One of the themes I keep hitting over and over here at Windypundit is that SWAT raids for drug crimes are a bad idea. Of course, I think the whole War on Drugs is a bad idea, but fighting that war through an endless series of armed home invasions is a plan that will only lead to carnage and tears.

It's simple statistics. The more times you send armed teams to break into people's homes, the more times people will get killed. It's the inevitable consequence of such a policy. No amount of propaganda and posturing can beat the math. So sometimes the victim is a 92-year-old grandmother, sometimes it's a mother with her baby in her arms, and sometimes it's a United States Marine.

But last Wednesday, on January 4th, police in Ogden, Utah raided the house of Matthew Stewart, and something unusual happened: The cops lost the gunfight. Stewart is a military veteran, and unlike the aformentioned Marine, when the SWAT team came through his door, he apparently didn't hold fire. Officer Jared Francom was killed, and five other cops were wounded. Stewart is still alive.

When cops win the gunfight and kill an alleged offender during a drug raid, there's usually a complete news blackout while they "investigate." Months may pass before they even release the name of the cop who pulled the trigger, if they ever do. In this case, however, the roles are reversed, and it's a cop who's dead, not a lowly civilian, so the law enforcement establishment has gone into high gear. Weber County Attorney Dee W. Smith has already announced that he will seek to have him executed.

I guess the investigation proceeds a bit faster when the deceased is someone the cops care about, and the shooter isn't a cop.

(By the way, if you've been following the excesses of the War on Drugs, you probably won't be surprised to learn that the police officers conducting this raid were part of a multi-jurisdictional task force. In this case, calling it a "task" force must not have sounded macho enough to the commander, so it's something called the Weber-Morgan Narcotics Strike Force.)

Other than the reversal of victim and shooter, however, the shooting of officer Francom was a pretty typical drug raid death. By which I mean it was completely unnecessary. From media reports, the raid appears to have been executed to serve a search warrant for a marijuana grow operation. Not only is that an inherently non-violent activity, it's not even the sort of thing where a criminal could dispose of the evidence if the cops moved too slowly. There was no point in turning this into a violent incident.

DEA Agent Charge Frank Smith doesn't see it that way:

"It's not a legalization issue, it's not an immigration issue, it's a public safety issue. If someone is willing to shoot it out with police, who is self-medicating on marijuana, what's to say he's not willing to walk out his house and start shooting his neighbors?" Smith says.

Well, there's the fact that he didn't walk out of his house and start shooting his neighbors. From all the reports I've read, he didn't start shooting until armed cops invaded his home.

Agent Smith is doing a little something called "moving the goalposts." This was originally an attempt to serve a search warrant. It should have been one swift assault with, at worst, a dead dog or two. Instead, it turned into a clusterfuck, and the Weber-Morgan Narcotics Stike Force has gotten a cop killed. So now Agent Smith is trying to reframe this as if taking out a violent threat to the community was what they planned all along.

Smith says the shooting case will be reviewed and he hopes lessons will be learned to prevent a tragedy like this from ever happening again.

I doubt it. Police departments have been doing raids like this for decades, and they keep getting people killed.

To head off a few objections, note that I'm not saying Stewart was a good guy. For all I know, he's an evil fuck who's been waiting for a chance to kill a cop. Maybe he saw the raid team coming and decided to try to kill them. That still wouldn't change the fact that it was a bad idea to send cops charging into his home.

With one officer dead, four others wounded, and a suspect who is likely to spend the rest of his life in prison, this raid has caused an awful lot of misery. And if this is a typical year, there will be another 40,000 raids in the War on Drugs.

So expect more dead bodies.

Over 40,000 Americans die every year in traffic accidents. This is a terrible tragedy. But I have a simple plan that will completely prevent all 40,000 of these deaths.

The key to my plan is to note that these 40,000 accidents are a result of 40,000 careless people driving cars. So all we have to do to eliminate these accidents is to make sure these 40,000 people aren't allowed to buy cars. Of course, the greedy auto makers insist on pushing their cars on everyone in the country, so some regulation will be required.

We need to impose strict production limits on U.S. auto manufacturing (and importing) to reduce the number of cars produced each year by just over 40,000, thus completely ensuring that irresponsible drivers are unable to obtain cars, which will completely eliminate all automobile deaths. This plan can't possibly fail.

What's that you say? You think my plan is completely stupid?

Well then, smartass, what does that mean for the DEA, which uses the exact same plan to prevent misuse of the prescription drug Adderall:

The DEA gets involved. It's an arm of the Justice Department, the Drug Enforcement Administration. Its job is to make sure, to the extent you can, that drugs don't get diverted into illicit use, drugs of abuse or potential abuse like amphetamines, the way these are.

And so it, every year, sets a ceiling on how much on the raw material, the active ingredient for a whole bunch of drugs, including these, can be made. So it's an overall aggregate amount of raw material that the DEA regulates.

Sigh, naturally, the people who were diverting the drugs before are simply continuing to do so now. On the other hand, the people who actually need Adderall for their health and sanity are having trouble finding enough of the drug. And naturally, the price of this now-scarce drug is rising, pricing some patients out of the market, and forcing them to do without any medication for their condition or switch to less effective drugs.

(Hat tip: Radley Balko)

With her husband already asleep, 84-year-old Anna Jakymek was just turning out the lights when she heard loud noises at the back and front doors about 11:30 p.m.

Her initial thought was that her 89-year old husband had fallen out of bed, but she realized something else was happening when she looked into the front room.

"I see maybe 20 guys come in and see the door knocked open," she said.

The intruders were members of the Cook County sheriff's police gang crimes narcotics unit executing a search warrant at the home on the 5600 block of South Kilbourn Avenue.

"I didn't believe it was the police. They broke everything. I told them they should have rung the bell."

...the officer explained they had misinformation, but said his job was over, and he was leaving. They left a copy of the warrant, but he absolved himself of any responsibility for the raid or the damage...

"As soon as we entered the home, we knew this couple was not involved in the activity alleged"

Ladies and Gentlemen, our nation's insane War On Drugs may have reached some sort of apotheosis with this story:

Two Philadelphia police officers have been charged with criminal conspiracy, robbery, kidnapping, unlawful restraint, false imprisonment, theft, and other related charges, according to officials.

Sean Alivera, 31, and Christopher Luciano, 23, allegedly robbed a supposed drug dealer of 20 pounds of marijuana with a street value of $24,000 as well as $3,000 in cash. It turns out that the man they thought was a drug dealer was actually an undercover officer.

So cops became criminals by stealing drugs from cops pretending to be criminals. Life is more like the Onion every day. It would be funnier, though, if it all weren't for all the ordinary folks caught up in this mess.

(Hat tip: Bobby G. Frederick)

Jennifer Abel finds some people who could learn a thing or two about honesty from Fidel Castro: Ouch!

Hey Kids! Want to know how to smuggle large amounts of dope without getting caught? Police Lieutenant Andrew G. Hawkes will show you how. Of course, he's selling his training materials to police officers only, so you'll have to get past his security questions without breaking any laws, which may be tricky.

Even so, there are a few handy tips on his web site:

Tip #3: "If you really want to be successful at highway drug interdiction then turn OFF your radar.  DRUG HAULERS DON'T SPEED!"

In other words, most highway cops are looking for speeders, so don't speed.

Indicator #18:  "Passengers that DON'T know each others' names is a strong indicator of drug trafficking."

So, you should exchange names and check everybody's memory before hitting the highway.

Tip #36-  "Be sure to turn on the A/C unit to see if the vents blow air, if they do not then that may mean there is a load of dope inside of it."

So, don't put so much dope in your ventilation system that it blocks the air flow.

Personally, I'm fascinated by this sort of thing. If anybody out there has a legally-acquired copy of the book and the bonus videos that they don't want anymore, I'd love to buy them off of you.

(Hat tip, Scott Greenfield)

My wife and I were in Louisville, Kentucky this weekend, and while we were stopping at a gas station mini-mart next to our hotel, I spotted this anti-drug poster in the window:

Larger ImageAnti-drug poster in the window of a gas station in Louisville, Kentucky.

The image is a little blurry because I took it with my phone, but the text reads, in part, "Trapped. Controlled. Alone. Also known as meth addiction."

On the inside, as we were paying for our Diet Coke and snacks, I spotted this display of pot smoking paraphernalia under the cash register:

Larger ImageDrug paraphernalia on sale in the same gas station

My first thought was that they were sending a mixed message, but perhaps the real message they are trying to send is "Don't use crystal meth, because there are much safer drugs you can use, like marijuana."

So, it's 4/20, which is apparently some sort of big day for pot smokers. I don't know why, but pot smokers have glommed onto the number 420 or 4:20 or 4/20 as somehow being tied to pot. I'm sure it makes sense if you're stoned.

Anyway, I think I've established my libertarian credentials well enough that I can now afford to make a libertarian confession: I hate marijuana.

When I was a teenager, I hung out with some friends who sometimes smoked pot. I remember being at parties where the smell got so thick in the air that I'd reflexively hold my breath until it started to hurt. When I finally took a breath, the smell made me want to vomit, and I had to leave. Marijuana smoke is a disgusting smell, and I can't imagine ever voluntarily inhaling something that smelled like that. I've developed a visceral hatred for the weed.

I hate the smell of it so much that just thinking about it now makes be feel a little queasy. I don't like to see pictures of people smoking it. I don't even like seeing pictures of piles of marijuana. I can imagine the smell and it makes me ill.

(In truth, I have no idea what unsmoked marijuana smells like, having never been around it in significant quantities, but what I imagine is pretty awful.)

I hate all the gadgets that pot smokers use. I vaguely remember some friend showing me his collection of pipes and expecting me to think they were really cool because they were carved into weird shapes, or because he had fuckin' stories about how when he bought each one and the places he used them. I hate watching pot smokers constantly fiddling with the pipes, poking at the insides for some damned reason. I hate roach clips, which always look filthy and have stupid shit attached to them. I hate all the stupid decorative bongs, and they way pot smokers get so excited about a new one.

I hate cannabis culture. I hate all the cute words marijuana smokers use -- pot, weed, grass, joint, blunt, roach, spliff, toke, jay, reefer, chronic, ganja. I hate all pictures of people smoking up and all the stupid drawings of marijuana leaves and all the little cartoon figures of people smoking pot.

Kids, smoking pot doesn't make you cool. It just makes you smell like pot.

Sorry, but I just needed to get that out there. Truthfully, I'm using the word hate for effect. I don't hate all that stuff I just mentioned, I just find it all irritating. Except maybe the smell of pot. That I probably do hate.

I think the smell has a lot to do with it. Olfactory memories tend to run especially deep and strong. I hate the smell of pot so much that I have an unpleasant response to anything that reminds me of the smell of pot. Such as, for example, pot.

None of this means I am any less in favor of ending drug prohibition. I hated pot long before I learned to hate the drug war, and my dislike of many illegal drugs has nothing to do with how I feel about legalizing them. It will be a great day when marijuana is finally legalized.

But on a personal level, I'm not looking forward to the smell.

I don't know anything else about Jim Gray, but this is about as good an explanation as I've ever seen of how the War on Drugs fails so badly:

When I was on a criminal jury a few years ago, the judge impressed on us how important our job was. He made sure we took it seriously. Which is one of the reasons this bullshit makes me so angry:

The Minnesota Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, has now ruled that Bong Water (water which had been used in a water pipe) was a "mixture" of "25 grams or more" supporting a criminal conviction for Controlled Substance crime in the first degree.  The crime is the most serious felony drug crime in Minnesota, with a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison for a first offense.

Let me make this clear: If you mix an illegal drug with an ounce of water, you can be charged with having 1 ounce of a drug mixture. Then, if you dilute the drug by adding another ounce of water, you can be charged with having a larger amount---2 ounces---of the drug mixture, even though in both cases you had the exact same amount of the actual drug.

I may not be applying the law correctly in my example, but the essence of this decision is that diluting the illegal drug with a legal substance increases the severity of the crime.

This is not an isolated example of bizarre legal thinking:

...a guy dumped his meth in the toilet.  The cops scooped the water out, weighed it, and used the weight of the toilet water as the basis for his prosecution.  Since they scooped more than 600 grams of water out of the toilet, that put him over the limit for a 1st degree felony.

The jury gave him 85 years in prison...

This is, the Court said, what the legislature intended.

This is mind-bogglingly stupid. Folks, it's basic math and logic. I mean, we teach children how to do fractions to avoid this kind of mistake. If this is what the legislature intended, then the legislature is an ass.

(Hat tip to Jamie for both examples.)

I've been following the foolishness that is the War On Drugs for decades, and this is one of the stupidest things I've ever heard of. But this is not the first time I've heard of it. I can recall a case where the government wanted to use the weight of the container that held the drugs in calculating the sentence.

Tell me, the next time someone lectures me how important the rules of jury service are---don't discuss the case, let the judge decide what the law is, follow the evidence, don't visit the crime scene, don't nullify---why (other fear of punishment for contempt) shouldn't I tell them to go fuck themselves? If the legislature and the prosecutor and the judge can ignore something as fundamental as physical reality---hell, basic math---why should us jurors be impressed by any of their rules? Clearly, the rules don't really matter.

This sounds like good news:

Federal drug agents won't pursue pot-smoking patients or their sanctioned suppliers in states that allow medical marijuana, under new legal guidelines to be issued Monday by the Obama administration.

It's about damned time.

While honoring our nation's fallen soldiers, I'm also going to take a moment to remember those who died in our longest and most senseless war.

Virginia prosecutor Tom McKenna and I never seem to agree on anything (except maybe guns) and my previous post in response to a police officer's complaint about the verdict in the Ryan Frederick case is no exception:

A blogging police officer complains of a manslaughter conviction for a dope dealer who killed a police officer attempting to serve a search warrant at his Chesapeake, Virginia house. (lots of the backstory here).

"Dope dealer" is kind of a stretchy term. Since drugs are illegal, there aren't any approved stores or mailorder suppliers. Everybody who has drugs is usually willing to sell to some to their friends. Technically, that makes them drug dealers. But in reality, there's a big difference between someone who sells to his friends, and someone who sells drugs as his job.

Since Frederick got up every morning for his job driving a delivery truck, I'm guessing he wasn't exactly raking in the cash from his tiny grow operation.

Now, this pot head, Ryan Frederick, has been written up cloyingly in Reason and has become somewhat of a poster child for the 420-loving crowd, who see this drug bust gone awry as more evidence of the failure of the drug war and the evils of the supposedly gestapo-like tactics used by police to persecute these peace-loving pot smokers.

That's because it is more evidence of the failure of the drug war and the evils of the methods used by police to persecute peaceful drug users. Obviously, Tom doesn't see it that way, and I'm not going to convince him.

Example: Windypundit in turn getting upset with the blogging officer, says this:

Alright Scott, here's something for you to think about: All this happened because Ryan Frederick was suspected of growing marijuana, a crime which has no victims. The next time you or your police buddies decide to do an armed home invasion because you think there might be evil plants inside, remember that there are hundreds of thousands of potential jurors out here who won't mind too much if you get your ass killed. Maybe that will make you stop and think about what you're doing.

Right. So on one side we have an angry officer, upset that a jury in Chesapeake, Va. (a very conservative community) did not find Frederick guilty of murder. On the other side, we have the dope heads and their ideological friends trying to make a Joan of Arc out of this Tidewater Toker.

Alright, I have to admit that the part where he quotes me sounds a bit harsh. On the other hand, I was responding in kind to the blogging officer's vaguely threatening suggestion that the jurors should stop and think about what would happen next time they called the police if the responding officers knew they had voted to acquit. I wanted him---or people who agree with him---to understand what it sounds like coming back at them.

While it appears that the police might have been more cautious about using the particular informant in this case, there was evidence presented that Frederick, despite denials, knew the police were coming to his house, and indeed had been operating a grow room in the preceding weeks (not to mention the trivial fact that police knocked and yelled "Chesapeake police--search warrant" five times before having to force entry).

If I remember right, the evidence that Frederick knew the cops were coming was from informants of questionable reliability. In fact, among the parade of jailhouse snitches was one who was such a notorious liar that a prosecutor from a neighboring county felt obligated to speak up about it in the middle of the trial.

Whether the police yelled anything loudly enough for Frederick to hear is also disputed. The police say they did, but the prosecutor couldn't find any neighbors who heard them yelling, and the defense found seven who said they didn't.

(The situation was confusing and happening fast, so maybe the neighbors weren't very alert and all seven of them missed the police yelling, but even if the police announced the warrant properly, that's not the important issue. What matters is whether Frederick knew they were police. So if all seven neighbors missed the yelling, maybe he did too.)

At one point, the prosecutor even tried to imply that Frederick's prison weight-gain showed he was unremorseful for killing a cop. I'm no lawyer, but it sounds like he was really reaching to try to prove his murder case.

And the bottom line is that the jury clearly rejected his claim that he was acting in self-defense from an unknown intruder-- self-defense is an absolute defense, if believed, to the offense they convicted him of manslaughter. By the same token, the jury apparently was hesitant to condone the way the police investigated this case and chose to execute the search warrant.

I think the jury also clearly rejected the claim that Frederick was intentionally trying to kill someone he knew to be a cop. He did something reckless that got a cop killed, but it's not like he was trying to do that. It's kind of like he drove too fast through an intersection and accidentally struck a cop directing traffic. He probably wouldn't get a murder conviction for that either.

A modest suggestion: if the police work in the case was less than optimal, it can hardly excuse the Tidewater Toker, who had no justification to fire a shotgun at a Chesapeake police officer.

Yes, but one of the things both Tom and the blogging cop are both glossing over is that Ryan Frederick did not get a walk on the shooting. He's been sentenced to 10 years in prison on the manslaughter conviction. He's going to pay for the death of officer Shivers. He's just not going to pay with his life.

That neither "side" is entirely happy probably means the jury got it just about right.

Could be. Press accounts of the details of shootings are always sketchy, but it sounds like Frederick shot at someone without identifying his target properly as a threat. If so, the resulting verdict sounds reasonable.

By the way, the fascist Nazi drug cop who "got his ass killed" was Jerrod Shivers, a Navy vet and a decorated police officer with a wife and three children.

Hey Tom, I think calling Officer Shivers a "fascist Nazi" is uncalled for, and you should apologize. At least, I assume that you think he's a "fascist Nazi" since I sure as hell didn't call him that.

Officer Shivers is yet another casualty of our stupid war on drugs, and although he was part of the police operation that initiated this violent mess, it's unfair to hold him responsible. He was just doing his job. If the Chesapeake police department hadn't gotten it into their head to conduct an armed home invasion to nab a guy growing a few pot plants, none of this would have happened. Ryan Frederick wouldn't be in jail, and officer Jerrod Shivers would still be alive and taking care of his family.

May he rest in peace.

On this we agree.

Strangely, it appears sanity may prevail in the ridiculous investigation into Michael Phelps' alleged pot smoking by Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott:

COLUMBIA, S.C. - A South Carolina sheriff said Monday he was not going to charge swimmer Michael Phelps after a photo of the 14-time gold medalist showed him smoking from a marijuana pipe.

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott said he couldn't ignore the photo but defended his investigation.

