Customers of this Dollar Tree store in St. Louis are greeted with the following signs located on the main entry door:
Here’s how I interpret the above: Welcome, honored guests, but it you rip us off, we’ll throw your ass in the slammer before you can even utter “Merry Christmas.”
Jim Webb introduced a bill to “create a blue-ribbon commission to look at every aspect of our criminal justice system with an eye toward reshaping the process from top to bottom.”
How shall we proceed? A recent amendment to Webb’s bill by Republican Senator Charles Grassley would bar the commission from “considering” “legalization” of presently controlled substances. See also, this post by Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
Rolling Stone reports in more detail:
Enter unreconstructed drug warrior Sen. Chuck Grassley, who has released the text of an amendment that would ensure the commission not reach any conclusions that threaten 40 years of failure. The commission would be prohibited, thanks to Grassley, from examining any “policies that favor decriminalization of violations of the Controlled Substances Act or the legalization of any controlled substances.”
Here’s the text of Grassley’s proposed gag rule:
SEC. ll. RESTRICTIONS ON AUTHORITY.
The Commission shall have no authority to make findings related to current Federal, State, and local criminal justice policies and practices or reform recommendations that involve, support, or otherwise discuss the decriminalization of any offense under the Controlled Substances Act or the legalization of any controlled substance listed under the Controlled Substances Act.
Therefore . . . let’s figure out how to revamp our criminal justice system but let’s not discuss the elephant in the room: the fact that the “war on drugs” that has ruined more lives than drugs ever could have ruined. It’s important to keep in mind that some conservatives see the light on the “drug war.”
Retired Judge James Gray has impeccable conservative credentials. I’ve posted about him previously. In a recent article in the Daily Pilot, he most reasonably suggests that most Americans would share most of the following goals:
1. Reduce the exposure of drugs to and usage of drugs by children;
2. Stop or materially reduce the violence that accompanies the manufacture and distribution of drugs, especially to police officers and innocent by-standers;
3. Stop or materially reduce the corruption of public officials, individual people and companies, and especially children that accompanies the manufacture and distribution of drugs;
4. Stop or materially reduce crime both by people trying to get money to purchase drugs and by those under the influence of drugs;
5. Stop or materially reduce the flow of drugs into our country;
6. Reduce health risks to people who use drugs;
7. Maintain and reaffirm our civil liberties;
8. Reduce the number of people we must put into our jails and prisons;
9. Stop or materially reduce the flow of guns out of our country and into countries south of our border;
10. Increase respect for our laws and institutions.
What is a good way to simultaneously further all of these goals? All we need to do is to treat the manufacture and sale of drugs “just like we treat alcohol.” Consider #2 in more detail–attempting to curtail violence on the streets. Judge Gray offers a hypothetical:
Today if Budweiser has distribution problems with Coors, they don’t take guns to the streets to resolve them. Instead they file a complaint in court, and have it peacefully adjudicated by judges like me.
Consider also, common sense economics: if drugs were not punished with criminal sanctions, the price of drugs would fall and “drug addicted people would only need to steal half as much to get their drugs.”
The case for decriminialization is utterly compelling to anyone who takes the time to consider the sceop of the current problem. For instance, it’s time to stop throwing 700,000 people into jail every year just because they use marijuana. Many of these people are (other than the marijuana offenses) peace-loving tax-paying citizens with families. It’s time to stop the insanity.
We’re about to spend hundreds of thousands of American dollars incarcerating a Canadian who was busted for selling marijuana seeds. He never set foot in the United States, but he’s being extradited. Who did he hurt?
“There isn’t a single victim in my case, no one who can stand up and say, ‘I was hurt by Marc Emery.’ No one.”
Here’s the conclusion of an article by Ian Mulgrew of the Vancouver Sun:
Emery is facing more jail time than corporate criminals who defraud widows and orphans and longer incarceration than violent offenders who leave their victims dead or in wheelchairs. Whatever else you may think of him — and I know he rankles many — what is happening to him today mocks our independence and our ideal of justice.
