Recently in War on Drugs Category

"The meeting was an error in judgment that will not be repeated, and I am sorry for it." Clinton consigliere and inveterate torturer of reason Mark Penn gets into trouble for playing both sides of a Colombian trade deal, is forced to apologize, and subsequently gets sacked by the nation in question. If only Sen. Clinton had followed Colombia's example months ago, she might still have a shot at the presidency right now.

In related news, Al Giordano of Rural Votes explains why Colombian president Alvaro Uribe is rooting against Obama, and why that speaks strongly in the Illinois Senator's favor. "The Uribe regime, after all, continues a chummy friendship with Bill Clinton, granting him the government’s 'Colombia Is Passion' Award last June. That, during the same 2007 spring when former vice president Al Gore cancelled his appearance at a Miami environmental conference because he did not want to share a podium with Uribe, the hemisphere’s poster boy for state-sponsored terrorism, narco-trafficking, and assassinations of opposition political, labor and social movement leaders."

"What the drugs themselves have not destroyed, the warfare against them has. And what once began, perhaps, as a battle against dangerous substances long ago transformed itself into a venal war on our underclass. Since declaring war on drugs nearly 40 years ago, we've been demonizing our most desperate citizens, isolating and incarcerating them and otherwise denying them a role in the American collective. All to no purpose. The prison population doubles and doubles again; the drugs remain."

On the eve of the final episode, the writers of The Wire -- Simon, Burns, Lehane, Pelecanos, and Price -- argue in favor of jury nullification as an act of civil disobedience against America's failed drug war. "If some few episodes of a television entertainment have caused others to reflect on the war zones we have created in our cities and the human beings stranded there, we ask that those people might also consider their conscience. And when the lawyers or the judge or your fellow jurors seek explanation, think for a moment on Bubbles or Bodie or Wallace. And remember that the lives being held in the balance aren't fictional."

"For a candidate sometimes accused of arrogance, Clinton did little in the immediate aftermath of the Iowa caucuses to suggest that she held herself responsible for the defeat or intended to change her message to attract voters in other states. Instead she and her advisers blamed the electorate and the process, saying the Iowa system is flawed... At the same time, her campaign advisers made some arguments that seemed to defy logic: They contended that, although the Iowa system is too exclusive, she also lost because so many people participated in the process."

As a candidate who's been cultivating her inevitability as the presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton's third place finish last night was obviously a huge setback for her (and for her main campaign strategist, Mark Penn.) Still, Senator Clinton is the well-financed, well-organized establishment candidate, and she enjoys both huge name recognition and a Weapon X in her popular, crowd-galvanizing husband. So, how does the Clinton camp propose to turn things around in four days? Let's take a look.

"'She's in big trouble and she knows it,' a top Democratic operative and Hillary Clinton booster told the newspaper." As the GOP debate again and the Dems prep for their last face-off before the January 3rd Iowa caucus, a new poll finds Obama is now statistically tied with Clinton in New Hampshire. "Clinton is now at 31 percent to Obama's 30 percent. New Hampshire's primary is set for January 8. Clinton's 5-percentage point drop appears to have been largely due to the loss of support among women." Nationally, however, the story is quite different, with Clinton still enjoying a huge lead over Obama, 53-23%. But, after an Iowa/NH bounce, who knows?

Update: As a reflection of how tight things have gotten in the Granite State, NH Clinton campaign co-director Billy Shaheen dabbles in drug hysteria in an attempt to tarnish Obama's potential electability. It should be remembered that Shaheen, husband of former NH Governor Jeanne Shaheen, is the same "statesman" who slung (real) mud at Bob Kerrey and called him a "cripple" during the 2000 primaries, back when he ran Gore's NH operation (the same campaign that eventually connived a traffic jam on I-93 to prevent Bradley voters from getting to the polls.) The fact that this inveterate asshole is not only working for but running the Clinton camp in NH only further diminishes her campaign in my eyes.

Update 2: "I deeply regret the comments I made today and they were not authorized by the campaign in any way." Shaheen retracts his statement, and the Clinton campaign says he was operating solo. But the seed's out there now, right? Pathetic. Whether this gutterball ploy was intended or not, I hope it backfires massively. Update 3: Sheehan resigns. Good riddance.

One of the staples of the failed drug war, mandatory minimums take two substantial hits as the Supreme Court decides 7-2 in favor of judicial discretion in a pair of drug cases, Kimbrough v. U.S. and Gall v. U.S. "Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented in both cases."