I have to say, I didn't see that coming. I gave this outcome only a 2% to 6% chance, depending on whether the local DA was interested in filing charges.

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott is apparently out to get champion swimmer Michael Phelps for smoking pot. After Phelps's admissions last week, Sheriff Lott arrested eight people as part of his "investigation" into the matter. Now word is coming out about some of the details of those arrests:

"He's sitting there on Saturday, and 12 cops kick in the door with guns drawn, search the house, and find 5, maybe 6 grams of pot," Harpootlian said about his client, who was arrested in the first raid at the Wells Point Drive home near Ballentine.

"They never asked him, 'Who sold you the pot?'" Harpootlian continued. "They were asking, 'Were you at the party with Michael Phelps? Did you see him using marijuana?' It was all about Michael Phelps."

Clearly, Sheriff Lott has visions of fame---he's probably an envious admirer of self-proclaimed "worlds toughtest Sheriff" Joe Arpaio---so he's hunting for a nice Olympic-quality pelt for his trophy room.

We've seen variations on this theme before---e.g. the Winona Ryder shoplifting trial---so I think we all have a pretty good idea of what could happen next. That's why, in the style of Adam Savage on Mythbusters before the experiment, I'm now going to try to estimate the odds on various possible results:

• 1%: Sheriff Lott can't put together a case against Phelps.
• 0.9%: Someone with political power at the state or county level makes Sheriff Lott back off because he's an embarassment.
• 0.1%: Sheriff Lott has a moment of clarity and stops on his own.
• 6%: Sheriff Lott puts together a case, but the DA isn't interested, so it goes nowhere.
• The DA is as publicity crazed as Sheriff Lott,
• but simple possession is only a misdemeanor in South Carolina, meaning there's no extradition, so Phelps
• 13%: simply stays away from South Carolina.
• 44%: voluntarily returns to face "justice" because it's better for his career.
• 35%: Phelps is indicted on trumped-up felony charges based on statements from other arrested people trying to make a deal, forcing him to return to Richland County.

That's a 79% chance that Phelps is arrested. If that's what happens, then that 79% breaks down further according to the result of the legal process:

• 1%: The publicity dies down, and the charges are quietly dropped.
• Phelps pleads to possesion and
• 13%: pays a fine and gets probation just like every other first offender.
• 6%: the DA's deal requires Phelps to serve some time in jail, and then Sheriff Lott and the DA announce at the press conference that "celebrities are not entitled to special treatment," despite the fact that every other first offender just pays a fine and gets probation.
• The DA won't agree to a plea, so the case goes to trial with the result that
• 3%: a star-struck jury acquits Phelps of all charges.
• 15%: a non-star-struck jury acquits Phelps of all charges.
• Phelps is found guilty of
• possession, and
• 27%: the judge gives him a fine and probation just like every other first offender.
• 8%: the judge gives him jail time to prove that celebrities don't get special treatment, and then Sheriff Lott and the DA announce at the press conference that "celebrities are not entitled to special treatment," despite the fact that every other first offender just gets a fine and probation.
• a felony drug crime, and
• 0.5%: the judge gives him a slap on the wrist because he's a celebrity.
• 5%: the judge gives him a little jail time, just like everybody else gets.
• 0.5%: the judge throws the book at him to prove that celebrities don't get special treatment, and then Sheriff Lott and the DA announce at the press conference that "celebrities are not entitled to special treatment," despite the fact that everybody else just gets a little jail time.

So, how'd I do? Any suggestions for adjustments? Possible results I missed?

The War On Drugs, at least as the federal level, arguable started 100 years ago this week:

On February 9, 1909, Congress passed the Opium Exclusion Act, barring the importation of opium for smoking as of April 1.  Thus began a hundred-year crusade that has unleashed unprecedented crime, violence and corruption around the world--a war with no victory in sight.

Long accustomed to federal drug control, most Americans are unaware that there was once a time when people were free to buy any drug, including opium, cocaine, and cannabis, at the pharmacy.  In that bygone era, drug-related crime and violence were largely unknown, and drug use was not a major public concern.

The Opium Exclusion Act applied only to the opium processed for smoking that was favored by Chinese immigrants--not the medicinal opium that white Americans commonly kept in their household medicine cabinets.

Read the whole thing.

(Hat tip: Radley Balko)

Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott has arrested eight people in connection with the Michael Phelps bong caper, according to a WIS News 10 story:

Lott says the picture indicated a law was being broken in his jurisdiction. He said he couldn't ignore the violation just because Phelps is rich and famous.

We've now learned that since investigators began trying to build a case, they've made eight arrests: seven for drug possession and one for distribution. These are arrests that resulted as the sheriff's department served search warrants. 

Sheriff Lott is clearly a jerk. Surprisingly, however, he's not the biggest jerk in this story:

We've also learned that the department has located and confiscated that bong.

Sources say the owner of the bong was trying to sell it on eBay for as much as $100,000.

The owner, who wasn't even at the party, is one of the eight now charged.

Speaking up for sanity is the Police Department and the Governor:

That house is in the city, but the Columbia Police Department decided not to initiate or take an active role in the investigation.

Governor Mark Sanford is also weighing in on the sheriff's actions.

On the FOX News Channel Sunday night, Geraldo Rivera asked Sanford whether Phelps should be prosecuted.

"I don't see what it gets at this point," said Sanford.

What it gets, of course, is Sheriff Lott's name in the news. That's what this is all about.

(Hat tip: Pete Guither)

The Michael-Phelps-smokes-pot non-story I blogged earlier has taken a depressing turn and brought back a familiar character, according to an AP story by Meg Kinnard:

Olympic superstar Michael Phelps could face criminal charges as part of the fallout from a photo that surfaced showing the swimmer smoking from a marijuana pipe at a University of South Carolina house party.

A spokesman for Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott, who is known for his tough stance on drugs, said Tuesday the department was investigating.

As it turns out, Sheriff Lott has appeared here in Windypundit before. He's the moron who thinks it's a great idea to fight drugs using a military armored personnel carrier, complete with a full-size "Ma Deuce" .50 cal machine gun capable of shooting clear through walls and killing people for miles in every direction.

Sheriff's spokesman Lt. Chris Cowan explains:

"The bottom line is, if he broke the law, and he did it in Richland County, he's going to be charged," Cowan said. "And there's no difference between Michael Phelps and several other people that we arrest for the same type of a charge everyday."

There sure as hell is a difference: Arresting a famous athlete will make Sheriff Lott famous, and Sheriff Lott desperately wants to be famous:

The Richland County sheriff has long sought to fight drug crimes. He rose from patrol officer to captain of the narcotics division in the early 1990s, after the television series "Miami Vice" made its splash.

Lott played the part well. He wore stylish suits and had long hair then. He drove a Porsche seized from a drug dealer and even worked undercover with federal agents in Florida.

It doesn't help Phelps that he apologized. The Sheriff's office is calling it a "partial confession" and saying that they only have to prove the incident took place in Richland County. I'm not convinced it's much of a confession since (a) the apology was released by his staff, not Phelps himself, and (b) none of the versions I've seen admit to any criminal act.

In any case, I'm hoping Phelps has learned his lesson. That lesson, of course, is Never Admit Nothing. Given the large amount of endorsement money at stake, it really is million-dollar legal advice.

(Hat tip: Radley Balko)

I don't know why this caught my eye, but yet another sports figure---this time it's Olympic Swimmer Michael Phelps---has admitted he's smoked pot, complete with ritual show-trial confession:

"I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment. I'm 23 years old and despite the successes I've had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again."

Yeah, whatever.

Hey kids, you know what? All your sports heroes use drugs. So do all your movie stars, musical performers, and political leaders. Except the ones that don't. Because, really, moderate drugs use doesn't make a big difference either way.

Get over it. Pay attention to something that matters.

Update: What Phelps should have said.

Does anybody know how to file a Freedom of Information Act request? Because there's something I've just got to know.

I was visiting the DEA site to see if they had any information about their anniversary celebration ("35 Years Of Ruining Lives For Nothing"), when I discovered something that stopped me cold: Like many law enforcement agencies, the DEA has a Victim Assistance Program. Since using and selling drugs is a classic victimless crime, I've got to know how much money the DEA spends helping the "victims."

They seem to realize there's a problem, because on their web page, they call it the Victim Witness Assistance Program even though the text on the page talks only about victims and says nothing about witnesses. I suspect the DEA is funneling victim assistance money into any regular law enforcement activity that can be characterized as helping a witness.

Keep in mind, too, that many witnesses in drug crimes are criminals who have been flipped by the government.

To balance Radley's anti-drug-war piece I linked to earlier, the Culture11 site also includes a piece by David Freddoso arguing that we should "Keep Drugs Illegal!" He makes a better argument than you usually hear, but it doesn't really hold up.

Freddoso's first argument is a relatively new one. He asserts that eliminating the War on Drugs won't eliminate street violence the way drug legalizers claim because criminals will just move on to something else:

The cause of criminal violence is not drugs or alcohol but rather criminals. To believe otherwise is to expect every drug dealer in America to give up and apply for a job at McDonald's or WalMart the day legalization occurs. Every society contains a sizable element whose members refuse to make an honest living under any circumstances. The legalization of drugs will not change this large-scale reality of human behavior.

I doubt that most of these people are refusing an honest living. They're just looking for an easy way to earn an easy living, and unlike most of us, they aren't worried if it's illegal.

Also, don't knock those jobs at McDonald's and WalMart. Entry-level drug dealers---corner crews and such---usually earn less than minimum wage. This is one reason why corner kids are always kids: Once they get older, many of them can find decent jobs that are less hazardous.

For now, many societal malefactors have the option of selling or trafficking drugs. But their real trade is to profit from the unwillingness of others to take the risks involved in illegal activity. Think of drug legalization, then, as a new government regulation on the drug dealer. It removes the illegality, and therefore much of the profit, from his trade. Experience suggests that such changes in government policy motivate economic actors to find loopholes. For the drug dealer or supplier, that means finding some new illegal activity through which to cash in on one's tolerance for the risks of crime.

Suppose every bit of this is true, that if the illegal drug trade goes away, the criminal underclass will just find something else to do that is equally violent and illegal. This may mean that legalizing drugs won't make the violence go away, but by the same argument, winning the war on drugs won't make the violence go away either. In that case, let's take the path that's cheaper and less destructive to civil liberties. Let's legalize drugs.

Freddoso goes on to list a bunch of horrible crimes that drug dealers could turn to, from money laundering to trafficking in conflict diamonds(!). Of course, the crime of money laundering is another part of the war on drugs---if legalization takes the money out of drug dealing, what will there be to launder?

Criminals don't have to wait for drug legalization to move into those other areas, they could do that now. They must be dealing drugs because it's their preferred way to make money. If we eliminate the profits from illegal drugs, it will force some criminals to fall back to their second-best illegal option. Since this is by definition not as desirable, a few of them will get out of the game.

Freddoso's second argument is more familar:

Despite the wishful thinking of its proponents, drug legalization would result in broader drug use, and for exactly the same reasons a legal narcotics market tends to reduce the size of an illegal one--lower prices, greater convenience, more reliable supply, and far more security in one's transactions. A great number of weighty disincentives to drug use would disappear. Many people who do not currently know how or where to obtain drugs would continue to abstain, but many others would want to try them.

I agree with every bit of that. Legalizing drugs would lower their cost, and people buy more of something when it's cheaper. But then Freddoso missteps:

As with alcohol, minors would find it much easier to obtain drugs if they were legal.

I'm not so sure of that. Alcohol is sold by licensed businesses, whereas illegal drugs are sold by criminals. Who do you think is more likely to sell to a child?

Freddoso continues:

Drug use itself--not just the drug trade--has enormous social costs in the form of crime, homelessness, and an increase in demand for taxpayer-funded social services. Wider drug use would inevitably exacerbate these costs.

That doesn't necessarily follow. A lot of the social problems of illegal drugs are due to the environment created by drug prohibition. Eliminate the poor quality control, the variable purity, the adulterants, the non-sterile needles, and the high dosage characteristic of illegal drugs, and you greatly reduce the direct harm from drug use. Also, you don't see users of legal drugs stealing from their families to finance their habit. It just isn't that expensive.

That brings the argument to alcohol, where Freddoso's argument careens completely out of control:

The worst arguments for drug legalization compare hard drugs to alcohol, as though alcohol were as addictive or as destructive as heroin, crack, or crystal meth, or as though hard drugs had the same social benefits that countless millions of responsible drinkers enjoy without incident.

Our history with alcohol shows that legalizing a drug encourages milder forms of the drug to enter (or re-enter) the market. Legalizing alcohol did not lead to liquor stores selling gallon jugs of moonshine and bathtub gin. Similarly, we can expect that, for example, legalized cocaine will not be sold in crack bottles. We'd probably see a return to a time when people could ask the bartender to punch up their drinks with a pinch of cocaine. Allowing Coca-Cola to be the real thing (again) is not a recipe for a social disaster.

To be sure, neither a health risk nor a possible ill effect is necessarily grounds for creating any prohibition in law. But some prohibitions are reasonable and should be kept in place. Even the staunchest libertarian expects government to protect him from precisely the sort of bodily harm that certain drugs--specially meth--have a long history of facilitating.

I think Freddoso doesn't know many libertarians. The "staunchest libertarian" most certainly does not want the government to protect him from knowingly taking dangerous drugs. He doesn't even want the government to use his tax money to stop other people from taking dangerous drugs.

Sigh. The anti-drug authorities have been telling us horror stories about every drug they've ever made illegal. But let's just say that this time I'm willing to believe that they're not telling lies. Maybe crystal meth really is as bad as they say.

Fair enough. So let's keep crystal meth illegal. Hell, let's keep crack cocaine illegal too. Now could we stop ruining people's lives over all those other drugs that aren't anywere near that bad?

Update: Kip takes issue with Freddoso's argument that there will always be criminals, and he's not as nice about it as I am.

Why do I hate the war on drugs?

Radley Balko explains it for me quite nicely in his Culture 11 article, "War on Drugs: The Collateral Damage." I highly recommend you read it.

You know what would be interesting? If someone---perhaps in response to accusations that a group of cops was framing innocent people---spent months setting up a fake drug house to attract police suspicion. Then, after the police raided the place and found no drugs of any kind, asked to see the sworn search affidavit, so they could check it for accuracy against their own heavily documented activities.

You'd have to be crazy to try something like that. You'd have to want to get in cops' faces and not be afraid of what they'd do to you. You'd have to have a hatred for the drug war verging on madness.

You'd have to be Barry Cooper.

Yes, the madman behind the Never Get Busted Again videos has set up a sting operation to snare a bunch of cops that he believes are responsible for getting an informant to plant dugs on a young woman named Yolanda Madden, who is serving a seven year sentence for possession with intent to distribute.

KopBusters rented a house in Odessa, Texas and began growing two small Christmas trees under a grow light similar to those used for growing marijuana. When faced with a suspected marijuana grow, the police usually use illegal FLIR cameras and/or lie on the search warrant affidavit claiming they have probable cause to raid the house. Instead of conducting a proper investigation which usually leads to no probable cause, the Kops lie on the affidavit claiming a confidential informant saw the plants and/or the police could smell marijuana coming from the suspected house.

The trap was set and less than 24 hours later, the Odessa narcotics unit raided the house only to find KopBuster's attorney waiting under a system of complex gadgetry and spy cameras that streamed online to the KopBuster's secret mobile office nearby.

Although I like Barry Cooper, I've always thought he was a bit of a con artist with a giant ego, and that his Never Get Busted Again video series was mostly a way to turn his background as a narcotics cop into some quick cash.

But damn, if this plays out, I have to admit he's the real deal, and that his giant ego is actually well-earned.

Here's some media coverage:

I've been avoiding commenting on Obama's rumored picks for his administration. I figure there's no point speculating how bad they might be when in a few months we'll know for sure how bad they are. However, I really have to say something about the rumors he wants to put Jim Ramstad in as Drug Czar.

Actually, I'll let Maia Szalavitz say it:

There is one issue that has consistently separated those who put science and saving lives in front of politics. That is needle exchange programs for addicts to prevent the spread of HIV and other blood borne illnesses.

...

Needle exchanges have been shown repeatedly to reduce HIV and contrary to the claims of opponents, they help addicts get into treatment.

But Bill Clinton had a drug czar -- Barry McCaffrey -- who said that needle exchange "sent the wrong message," and would make him seem soft on drugs. McCaffrey fought against it and Clinton now says he "regrets" caving in to drug war politics.

While Obama has said that he favors federal funding, the last thing we need is another drug czar to talk him out of it.

Ramstad looks like that person...In 1992, he said, "Federal funds should be used to get people off drugs not facilitate drug abuse...let's support programs that save lives, not destroy lives." By then, dozens of studies from around the world already suggested that clean needle programs not only reduce HIV, but attract addicts into recovery.

...

In 1999 -- with the data now overwhelming -- Ramstad voted to prevent Washington DC from using its own money to fund syringe exchange.

Ramstad is also on the record opposing medical marijuana programs.

In both cases, Obama has indicated he opposes Ramstad's former positions. He's talked about lifting the needle ban and about stopping federal raids of medical marijuana providers. I suppose it's possible that Ramstad changed his mind or is willing to implement policies for Obama that he doesn't agree with.

But then what are we to make of Obama's choice of Eric Holder for Attorney General? Jacob Sullum tells us that

Barack Obama's selection of Eric Holder as his attorney general is a very discouraging sign for anyone who hoped the new administration would de-escalate the war on drugs. ...Holder pushed for stiffer marijuana penalties when he was the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and the details are strikingly at odds not only with Obama's signals regarding marijuana but with his opposition to long sentences for nonviolent drug offenders. According to a December 1996 report in The Washington Times...Holder wanted "minimum sentences of 18 months for first-time convicted drug dealers, 36 months for the second time and 72 months for every conviction thereafter." He also wanted to "make the penalty for distribution and possession with intent to distribute marijuana a felony, punishable with up to a five-year sentence." The D.C. Council made the latter Holder-endorsed change in 2000. Holder thought New York City's irrational, unjust crackdown on pot smokers was a fine idea and worth emulating, saying "we have too long taken the view that what we would term to be minor crimes are not important."

(Joel, if you're reading, Holder's also awful on guns.)

I suppose it's possible he's changed his mind or is willing to implement alternative policies, but can we really believe that two stern drug warriors---Holder and now Ramstad---have both had changes of heart? Are we to hope that Obama will stick to his stated plans to scale back drug war excesses despite these two picks and despite the drug-warrior credentials of runningmate Joe Biden and Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel?

That's a lot to hope for.

Update: While I'm at it, Eric Holder's not so good on the First Amendment either.

The ONDCP blog is touting their latest set of anti-drug ads. Each one depicts a fictional job title---Burrito Taster, Couch Security Guard, TV Remote Control Operator---and concludes with the tag line "Hey, not trying to be your mom, but there aren't many jobs out there for potheads."

The obvious flaw with this argument is the plenty of pot smokers have gone on to really great jobs. One of them, in fact, is going to be President of the United States in a couple of months.

