Category Archives: The Drug War

NJ Gov. Christie: End the Drug War

Posted on January 31, 2014 | Comments Off on NJ Gov. Christie: End the Drug War

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie says he wants to end the war on drugs, while other GOP presidential hopefuls Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Texas Gov. Rick Perry want to stop federal enforcement of marijuana laws and let the states decide what to do about it.

Just reducing the penalties for possession in Texas would be a good start and Perry seems to favor that. Politicians know vote getters when they see them, so that’s a hopeful sign. The drug war, after all, is largely a war on marijuana and most of the people busted, jailed, convicted and imprisoned got there for marijuana use.

I doubt we’d ever see marijuana legalized for adult use in Texas, as it has been in Washington and Colorado, but then I didn’t expect it to happen there. Or anywhere, really.

Would Christie really end the failed drug war, which mainly hits minorities and the poor (and is increasing militarization of the police) if he was elected president? Hard to say. Pols lie so often. But just saying he wants to do it is a big deal. He obviously sees it as a viable issue, or he wouldn’t stick his neck out. The times they do seem to be changing.

UPDATE:  Of course it doesn’t help that Holder’s “justice” department is investigating Christie’s administration. Probably has more to do with CC’s presidential possibilities versus the Democrats than his opposition to the drug war. But, with Wormtongue, it’s smart to be paranoid.

MORE:  The former leader of the Choom Gang, meanwhile, indicates his “justice” department will continue to go easy on marijuana use in Washington and Colorado because “we don’t have . . . the resources to police whether somebody is smoking a joint on a corner.” Curious remark, actually. They sure do have the resources (i.e. local law enforcement) in states where it remains illegal, as they have proved many times.

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Posted in Obsessions, Texana, The Culture, The Drug War

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End the drug war

Posted on January 29, 2014 | 2 comments

The WaPo’s brilliant new hire (at least for the “opinion” pages, though he outshines their lapdog reporters) Radley Balko marshalls the statistics that show the drug war really is a war on the poor and minorities and the excuse for the militarization and corruption of police agencies and politics in general.

Odd that the war didn’t even rate a mention in Ditherton’s SOTU. And him a minority at that. Too realistic, I suppose.

Via The Volokh Conspiracy.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, The Drug War, War Without End

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First legal pot sales in Colorado

Posted on January 1, 2014 | 1 comment

“Judish peeled off $30 cash and walked out with 1/8 ounce of Larry OG, a potent strain of marijuana that connoisseurs like for its euphoric rush. ‘It’s cool to be part of history,’ he said with a grin. He had put his name on a list to be the first customer 14 hours earlier.”

It won’t be so cool to go to jail. It’s still a federal crime to buy, sell, or smoke marijuana. Which is why I say good luck to people like this who are foolish enough to put their names on a list the Choom Administration’s feds may soon be demanding to see.

Via Althouse.

UPDATE:  Or, maybe not. “The feds say they’ll intervene if governments can’t prevent distribution to minors or trafficking across state borders, but those are both inevitable and no one should expect that Attorney General Eric Holder’s troops will arrest people as they cross into Utah. Those are President Obama’s voters.“

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Posted in Blogosphere, Obamalot, The Drug War

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Texas roadside cavity searches for suspected marijuana

Posted on August 3, 2013 | 5 comments

THIS HAS BEEN UPDATED BELOW

Pretty incredible stuff, the videos here at the Advice Goddess. Apparently not a lone wolf operation but the latest escalation in the war on drugs. Because, otherwise…

“So how did Texas troopers hundreds of miles apart get captured on dash cams conducting body cavity searches under nearly identical conditions? ‘The fact that they both happened means there is some sort of (department) policy’ advocating their use at traffic stops, Jim Harrington of the Texas Civil Rights Project told the [New York] Daily News. ‘It’s such a prohibited practice. I don’t know why they think they can do this. It’s mind-boggling.'”

Harrington is an old Lefty ambulance chaser who’s never been shy about exaggerating the facts for political/publicity purposes, but he doesn’t seem to be twisting anything here, thanks to the videos. The searches occurred by the roadside after traffic stops. Apparently no warrants involved. Certainly no legal representation.

So far, one trooper has been suspended, but three more also are involved, in Dallas and Brazoria counties [Actually, there’s more, see my UPDATE below]. And there are at least two lawsuits from these cases now going against the Department of Public Safety, so maybe the rest of us won’t have worry about this every time a trooper decides he smells marijuana.

Can’t speak for the truth of the NYC paper’s report, of course. There’s an old tradition in the news biz that the farther away from the newsroom the story occurs, the looser with the facts the reporter and editors can and tend to be. Especially the Yankee press beating up on Texas and other Southern states.