Emery’s crime is so incredibly serious that he would have spent an entire month in a Canadian prison for his crime. But, apparently, we have nothing better to do with American tax dollars than incarcerating people who sell marijuana seeds to people who want to buy them.
Way back in 1989, I happened to be watching Episode Two of a PBS series entitled “Ethics in America.” It was a terrific 10-part series that considered compelling topics in ethics. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia was a participant in Episode Two. You can see all of the episodes, including Episode Two here (click on the little “VoD” button next to Episode 2). You might be wondering how I could possibly remember a particular comment from a particular episode from 20 years ago. I do remember: it was burned into my memory because it was so utterly bizarre.
At about the 31-minute mark, the moderator (Charles Ogletree, Jr.) posed a hypothetical. What if you were an attorney and your client told you that he committed a murder a couple years ago? The clear answer is that the attorney-client privilege protects that admission; if you were that man’s attorney, you could not tell anyone else what your client told you in the course of your consultation with him.
Things got much more interesting, as the moderator elaborated on the hypothetical. Assume that your client tells you that after he committed the murder, the police erroneously arrested the wrong man. Further, assume that man has been found guilty by a jury and he is scheduled to be executed. As the attorney, what can you do to protect the life of an innocent man who is about to be executed for a crime committed by your own client who is confessing his guilt to you?
This is a tough issue, right? At the moment where the moderator indicated that the innocent man was about to be executed for a crime he didn’t commit, Justice Scalia spoke up: “Well, he probably did something else wrong anyway.” You can see and hear this statement for yourself at 31:50 in the video. Although I’m certain that Justice Scalia would claim that his utterance was a “joke,” (after all, other participants laughed), it makes you wonder, especially in light of a recent case decided by the United States Supreme Court, In re Davis.
Remember the woman who was criticized for allowing her highly competent 9-year old boy find his way home on the Manhattan subway? Her name is Lenore Skenazy. She’s a syndicated columnist and she’s not retreating a single inch. She has created a website called Free Range Kids. In April, 2009, she published a book called Free-Range Kids: Giving Our Children the Freedom We Had Without Going Nuts with Worry. Here’s how she sums up the widespread American problem:
Somehow, a whole lot of parents are just convinced that nothing outside the home is safe. At the same time, they’re also convinced that their children are helpless to fend for themselves. While most of these parents walked to school as kids, or hiked the woods — or even took public transportation — they can’t imagine their own offspring doing the same thing. They have lost confidence in everything: Their neighborhood. Their kids. And their own ability to teach their children how to get by in the world.
Lenore reminds us to consider our own “dangerous” childhoods when thinking of extending your own child’s leash–and she has drawn hundreds of lively comments. What is general solution?
We do NOT believe that every time school age children go outside, they need a security detail. Most of us grew up Free Range and lived to tell the tale. Our kids deserve no less. This site dedicated to sane parenting . . .
I started this site for anyone who thinks that kids need a little more freedom and would like to connect to people who feel the same way. We are not daredevils. We believe in life jackets and bike helmets and air bags. But we also believe in independence. Children, like chickens, deserve a life outside the cage. The overprotected life is stunting and stifling, not to mention boring for all concerned. So here’s to Free Range Kids, raised by Free Range Parents willing to take some heat. I hope this web site encourages us all to think outside the house.
This is a well-considered site with lots of ideas for tempering our paranoia about child abductions and sexual predators. Here are a few additional Free Range Children stories that I recommend from Lenore’s site:
The end of the Super-Mom Era.
How cell phones can stunt your children’s emotional growth.
Here’s another article detailing the subway adventure. And here’s Lenore’s three-minute video describing her approach.
New reports cast more doubt on the use of private contractors in a war zone. CNN is reporting that the watchdog group Project On Government Oversight (POGO) briefed reporters and sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about widespread hazing incidents allegedly taking place at the U.S. Embassy in Afghanistan.
POGO says two weeks ago it began receiving whistleblower-style e-mails, some with graphic images and videos, that are said to document problems taking place at a non-military camp for the guards near the U.S. diplomatic compound in Kabul.