I thought it would be a great idea to come up with a list of people with pretty impressive jobs who have smoked up, but Radley Balko beat me to it:

Barack Obama, president-elect.  Bill Clinton, 42nd president of the U.S.  John Kerry, U.S. Senator and 2004 Democratic nominee for president.  John Edwards, multi-millionaire, former U.S. Senator, and 2004 Democratic nominee for vice president.  Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska, 2008 Republican nominee for vice president.  British Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, Transport Secretary Ruth Kelly, and and Chancellor Alistair Darling.  Josh Howard, NBA all-star.  New York Governor David Paterson.  Former Vice President, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and Oscar winner Al Gore.  Former Sen. Bill Bradley, who smoked while playing professional basketball.  Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, and former New York Governor George Pataki. Billionaire and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Read the whole thing.

The Chicago Police Department has been facing some looming shortages of money and manpower. Whenever any law enforcement entity faces such problems, we libertarians have a stock solution: Stop wasting money on the War on Drugs. Use the people and equipment for something more important.

Which brings me to Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis, who has said some interesting things lately. According to a Chicago Tribune article by Azam Ahmed, he's deviating from the company line when it comes to the War on Drugs:

Weis pointed out that efforts to reduce the supply of cocaine have been ineffective, citing that the cost of a kilogram of cocaine has remained about the same for the last few decades.

Former police chiefs like Norm Stamper have been saying stuff like this for years, but it's unusual for an active head of a police department to make such comments.

Even more unusual is an explanation Weis gave that sounds like a variation of the "Hamsterdam" plot line from the third season of The Wire. Weis made it clear just what his department is willing to overlook:

Ultimately, the priority to reduce violence trumps the department's need to combat drugs, he said.

"Life has become extraordinarily cheap in some neighborhoods," Weis said. "If a gang is dealing drugs and not killing anyone . . . that's not on our priority list."

If Weis is serious about this, and if he has the leadership skills to bend the department to his vision, the next few years could take Chicago law enforcement going in some interesting directions. I'm...optimistic.

A jury just convicted California medical marijuana provider Charles Lynch of federal drug distribution charges.

His marijuana dispensary was entirely legal under California law, and he operated it wth the blessing of local officials, including the mayor and city attorney of Morro Bay. However, he was charged under federal anti-drug laws, so none of that mattered.

He was also charged with providing marijuana to a minor. That would be 17-year old cancer patient Owen Beck who was using marijuana with prescription from his Stanford-trained oncologist.

Owen Beck was not allowed to testify to his illness. Neither were any of Lynch's other customers.

For his crimes, Lynch is now facing a minimum 5-year sentence. (The maximum is 100 years, but that won't happen unless the judge is insane.)

So, remember what happened to Charles Lynch, and the next time some self-described conservative starts telling you about about the importance of limited government, federalism, and states rights, put him to the test. Ask him what he thinks about the Charles Lynch case. If he's serious about limited government, he'll agree that this is a travesty. Otherwise, he's a poser.

You'll notice that I didn't title this piece "Remember Charles Lynch." That's because as important as it is to remember the victimes of the War On Drugs, it's even more important to remember the perpetrators.

David Kowal is the lead prosecutor in the case against Charles Lynch. Remember his name, and the next time that name pops up in your life---as a candidate running for for office, as a guy stranded on the side of the road whom you stop to help---remember the thing that he did. And give him hell for it.

[Update: Make sure it's the right David Kowal. This guy had nothing to do with it.]

Speaking of drug raids, a while back I posted about a raid in which the Lima, Ohio SWAT team killed Tarika Wilson.

For that post, I was taken to task twice (here and here) by people who called me ignorant of police tactics. I'm sure they're right, but that just doesn't matter, because you don't have to be an expert on police tactics to know that something is wrong when cops shoot and kill an unarmed woman while she's holding her infant son, who is also wounded.

As I made clear,

my anger isn't directed at the individual member of the Lima SWAT team who pulled the trigger. Something definitely went wrong that day in Wilson's house, but I have no idea what, and it may not have been his fault.

It turns out that some important people disagree with me, specifically the prosecutor for Lima, Ohio. The shooter, Sgt. Joseph Chavalia, has been charged with negligent homicide and is currently on trial.

The prosecutor's witnesses have testified to some ugly details:

A woman shot and killed by a police officer during a drug raid was likely on her knees and complying with a SWAT team's orders to get down when she was hit in the neck and chest, two experts testified Wednesday at the officer's trial.

And yes, they also shot the dog.

Yet another pointless drug raid:

"My government blew through my doors and killed my dogs," Calvo said. "They thought we were drug dealers, and we were treated as such. I don't think they really ever considered that we weren't."

This time the victim is the Mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland, so this is getting a little attention outside the libertarian blogosphere.

His two dogs were labrador retrievers, not the most threatening dogs in the world, and he claims one of them was shot as it ran away. It's not the first time SWAT teams have been accused of shooting the family dogs for sport.

Local news video here.

(Hat tip: Pete and Radley)

Georgia state troopers claimed they searched a car because they smelled marijuana in it. When it turned out the only marijuana in the car was wrapped in plastic in the trunk, a dirty no-accounts defense attorney wanted to make them prove their pot-smelling skills by finding the same plastic-wrapped package of marijuana hidden in one of the cars in the court parking lot. Fortunately, the judge stood up for law and order and denied the motion, clearly recognizing the well-known fact that any cop can smell pot just as well as a trained drug dog.

(Hat tip: Balko)

Update: To be fair, I suppose it's possible that there was a smell of marijuana in the car for some reason other than the stash in the trunk. It could happen.

I've watched Barry Cooper's Never Get Busted Again, Volume 2: Never Get Raided twice now, and maybe it's just because the novelty has worn off, but this video wasn't quite as much fun as the first one. It's probably still worth buying, however, if you really need to know this kind of information...if you know what I mean.

(A lot of people will stumble across this review who don't know me. You should keep in mind that I'm an anti-drug-war activist, but I don't sell or even use these drugs myself, so I may not be the best judge of the soundness of Barry's advice.)

The first section is about growing marijuana outdoors, and it's a good example of what Barry Cooper brings to the table in the war against the War on Drugs. Barry and his team go out in a helicopter, find a marijuana field from the air, then go in on the ground and find debris, tools, and marijuana plants as Barry explains how the DEA finds growing fields---looking for worn paths near streams, spotting trees that have been cut down to remove shade, and finding litter characteristic of a grow operation. It's a fascinating insight into how drug cops do their jobs.

The next few sections are about growing pot indoors, and the style is a little stilted as Barry starts working from a script. The DVD is always more entertaining when Barry is allowed to be Barry.

This part has a lot of information about the technology of operating a secret grow room, which might be useful, but a fair amount of it is spent discussing operational security: Being careful about heat escaping from the house, watching your electric bill, telling no one about your grow operation, procuring supplies safely. I suspect there are better sources for this information on the internet, but it's still useful to hear what a former narcotics officer thinks is effective.

Barry gives one piece of advice in this section that really worries me. When advising how to safely order growing supplies over the internet, Barry says to use a public computer and pay for it with one of those gift credit cards you can buy with cash. Then he discusses how to ship it safely:

Simply pick a shipping address of a friend or a relative and explain to them you have a gift for your wife or significant other being shipped to them---you didn't want it shipped to your house or your wife or significant other would figure out the surprise.

This guarantees that grow equipment will go somewhere that can't be traced.

That's not cool. Neither is Barry's advice that if you buy supplies directly from a store with cash, you borrow somebody else's car to make the pickup.

Barry argues that you're not getting your friends in trouble because they aren't operating a grow room, but I don't buy it for two reasons: First, getting raided by the police is going to suck for your friends, even if the cops don't find anything. Second, you don't know what your friend is doing in the privacy of his home that the police might frown on. If somebody did this to me and brought the drug police to my door, I'd be seriously pissed off. We wouldn't be friends any more.

On the other hand, the operational security is fascinating, as Barry explains how to approach and leave a growing supply shop, and how to handle being tailed by the police. Barry also explains the importance of disposing of trash in a thought-provoking way:

Controlling trash should enter your mind as controlling evidence.

The video takes a dark turn in the section on how to handle a "Knock and Talk" or "Tap and Rap" as police call it when they come to your door to ask you a bunch of questions. This is another section where Barry's advice differs from other people.

All the people I arrested, and all the people emailing me for help, made one critical error: They all opened the door for the police. A lot of well-meaning drug reformers and attorneys have instructed citizens to open the door, step out on the porch, and shut the door behind them, when confronted with a knock and talk.

When I was a narcotics officer, If I could get the person to open the door, I knew I could search their house. I would explain I smelled marijuana, that if they forced me to go get a search warrant I was going to arrest everybody in the house, and seize their home and put them in prison, or they could simply cooperate, sign a consent-to-search form, and allow me to search. It worked every time.

Had they not opened the door for me, I never would have been able to manipulate them into signing a consent to search their home.

Interspersed with Barry's advice is an interview with Ryan Rodriguez, President of the Dallas Chapter of NORML, in which he tells the story of a raid on his house. His voice is filled with regret as he describes how the cops threatened to arrest his wife and take his child, but said they'd let him go if he cooperated. So he cooperated. And then the cops arrested him anyway.

Barry says to "Never, ever, ever open your door for the police." His demonstration of what to do instead may not be the best idea, but it's my favorite clip of Barry being Barry:

[Update: This video stopped working and displayed a message that it's no longer available. I think I fixed it, but I do not pretend to understand the mysteries of Youtube yet.]

After a section in which Barry digs into his background as a police dog handler to explain how to canine-proof your home, we come to a pair of segments that give me pause: Spotting undercover cops, and spotting informants.

If Barry's advice is good, it sounds like it has the potential to endanger police officers. Barry anticipates this reaction, and has this to say about it:

If you're a police officer, and the information I'm about to share bothers you or makes you feel unsafe, then stop being an undercover officer, and channel your law enforcement energy to chasing violent offenders.

I oppose the War On Drugs, and I think Barry Cooper's argument here is probably correct, but I'm not so sure of myself that I'm going to repeat any of his advice on spotting undercover cops and informants. You can get the video if you need know.

The final substantive section is Barry's explanation of how to sell marijuana safely---without getting busted. I have no clue if any of it is good advice, but I'll say this: If I was thinking of selling drugs, Barry's video might make me think again. It looks like a lot of hard work.

In the last few sections, Barry address some drug war issues. In the first one, he mentions the Lima raid, in which police killed an unarmed woman holding a baby, shooting off one of the baby's fingers in the process. He blames raids like that on police being adrenaline junkies, and he asks them to find another way.

The last section is Barry and his wife telling parents to teach their children the truth about drugs, and about the War on Drugs. Then the DVD ends with clips of Barry's media appearances.

I don't think this video will make as big of a splash as the first one, but it has some advice that's probably worth following.

Last year, I reviewed the DVD Never Get Busted Again, Volume 1: Traffic Stops by former narcotics cop Barry Cooper, in which he explains how to avoid getting busted for driving with weed. I found it interesting and entertaining, and I thought it might actually help some people avoid getting busted.

(It may surprise some of you to learn that although I'm a libertarian, I don't use drugs, let alone sell them. I've got enough problems. Also, I hate cannabis culture. So why buy Barry's DVD? Curiousity about cops and crimes. Basically, it's the same reason I watched The Wire.)

When Barry released the second volume in the series, appropriately titled Never Get Busted Again, Volume 2: Never Get Raided, I was't sure I wanted to spend my money on it. Eventually, however, my curiousity got the better of me, and I decided to buy a copy.

I'll have a full review in a later post, but for now I just want to explain how Barry's DVD pissed me off before I even opened it.

First of all, did I mention that I had to buy a copy? Given the decent review I gave his previous DVD---Barry even quotes me on his website---would it have killed him to comp me a copy?

Second (and more seriously), the mailing was screwed up. Again. With the previous DVDs, a lot of people complained that they arrived in the mail with "NeverGetBusted.com" printed on the outside where anybody could read it. This time around, the Never Get Busted FAQ clearly states that

The orders are packaged very discreetly in a plain envelope with the return address reading "Never Go Hungry Inc."

The DVD arrived today, and here's the return address:

Larger Image

That's not really a problem, but it's not what Barry said they'd do, either.

Even worse, however, when I ordered the DVD, I specified shipping to the rental box I use for my business, but they ignored the shipping address and sent it directly to my credit card billing address---my home.

These mailing mistakes don't bother me directly---I'm not trying to hide this stuff from anybody---but it's something to keep in mind if you decide to order a copy for, uhm, business purposes. Barry's operation is a little sloppy.

This is what happens when you do business with potheads.

I just got another comment to my post about the Lima, Ohio SWAT team's shooting of an unarmed mother who was holding her child. The guy calls himself "Major." Let's see what he has to say:

Yeah, enter and clear a room with taser or pepper spray first. You people are a joke. If you thought someone and not to mention a felon was in your house when you came home, you would probably be too cowardly to go in there at all.

He's right. I'd call the police. So what? I'm not saying that the Lima SWAT team members are cowards, I'm saying that as unit, they are dangerous jerks.

The reference to a taser and pepper spray is apparently a response to my assertion that discharging a firearm to shoot the household dog is a fairly risky thing to be doing in a house with children in it. Those bullets don't always go where you point them or stop where you want them.

I think there's got to be a less dangerous approach to stopping a dog, such as a taser or pepper spray.

Now you are going into the felon's house, known drug house, violent offenses, are you still going in pepper spray first?? I think not.

There are certainly a lot of things I don't know about conducting a SWAT raid. Maybe this is one of them.

Tell me, Major, are you saying that you can't switch weapons in the middle of clearing a room? Then what do you do when you encounter someone who presents a non-lethal threat? I big guy swinging his fists, or a woman with a baseball bat? Do you shoot? Do you kill all resisters?

If yes, then SWAT raids are a monstrous atrocity that should be stopped at once.

If not---and I'm sure this is the case---then stop shooting people's dogs. A search warrant shouldn't be a death warrant for any large dog in the house.

Lure them out of the house?? This is not a hostage situation or a murder suspect only or a child molester. They went to the house because it was a drug house. It would defeat the purpose if you let them come out at their own leisure, you dip shits!

It's a stupid purpose, you dipshit!

They would just take a couple minutes and flush all the drugs instead of going to jail for 30 years, don't you think?

Probably. But I can live with that a lot easier than I can live with this unceasing parade of home invasions. And for what? To gather some evidence against drug dealers, so you can put them in jail while other drug dealers replace them. This is a stupid waste of police resources, and a dangerous risk to take with people's lives.

If it's not a hostage or barricade situation, then there's no immediate danger. Nothing violent is happening. The violence doesn't start until the SWAT team starts it.

All over the country, SWAT teams are doing close assaults on people's homes in the name of the War on Drugs. It accomplishes nothing, but it leads to tragedy after tragedy.

What's the exchange rate here? How many successful drugs busts do you have to do for it to be worth the cost of this young mother's life? How many more for the next one?

You sell drugs you put you're dogs at risk. You sell drugs you put you're kids at risk. You sell drugs you put you house and vehicle and all of you money at risk. Don't sell drugs!

Are you saying that people who sell drugs are responsible for their kids getting injured or killed by careless SWAT teams?  It's all their fault? The SWAT teams have no duty to not shoot innocent people?

It's true that people in the drug trade put their families at risk because they deal with a lot of violent people, but the police should not be part of the problem. Don't shoot mothers and babies!

That being said the person that has all of this at risk; do you think they are going to come quietly??

I think they're a lot more likely to come quietly than to start a gunfight with the SWAT team, especially if they have time to think it over.

When you people start doing a service for your community then you start entering houses with pepper spray and tasters and do things your way.

When you do that on your own time and on your own property, you can do it your own way. But as long as you're doing it in people's private homes and on the public dime, you are accountable for your actions. Besides, I don't believe that the community would consider having their homes raided a "service."

Until then shut the hell up and let the professional do their jobs.

Do you hear me complaining about patrols? Detectives? Homicide? The bomb unit? I wasn't complaining about the Lima police department until their SWAT team killed an unarmed woman and shot off a baby's finger.

We have been letting the professionals do their job and they just failed miserably. Innocent people were badly hurt. That's not something anyone should shut up about.

They don't come to McDonalds and tell you how to flip burgers do they? Or come down to the office and tell you how to put on a pot of coffee and make a power point slide, do they?

Are you kidding? Cops are always butting their noses into other people's business. Granted, they do that because it's their job, and in a general way it's what we want them to do, but it's the height of hypocrisy for them to complain when other people question what they're doing.

It's sad to see that the only people that have their heads in the clouds about what the real world is like and what human nature is are the people the bleeding hearts, the biggest mouths and the blind folds on!

I don't have to be a world-weary seen-it-all supercop to know that I don't want a SWAT team throwing flash-bang grenades through my windows and breaking into my house just because someone inside might be involved in the drug trade. I assume other people feel the same way.

If narcotics teams, SWAT teams, dynamic entry teams, and any other kinds of police can't do drug raids wihout without endangering public safety or themselves, then they shouldn't do them at all.

I'm not anti-police or anti-SWAT. Police work is a worthy and admirable profession, and SWAT teams can do an amazing amount of good. But having SWAT teams do dynamic entries for the sole purpose of gathering evidence for a victimless crime is just stupid. It's a waste of talent, and a danger to the public.

Update: When considering whether it's worth all this trouble to gather evidence against a drug dealer who will be replaced within a couple of days, don't forget that it's not only the occupants of the houses that die in these raids. Sometimes they kill one of the cops in the raid team instead.

(Unless it's the Atlanta PD doing the raid. Then a slow entry can give a frightened 93-year-old occupant enough time to find her gun and fire a single shot that touches off a flurry of panic fire in which the police gun down her and each other.)

Even in states where medical marijuana is legal, it's still illegal under federal law. That's a bit of a problem for cancer patient Owen Beck and maybe even more of a problem for Charlie Lynch, the guy who provided his medical marijuana. See the whole sad story at reason.tv.

Not satisfied with making my city the butt of jokes for banning foie gras, some moron in the City Council wants to ban tiny little plastic bags, because, you know, people sell drugs in them:

Ald. Robert Fioretti (2nd) persuaded the Health Committee to ban possession of "self-sealing plastic bags under two inches in either height or width," after picking up 15 of the bags on a recent Sunday afternoon stroll through a West Side park.

He has some bozo in the police department backing him up:

Lt. Kevin Navarro, commanding officer of the Chicago Police Department's Narcotics and Gang Unit, said the ordinance will be an "important tool" to go after grocery stores, health food stores and other businesses. The bags are used by the thousand to sell small quantities of drugs at $10 or $20 a bag.

There are some obvious problems:

Prior to the final vote, Ald. Walter Burnett (27th) expressed concern about arresting innocent people. He noted that extra buttons that come with suits, shirts and blouses -- and jewelry that's been repaired -- come in similar plastic bags.

Also electrical components, beads and findings used to make jewelry, camera parts, computer parts, small tools, replacement screws, and lots of other stuff that idiot aldermen don't use and therefore don't care about.

Burnett was reassured by language that states "one reasonably should know that such items will be or are being used" to package, transfer, deliver or store a controlled substance. Violators would be punished by a $1,500 fine.

