raised kids smart enough to stay the hell away from you.

    They probably all live in San Francisco.

    Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

  42. 42.

    Don K

    November 23, 2007 at 11:48 am

    I’ve known the Drug War is a crock since my younger days of pot smoking (and ingesting other illicit substances), but it’s true you have to have this hit home before you can truly be outraged.

    My partner has chronic pain because of MS, and the most any doctor around here will prescribe is 800 mg Ibuprofen or extra-strength Naproxen, neither of which does the trick. He recently got a scrip for a couple of dozen Vicodin after minor surgery, and now wonders why he can’t get that on a recurring basis. He starts out from the assumption that the doctors are just being pricks, but I’ve been trying to convince him that it’s because the doctors are absolutely paranoid of facing prison time.

    The truly infuriating thing about it is that the doctors’ offices all have signs saying “Are you in pain? Nobody should have to suffer unnecessary pain.” What they don’t say is that there’s nothing the doctors can do about it that’s more than applying a bandaid to a stab wound.

  43. 43.

    spoosmith

    November 23, 2007 at 12:15 pm

    Don K:

    Have your partner try pot for the pain. I have MS and it works for me.

  44. 44.

    lou

    November 26, 2007 at 10:55 am

    And from the same state where Rush Limbaugh was doctor shopping for oxycitin, a man with a perscription! is in prison for 25 years.

    Don’t forget Jeb Bush’s daughter. I think she was caught forging painkiller prescriptions and received really lenient sentences — rehab and probation.

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