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Someone tell Rudy Giuliani to shut up.
by John Cole| 58 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs
by DougJ| 67 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs
I just read a fascinating article on marijuana legalization in Mendocino, CA, which, in my opinion, is one of the most beautiful places on earth. The county put in some of the most lenient laws in the state and various problems ensued:
Now some growers planted in town, considered declasse because flowering buds put up a powerful stink. In Ukiah, the county seat, a man was shot after climbing into a fenced pot patch. Another suffered a heart attack halfway over.
“It’s a huge problem in our schools,” said Meredith Lintott, the district attorney. “Children come in reeking of marijuana.”
Worse, outsiders poured in, some armed. In September, three carloads of men aged 18 to 24 arrived from Sacramento carrying guns, radios and pruning shears. They had read about Mendocino in High Times. Home invasions rose to 40 from 24 the previous year.
[….]And so, in November, a measure passed to scale back Mendocino’s legal limit to the state’s suggested six-plant minimum. The sheriff sensed a mandate. Tips rolled in, and deputies saddled up.
I strongly support legalizing marijuana. But it’s interesting to see the complications of exactly how that might be done.
Update. Commenter brantl makes a good point
It’s only a problem there because they are unique. If they stop being unique, it takes the ‘touristy’ elements out of this.
by John Cole| 54 Comments
This post is in: The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs
This is interesting:
Crime laboratory reports may not be used against criminal defendants at trial unless the analysts responsible for creating them give testimony and subject themselves to cross-examination, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday in a 5-to-4 decision.
The ruling was an extension of a 2004 decision that breathed new life into the Sixth Amendment’s confrontation clause, which gives a criminal defendant the right “to be confronted with the witnesses against him.”
Four dissenting justices said that scientific evidence should be treated differently than, say, statements from witnesses to a crime. They warned that the decision would subject the nation’s criminal justice system to “a crushing burden” and that it means “guilty defendants will go free, on the most technical grounds.”
***Noting that 500 employees of the Federal Bureau of Investigation laboratory in Quantico, Va., conduct more than a million scientific tests each year, Justice Kennedy wrote, “The court’s decision means that before any of those million tests reaches a jury, at least one of the laboratory’s analysts must board a plane, find his or her way to an unfamiliar courthouse and sit there waiting to read aloud notes made months ago.”
Justice Antonin Scalia, writing for the majority, scoffed at those “back-of-the-envelope calculations.”
In any event, he added, the court is not entitled to ignore even an unwise constitutional command for reasons of convenience.
“The confrontation clause may make the prosecution of criminals more burdensome, but that is equally true of the right to trial by jury and the privilege against self-incrimination,” Justice Scalia wrote.
“The sky will not fall after today’s decision,” he added.
But that is not how prosecutors saw it. “It’s a train wreck,” Scott Burns, the executive director of the National District Attorneys Association, said of the decision.
“To now require that criminalists in offices and labs that are already burdened and in states where budgets are already being cut back,” Mr. Burns said, “to travel to courtrooms and wait to say that cocaine is cocaine — we’re still kind of reeling from this decision.”
DA’s will just have to prioritize. Also, dissenting were Roberts and Alito. It will be interesting to see how many years it takes before Roberts fails to side with the government. A thoroughly modern Bush-era “conservative,” with total deference to the government in almost every regard. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he has a tattoo that says “If you haven’t done anything wrong…”
by John Cole| 88 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs
Gotta admit, after reading the questioning a while back, I didn’t expect this ruling:
In a ruling of interest to educators, parents and students across the country, the Supreme Court ruled, 8 to 1, on Thursday that the strip search of a 13-year-old Arizona girl by school officials who were looking for prescription-strength drugs violated her constitutional rights.
The officials in Safford, Ariz., would have been justified in 2003 had they limited their search to the backpack and outer clothing of Savana Redding, who was in the eighth grade at the time, the court ruled. But in searching her undergarments, they want too far and violated her Fourth Amendment privacy rights, the justices said.
Had Savana been suspected of having illegal drugs that could have posed a far greater danger to herself and other students, the strip search, too, might have been justified, the majority said, in an opinion by Justice David H. Souter.