That sort of "one reasonably should know" language in laws always pisses me off. It's an attempt to skirt the requirement for proof beyond a reasonable doubt. In order to convict people of dealing drugs, Lt. Navarro and his unit would have to catch people with actual drugs. But with a "reasonably should know" clause, they don't have to prove the existence of any drugs to get a conviction.

If this passes, expect to see a series of sting operations where police or informants go into stores to buy tiny plastic baggies and carefully use some drug slang before completing the purchase, thus allowing them to arrest shopkeepers and grocery clerks, who are well-known to be the lynchpin of the illegal drug trade. This will be especially effective when the clerks and shopkeepers are immigrants who don't understand English drug slang. 

Clearly, once we deprive drug gangs of their tiny little baggie technology, we'll finally be able to win the war on drugs...unless of course those drug dealers are smart enough to import tiny little baggies from the suburbs, or switch to slightly larger baggies, or use heat-seal baggies, or switch to wax paper bindles, or use folded tinfoil pouches, or small plastic bottles, or small glass bottles, or tiny cardboard boxes, or pill sorters, or condoms, or tampon wrappers, or drinking straws clamped shut at the ends, or folded dollar bills, or...

Jacob Sullum at Hit & Run tries to ruin our day with this summary from a court brief:

Savana Redding, an eighth grade honor roll student at Safford Middle School in Tucson, Arizona, was pulled from class on October 8, 2003 by the school's vice principal, Kerry Wilson.  Earlier that day, Wilson had discovered [drugs] in the possession of Redding's classmate....Under questioning and faced with punishment, the classmate claimed that Redding, who had no history of disciplinary problems or substance abuse, had given her the [drugs].

...

In the school nurse's office, Redding was ordered to strip to her underwear. She was then commanded to pull her bra out and to the side, exposing her breasts, and to pull her underwear out at the crotch, exposing her pelvic area. The strip search failed to uncover any [drugs].

In a previous court proceeding, a three-judge panel ruled that the principal had reasonable grounds to believe that drugs would be discovered, and that the search was not excessively intrusive.

This was a 13-year old girl. In a letter to the East Arizona Courier, she says she's been in therapy regarding the incident. Her description of the incident and its emotional aftermath sounds just like a rape victim.

If I asked a 13-year old girl to show me her breasts or her crotch, I'd probably be arrested, and rightly so. But these assholes force her to show herself, and nothing happens to them?

By the way, the drug in question? Prescription strength ibuprofen.

What if Muslim contries did what our DEA does?

When we all got a pretty good look at the Taliban back in 2001, it was clear that their religious fanaticism lead to some strange rules for living. I mean, what kind of insane tyrant jails men for cutting their beards?

We have our own version of the Taliban in this country. They're running our own never-ending jihad: The War on Drugs.

The War on Drugs is essentially religious in nature. I don't mean that it's driven by our Christian theology, or even that it's supported by Christians. The religion I'm talking about is not Christianity. Nor is it Islam, or judaism, or any other popular creed.

No, the War on Drugs is a religion all its own. Faithful adherents believe it's evil to to use chemicals to make yourself happier...except for certain happy-making chemicals that are not evil. Like most religious fanatics, the essentially arbitrary nature of their oppressive rules escapes them, and they have mistaken the customs of their tribe for the laws of the universe.

I mean, what kind of insane tyrant jails people for growing the wrong kind of plant?

(Hat tip: Pete)

Over at Drug WarRant, Pete writes about yet another way politicians and their minions use the fear card to get more money for government programs.

As part of his article, he includes a mock "FEAR" credit card. I liked the idea a lot, but I wanted to try making one that was even more obviously a credit card:

You might think the monster is so cheesy looking because I have no artistic talent, but really I did it that way as an ironic commentary on the banal fakery inherent to all fear-mongering. I swear.

My post about the Lima, Ohio SWAT team's shooting of of Tarika Wilson and her infant son drew an angry comment from Kevin P:

Ok, First of all i would say who the fuck are you to tell them how to handle things. When you become part of the SWAT let me see how you react. I bet you have no clue how that even works do you? Do you know how hard they train. Lets keep it this way, I live over in New Jersey, And i am only 15. We go up to camden and also pennsauken, to play at a real SWAT house. This house is used for every Kind of Law Enforcement Agency. Now remember we are just playing paintball, but being traied by an Ex-Navy Seal. But do you know how your heart beats around every corner you go. I don't think you relize what exactly goes on do you. They are pretty much trained to not shoot untill they see movement. Now if were in the swat and you were called out to go to this house, And your the point-man In the stack(If you Even now what that means) And im coming around the corner now all of a sudden someone pops out in front of you. Ohh yea are you just going to let them walk right by??? When your in there it is a whole diffrent world. How do you know that Anothny Terry didn't have a gun. Do you know that bullets can go through walls, well if u did. Did yo ever come to think that the kid was hit by axident. What do you think thier going to be perfect?? Well anyway i just wanted to give you a little example and next time you should think twice bud. Remember Im Only 15 To!

The paintball exercises in the SWAT house sound really cool. I never got to do stuff like that.

Now let me address a few of your points...

First of all, I'm an opinionated blogger, that's who the fuck I am. Welcome to the blogosphere.

I'm sure you know more about SWAT tactics than I do. (Folks, that's not snark: Wargames are a fantastic learning tool, and I think paintball is about as realistic as it gets for close combat.) However, I know a thing or two about firearms safety and the ethics of deadly force.

As a general rule, except for open warfare, you are responsible for what you shoot. Whoever shot Tarika Wilson didn't identify his target properly, or handled his weapon poorly and had an accidental discharge, or (to adopt your scenario) shot through a wall because he wasn't paying attention to his backstop when he pulled the trigger, or...something else bad, because it's an undeniable fact that a member of the SWAT team shot a finger off a baby and killed its mother. That can't be right. It was almost certainly an accident, and it may have even been an excusable accident, but you can't deny that it was a bad outcome.

(I don't know what kind of SWAT scenarios you run through, but don't you lose points or something if you shoot a hostage or an innocent bystander?)

Like all men under arms, a SWAT team exists to serve a political goal: Promoting law and order. However, the shooter was white and the victim was black, which has increased racial tensions in Lima. Hundreds of people have marched through the street and outside the police station. Thankfully, the unrest hasn't turned violent.

I think the SWAT team has been stood down while the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation is investigating the incident. The Ohio Attorney General's office is observing the situation, and a special prosecutor has been appointed. The FBI has also begun an investigation of possible civil rights violations.

The Lima SWAT team may have succeeded in their mission---the capture of Anthony Terry---but in terms of the larger goals of the Lima police department and the city government, this was a disaster.

As for the hypothesis that Anthony Terry had a gun, I think we can dismiss it. Here in Chicago the police shoot people all the time, and they usually announce within hours if the offender had a gun. Two weeks have gone by since the Lima shooting, and nobody in the police department or the city government has said anything about Terry having a gun.

I was pretty angry when I wrote that original post, so I should make it clear that my anger isn't directed at the individual member of the Lima SWAT team who pulled the trigger. Something definitely went wrong that day in Wilson's house, but I have no idea what, and it may not have been his fault. Unless he's a psychopath, I'm sure he feels terrible about the shooting. His life will never be the same again.

My objection is not about SWAT tactics, it's about the SWAT mission. The original purpose of SWAT teams was to handle violent situations that were beyond the capabilities of a few cops in patrol cars, especially barricade and hostage situations. That was a great idea, and SWAT teams have worked out well handling tough problems like that.

But police departments have increasingly begun to use SWAT-like tactics for a far less vital purpose: Gathering evidence in the war on drugs. The armed dynamic entry into a home is not intended to keep police officers safe, it's intended to prevent the occupants from destroying evidence.

In New York, drug cops don't like to use the main SWAT team for arrests because they move too slowly and carefully to preserve all the evidence, so they have their own dynamic entry teams that work faster.

If all police wanted to do was arrest someone, there are much safer ways. A friend of mine was arrested (falsely) a little while ago. Despite a witness saying he had a gun, when the police came for him, they didn't throw stun grenades and crash through his door. A handful of ordinary cops just grabbed him when he came out of the house. That's because you can't flush a gun down a toilet.

The FBI Hostage Rescue Team is probably the finest SWAT team in the world. But when the FBI went to arrest the Unabomber---the most wanted man in America---a couple of federal law enforcement officers just walked up to his cabin, lured him outside with a ruse, and put the cuffs on. Because he had no way to get rid of the evidence.

But when police needed to collect drug evidence from a home filled with children, we're supposed to believe they went in hard and fast because it's safer that way? I call bullshit.

As for how much training SWAT teams do and the heart-pounding stress of being on a mission, that just makes my point. SWAT work is difficult and demanding and filled with risk. All the more reason to avoid SWAT raids for any purpose other than saving lives.

SWAT teams were originally formed for the purpose of bringing violent confrontations to a close, but increasingly they are used to start violent confrontations for the purpose of stopping victimles drug crimes, and the results are often tragic.

The town of Lima, Ohio (population 40,000) has a 14-member SWAT team. According to their web site, the SWAT team deploys about once a week. Check out these badasses:

That picture is from their web site.  Here's another one from their web site:

Now that you've seen how these macho bastards portray themselves, would you be surprised to learn that on Saturday they raided the house of Tarika Wilson, a black 26-year-old mother of six---to arrest her boyfriend for selling drugs---and somehow managed to kill her and shoot the 1-year-old child she was holding?

As SWAT teams often do, they shot the household dog as they entered. Now ask yourself, given that police have TASERs, pepper spray, riot batons, and body armor, what kind of asshole discharges a firearm in a house with children in it just to stop a dog?

The target of the raid, Anthony Terry, 31, was arrested on the extremely lame charge of suspicion of possession of crack cocaine, and was being held in the local lockup.

The cop who killed Tarika Wilson was of course not arrested. In fact, as is usually the case in these kinds of atrocities, the police haven't even released his name.

The wounded child is expected to recover, but he had to have a finger amputated.

Terrific news today.

Richard Paey, one of the worst victims of the War on Drugs, has just been pardoned.

The state's parole commission recommended denying clemency for Paey, who was only seeking to have his prison sentence commuted. But after his lawyer, wife and four children wept and pleaded for Paey's release, [Florida Governor Charlie] Crist and the Cabinet went further than Paey expected by unanimously agreeing to grant him a full pardon -- meaning he'll have the right to vote and carry firearms.

There are even signs that the Florida justice system's cruel treatment of Paey will lead to some reforms in the state's drug laws and criminal procedures.

The state's parole commission recommended denying clemency for Paey, who was only seeking to have his prison sentence commuted. But after his lawyer, wife and four children wept and pleaded for Paey's release, Crist and the Cabinet went further than Paey expected by unanimously agreeing to grant him a full pardon -- meaning he'll have the right to vote and carry firearms.

They also acknowledged that the state's drug laws might be unfair.

''This is not a pleasant case,'' said Attorney General Bill McCollum, who noted that he supported mandatory-minimum sentences when he was in Congress. ``Our laws are very much to blame.''

If you're unfamiliar with Paey's situation, I summarized the whole awful mess here.

The Drug Czar's blog, Pushing Back, links aprovingly to a story in the Record Searchlight of Redding, California:

The nation's top anti-drug official said people need to overcome their "reefer blindness" and see that illicit marijuana gardens are a terrorist threat to the public's health and safety, as well as to the environment.

John P. Walters, President Bush's drug czar, said the people who plant and tend the gardens are terrorists who wouldn't hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties. Walters made the comments at a Thursday press conference that provided an update on the "Operation Alesia" marijuana-eradication effort.

In those comments, Drug Czar John Walters once again raises the eternal dilemma about politicians: Is he stupid? Or does he think we're stupid?

The criminals who grow marijuana illegally may commit violent acts to protect their fields, but what's this "mass casualties" bullshit? Has that ever happened?

Perhaps Walters is talking about foreign terrorists sneaking over our borders through the same channels used by the drug trade. Well, has that ever happened?

And if that's what he's worried about, why are they eradicating marijuana in California? Growing pot in the United States reduces the amount that has to be brought across the border. By destroying domestic crops, the Shasta County Sheriff's office is increasing traffic across our borders, giving terrorists more opportunites to sneak across.

Frankly, when it comes to domestic terrorism, I'm a lot more worried about the people responsible for these killings than about pot growers.

Larger ImagePolice Superintendent Phil Cline

The guy sitting in back on the driver's side and wearing a white shirt is Police Superintendent Phil Cline, who's retiring soon—probably a little sooner than he planned, due to the Abbate mess. Given the long history of police harrassment of gays, transvestites and, well, almost every other group represented at the parade, it is kind of nice to see police brass showing some respect.

But check out that cool car he's riding in. Many of the nice new cars in the parade are provided by car dealers doing a favor for a local politician, but those aren't dealer plates. Where do you suppose Superintendent Cline got a classic old muscle car like that?

According to the sign on the back, he stole it.

Larger ImageSeized Car

Well, the department seized it from a drug dealer, and maybe you can't get too worked up about some gangster losing his sweet ride. The truth is, neither can I. Part of the reason I oppose the War On Drugs is because I don't want recreational drugs to be distributed by hardened criminals.

That said, it's important to remember two things: First, catching real drug dealers is hard work, so to accomodate lazy police forces, the law defines drug dealer much more broadly than many people realize. If you hand a friend a joint or a pill at a party, you are dealing drugs, and if you simply have more than some legally defined "personal use" quantity of drugs, the law defines you to be a dealer.

Second, the forfeiture laws allow police departments to seize vehicles and other property without actually convicting anyone of a crime. Through some bizarrely twisted legal logic, the police can take your stuff merely by accusing you of a crime, and then they can make you prove your innocence in court before they'll give it back.

So while I don't know this car's history, it's entirely possible that this car was taken from someone who was never caught dealing drugs and was never convicted even of possessing drugs.

So be proud of who and what you are, unless drugs are involved.

Lately I've been blogging about some scandalous behavior by Chicago Cops. There's been some bad stuff in the news, with more to come, but the Windy City has nothing going on that remotely compares to what happened in Atlanta last November.

That's when Atlanta cops shot and killed 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston during a drug raid. When the cops entered her home, she apparently didn't realize they were cops and took a shot at them. They shot back. Three cops were wounded, and Johnston was killed.

At the time, I was pissed off that yet another innocent person was killed in yet another SWAT-style drug raid, but I didn't blame the officers involved. They had a warrant giving them the legal authority to enter her home, and they also had a moral right to self defense when she shot at them, even though she also believed she was shooting in self-defense. It's a monumentally stupid policy that creates situations like this, but that's not the cops' fault that they got in the situation, and once they got in it, they did what they had to do.

Or so I thought.

However, the feds have been investigating the incident, and their allegations paint a different picture. A horrifying picture.

According to recently released documents, the raid was apparently based entirely on information from a suspected drug dealer named Fabian Sheats who made a deal to get out of a drug bust...a drug bust which turns out to be a sham. The cops had a bunch of marijuana in the trunk of their car from another case, and they planted some of it at the scene and then called a K-9 unit to come and "find" it to implicate Sheats. To get out of this frame, Sheats pointed out a house and said he bought drugs there from a guy named Sam and saw more drugs on the premises.

Sheats was not an approved confidential informant—meaning he had never given them reliable information before—so his statement would be difficult to use on a warrant application, so the cops made up a better story and got their warrant. To justify a no-knock entry, they told the judge the building had security cameras, meaning the dealers inside could see them coming and destroy the evidence unless they entered quickly. These cameras did not exist.

So, even before the disastrous invasion of Johnston's house, the cops had already stolen drug evidence from another case, lied to a fellow officer, framed Sheats for for drug dealing, and perjured themselves to get a warrant.

None of this would matter once they grabbed Sam and all his drugs, because nobody would ever take a close look at the warrant. It should have worked just fine for the cops.

But not only were these Atlanta cops corrupt, they were also spectacularly incompetent. When the raid started, it took them two minutes to break down the door. They had lost all tactical surprise. Any dealer inside had plenty of time to dump a lot of drugs down the drain. They might as well have just knocked on the door and politely served the warrant on whoever answered. Their violent entry was pointless.

It was even worse than that, however, because nothing Sheats told them was true. There were no drugs in the house, and there was nobody named Sam living there. Just Kathryn Johnston and her gun.

While the cops were breaking down her door, the 92-year old grandmother had plenty of time to get her gun, and when the cops came through the door she took a single shot at them. The police responded by gunning down everyone in the house. And I mean everyone.

Remember when I said that three cops were wounded? Since the crime scene investigators found the bullet from Johnston's single shot in a porch roof, it's clear she didn't actually shoot anybody. That's right. These corrupt thugs had shot each other.

In a way, it's karma. They lied and broke the law in order to create a dangerously violent situation, and they got themselves shot. Unfortunately, they also shot Kathryn Johnston. Five or six times.

While she was lying on the floor of her house, bleeding and dying, the cops handcuffed her and then started planning how to frame her as a drug dealer. They got more drugs from the trunk of their car and "found" them in her home. They talked another informant into saying he bought drugs at the house to back up their story.

Obviously, their cover-up didn't work. This whole story of crime and stupidity comes from an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. They got it from the feds who investigated the incident. The feds got it when one of the cops involved made a deal and confessed.

I'm not a lawyer, but this sounds like felony murder. That's what they call it when someone dies as an accidental result of a felony. For example, if a criminal starts a gunfight with the police, and a police bullet kills an innocent bystander, the criminal is charged with felony murder because he created a dangerous condition by breaking the law and starting the gunfight. In this case, it was the police who broke the law and started the gunfight. Therefore, according to the felony murder rule, Kathryn Johnston was murdered by Atlanta police officers.

Pete Guither posts an article entitled "Quote of the day" in which he cites Bill Maher:

I mail myself a copy of the Constitution every morning just on the hope that [the government] will open it and see what it says.

That's a pretty good line. However, a few posts later, Pete is discussing an editorial which derides our nation's wasteful anti-drug efforts in Columbia only to advocate wasteful anti-drug efforts right here in the United States.

Pete's response:

So while everybody seems to see that the war isn't working, you've got some people saying "The problem is, we've got to kill more Colombians," and someone else saying "No, no, you're wrong -- that doesn't work. We've got to kill more Americans."

Some days it feels like I'm watching a house on fire. And one idiot wants to put it out with a machine gun. The other one wants to use grenades. And I'm standing there with a bucket of water and they look at me like I'm crazy.

Damn. That's exactly how it feels.

That is the real quote of the day.

All week long, I've been covering the story of Barry Cooper's Never Get Busted Again video and of the reactions to it from various places, especially the folks at the Flex Your Rights Foundation. The difference in approach is fascinating.

I didn't say much about it in my review, but Barry Cooper is fun to watch. When he's talking about claims that drug dealers sell to children, just his face and the tone of his voice as he says "that's BULLcrap" makes me smile every time. The folks at Flex Your Rights are more staid and professional.

In part, that's because everything at Flex Your Rights is couched in terms of protecting your legal rights during an encounter with police. It's all legal advice. Cooper, on the other hand, is very blunt about the fact that he's explaining how to smuggle drugs.

Cooper tells you where to hide your stash, and how to keep the cops from finding it. Over at Flex Your Rights, they don't use words like "stash" or even "drugs." When discussing consent to search, they refer repeatedly to your "private items."