“This is well beyond partying,” said Danielle Brian, POGO’s executive director, after showing a video of a man with a bare backside, and another man apparently drinking a liquid that had been poured down the man’s lower back.
These latest allegations are about ArmorGroup, a British company that was formed in 1981. These types of companies have seen exploding rates of growth since the start of the Iraq war as more and more functions that have been traditionally assigned to the military have been outsourced to private security companies. In 2004 it was reported that there were over 180 private companies providing services in Iraq. This massive deployment has skewed traditional warfighting:
In the first Gulf War 15 years ago, the ratio of private contractors to troops was 1 to 60; in the current war, it’s 1 to 3.
In fact, the private sector has put more boots on the ground in Iraq than all of the United States’ coalition partners combined. One scholar, Peter Singer of the Brookings Institution, suggests that Bush’s “coalition of the willing” would be more aptly described as the “coalition of the billing.”
Those bills are in the billions and rising.
According to the NYT, studies have shown that texting while driving is dangerous because those who text take their eyes off the road for extended periods while reading or sending a text.
Hmmm. Why did it take a study to come to this conclusion? Why not simply follow this logic:
A) You need to take your eyes off the road to read or send texts.
B) This is dangerous.
We certainly don’t need studies to say equally obvious things, such that it is dangerous to drive while
A)watching Youtubes on your smartphone,
B) eating corn on the cob;
C) reading novels on your Kindle; or
D) playing the trumpet.
An easy test for me is to ask whether you would mind riding on a public bus on which the bus driver was both texting and driving. I’m fully in agreement that no one should be texting while driving–I’m glad that the issue is getting some attention.
In the Washington Post, two police officers make the case that it’s time to legalize and regulate street drugs. Why? To quit squandering tax dollars, to quit filling prisons with people who don’t belong there and to protect neighborhoods and police officers.
Only after years of witnessing the ineffectiveness of drug policies — and the disproportionate impact the drug war has on young black men — have we and other police officers begun to question the system . . . Drug manufacturing and distribution is too dangerous to remain in the hands of unregulated criminals. Drug distribution needs to be the combined responsibility of doctors, the government, and a legal and regulated free market. This simple step would quickly eliminate the greatest threat of violence: street-corner drug dealing.
Here’s the “money” quote:
Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron estimates that ending the drug war would save $44 billion annually, with taxes bringing in an additional $33 billion.
Who were the psychologists who created and oversaw the U.S. torture of its prisoners? Consistent with much else that occurred during the Bush Administration, it turns out that even though they were psychologists, Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were shockingly unqualified, according to the NYT:
They had never carried out a real interrogation, only mock sessions in the military training they had overseen. They had no relevant scholarship; their Ph.D. dissertations were on high blood pressure and family therapy. They had no language skills and no expertise on Al Qaeda.
According to the NYT article, Mitchell and Jessen now face a possible criminal inquiry.
Via Daily Dish, here is a well written post from Steamboats are Ruining Everything regarding:
My principle became, roughly speaking, bike in such a way that even relatively inattentive drivers can be expected to see you and know what you’re going to do next. Also: don’t be annoying to pedestrians. I began halting at red lights and stop signs. (Later I relaxed this somewhat, almost to Idaho rules.) I made sure to bike in the bike lane, if there was one (or on the outer edge of it, if biking inside it was going to put me within swinging distance of the opening doors of parked cars). I stayed off sidewalks. And I never, ever biked the wrong way down a one-way street.
Since having this epiphany, “Steamboats” has loosened up a bit, including his approval of the “stop as yield” law used in Idaho.
I admit that I rarely stop at stopsigns such that my feet both come to the ground. At 1 am, I don’t sit there waiting for the light to change. On a particularly dangerous overpass, I ride on a sidewalk for a quarter-mile. On the other hand, I am aggravated by the bicycle riding behavior of many riders because it is so often dangerous, not because it’s a violation of a law. So often, when you see a cyclist violating a law, he or she is simultaneously breaking five laws. The person I have in mind is the wrong-way rider who violates a stoplight in the dark without any bicycle light, while not wearing a helmet, while failing to signal.