“In sum, what was missing from the suspected facts that pointed to Savana was any indication of danger to the students from the power of the drugs or their quantity, and any reason to suppose that Savana was carrying pills in her underwear,” the court said. “We think that the combination of these deficiencies was fatal to finding the search reasonable.”
I’m still not thrilled about the notion that had illegal drugs been suspected, it would have been legitimate, but I will take what I can get. I will leave the rest of the analysis to those of you who understand the law, rather than just spout off about it like me.
Oh, and the lone panty-sniffing dissenter? Clarence Thomas.
by John Cole| 66 Comments
This post is in: The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs, War on Terror aka GSAVE®, The Failed Obama Administration (Only Took Two Weeks)
Here.
Is it just me, or is there a really solid lack of understanding what we are doing over there and why? I understand that people are willing to give the new President some time to formulate a policy, but I’m really at a loss to know what it is. Other than the appointment of McChrystal, adding some troops, and continuing aerial missions with less than optimal results, I really have no idea what the grand strategy is or if there is one. This may be my fault for not reading up enough, but at the same time, it is not like it has been front and center. The economy blowing up and other weighty issues like mustard choices and releasing terrorists onto the streets of Fon du Lac seem to dominate the news.
What exactly are we doing over there? And I’m not saying that seizing the things that makes the Taliban go is a bad thing, just that it is hard to figure out what our big plan is in the region. Drug seizures in a region renowned for opium production just seems kind of whack-a-mole.
by John Cole| 79 Comments
This post is in: The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs
This seems to be pretty positive news:
The Obama administration’s new drug czar says he wants to banish the idea that the U.S. is fighting “a war on drugs,” a move that would underscore a shift favoring treatment over incarceration in trying to reduce illicit drug use.
In his first interview since being confirmed to head the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, Gil Kerlikowske said Wednesday the bellicose analogy was a barrier to dealing with the nation’s drug issues.
“Regardless of how you try to explain to people it’s a ‘war on drugs’ or a ‘war on a product,’ people see a war as a war on them,” he said. “We’re not at war with people in this country.”
Mr. Kerlikowske’s comments are a signal that the Obama administration is set to follow a more moderate — and likely more controversial — stance on the nation’s drug problems. Prior administrations talked about pushing treatment and reducing demand while continuing to focus primarily on a tough criminal-justice approach.
The Obama administration is likely to deal with drugs as a matter of public health rather than criminal justice alone, with treatment’s role growing relative to incarceration, Mr. Kerlikowske said.
I’m really not sure why an approach that includes treating drug addiction as a matter of public health is so controversial. You would think the hysteria and rampant incarceration of the last thirty years would be seen as more controversial. I’m interested to see how they follow up on this.
This post is in: Media, The War on Your Neighbor, aka the War on Drugs
This seems positive:
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said Tuesday that the discussion over whether to legalize and tax marijuana for recreational use in California would benefit from a large-scale study, including international case comparisons, to show the possible impact of such a change.
Pressure to mend the state’s fractured budget along with growing public support of marijuana legalization moved him to support such a study, Mr. Schwarzenegger said.
“I think it’s time for a debate,” he said. “I think all of those ideas of creating extra revenues; I’m always for an open debate on it. And I think we ought to study very carefully what other countries are doing that have legalized marijuana and other drugs. What effect did it have on those countries?”
I was watching Real Time With Bill Maher on the DVR last night, and Barney Frank and Fareed Zakaria were the guests. Apparently, Frank is introducing legislation to decriminalize marijuana, which shocked me, but according to the google, this is in fact the case. This strikes me as particularly good news.
One other thing- Zakaria, someone I genuinely think is interesting and who has a great show, really, really pissed me off during that show. While Maher and Frank were discussing marijuana, Zakaria kept snickering and rolling his eyes and acting like it was a joke, and basically giving the ‘Oh you crazy dopers’ looks at the audience, and it was infuriating. It was also when I realized how wrong I was in March when President Obama dismissed the marijuana question that was freeped to the top of his online town hall. I still think it was a stupid thing to do (freeping the poll), but I understand now why so many of you were pissed at Obama. We’re never going to get anywhere if everyone keeps treating this as a joke, and millions of people locked up for nothing just isn’t funny.
I get it now.