The most serious difference shows up in the dispute over the consent to search issue. Simplifying greatly, the Flex Your Rights folks say you should never consent to a search, whereas Barry Cooper says you might as well, because the cops will just do an illegal search anyway.

In other words, the liberal ACLU-types are assuming that police officers will be professional and respectful of your rights. The ex-cop, on the other hand, is assuming that the cops will act like thugs.

Amusing. But also sad.

I just received another mass mailing from Barry Cooper at NeverGetBusted. Most of it is a copy of the points from FlexYourRights that he agreed with, as I mentioned at the bottom of my previous post.

Then at the end he mentions a few other things:

NEVERGETBUSTED IS WORKING ON A NEW PAGE FOR OUR WEBSITE!!!!!! The page will map the exact highways you are likely to encounter a drug interdiction officer in the U.S. and will rate their likeliness or unlikeliness of violating your 4th ammendment rights. The data will be compiled through your emails to me of your encounters with officers in your area. Please report to me any strong interdiction efforts being made in your area. Your local newspaper is a great source for this type of information. Access to this wonderful resource will be free.

Wow, this is a lot like one of the ideas I suggested in my Open Letter to Barry Cooper a few days ago. That's pretty cool!

(Unless it gets every drug interdiction officer in the country pissed off at me. That would be...not so cool. Think, then post...think, then post...)

Cooper continues:

I will be the first to submit to this project:

If you are traveling on I-20 between Tyler and Longview, TX, be aware of Volunteer Constable, [name redacted]. He frequently works this portion of Interstate and has quick access to a K-9. I personally watched a video of [name redacted] making a drug seizure after a K-9's was encouraged to FALSE ALERT. [name redacted] grade is an "F" when it comes to violating 4th amendment rights.

Yikes. Cooper sure meets these things head-on.

(I redacted the name of the officer. I'm not sure how these things work, but I don't have the name of a good libel attorney handy. Actually, I do, but he's not cheap.)

Barry,

From your lengthy comments at FlexYourRights, you know I rather like your video, so please read this with that in mind.

I think part of what's angering people (in addition to the substantive "consent to search" issue) is that your message conflicts with your promotional style. You say you want to right wrongs—on your video you actually say you're doing it all out of love—which implies a degree of altruism on your part.

However, when you're promoting yourself, you come across with all the sincerity of an infomercial pitchman. Combine those two, and you sound like a televangelist. And just to be clear, I don't mean that in a good way.

Personally, I disagree with Loretta Nall's opinion of your video, but the things you've said about her will not win you points in the drug liberalization community. Chill out.

Perhaps your heart is in the right place, but the dark egotistical salesman within your nature is getting in your way. If that's the case, then you know what I'm talking about, because it's been causing you trouble all your life. Again, chill out.

Look, you've got a product that nobody else has. The drug reform groups are trying to get the laws changed, and in the long run, they're the ones who will probably end the war on drugs. In the meantime, however, there are a lot of people who need help avoiding arrest under laws that all of us regard as unjust.

FlexYourRights and similar web sites provide terrific information about the legal issues, but are often lacking in explaining the ground truth of how to handle an encounter with police:

"You have any illegal drugs, sir? Mabe a little pot?"

"No, officer."

"Then you won't mind if I take a look, will you?"

Handling a simple interrogation trick like that takes at least as much street psychology as it does legal acumen, and that's where you have knowledge that most lawyers do not. Your knowledge is a valuable supplement to what's already available on the web.

On another matter, you express dismay that people are complaining that you're doing this to make money, and you point out that doctors and pharamaceutical manufacturers make money for helping people too. True enough. But then don't compare yourself to FlexYourRights or LEAP, both of which are operated as 501(c)(3) public charities.

Listen, I'm hardly an expert, but if you want respect here on the internet, there are a couple of things you could do:

First, give good stuff away for free. My favorite example comes from Googling the phrase "Tivo upgrade". At least from where I am, the number one search result, after the paid advertising, is some guy who sells Tivo upgrade kits out of his house. At his site, you'll find complete instructions for every step of upgrading your Tivo box, including what kind of harddrive to buy, what tools you need, and what software to use. This is great stuff, and it brings people to his site. This openness also makes him trustworthy, which is why I bought an upgrade kit from him instead of doing it all myself.

You can sell your stuff this way too. Start a blog and start giving out free advice to attract traffic. Allow discussions. Some people will trash you (this is the internet, after all) but you'll also find some like-minded supporters. Maybe when sales die down for your video, post the whole thing on your site so people can see it for free. You'll have little to lose, and much to gain with the attention you'll get, especially if you coordinate it with the release of your next video.

Second, and this is the real lesson of all the so-called Web 2.0 companies like YouTube and Flickr, get the community involved in your work. Listen to other people's suggestions, ideas, and yes, even criticisms. You may know more about narcotics enforcement than almost everyone else in the drug liberalization community, but there are many thousands—maybe millions—of us, and collectively we know a lot more than you.

Use our knowledge. For example, you say that refusing a vehicle search never really works. That may well be true in Big Sandy and the Permian basin, but that's not the case everywhere. Instead of arguing about it, set up a web page on your site for people to report what happened when they refused a search. Did the cops press on anyway, like you say they will, or did they shrug their shoulders and find someone else to question? Gather a few thousand of these reports from around the country and plot them on a map, so people can see where the police respect the Fourth Amendment and where they don't.

Then go a step further and start gathering detailed reports of police enforcement tactics and publish those on the web. Become the clearing house for information about police activities. Since you'll be relying on voluntary contributions of information, you won't be able to sell this stuff—nobody would give it to you if they couldn't also see what everyone else was saying—but you could certainly leverage the web traffic by putting ads for your products on every page.

I'm not a web entrepreneur, so these specific ideas are probably worthless, but these are the kinds of things that successful web companies do. Yes, places like Amazon make money by selling products, but they also give away vast amounts of information about the stuff in their catalog and they provide tools for users to rate and recommend products, all for free.

You can't beat the internet, but you can still be one of its many winners.

This seems to have gone out to Barry's Buds subscribers:

I am sooooo sorry about the return address on your order saying "NEVER GET BUSTED." My dvd is manufactured and mailed by a fulfillment company in Illinois. I am in Texas. They made the mistake and I quickly corrected the problem. Future orders will say "Barry and Candi Promotions."

To our surprise, mainstream America is ordering the dvd more than the counter culture so maybe one day NEVERGETBUSTED will seem normal to everybody.

I do care about your privacy and am very sorry this happened. Please forgive me, I fixed the problem.

Barry

CEO/NeverGetBusted

The Most Trusted Name in Anti-Prohibition

That was my theory. Loretta Nall and others have been making a big deal about the fact that the return address on the package is "NeverGetBusted.Com", but I just couldn't get worked up about it. Maybe I'm naive, but I'm pretty sure they can't bust you for having a DVD that instructs you how to commit crimes.

On the other hand, Barry is hardly "The Most Trusted Name in Anti-Prohibition."

I just finished watching Barry Cooper's Never Get Busted Again DVD that the blogosphere was all excited about a few weeks ago. As it's subtitled "Volume 1: Traffic Stops", I assume he hopes to release more videos in the future. (Actually, he's also released a bonus 45-minute DVD of a training video he made to teach police how to find false compartments in cars, but I didn't get that.)

Here's my short review: If you sometimes travel by car with small amounts of marijuana—a few joints, say—then this video will probably help you avoid getting busted.

I'm not the best person to review a DVD like this because I don't use illegal drugs and I've never had drugs in my car. For all I know, everything in this video is available from other sources of drug information, such as High Times magazine. That said, there's definitely some useful information in here, and I found it to be a fascinating insight into police thinking about drug interdiction tactics.

In the introductory segment, Cooper gives a brief description of his background. He says that after he quit law enforcement, he owned a variety of businesses—"three car dealerships, a tire shop, a limousine service, a mixed martial arts company (cage fighting) and finally CEO of NEVERGETBUSTED.COM" according to his bio page. He says that since quitting the cops, he's tried marijuana himself and been arrested five times for various reasons.

I think Cooper is a smart guy who's a bit of an adventurer. After he soured on the police job, he tried a few other ways to make a living, and now he's figured out how to make a few bucks by selling his knowledge of how cops do drug busts. In addition to the money, I'm sure he love the notoriety. As a libertarian, I have no problem with that, as long as his DVD delivers the goods.

The DVD has six more chapters, the first of which is about drug-sniffing dogs. Cooper starts by cooking a pot of stew and pointing out that humans can look at the stew and see all the ingredients, but when they sniff a pot of stew, all they smell is stew. A dog can't see well enough to identify the ingredients, but when he sniffs the pot, he can smell each individual ingredient of the stew.

I just received my copy of Barry Cooper's Never Get Busted DVD in the mail. I'll try to have a review up real soon.

John Hawkins of Right Wing News has an editorial in Human Events defending the war on drugs. I want to talk about a few of the arguments he makes:

Libertarians often attack the war on drugs as a waste of tax dollars and an infringement on personal liberties. That is misguided thinking that comes from trying to apply unworkable theoretical concepts in the real world.

At least libertarians have theoretical concepts, like freedom and personal responsibility.

By the way, nowhere in the rest of the article does he try to defend the drug war's record of destroying our personal liberties.

For example, you often hear advocates of drug legalization say that we're never going to win the war on drugs and that it would free up space in our prisons if we simply legalized drugs. While it's true that we may not ever win the war against drugs -- i.e. never entirely eradicate the use of illegal drugs -- we're not ever going to win the war against murder, robbery and rape either.

In a way, I agree with Hawkins here. I've never liked the argument that drugs should be legalized because they can never be eradicated, and for exactly this reason. In order for this argument to work, you have to argue that drug use is very much less evil than those other crimes. But if we could convince people of that, we probably wouldn't need the rest of the argument.

Nevertheless, let me point out that while we may never eliminate robbery, rape, and murder, we can certainly police them more effectively than drug use for the simple reason that there will be cooperating witnesses. Robbery and rape victims—and the friends and families of murder victims—will complain to the police about these crimes and help them identify the bad guy.

That never happens with the sale, possession, and use of drugs because there's no victim to complain. Violent crimes and property crimes have to be solved; drug crimes have to be discovered.

Since no one wants the police involved, they end up spying on people, searching cars and homes, monitoring financial transactions, bugging phones, and doing a bunch of other things that infringe on our personal freedoms.

But our moral code rejects each of them, so none -- including drugs -- can be legalized if we still adhere to that code.

Hawkins is pretty quick to whip out the first person plural there. Maybe his moral code rejects all four of those crimes, but our moral code does not. In particular, my moral code does not reject drug use, and neither do the moral codes of a lot of other good people.

Of course, the number of people using what are currently illegal drugs would skyrocket if they were legalized, so we'd see a new wave of drug-addled burglars if we "legalized it."

I doubt it. Most of the end user's high purchase price of illegal drugs is caused by the direct and indirect costs of drug smuggling. Drugs that don't have to be smuggled are a lot cheaper, and their users don't have to commit crimes to afford their habit. You don't see many drunks breaking into homes to afford their next hit of booze.

But, some people may say, "so what if drug usage does explode? They're not hurting anyone but themselves." That might be true in a purely capitalistic society, but in the sort of welfare state that we have in this country, the rest of us would end up paying a significant share of the bills of people who don't hold jobs or end up strung out in the hospital without jobs -- and that's even if you forget about the thugs who'd end up robbing our houses to get things to pawn to buy more drugs.

Man, he just doesn't let up on that. It's not as if this wasn't a major part of the pro-legalization argument. Legalizing drugs will reduce the amount of drug-related crime because drugs will be a lot cheaper and people won't need to live a life of crime to afford a drug habit.

For example, cocaine has some legal medical uses, so there's a legal market. Last time I checked, the cost of medical cocaine was about 1/30th the cost of street cocaine. Who's going to do burglaries to afford a drug habit when they can pay for it by panhandling?

There's another crime-reducing effect as well: If other drugs have similar ratios of legal to illegal price, legalizing drugs could drain 97% of the revenue out of the street gangs and international drug smuggling operations. That should make things quieter in Columbia and on Chicago's west side .

As for that bit about how the rest of us would be paying for drug users' problems, I see his point, but where does that logic end? If we keep thinking that way, we'll end up with a public health nanny state that tries to manage and control every aspect of human behavior that's the least bit risky.

Even setting that aside, we make laws that prevent people from harming themselves all the time in our society. In many states there are helmet laws, laws that require us to wear seatbelts, laws against prostitution, and it's even illegal to commit suicide. So banning harmful drugs is just par for the course.

Yeah, but have a sense of proportion. The first two crimes are just violations which are punished with small fines, and prostitution sentences are also very mild. As for suicide, are people ever really punished for that? I'm pretty sure the laws against suicide are only there as a justification to allow the government to restrain and evaluate suicidal people. None of those laws are enforced by multijurisdictional task forces that invade people's homes in the middle of the night and sometimes shoot 92-year-old grandmothers.

And for the record, I oppose every single one of those laws on principle.

How many homeless people are drug addicts? How many women have had crack babies? How many people are in jail today because they got high and committed a crime? How many lives have been wrecked in some form or fashion by drug use? There's probably not a person reading this column who doesn't know someone who has faced terrible consequences in his life because of drug use.

Sure. I know a bunch of people who screwed up their lives, some with drugs, some with booze, and at least one with a vicious shopping habit.

Not one of them would have been better off if they'd also done time in prison.

That's why once, way back when William Bennett was the drug czar, he responded like so to a caller on the Larry King show who told him that he should "behead the damn drug dealers."

"I mean what the caller suggests is morally plausible," he said. "Legally, it's difficult. But somebody selling drugs to a kid? Morally, I don't have any problem with that at all."

Bennett was right then, he's right now, and my guess is that most parents, upon finding out that someone was peddling drugs to their kid, would agree with him. Since that's the case, do we really want the federal government to take over the role of a pusher and get our kids hooked on drugs to make a profit? No, we don't.

Again, it's like he's never read anything about legalization. People who support legalizing drugs—or ending drug prohibition, to use our preferred terminology—want the currently illegal drugs to be regulated like alcohol or tobacco, both of which cannot legally be sold to children.

Finally, consider Hawkins' turn of phrase about about us wanting "the federal government to take over the role of a pusher". That raises the question: Take over from who? If we don't want to take control of drug sales, then who are we going to leave in control? Who's the pusher during our long-running war on drugs? Who's selling drugs right now? Under our current drug war, who's making the decisions about whether to sell drugs to our kids?

Criminals.

Update: T. F. Stern emailed me his objection to my assertions that legal drugs would be cheap drugs, and cheap drugs would mean less crime:

I agree, at least a little, that if the drugs which have to be smuggled in were legal the price would drop considerably. I would have to put a question mark on the second part. As a police officer on night shift I wish I had a nickel for every store front that got bashed in just for a couple of six packs of beer. Thousands of dollars in damage for a few dollars in beer made no sense to me but it happens all the time. Thieves are still going to steal regardless of the legality of the substance.

He would know; he used to be a police officer.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned former police officer Barry Cooper and his hugely hyped but not-yet-released Never Get Busted video that purported to explain how not to get busted for drugs. My gut feeling was that it was going to be a big disappointment. Nevertheless, I ordered a copy, on the theory that I could watch it so that you don't have to.

I haven't received the video yet, but I just got an email which does not make me feel better about it:

Greetings Customers,

Thanks for your order. I am using the money to travel all over the nation to speak out against our unjust war on drugs.

Dude, you better not be. I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to charge my card until you ship the product.

Due to the overwhelming demand because of the world attention my DVD has recieved, please allow the entire six weeks to recieve your order. I promise you will be satisfied with my product. I even added some extra footage for you since the media frenzie. All orders placed in February will be recieved within 3 week.

Re-check my website, www.nevergetbusted.com, to see a newly posted actual sneak preview of the DVD you ordered.

 Remember: Save a child from molestation by releasing non-violent drug offenders!!!

Your friend,

Barry N. Cooper

CEO/NeverGetBusted.Com--The Most Trusted Name In Anti-Prohibition

"The Most Trusted Name In Anti-Prohibition"? No, I think that would be Ethan Nadelmann, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Alliance, or maybe Pete Guither at DrugWarRant, or maybe former Retired Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper and the other 62 speakers at LEAP. This kind of self-serving promotion is unattractive.

However, when I clicked through and watched the sneak preview video, I have to say it wasn't bad.

The preview is a segment of Cooper driving down the highway, looking at cars going by and explaining why some of them fit a profile that would attract the attention of a narcotics officer.

He sees a woman wiping her nose and says that would make him think she might have cocaine. Later he becomes interested in a car with a college sticker and four young people in it, saying that they're probably marijuana smokers. I think he means that with four college students in a car, there's a pretty good chance that at least one of them is holding pot.

He also says that he would stop cars with "D.A.R.E." and "Say No To Drugs" stickers and find a lot of drugs that way. This sort of confirms my theory about police reaction to stickers on your car, which is that nothing you can put on your car will deter an officer, and a lot of things might get their attention or piss them off.

Some of Cooper's advice seems pretty obvious, such as "Do not drive down the highway rolling a joint." But since he says that right after actually finding and filming someone doing exactly that, maybe it was worth mentioning.

Cooper also says cops hate making narcotics stops on rainy days, because everybody gets wet, so there's not much chance you'll get stopped if it's raining. I thought it was obvious that cops won't want to get wet, but it's interesting to hear they actually let it change their behavior. He even goes so far as directly saying that if you're going to travel with drugs, do it on a rainy day. I was surprised by such a direct encouragement of a criminal act.

In general, Cooper comes across as an ex-cop who doesn't have much affection for the job or the people that do it. Just in this short preview, he manages to paint his fellow officers as adrenaline junkies, racists, and liars.

The rest of his video might be interesting. At the very least, I expect some interesting insights into how drug cops do their job. That sort of thing is always fascinating, and that more than anything is why I ordered this video. No, really.

Over at StoptheDrugWar.org, Scott Morgan quotes from the Seattle Times:

The [U.S. asparagus] industry has been decimated by a U.S. drug policy designed to encourage Peruvian coca-leaf growers to switch to asparagus. Passed in 1990 and since renewed, the Andean Trade Preferences and Drugs Eradication Act permits certain products from Peru and Colombia, including asparagus, to be imported to the United States tariff-free.

To which Morgan responds:

This is what we're trying to tell you about the U.S. war on drugs. The people running this thing will screw over American farmers while pretending to protect our nation's interests.

The drug warriors have been screwing over everyone else for decades, it's about time they did it to someone who deserves it, and protectionist farmers certainly deserve it. They've been screwing us consumers for a long, long time.

In a way, this is like having the school bully who always takes your lunch money getting beat up by the school bully who likes to shove your head in the toilet.

Elsewhere Morgan says:

Notwithstanding divergent views on free trade among our readership, I'm sure we can all agree that tariffs shouldn't be arbitrarily lifted in support of a failed drug war policy in Peru. Any success achieved in South America (there hasn't been any, but bear with me) must be measured against the sacrifices American farmers are forced against their will to make.