Via The Advice Goddess

UPDATE:  This, it turns out, is old news, indeed. Not just because both incidents happened  last summer, but because in May a Dallas County grand jury indicted the two  troopers involved there for sexual assault and “official oppression” (interesting name for a law).  One was fired and the other is on suspension. The DPS also paid $185,000 in settlement of a civil lawsuit.

In the Brazoria County incident, one trooper was fired and the other is on suspension and DPS is admitting official embarrassment: “The department does not and will not tolerate any conduct that violates the U.S. and Texas constitutions, or DPS training or policy,” said DPS Director Steven McCraw.

The Texas Rangers have investigated and recommended grand jury review and Brazoria County prosecutors are considering it. Their action may be delayed because the case seems to involve the elected county sheriff, Charles Wagner, and one of his deputies, Aaron Kindred. There’s also a pending civil lawsuit, which also includes Wagner and Kindred as defendants.

So the DPS, the Rangers, at least one grand jury and prosecutors are on the case. It’s rogue behavior and not official policy. I’m relieved.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Texana, The Drug War

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Our thug culture

Posted on July 23, 2013 | 5 comments

Making a rock star out of the Islamic Boston bomber on the cover of Rolling Stone is the latest example of our thug culture. Hip hop “music” with its lyrics about whores and killing niggas is another example. White teenage boys like Mr. B. soak up the cynical lyrics alongside their favorite headbanger noise.

Look how the alphabet stations and the big newspapers knowingly stuck with a photo of a baby-faced Trayvon at 8 12 years old, instead of the sullen, gold-grill 17-year-old who sold and smoked marijuana and stole jewelry.

Then they ignored Zimmerman’s mixed-race heritage and by uniquely dubbing him a “white-Hispanic” turned him into “an honorary white male steeped in white privilege.” All to elevate a young black thug into a pitable victim of pretend racism and give the Revs. Al and Jesse a new lease on “leadership.”

And you could go back even farther. How about the musical Guys & Dolls, with its catchy, hummable songs (Luck Be A Lady) celebrating the blood-soaked gangsters of the New York underworld and their hooking-up floozies? It almost won a Pulitzer for drama.

And don’t forget Bonnie & Clyde. They got a hit movie thirty years after their deaths for their small store (not banks, as their publicists claimed) robberies and killing at least nine cops.

It all may seem more vulgar and dishonest today than ever before, and maybe it is, but the squalid nonsense is old, very old in a culture that has always been much less than it pretended to be.

Via Phase Line Birnam Wood and Instapundit.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Mr. Boy, Music, Scribbles, The Drug War

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Beating the white supremacist drum

Posted on April 2, 2013 | Comments Off on Beating the white supremacist drum

[Updated below]

The snooze media, when it’s not sucking up to our imperial president, his cronies and political party (for you newly arrived illegal immigrants, that would be the Democrats), likes to emphasize our political hyphenation of the past several decades. You know, the multiculturalism nonsense (all cultures are equal; none are superior to any other) that’s supposed to (somehow) make minorities feel better about themselves if they happen to come from a (clearly) backward culture.

Thus the recent killing of the district attorney and his wife in their home in North Texas is, the ever-mendacious NYTimes and cBS assure us, the probable work of the “white supremacist” group the Aryan Brotherhood.  (When it comes to brotherhoods the only one the snooze media likes is the radical Muslim version.)

As Wretchard points out in one of his usual understated blog postings, white supremacism is the snooze media’s favorite hobby horse because it excites their multiculturalist chums. After the Tea Party, perhaps. And gun owners are somewhere on the list. But snoozers have been flogging the gun owners recently and before that the Tea Party. So now, apparently, it’s time (to continue mixing metaphors) to beat the white supremacist drum again. All of which are much easier than thinking or actually working, two things the snooze media tries really hard to avoid and almost always succeeds.

Especially when the probable reason for the DA’s murder is (as usual) staring them in the face. It’s one of the big three. The big three any cop will tell you is the usual reason for murder: sex, drugs or money. Wait and see. The odds are it’ll be one of them, not white supremacism at all. And the snooze media will act like they never doubted it from the beginning and go back to picking on the gun owners.

UPDATE:  Indeed, by April 19, a former justice of the peace and his wife have been charged with the crime, neither of them Tea Party or Aryan Brotherhood members. Nor organizers of a dramatic “hit.” Just plain vanilla murderers, apparently over money. Big surprise.

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Posted in Blogosphere, Guns, Obsessions, Scribbles, Texana, The Drug War

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The buck stops…elsewhere

Posted on March 17, 2013 | Comments Off on The buck stops…elsewhere

Via
Phase Line Birnam Wood

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Posted in Afghanistan, Blogosphere, Iraq, Israel, Obamalot, South of the Border, The Drug War, The Economy, The War, Troops

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