Yes, this is a foolish way to make trade policy, but American farmers aren't being forced to do anything. For years, American consumers wanting to buy asparagus from non-Americans have been forced to pay extra money to do so. Now, thanks to the War on Drugs, Americans are free to buy asparagus from Peru if they want to.

Besides, reducing the retail price of asparagus my be the single greatest accomplishment of the War on Drugs.

The drug liberalization blogosphere is all abuzz over Barry Cooper. He's apparently a former Texas narcotics officer who has produced a video called "Never Get Busted" in which he apparently explains how to avoid getting arrested for drug possession.

As it happens, I too have a foolproof system for avoiding a drug possession arrest: I don't possess drugs.

I think we can assume that's not what Cooper has in mind. Presumably, what he's really going to teach people is how to possess drugs without getting arrested for possessing them.

He claims to be motivated by a desire to help people who will otherwise suffer under our unreasonable narcotics laws. Of course, if that's all he wanted to do, he could do what the folks at the Flex Your Rights Foundation did with their Busted video: Release the entire video at YouTube.

Instead, Barry Cooper sells the video at his web site for $24.95, plus $5.95 for shipping and handling. There's nothing wrong with making some money, but a few things about his operation bother me.

First of all, Barry Cooper sounds a lot like infomercial guru Don LaPre, and that's never a good sign. You may not know the name, but you'd recognize his delivery. I couldn't find any online video of LaPre, but here's a parody of Don LaPre that's pretty close, and here's one that's even closer but kind of long.

Second, the Never Get Busted website is just a little too slick looking, especially when compared with the LEAP web site.

Third, according to Libby at Last One Speaks, he approached Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP) a few weeks ago and asked to join their speaker's beureau. He then began promoting his video and claiming to be a LEAP speaker, even though they had told him he couldn't use LEAP to promote the video. Since then, LEAP has dumped him.

Fourth, in one of his interviews he says this video holds nothing back. So why is it called "Volume 1"?

Fifth, Barry Cooper is totally unknown in the drug law reform community. The folks at the D'Alliance never heard of him, nor did Libby Spencer, Loretta Nall, Pete Guither, or LEAP. If Cooper really believed in his video, aren't those exactly the people who'd be getting review copies?

There's a lot of speculation that this could be some sort of undercover operation, perhaps by the DEA, to get drug users to identify themselves. That seems unlikely to me. I think he's just a hustler looking for a quick buck.

Time will tell, and I'll publish my apology if I'm wrong.

Amy Barrilleaux of WQAD reports:

"(I was) made to feel like a criminal -- Made to feel low, dirty. Just totally degraded," recalled Tim Naveau, who says he'll never forget the hours he spent in Rock Island County Jail -- he says all because of his allergies.

Naturally, this degradation is part of the War on Drugs.

Tim takes one 24-hour Claritin-D tablet just about every day. That puts him just under the legal limit of 75-hundred milligrams of pseudo ephedrine a month. The limit is part of a new law that Quad Cities authorities are beginning to strictly enforce.

The law limits the amount of pseudo ephedrine you can buy. Pseudo ephedrine is an ingredient in medicines like Sudafed and Claritin-D, and it's also a key ingredient in methamphetamines.

...

"I bought some for my boy because he was going away to church camp and he needed it," he said.

That decision put Tim over the legal limit. Two months later, there was a warrant for his arrest.

In other words, the Illinois legislature set the limit so low that each family member has to buy their own medication. Pick up some allergy medicine for your wife, get charged with a crime.

This level of stupidity is breathtaking, literally, and it only gets worse.

According to a state consumer information fact sheet, the legislature also prohibits sale of pseudoephedrine to minors, so parents have to buy the drug for their children. If you and your child have allergies, you have to decide which of you gets treatment. Even if both parents forego treatment for the sake of their children, they better not have more than two children with allergies, otherwise they really will have to decide which ones they love most.

(Hat tip: Jamie Spencer)

The Drug Czar's blog, in a post about YouTube videos showing people using inhalents, links with some approval to the National Inhalant Prevention Coalition, which features a poster with these words:

Sniffing Correction Fluid Can Stop Your Heart

If you sniff to get high, you're inhaling poisons that do definite damage. So stop. Before your heart does.

You may be surprised to discover that this is an anti-drug message I agree with.

Even a harsh street drug like meth or heroin is pretty closely related to chemicals that have genuine medical uses. To be sure, heroin is not morphine, and meth is seriously not Sudafed, but these are, nevertheless, drugs.

A lot of the chemicals in inhalents, on the other hand, are industrial solvents or alkanes that are hazardous chemicals. There's nothing medical about them.

So kids, listen up. Don't do inhalants. They're very bad for you. If you want to get high, use a safe drug like marijuana or ecstasy.

It's been a big week in news of the War on Drugs.

Last year I wrote about Richard Paey, who was sentenced to 25 years in jail for (at worst) forging prescriptions for his pain medication (click the link for the whole story, which is even worse than it sounds.). Now the Court of Appeal in Florida has rejected his claim that this was cruel and unusual punishment.

Judge James H. Seals filed a withering dissent:

I suggest that it is cruel for a man with an undisputed medical need for a substantial amount of daily medication management to go to prison for twenty-five years for using self-help means to obtain and amply supply himself with the medicine he needed. I suggest it is cruel for government to treat a man whose motivation to offend sprang from urgent medical problems the same as it would treat a drug smuggler motivated to obtain personal wealth and power at the expense of the misery his enterprise brings to others. I suggest that it is unusual, illogical, and unjust that Mr. Paey could conceivably go to prison for a longer stretch for peacefully but unlawfully purchasing 100 oxycodone pills from a pharmacist than had he robbed the pharmacist at knife point, stolen fifty oxycodone pills which he intended to sell to children waiting outside, and then stabbed the pharmacist.

(See the court's decision for the details.)

The Atlanta police, meanwhile, are looking worse than ever, and that's saying a lot since they gunned down a 92-year old grandmother a few weeks ago.

Their story has changed yet again. They're now saying they busted a guy named Fabian Sheats for drugs and he tried to make a deal by telling cops about drugs at Kathryn Johnston's house.

Police say they used Sheats' tip to direct a confidential informant to the Neal Street house, where he made a drug buy, leading them to conduct the raid. A man named Alexis White later came forward to say he is a longtime informant and police asked him to lie after the shootings and say he bought drugs at the address. Police will not say who the informant was.

Radley Balko puts it together like this:

This raid was conducted based on nothing more than a tip from Sheats, a convicted drug felon who was looking for leniency. For whatever reason, he sent police to Johnston's home. The narcotics officers then hid behind the anonymity courts afford to informants, and fabricated the stuff about the buy. They took a shortcut. When the raid went bad, they chased down an informant they'd used in the past -- White -- and asked him to lie to cover their asses, just as White says they did.

There's even a 911 tape of someone claiming to be White asking for help because some dirty cops were threatening him.

To his credit, the Atlanta Police Chief has brought in the FBI to investigate the incident. Seeing how this story is evolving, it sounds like he may be using the Johnston incident to do some housecleaning in his department.

Then there's the House of Death. According to the Guardian, that's a killing ground operated by the Juarez drug cartel just over the border in Mexico. The DEA apparently had an informant there, and they liked his information so much that they allowed him to kill people there, including at least one American citizen.

This is our War on Drugs.

Just to let you all know, I'm planning to do some drinking and driving this holiday weekend. Not drunk driving, mind you—that would be illegal—just some drinking and then some driving.

I'm very nearly a teetotaller by inclination. I think I've had four, maybe even five drinks so far this year. No reason for it, I just rarely ever get that "I'd like to have a drink now" feeling.

However, the moral stormtroopers at MADD have launched a new Campaign to Eliminate Drunk Driving.

This Campaign goes beyond slogans and taglines. It is precisely what it says it is. We want to completely eliminate drunk driving. With your help, we plan on making drunk driving the public health equivalent of polio.

First of all, polio is a public health problem and therefore polio is the public health equivalent of polio. Drunk driving, on the other hand, is not a public health problem—not in the same way as polio or malnutrition or poor waste disposal—no matter how much the folks at MADD try to pretend it is.

Second, they keep talking about ignition interlocks for cars and advance technology for alcohol detection:

First 5 years:

We'll focus on widespread installation of existing and emerging technologies on convicted drunk drivers.

Second 5 years:

We hope to see implementation of improved technology on large fleets thanks to cooperation from the auto industry.

Ten years and beyond:

We could possibly see voluntary application to general population with insurance premium incentives..

In other words, they want to put alcohol detection gear and ignition interlocks in every car in America. They say this would be voluntary, but when has anything MADD wanted ever been voluntary? MADD has a list of 40 laws that they want passed in every state. Almost everything on their Take Action page involves getting laws passed. I don't believe for a second that the petty tyrants at MADD won't be forcing this technology down our throats in a few years.

In protest of this policy, sometime this weekend, possibly today, I'm going to have a drink and then I'm going to operate a motor vehicle on the streets and roads of metropolitan Chicago. Just because I know it would piss them off.

What can I say? I'm a rebel.

But not before she wounded three of them:

Three Atlanta police officers were shot and wounded and an elderly woman killed at a house in northwest Atlanta Tuesday night.

The woman, identified by relatives as 92-year old Kathryn Johnson, opened fire on the officers from the narcotics division at a house at 933 Neal Street, according to officials. Authorities say they received a tip of drug activity taking place at the home and officers were headed to the house with a search warrant.

I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that Mrs. Johnson probably wasn't dealing any drugs. Certainly the Atlanta police haven't claimed to have found any drugs.

In a report from Fox News in Atlanta the reporter says this:

Atlanta Police...insist the warrant was legal and the use of force necessary.

Yes, but was the raid necessary?

These raids are a crazy situation. The police, by virtue of their warrant, have a legal right to break into somebody's house. The occupant, by virtue her natural right of self defense, has the right to use lethal force to prevent a home invasion. The police, by virtue of their natural right of self defense, have the right to use lethal force to defend themselves if attacked.

It's not hard to see how that can go wrong. If the occupant fails to realize that the invaders are police—either because she is mistaken or because they don't identify themselves properly—you've got the makings of a perfect tragedy, a life-or-death gunfight between people who are both firing in self defense.

The police say the officers knocked and announced themselves, but that's not the same as identifying themselves. In fact, according to reports, the officers were in plain clothes, and therefore indistiguishable from common criminals, who also sometimes yell "Police!" when breaking down doors. I have the feeling that a lot of these shootings could be avoided if the cops would take the time to put on uniforms and make themselves look like police.

Then again, a lot of these situations could be avoided by simply not conducting these stupid raids.

Update: Police are now saying there was a controlled drug buy at the location and that they found what might be drugs at the scene.

Update: Here, via Instapundit, is a bird's eye view of the house. It may have nothing to do with anything that happened yesterday, but it makes me angry just to see it: The house has a wheelchair ramp.

Update: Pete Guither points out that the next day the fucktards at the Drug Czar's office are bragging about financing anti-drug police efforts in Atlanta.

Good job! Just a few million more dollars and I'm sure they'll have wiped out the scourge of drug-dealing grandmothers.

In response to a previous post, I got this comment:

I've discovered that the issue which transcends all political boundaries better than any other issue is the comprehension that the War on Drugs is a failure. Consider this organization: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. It’s comprised of cops, judges, prosecutors and others in the criminal justice system, as well as concerned citizens, who are all opposed to the War on Drugs. We believe that the govt should control the manufacture and distribution of all drugs—not the cartels, criminals and international terrorists. These folks explain this issue nearly every day on talk radio, to civic grps, in front of church congregations and even to military officers and enlisted people...and the result is overwhelmingly positive.

Quite a provocative view for cops to take…but who better to explain the issue than the very people tasked with promulgating the policy?

Sincerely,

Mike Smithson

Speakers Bureau Coordinator

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

http://www.leap.cc speakers@leap.cc

So, if the failure of the War on Drugs "transcends all political boundaries better than any other issue" why isn't it an issue? What politician running for office promised to decriminalize drugs—any drugs? What politician even promised to reign in the abuses of the war on drugs? What politician accused his opponent of passing drug laws that allow masked police to conduct midnight raids into people's homes?

Nobody with real power is on our side.

Some nationally visible politicians have spoken out against the War on Drugs in the last few decades—Baltimore Mayor Kurt Schmoke in the '80's and New Mexico Governor Gary Johnson in the '90's—but they've been few and far between.

Don't get me wrong. LEAP is a great organization. I'm a "Friend of LEAP"—a non-law-enforcement member— and I've linked to their stuff before. They're fighting the good fight. But the positive responses to LEAP speakers—or to any other decriminalization effort—don't seem to be translating into political power.

In the corner of the blogosphere I inhabit, a lot of people oppose the War on Drugs. But out in the real world, it's a fringe issue. Crazy ideas like walling off Mexico get serious debate and coverage on all the talk shows. But ending a policy that costs billions of dollars, jails hundreds of thousands of Americans, and crushes our civil liberties? Not up for debate anywhere that matters.

Folks like Kos have been pushing a new concept of a Libertarian Democrat. It's been getting a lot of attention in the blogosphere. According to Kos, here's what a Libertarian Democrat believes:

A Libertarian Dem rejects government efforts to intrude in our bedrooms and churches. A Libertarian Dem rejects government "Big Brother" efforts, such as the NSA spying of tens of millions of Americans. A Libertarian Dem rejects efforts to strip away rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights -- from the First Amendment to the 10th. And yes, that includes the 2nd Amendment and the right to bear arms.

...

A Libertarian Dem believes that true liberty requires freedom of movement -- we need roads and public transportation to give people freedom to travel wherever they might want. A Libertarian Dem believes that we should have the freedom to enjoy the outdoor without getting poisoned; that corporate polluters infringe on our rights and should be checked. A Libertarian Dem believes that people should have the freedom to make a living without being unduly exploited by employers. A Libertarian Dem understands that no one enjoys true liberty if they constantly fear for their lives, so strong crime and poverty prevention programs can create a safe environment for the pursuit of happiness. A Libertarian Dem gets that no one is truly free if they fear for their health, so social net programs are important to allow individuals to continue to live happily into their old age. Same with health care. And so on.

Notice what's missing?

The War on Drugs is a war on freedom that should appeal to any libertarian, and the War on Drugs has had devastating effects on minorites and the poor. Opposition to the War on Drugs should be the defining belief of anyone claiming to be a Libertarian Democrat.

But as usual, it gets no attention at all.

The Drug Czar's blog, Pushing Back has this item:

Prop 215: Creating Confusion, Abuse, and Criminality since 1996

What happens when pro-drug groups con voters into passing marijuana legalization laws under the guise of medicine? What happens when these state laws conflict with Federal law? What happens when criminal groups and drug dealers start selling drugs under the cover of medical marijuana laws?

Ten years after the State of California passed Proposition 215, state and local officials are still struggling with these questions.

Ten years. Fair enough. There are still some problems with the implementation.

But look who's talking.

It's been over 90 years since the United States passed the Harrison Narcotics Act and we're all still struggling with that mess. We've spawned giant criminal empires, destabilized small nations, imprisoned hundreds of thousands of Americans, created police forces that terrorize people in their homes, and sacrificed many of our civil liberties. Is the War on Drugs working yet?

Let's give medical marijuana another 80 years before we call it a failure.

Did you ever notice those ads where they say that using illegal drugs can lead to irresponsible sex? Pete Guither found an interesting take on them.

Pete Guither asks us to help put together a challenge to a page at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) called Drugs in the Workplace—What an employer needs to know.

I'll start with the third sentence, which includes this: "77 percent of illicit drug users in the United States are employed." Since the employment rate in the general population is only 63 percent, it appears that illicit drug users work harder than the non-drug-using population. That's skewed by the fact that women, the very young, and the very old have a lower labor force participation rate and also use illicit drugs less. Still, if you look at the breakdown by age and sex, illicit drug users post some pretty good numbers.

More seriously, the page has an interesting breakdown in credibility about half-way through. The first half discusses the problems caused by workplace substance abuse and gives actual quantitative answers in dollars and percentages and relative likelyhoods of certain outcomes. The references aren't the greatest—secondary publications rather than scientific studies or reliable statistics—but still, they're laying it all out for us to see.

The second half tries to answer the question "What can your organization do to decrease the impact of substance abuse?" The answer they give is "Implement a drug-free workplace program." But this section of the document contains no references or statistics of any kind. They were quick to give statistics for the dangers of drug use, but appear to have nothing to prove that implementing a drug-free workplace program is actually effective.

I haven't even begun to describe the fundamental problem with the SAMHSA page. That will be a longer article, which will have to wait until I'm less busy.

I think the drug war has been arguably the single most devastating, dysfunctional, harmful social policy since slavery.

That's Norm Stamper, retired Seattle Police Chief.

He's just one of the current and former police officers and other criminal justice professionals who are members of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

Here's a short video of some of their speakers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LayaGk0TMDc

It's fuzzy video, but it's a searing criticism of the War on Drugs.

I took a few hours yesterday to drive down to one of my long-time favorite places in Chicago, the Museum of Science and Industry.

Larger ImageChicago Museum of Science and Industry

I haven't been there in years, and I wasn't exactly looking forward to this. That's because I wasn't there to see the Leonardo da Vinci exhibit. I was there to see this:

Larger ImageClosed Doors at Target America

It's a traveling exhibit produced by the DEA that "traces the historic and contemporary connections between global drug trafficking and terrorism."

As you can see, the doors were closed. Rather than wait for them to re-open, I went to check on something else going on at the museum that day. I walked out that magnificent historic front entrance (I had entered from the parking structure) and took the picture that opens this post. Then I went down the rest of the stairs and said hello to a certain shifty-eyed gentleman hanging out in front of the museum.

Larger ImagePete Guither

That's Pete Guither from the Drug WarRant blog. (Pete's not really that shifty eyed, I just took pictures while he was talking, and the others came out even worse.)

Pete's out there protesting the exhibit with his own DEA Targets America campaign. He's got flyers to hand out, and he'll talk to anybody who'll listen.

As you'd expect from Pete if you read his blog, he's pretty low key about it. He told me he dropped in at the security office to find out where it would be okay for him to protest. I was surprised they let him as close as they did, but I guess the Museum is on Chicago Park District land, so freedom of speech is the rule.

Speaking of which, there were a few rules to the protest: Pete was not allowed past the edge of the building containing the main pedestrian entrance. The salient features are shown below in my best "Alice's Restaurant" diagram.

Larger ImageThe Limits to Pete's Domain

I said goodbye to Pete and went back inside to see if the exhibit was open yet. It was. I didn't have a lot of time left, but I managed to get a few nice pictures.

Larger ImageDrug Crash

The first exhibit inside the door is about some genuine victims of drug abuse. It's the front end of a car that was in a lethal collision that killed a mother of two and injured her children. In addition to the car parts, there are pictures of the driver and his victims before the crash, along with children's toys and drug paraphernalia. The driver was using many different drugs and is currently doing jail time.

Larger ImageMore Drug Crash

The other side of that exhibit is more stuff from the families, and there are placards hanging overhead showing pictures of overdose victims and other hazards of drugs.

You may recall that the DEA started emphasizing narco-terrorism after 9/11. A cynic might suggest that they were afraid of losing some of that War on Drugs budget to the War on Terror unless they found a way to make themselves part of it.

This brings me to the biggest reason I don' t like this exhibit:

Larger ImageDEA 9/11 Memorial

Those are real pieces of the World Trade Center leaning up against a giant poster of the remnants of the outer wall of one of the towers. The back side has parts of the Pentagon. I would probably find it moving if it wasn't such a cynical attempt to cash-in on Americans' feelings about 9/11. DEA officials have admitted there's no evidence that drug money helped fund the attacks. I guess whoever designed the exhibit just wanted to exploit our memories of 9/11 to punch up the message a bit.

I guess I should be thankful. A few of the things on exhibit, such as the car crash at the beginning, strongly support the DEA's message, and stuff like this only serves to undermine it. I should be in favor of that, because maybe then we'll see less of this:

Larger ImageInter-Agency Task Force

I didn't see any sign explaining what this was, but it looks like a photo of some kind of inter-agency task force. (It almost looks good enough to be from a television show, I hope I'm not fooling myself.) It seems like whenever I read something at Drug WarRant or The Agitator about some overbearing government action in the name of the War on Drugs, there's an inter-agency task force involved.

Next stop: Second floor.

Larger ImageOverview of the Exhibit

That's where I found this minimalist simulated tenement apartment.

Larger ImageSimulated Drug Den

That's all there was, other than some explanatory posters.

The weirdest exhibit was right next to it:

Larger ImageUnexplained Exhibit

It looks like a child's room, but why? There's no sign explaining it. Actually, I imagine a poster on one of the nearby exhibits probably explained it, but there was nothing to explain it while you were standing in front of it.

Larger ImageHotel Room Meth Lab

I guess the idea here is that when you stay in a hotel room, your bed could be right up against a meth lab. I've got to give the DEA credit for getting this right. The flammable and potentially explosive chemicals used in these labs are a genuine danger to the general public.

Larger ImageEnrique Camarena

That's a bust of Enrique Camarena, a legendary undercover agent for the DEA who helped destroy a lot of drug trafficking organizations before he was brutally kidnapped, tortured, and murdered in 1985. The DEA's relentless pursuit of his killers eventually led to an international incident and a Supreme Court case when bounty hunters kidnapped them in Mexico and brought them to the United States for trial.

It's a reminder that while I disagree with most of what the DEA stands for, they really are taking down some evil people. For example:

Larger ImageSendero Luminoso Flag

The lower right corner of this exhibit has a flag for Sendero Luminoso, a.k.a. Shining Path, one of the most brutal and heartless terrorist organizations in the world. They are Maoist communists, dedicated to overthrowing the Peruvian government. Given how much of the world's cocaine is produced in Peru, this seems like the real thing: Terrorists who probably receive a lot of money from the drug trade.

That brings me back to another view of the DEA's 9/11 Memorial about a terrorist act that was not funded by drug money. Here's another picture of it that I took on the way out.

Larger ImageDEA 9/11 Memorial

As I was leaving, I also grabbed a picture of this simulated outdoor drug lab.

Larger ImageOutdoor Drug Lab

The museum gift shop had DEA merchandise for sale. I was tempted to get Pete a hat or a shirt to wear while he was protesting, but I'm sure he wouldn't want to be accused of misleading people.

Larger ImageDEA Merchandise

One thing I learned on my trip: I've got to come back to this museum soon to see all the cool stuff:

Larger ImageCool Stuff

Rush Limbaugh had another run-in with the drug police:

Rush Limbaugh was detained for more than three hours Monday at Palm Beach International Airport after authorities said they found a bottle of Viagra in his possession without a prescription.

It's a perfectly legal drug. Who really cares whether or not he has a prescription?

Assholes from U.S. Customs, that's who.

Someday I'll have to find out why it is that police need probable cause to search you except when you're crossing the border. Where is that exception in the Constitution?

I don't like Rush Limbaugh, and I never would have thought I'd feel sorry for him, but nobody deserves this kind of crap.

What's even sadder is that I don't think Rush is going to learn anything at all from his troubles.

(Hat tip: Drug WarRant)

Radley Balko has been researching police shootings of innocent citizens during SWAT-style drug raids. It's surprising how often this happens and how little press it receives.

Recently, Balko was researching a raid back in March that scared the hell out an elderly couple when he came across a letter to the editor from a man whose neice had been killed during a drug raid.

After receiving an anonymous tip, police in Lexington, Tennessee forced entry to the home of Stacy Renae Walker.

Once inside, Deputy Tim Crowe, who had been on the police force for only a week, saw Renae rise from the couch with a child in her arms, and discharged his gun. The bullet struck Renae in the back of the head and exited through her mouth, killing her. Police would later say Crowe's gun fired and scored a direct hit because he "tripped."

Police found no drugs or weapons in the home. They later conceded that the entire raid was "a terrible mistake."

Got all that? Based on a tip from someone who the police cannot identify or prove actually exists, police conducted a SWAT-style raid of a home and found nothing illegal, but a deputy tripped and accidentally shot someone square in the head.

Then, while researching that shooting, he stumbled across two more shootings that happened in Salem, Oregon within a year of each other, one of which was another raid at the wrong location.

If you're interested, you can read the whole story at Balko's Blog, where he mentions that so far he's found 42 cases of innocent bystanders killed in SWAT-style forced-entry raids, another 15 cops killed during the raids, and another 20 people killed whose crimes were non-violent, such as pot smokers and illegal gamblers.

Now here's something to think about. A few days ago there was a story about two New-York cops convicted of doing contract killings for the Mafia.

Thankfully, cops that crooked are pretty rare, but if the Mafia can buy off a few cops, so can a drug gang. And if Deputy Crowe can shoot an unarmed woman in the back of the head without facing any charges, don't you think a corrupt drug task-force cop can shoot few known drug dealers during raids without attracting much attention, especially if he's able to plant some evidence? Don't you think it's already happened?

I have a cold, and I ran out of cough medicine, so I stopped at the local Walgreens to get some more. I like to treat a cold with dextromethorphan (a cough suppressant), guaifenesin (an expectorant), and pseudoephedrine (a nasal decongestant). In other words, Robitussin CF.

Of course, that last ingredient, pseudoephedrine, is a key ingredient for making crystal meth these days, so the drug warriors have passed laws requiring pharmacies to keep it behind the counter. I had to pick out a hanging card for the right stuff and give it to the pharmacist. The cards are poorly displayed, so it took me forever to find the right one—the first one I grabbed turned out to be the infant formulation. I eventually found the card for the Walgreens generic version, but when the pharmacist went to get it, he told me it was sold out and they only had Robitussin.

Once I got the right stuff, the pharmacist needed to see my ID and copy down my name and address before he'd sell it to me. I asked him who gets the records, and he said no one. Apparently, they have to keep the records in case law enforcement ever wants to get a court order to look at them or something.

What a total waste of all our time.

The story of Julia Diaco is bouncing around the legal blogosphere. She's an attractive young white college girl who was caught dealing drugs on the NYU campus. She could have been sentenced to as much as 25 years, but instead received a slap-on-the-wrist sentence of 5-years probation.

A New York Post story, "Pot Hottie Breathes Freedom" (really), contrasts that sentence with another case:

News of the deal frustrated Anthony Papa, 51, who, like Diaco, was once a first-time, non-violent offender. Instead of probation, he was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for delivering four ounces of cocaine for a police informant to an undercover cop for a $500 fee.

The owner of a struggling auto repair business in The Bronx, Papa was desperate for cash and couldn't afford a pricey lawyer.

"I get angry with a case like this because the laws are not applied equally. Because she had money and the right lawyers, she didn't go to jail. Others should have that same opportunity," he said. "All people should be treated like this woman - with compassion."

Virginia prosecutor Tom McKenna responds in his blog:

[Anthony] Papa, however, draws the exactly 180-degree wrong conclusion...How 'bout instead we treat like cases alike and put the drug-dealing pretty rich girl in jail for 15 years?

Well, I think it's Tom that's drawing the wrong conclusion. The War On Drugs is a pointless communist-empire-sized waste of resources that has eroded our civil liberties far more than the PATRIOT act ever has, all in the name of stopping a victimless crime. As far as I'm concerned, Julia Diaco got justice (or pretty close to it). The injustice here is not the light sentence given to a rich white babe, but the crushing sentences routinely handed out to everyone else.

Tom's response is chilling. A 15-year prison sentence is life-shattering. It would destroy all her hopes and plans. Her friends would leave her and move away. Family members would grow sick and die. Everything she did, all the plans she made, all the dreams she had...it would all be wiped out, made meaningless by the passage of a decade and a half. When she got out, she'd have to start her life over from scratch.

Some criminals, of course, deserve that. But Julia Diaco is a college student who sold a little drugs to other college students. A slap on the wrist sounds about right.

I know, I know, some of you are thinking George Bush. But I think it's Captain David Alexander of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission. He's having his officers arrest people for getting drunk in bars. He justifies it this way:

"Going to a bar is not an opportunity to go get drunk," TABC Capt. David Alexander said. "It's to have a good time but not to get drunk."

I don't think Captain Alexander understands why we have bars.

This is not the first we've heard of this sort of thing.

On June 3rd, in Washington D.C. a bunch of people will be getting together for the first ever Vigil for Lost Promise in memory of young men and women who died from drugs. This is more than just a gathering of parents and friends to remember the departed, however. This is a cynical propaganda effort by the Drug Enforcement Agency.

The associated web site includes eight Stories of Lost Promise about young people who died from drugs. They make for instructive reading, both in the dangers of drug abuse and the source of those dangers. While even the DEA is sane enough not to directly using this event to propose legislation or ask for funding, it's clear they have a few things in mind.

One of the stories is about an 18-year old who died from an overdose of Vicodin that he obtained over the internet. I'm inclined to believe that this is a real problem. Vicodin is a relatively easy drug to abuse or become addicted to. As the parent who wrote the story suggests, it probably shouln't be available without a prescription after seeing a doctor.

Another case is a 19-year old man who died from an overdose of Xanax which he was taking for recreational purposes. That's a legal prescription drug which he obtained through a source that is not described in the story.

The rest of the stories, however, tend to illustrate problems with the war on drugs:

• One of the stories is about a 16-year old boy who died from inhalant abuse. Inhalants are legal substances (although probably illegal to inhale) which is one of the reasons kids use them instead of safer drugs like marijuana or Ecstasy.
• Two stories are about heroin users who died of overdoses. Because it's illegal, the supply of heroin, and therefore the quality and purity of each dose, is controlled entirely by criminals.
• Two of the stories are drawn from the relative handful of people who have ever died from taking Ecstasy. One is a 23-year old woman who died of an Ecstasy overdose, although the story doesn't give details. The other was a 14-year old girl who took an Ecstasy pill and became very sick, but her friends didn't get adult help until it was too late because they were afraid of being busted for having the drugs.
• One of the stories is about a young man who hung himself, an incident which is being blamed on depression brought on by suddenly cessation of steroid use. Perhaps he and his parents would have known how to stop the steroids safely—or even use them safely—if there weren't such restrictive rules about them.

Pete Guither at Drug WarRant has created his own counter-web-site, also known as Vigil for Lost Promise. It contains links to his Drug War Victims page. By linking to it as I have, I and others hope to push it to the top of the Google search above the official DEA site.

Lawrence Taylor posts an excerpt from a story about a man who was convicted of DUI for a drunken ride on a pocket bike—a small bike that sits less than a foot off the ground.

It doesn't sound like operating a pocket bike under the influcence constitutes much of a risk to innocent bystanders, but I don't really know enough to have a firm opinion. What struck me, however, was the judge's explanation of why he decided it was a vehicle:

In his written opinion, Caposela pointed to cases from other states where drivers who drove golf carts drunk were subject to DWI penalties.

I know that precedent has a place in judicial rulings, but I can almost hear my mother's response: "If those other judges jumped off a cliff, would you jump too?"

One of the most annoying responses to proposals to relax the drug war is the assertion that doing so would send the wrong message to the children. Even allowing sick people to smoke marijuana has been criticized this way.

Pete Guither at Drug WarRant is asking what message are we sending by continuing the senseless war on drugs. Here are a few of my favorite responses of his and his readers:

"Lying is OK when adults are talking about drugs."

"If you make a mistake regarding drug use, we're going to make sure that your friends are too afraid to get help that might save you."

"If you're going to use drugs, we want to make sure that you get them from a criminal[...]"

"You have no rights. We can come and test your blood or your urine or search you whenever we feel like it. You're property."

"We use sick people as a tool for our political purposes. We don't care whether they are in pain or die from a lack of medicine."

"Non-violent drug posession is more serious than sexual assault or armed-robbery." (Ben Heumann)

"If drugs are outlawed, only outlaws (and sick people and kids and casual users and drug abusers and criminals and politicians and homemakers and rock stars and the elderly and professors and steelworkers and journalists and day laborers and teens and actors) will have drugs." (Baylen Linnekin of To the People)

"We believe there is logic in allowing an easily grown weed to sell for more than gold with only criminals making the profit from it." (Kwix)

"It's better to tear a family apart than to permit someone to possess a leaf. Snitch on your family and friends, it's the right thing to do. Drugs decrease your ability to perform your job, so they should be banned. Performance-enhancing drugs increase your ability to perform your job, so they should be banned. Drugs are bad because they're illegal, and they're illegal because they're bad." (Bruce)

That last guy could work for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. He's really got their talking points down cold.

Just spotted this example of screwed-up priorities over at The Agitator:

Federal drug agents fanned out across San Diego on Monday, clamping down on medical marijuana dispensaries that had been doling out marijuana to sick and dying patients.

I realize that even though medical marijuana is legal in the state of California, it's still illegal under federal law. But don't all these federal agents have something better to do? At a time when we're still being told to give up some of our freedoms for the war on terror, this seems like a wasteful use of federal agents' time.

At any time, it's cruel and heartless, and it shows a remarkable lack of perspective on the part of the Department of Justice.

Stephen Littau has a good article on the insanely huge sentence received by Weldon Angelos, whose first-time bust for selling marijuana earned him a stunning 55-year mandatory sentence because he had a gun on him. He didn't shoot anybody. He didn't even brandish the gun. He just had it with him.

According to DUIblogger Lawrence Taylor, the Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus (HGN) test is essentially a fraud. This is the follow-the-pen eye test that cops use to test drivers for impairment, and it's one of only three tests approved by the Department of Transportation.

Taylor quotes a recent study:

This summary critique demonstrates that it is scientifically meretricious and that the United States Department of Transportation indulged in deliberate fraud in order to mislead the law enforcement and legal communities into believing the test was scientifically meritorious and overvaluing its worth in the context of criminal evidence....

A series of NHTSA studies had examined the field sobriety tests in use around the country and determined that three of them were accurate, easy to do in the field, and easy to do the same way every time: Walk and Turn, One Leg Stand, and Horizontal Gaze Nystagmus.

I've never been pulled over for suspected drunk driving, but I've thought a little about how to handle it. My plan has been to refuse to do the Walk and Turn or One Leg Stand tests because the NHTSA has only validated those tests for people in a limited weight range, and I'm well outside the bounds.

(Of course I wouldn't say that to the cop: I don't want him thinking about why I know so much about the tests. He'll never believe that I was just curious and looked it up. My plan is to say something like "Stand on one leg? Oh, man, I haven't had that kind of balance in decades!" Then if he decides to give me the breath test, I'll just blow a straight 0.00% and be on my way—I never drink and drive. At least that's what I'd like to do. In reality, I'll probably just cave-in and meekly do whatever he tells me to do. I hate when that happens.)

Now it looks like I'd have to refuse the HGN test too.

Someone calling himself Ogre has a small article about the recent vote in Denver to legalize marijuana. Since the vote doesn't change the laws of Colorado—just of the city of Denver—police will continue to arrest people under the Colorado controlled substance laws.

The last paragraph sums up the absurdity of laws against drug possession pretty well:

Why? Why should it be illegal to simply hold a plant in your hand? How does that affect anyone else in Colorado, or anyone else in the U.S.?

By the way, be sure to check out the funky design of Ogre's main page. Scroll down to see how the articles link together.

Update: Jim Leitzel at Vice Squad wakes up briefly to tell us that in Singapore they're going to hang a guy for having a few hundred grams of heroin. So I guess drug users in Denver should be thankful for some things.

I thought I'd try to get away from Katrina blogging for a while, so I visited the MADD web site to see what those paternalistic weanies are up to. I turns out they're trying to cash in on the hurricane:

Contribute to MADD's Katrina Fund and provide aid to MADD volunteers and staff whose lives have been changed forever by Hurricane Katrina—100% of proceeds will be sent directly to affected areas, and will be administered locally.

For one shocking moment, I was worried they had figured out some way to blame Katrina on drunk drivers, but I guess even they can't pull that one off.

Hmm. Maybe I should visit the web site for the Office of National Drug Control Policy to see if they've found a way to blame the hurricane on medical marijuana yet...

About a decade ago, the high-school aged children of a friend of mine had a party at which they and their friends had some alcoholic drinks. My friend knew all about what her kids were up to. In fact, she hosted the party and served the alcohol herself.

It seemed like a good idea. Kids that age can always get booze when they want to, but at least this way a responsible adult would be there to make sure they didn't drink too much or drive away drunk.

It must have seemed like a good idea to a lot of people, because she got signed permission slips from the parents of every kid who attended. The only exception was the son of the Chief of Police in her town. He called her to say he couldn't sign the note because she was technically breaking the law, but he assured her he approved of his son attending.

That was then, this is now:

That's exactly what a Rhode Island couple did in 2004. When they learned that their son planned to celebrate the prom with a booze bash at a beach 40 miles away, William and Patricia Anderson instead threw a supervised party for him and his friends at their home. They served alcohol, but William Anderson stationed himself at the party's entrance and collected keys from every teen who showed. No one who came to the party could leave until the next morning.

For this the Andersons found themselves arrested and charged with supplying alcohol to minors. The case ignited a fiery debate that eventually spilled onto the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

That's from Radley Balko in the Washington Post. He goes on:

The local chapter of Mothers Against Drunk Driving oddly decided to make an example of William Anderson, a man who probably did more to keep drunk teens off the road that night than most Providence-area parents.

I'm shocked! Why would a driving safety group like MADD be acting like a bunch of old-time prohibitionists? I don't know, but as I mentioned before, MADD has drifted far from their original goals.

In fact, the Andersons were lucky. A couple in Virginia was recently sentenced to 27 months in jail for throwing a supervised party for their son's 16th birthday, at which beer was made available. That was reduced on appeal from the eight-year sentenced imposed by the trial judge. The local MADD president said she was "pleasantly surprised" at the original eight-year verdict, and "applauded" the judge's efforts.

Eight years. That's an awfully long sentence for serving alcohol to minors. Bank robbers and rapists would serve less time (for a single first offense). That a MADD officer would support such a sentence makes me wonder if MADD is becoming some sort of hate group, kind of like the KKK except instead of hating another race, they hate drinkers.

Update: Okay, I got angry and went overboard there. My apologies to MADD for the unqualified comparison to the KKK. Unlike the KKK, MADD acts within the law, not against it, and they don't do lynchings. However, I still say the MADD president's comment suggests that MADD is more motivated by hatred of drinkers than by improving traffic safety.

John Tierney has a New York Times article about Richard Paey, sentenced to a mandatory minimum sentence of 25 years in prison for drug trafficking.

Actually, the prosecutors in the case never proved that he was selling drugs. The law they used simply defines possession of an ounce or more of illegal drugs as trafficking. The police watched him for quite a while, but they never caught him selling drugs.

His drugs weren't really illegal, either. He had Percocet (oxycodone), Lortab (hydrocodone), and Valium (diazepam). Apparently he filled prescriptions for 400 pills per month. That's about 13 pills per day, or each pill taken 4 times daily, which isn't really a whole lot. It's especially not a lot when you consider that Richard Paey has a serious back injury from a car accident 20 years ago. He also has multiple sclerosis. He'd been receiving this kind of medication from his doctor in New Jersey.

So why the problem? It appears Paey didn't actually have a prescription for all the drugs he was getting. He had recently moved to Florida and apparently had trouble finding a doctor who would give him the medication he needed, so he forged prescriptions from his previous doctor.

Well, he says he didn't forge the prescriptions, but the jury didn't believe him. This was really the major factual dispute. If he had a prescription, he'd be free and clear.

Let's assume the jury got it right. The worst you can say about Richard Paey is that he became addicted to medication he was taking legally for his pain and used illegal means to obtain more of the same medication. For that crime, the State of Florida is sending a guy with a serious back injury and MS to jail for 25 years.

Oh, did I mention that Paey is in a wheelchair? Did I also mention that Richard Paey is married and has three children?

Finally, did I mention that he was arrested in March 1997 and it took until April 2004 to convict him because the first trial ended in a mistrial and the second verdict was thrown out by a judge? That's right, the prosecutor went to trial three times to throw a wheelchair-bound father of three in jail for fake prescriptions for pain medication.

They offered him plea bargains for a lot less time, but he refused to plead guilty. Reason magazine has this:

The prosecutors, who finally obtained the draconian sentence that even they concede Paey does not deserve, say it's his fault for insisting on his innocence. "It's unfortunate that anyone has to go to prison, but he's got no one to blame but Richard Paey," Assistant State Attorney Mike Halkitis told the St. Petersburg Times. "All we wanted to do was get him help."

Got that? The State's Attorney's office, which could have dropped the charges at any time, is saying this is all Richard Paey's fault. They say he should have taken their deal. (Wife-beaters everywhere think exactly the same way. "If she just did what I told her, I wouldn't have to beat her!")

Actually, the "he's got no one to blame but [himself]" line is somewhat suggestive. If the prosecutors had just put away a guy who committed a real crime—one with a victim, say—they wouldn't be blaming him, they'd be taking credit for themselves.

Paey's wife has explained that he didn't want to take the deal because he was afraid that with a conviction for illegal drugs, he would have trouble getting his pain medication.

While he's in jail, that turns out not to be a problem. His jailhouse doctors have got him on a steady flow of morphine. It's the best pain relief he's ever had.

Richard Paey sums it up this way:

"We've become mad in our pursuit of drug-law violations," he said. "Generations to come will look back and scarcely believe what we've done to sick people."

(Hat tip: Public Defender Dude.)

Update: Something wonderful happened.

The news media have been having fun reporting that Glynn Birch, the new national president of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, is a man. That MADD would chose a president who has never been a mother doesn't surprise me a bit, but I'll get back to that later.

Meanwhile, lets look at a few excerpts from MADD's press release about their new president. The first paragraph introduces Glynn Birch. Here's the second paragraph:

Today's announcement is timely, as MADD took the opportunity to urge Congress to reject an Administration proposal that would divert $1.27 billion in restitution funds from the Crime Victim's Fund of the federal Victims of Crime Act (VOCA). Current MADD National President Wendy Hamilton said the Fiscal Year (FY) 2006 budget proposal would be "a catastrophic blow to programs run by nearly 4,400 community service groups like MADD to assist four million crime victims most in need each year."

Apparently, MADD's number one priority in the fight against the carnage caused by drunk driving is getting the government to give MADD more money. That sort of thing always makes me a bit cautious. It seems that almost all identifiable groups of the poor and downtrodden are surrounded by buzzing clouds of middle-class folks—doctors, lawyers, social workers, advocates, and other potential assistants—clamoring for government money. Of course, even the best charities get paid for their work, so MADD isn't necessarily a bad organization because of it. But it does mean they don't deserve a presumption of saintliness.

Let's look at what MADD does to help crime victims. Consider the case of Glynn Birch's own 21-month old son Courtney, who was killed by a drunk driver in 1988. Here's what happened, and how MADD helped:

On May 3, 1988, Birch's son Courtney was playing with his two cousins at his grandmother's house when they ran outside to the sounds of an arriving ice cream truck. A car traveling 70 miles an hour struck and killed Courtney, and dragged his body 150 feet before finally stopping. The driver had a .26 blood-alcohol concentration, three prior DUI convictions and was driving on a suspended license as a result of previous DUIs. "This offender who took my son's life was the epitome of a higher risk driver," Birch said.

After his son's death, Glynn contacted MADD to help him deal with his shock and grief. A trained MADD victim advocate, who was partially funded by a VOCA grant, guided him in writing a victim impact statement that helped send the convicted drunk driver to jail for the maximum fifteen years.

In other words, MADD helped the victim's family by working to get the drunk driver a long sentence. I suppose the family was glad to see the killer get hard time, but I'm not sure this was really helping the victim's family so much as it was hurting the criminal. There's nothing inherently wrong with seeking to maximize penalties for serious crimes, but is a VOCA grant to MADD the best way to do it? Surely it would be more efficient to use the VOCA money to increase funding to the prosecutor's office. Or the legislature could just bump up the sentencing guidelines. (God knows, they never seem to pass up a chance to do that.)

Besides, I think MADD is exaggerating their own importance. I doubt their participation made much of a difference, because I doubt that the victim impact statement made much of a difference. I don't believe the judge needed a victim impact statement to throw the book at a guy with .26 BAC who drives 70 miles per hour in a residential neighborhood and kills a child.

In a Chicago Tribune article, reporter Sam Singer gives us more information about outgoing MADD president Wendy Hamilton's remarks. His summary includes these two telling paragraphs:

MADD says its concern is that the deterrent effect of current regulations has been limited to social and recreational drinkers—those least likely to be repeat offenders—while having negligible sway over habitual, or "high-risk" drivers.

Hamilton said the failure of past safety regulations to directly target high-risk drivers is a principal reason for the failure of the past decade's legal reforms to translate, statistically speaking, into fewer alcohol-related traffic fatalities.

Now who's fault is that? MADD has been campaigning for years for regulations that target social and recreational drinkers rather than high risk drivers. You only have to take a look at their positions on law enforcement page, where they advocate several issues that seem to go against their stated goal of targeting high-risk drivers.

Sobriety Checkpoints

MADD supports the frequent and regular use of highly publicized sobriety checkpoints and/or other high visibility enforcement programs to detect and apprehend alcohol and other drug impaired drivers, and as a visible deterrent to drinking and driving.

First of all, stopping and questioning thousands of people without a reason to suspect them of a crime is a violation of our civil liberties. Internal checkpoints are one of the surest signs of totalitarianism. (The Supreme Court disagrees with me, which is why we still have sobriety checkpoints.)

Second, this is an incredibly wasteful way to find high-risk drunk drivers. Only a tiny percentage of drivers are actually drunk, so stopping them all wastes a lot of police labor. We'd all be better off if the police were patrolling and keeping an eye out for dangerous drivers. Not only would they catch more drunk drivers, they'd catch a lot of other criminals.

Enforcing drunk driving laws with sobriety checkpoints is like enforcing rape laws by following random men around to see if they rape anybody.

(I could be persuaded on the efficacy of sobriety checkpoints by someone with real data comparing them to traditional patrolling.)

.08 Per Se BAC

MADD supports setting the illegal blood alcohol content (BAC) limit for non-commercial drivers age 21 and older at .08 per se.

This is exactly the sort of low-level enforcement that MADD is now complaining about.

Open Containers in Vehicles

MADD endorses open container restrictions which prevent the consumption of alcohol or the possession of open containers of alcohol in any motor vehicle.

Again, this doesn't target high-risk drivers. Heck, it doesn't even target drunk drivers: You could be perfectly sober, and yet your passengers aren't allowed to have a few beers. Heck, you could get busted for this if one of your passengers happens to have a closed but unsealed bottle of booze.

Some of MADD's policy issues have nothing to do with drinking, such as primary enforcement of seat belt laws. They also favor graduated driver's licenses for young drivers, including nighttime driving restrictions and restrictions on carrying young passengers. I can't imagine what my teenage years would have amounted to if I couldn't ride around with my friends at night. Also, night driving is a lot easier because there's less traffic. Besides, isn't this really a matter for parents to decide?

On the other hand, many of MADD's policy issues have a lot to do with drinking but very little to do with driving. For one thing, they want stricter enforcement of the minimum drinking age law, including "driver's license sanctions for underage persons convicted of purchase or possession of alcoholic beverages." They want to turn all youth gatherings into Alcohol-Free Zones, apparently even for adults at the same event. They even want Social Host Liability which will "establish civil liability for adults who provide alcohol to underage persons or who allow underage persons to consume alcohol." This would essentially prohibit parents from teaching their kids about responsible drinking by holding supervised parties.

MADD also supports the minimum drinking age of 21, alcohol and drug abuse prevention and education, laws against happy hours, warning labels on alcohol, uniform bar closing times, many policy changes for college campuses, and a vast array of restrictions on advertising.

Then there's this:

Keg Registration

MADD supports the requirement that all kegs and other large containers of alcoholic beverages be registered at point of purchase in order to facilitate identification of those who purchase illegally or to provide to youth under age 21.

Not all of MADD's policies are as crazy as that last one, and some of them are probably even good ideas. However, I have become sympathetic to the view of many of MADD's critics that it is more and more about alcohol prohibition than about drunk driving. There's more to it than that, though, as evidenced by their automotive safety policies and their victim's rights activity. I think they've become an organization that is interested mainly their own continued existence and growth. They're in favor of anything that will bring in the money.

So, I'm not surprised they have a man as president. They stopped being about drunk driving a long time ago, they might as well forget the "Mothers" part of the name too.

DEA Administrator Karen P. Tandy has recently published an article called "Marijuana: The Myths Are Killing Us" as part of her campaign against medical marijuana.

Now meet 14-year-old Ashley Villarreal of San Antonio, Texas. Back in February of 2003, DEA agents raided her house trying to get evidence of illegal drug dealing by her father. They didn't find any drugs, but as they rolled up to start the raid, they shot and killed Ashley.

That one sad death is all it takes to prove something worth keeping in mind the next time you come across some medical marijuana bashing: The DEA has killed more people than medical marijuana.

Update: Oops. Forgot to credit Pete Guither of Drug WarRant for the pointer to Ashley Villareal's story.

Update: Read the whole story of Ashley Villarreal's death at the hands of the DEA.

Well, the Supreme court decided Raich today. Or, as the AP wire story so aptly puts it, "Court Rules Against Pot for Sick People."

It's bad enough that this is a giant "Fuck You!" to sick people, as Reason's Nick Gillespie puts it. Sometimes, however, the Supreme Court has to reach conclusions that cause trouble in the short term but that uphold valuable principles. This isn't one of those times.

The Supremes seem to have almost completely abandoned the concept of limited government, allowing the feds to reach virtually any human activity through the Commerce Clause that gives the feds control over interstate trade. Stevens's opinion basically says that Congrees can regulate intrastate activities that affect interstate trade, even if the intrastate activities do not involve trade, as long as the intrastate activities are economic in nature. Stevens defines economic as "the production, distribution, and consumption of commodities."

That's actually a reasonable definition of economic. What I fail to understand, however, is how regulation of interstate trade has expanded to include regulation of anything that affects the economic variables of interstate trade. At this point, the Supreme Court rulings seem to allow the federal government to regulate damned near every human economic activity, from liquor store hours to church bake sales.

I'm so upset by this. I'm so angry.

I'm straying a bit from the Commerce Clause issue, but I'll leave you now with a few words from Justice Clarance Thomas's dissenting opinion (as quoted by Orin Kerr):

[N]either in enacting the [Controlled Substances Act] nor in defending its application to respondents has the Government offered any obvious reason why banning medical marijuana use is necessary to stem the tide of interstate drug trafficking. Congress's goal of curtailing the interstate drug trade would not plainly be thwarted if it could not apply the CSA to patients like Monson and Raich. That is, unless Congress's aim is really to exercise police power of the sort reserved to the States in order to eliminate even the intrastate possession and use of marijuana.

Update: Jacob Sullum at Reason says it better.

Governor Rod R. Blagojevich
Office of the Governor
207 State House
Springfield, IL 62706

Dear Governor Blagojevich,

I'm a taxpayer, voter, and 40-year resident of Illinois. I'm writing to thank you for signing SB3007, which mitigates the damage to people's lives as a result of a minor criminal conviction. It was so very much the right thing to do.

I hope you continue to make more changes along these lines. In particular, incarcerating people who commit victimless crimes seems wasteful and unnecessary. The Illinois justice system seems to recognize this in certain matters, such as prostitution and gambling, for which harsh sentences are rarely given. But when it comes to drug crimes, we still seem to be following a wasteful policy of lengthy imprisonment.

I doubt jail does much to cure drug abuse, but it does cure people of being able to get jobs. Aside from the effects of a criminal record on employability, I doubt that people jailed as teenagers will re-enter the workforce after jail with any kind of work ethic. Long prison terms break people.

Long prison terms cost a lot of money too. When I hear stories of people getting five years in jail for small-scale drug crimes, it irritates me to think that taxpayers are going to have to cough up about $100,000 for that. I can think of better and more productive ways to spend the money.

I ask you, and urge you, to do what you can to move Illinois toward a more compassionate program of treatment for drug offenders. Like SB3007, it's the right thing to do.

Sincerely,

Mark Draughn

Big Bill Of Rights news today, as the Illinois Police and the Supreme Court pile another rock on the chest of the Fourth Amendment, hoping this time to crush it to death. (Metaphor courtesy of Bryan Gates at I respectfully dissent.)

The court's ruling in Illinois v. Caballes says that police can use a drug dog to search a vehicle without any individualized suspicion. The scariest part of the ruling is the reasoning: Since drug dogs only detect drugs, the person's privacy is only violated to the extent that they have drugs. But because drugs are illegal, there is no right to privacy for possessing them.

That is, because the police have developed a technology for searching (trained dog) that only finds illegal stuff and does not infringe on legally private matters, there is no violation of privacy for police to do the search without warrant or cause.

Orin Kerr worries about this:

Under the rationale followed by the Court today, the government may be free to invade your property so long as they only obtain "non private" information. This is particularly troubling in the context of computer searches and seizures. Can the police send a computer virus to your computer that searches your computer for obscene images, or images of child pornography, and then reports back to the police whether such images are on your computer — all without probable cause, or even any suspicion at all? The traditional answer would have been no: the police cannot enter your private property to search even for non-private stuff. But thanks to the increasing focus on the nature of the information rather than how the information is obtained, it's no longer so clear.

I think the problem may be worse than Kerr's example implies. If computer searches pass Caballes, it's not because the search is of a computer, but because the search is by a computer. I think any computer-mediated search technology might pass as long as the computer hides the target's private information and only passes the illegal stuff to the operator. (After all, the drug dog probably smells a lot of stuff it isn't barking about.)

How about taking millimeter-wave radar images of pedestrians and letting a computer process the images to search for weapons? Such technology is far from perfect, but it arguably only has to be as accurate as a police dog and handler. Computer voice recognition of criminal speech is more difficult, but when it becomes possible, this ruling will leave the door open for it.

That slippery slope worries me too. Once we allow searches that that depend for their legality on their accuracy, just how accurate will we require them to be? Will it depend on what we're searching for? I'm not looking forward to any Fourth Amendment balancing act.

Over at Drug WarRant, author Pete Guither is writing about unexpectedly making the news. He endorsed Tari Renner for the Illinois 11th district, over Jerry Weller, the incumbent, because Renner's drug policies are better than Weller's. Weller, for example, thinks it's a great idea for the federal government to harass and imprison patients taking medical marijuana despite the fact that their doctor recommends it and their state's laws allow it.

Now Weller has started using Pete Guither's endorsement as a way to attack Renner. Weller's people are saying that Guither's Drug WarRant site promotes drug use and encourages people to use heroin, neither of which are true. Drug WarRant is a typical legalization site: Guither's rants are not in praise of drug use but in condemnation of the War on Drugs.

Weller's opponent, Tari Renner, isn't much help either. Pete Guither, who lives in the 11th district, had sent Renner's campaign a contribution, but Renner's office just sent it back.

Sigh.

My title is probably unfair. Just because congressman Weller's people are making up vicious lies about Pete Guither, and just because candidate Renner's people don't even want to come close enough to Pete Guither to take his money, doesn't mean they're treating drug war opponents like the 1930s Nazis treated the Jews.

Guither's article just made me despair a little. If the Ku Klux Klan gives your campaign money, you give it back. If an Al-Qaeda-linked "charity" gives you money, you give it back. Do these politicians really put drug legalization into the same category as racism and terrorism? Do these people actually see Pete Guither's views, Pete Guither's values, my values, as so abhorrent that they don't even want our money? That they slander and libel us? Are they that disgusted at the thought of not hurting drug users and putting them in cages?

Crap. I don't have an ending. I just sit here sputtering about what assholes these people are. Well, this will have to do: Pete, I just hit your tip jar for $20. I have no interest in coffee myself, being more of a Diet Coke head, but have a few pounds on me.

According to an AP story, the DEA has shown that some illegal drug sales in the US are used to fund terrorism in the Middle East:

"There is increasing intelligence information from the investigation that for the first time alleged drug sales in the United States are going in part to support terrorist organizations in the Middle East," DEA administrator Asa Hutchinson said Friday.

I have to admit, I've always been skeptical about the supposed use of drug profits to fund terrorism, but the DEA appears to have found a smoking gun. Conveniently, this discovery coincides closely with the DEA's announcement of an exhibit illustrating the drugs-and-terrorism link:

"This is the first exhibit that connects drug trafficking and terrorism graphically and unequivocally for the American public. Opening with a sculpture composed of rubble from the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the exhibit uses the events of September 11 to tell the historic story of the connection between the violent drug trade and terror, from the Silk Road to the present," said Director Hutchinson.

But wait, going back to the AP story we find this:

There is no evidence that any of the money was connected to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, officials said.

So why is there a piece of the World Trade Center in the exhibit if there's no connection? Could it be that somebody at the DEA just wanted to exploit September 11th to punch up the message?

And another thing from the AP story:

Hutchinson has been warning for months that illegal drug money provides a compelling opportunity for terror groups to siphon support from the United States, but the DEA investigation provided the first evidence of a direct flow of money.

So those earlier warnings were based on guesswork with no evidence? And what does this say about all those millions of dollars of TV commercials claiming that drug users were helping to fund terrorism? If this is really the smoking gun the DEA claims it is, then all those other claims must have had no basis in fact. It was all lies.