"All told, the United States has spent an estimated $500 billion to fight drugs - with very little to show for it. Cocaine is now as cheap as it was when Escobar died and more heavily used. Methamphetamine, barely a presence in 1993, is now used by 1.5 million Americans and may be more addictive than crack. We have nearly 500,000 people behind bars for drug crimes - a twelvefold increase since 1980 - with no discernible effect on the drug traffic. Virtually the only success the government can claim is the decline in the number of Americans who smoke marijuana - and even on that count, it is not clear that federal prevention programs are responsible. In the course of fighting this war, we have allowed our military to become pawns in a civil war in Colombia and our drug agents to be used by the cartels for their own ends. Those we are paying to wage the drug war have been accused of ­human-rights abuses in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. In Mexico, we are now ­repeating many of the same mistakes we have made in the Andes."

To their credit, those left-wing hippie radicals at National Review said as much way back in 1996, and HBO's The Wire has dramatized the dismal consequences of the conflict for several years now. Now, coming to the same dour conclusion in 2007, Rolling Stone's Ben Wallace-Wells explains how America lost the War on Drugs, and argues that continuing to perpetuate it in its current fashion -- with its "law and order" emphases of crushing supply, international interdiction, and mandatory minimum sentencing -- is tantamount to flushing money and lives down the toilet. "Even by conservative estimates, the War on Drugs now costs the United States $50 billion each year and has overcrowded prisons to the breaking point - all with little discernible impact on the drug trade...The real radicals of the War on Drugs are not the legalization advocates, earnestly preaching from the fringes, but the bureaucrats -- the cops and judges and federal agents who are forced into a growing acceptance that rendering a popular commodity illegal, and punishing those who sell it and use it, has simply overwhelmed the capacity of government." (Found via Jack Shafer's endorsement at Slate.)

"It ought to be borne in mind that Romney is not a mere rank-and-file Mormon. His family is, and has been for generations, part of the dynastic leadership...It is not just legitimate that he be asked about the beliefs that he has not just held, but has caused to be spread and caused to be inculcated into children. It is essential. Here is the most salient reason: Until 1978, the so-called Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was an officially racist organization." Slate's Chris Hitchens explains why Mitt Romney needs to start being more forthright about his Mormonism. I'm inclined to agree -- if nothing else, he needs to clear the air as Kennedy did in his 1960 address to Southern Baptists (a strategy Romney avoided in his run against JFK's little brother in 1994.)

A self-proclaimed paragon of virtue, Governor Romney has recently been publicly tsk-tsking Barack Obama's candor about his drug use. But I doubt I'm the only American who'd feel more sanguine about my child experimenting with marijuana than he or she espousing some of the notions that the Mormon Church declared holy writ within my lifetime. "[I]n antebellum Missouri and preaching against abolition, Smith...announced that there had been a third group in heaven during the battle between God and Lucifer. This group had made the mistake of trying to remain neutral but, following Lucifer's defeat, had been forced into the world and compelled to 'take bodies in the accursed lineage of Canaan; and hence the negro or African race.' Until 1978, no black American was permitted to hold even the lowly position of deacon in the Mormon Church, and nor were any (not that there were many applicants) admitted to the sacred rites of the temple." As Hitchens aptly points out, "Mitt Romney was an adult in 1978. We need to know how he justified this to himself, and we need to hear his self-criticism, if he should chance to have one." Update: Facing a surprising (to him) Huckabee surge among Christian conservatives, Mitt Romney announces he'll discuss his faith in a major speech next Thursday, akin to Kennedy's 1960 address. I presume he won't be delving into this former aspect of his faith, but you never know.

"But even those who hailed absinthe saw unsettling shadows. Wilde explained: 'After the first glass, you see things as you wish they were. After the second, you see them as they are not. Finally you see things as they really are, and that is the most horrible thing in the world.'" In the NYT, critic Edward Rothstein sings the praises and surveys the notoriety of "the green muse," absinthe, which is apparently making a legal comeback both here and in the EU. "Absinthe was the premier bohemian drink, as inseparable from the avant-garde of mid-19th-century Paris as was scorn the bourgeoisie. It played the role well; absinthe helped overturn that bourgeois world with seductive visions of another."

"This final season of the show, Simon told me, will be about 'perception versus reality' -- in particular, what kind of reality newspapers can capture and what they can’t. Newspapers across the country are shrinking, laying off beat reporters who understood their turf. More important, Simon believes, newspapers are fundamentally not equipped to convey certain kinds of complex truths. Instead, they focus on scandals -- stories that have a clean moral. 'It’s like, Find the eight-hundred-dollar toilet seat, find the contractor who’s double-billing,' Simon said at one point. 'That’s their bread and butter. Systemic societal failure that has multiple problems -- newspapers are not designed to understand it."

A huge find by way of Chris at Do You Feel Loved?: Margaret Talbot offers a long-form New Yorker profile on David Simon and The Wire. (If you haven't yet seen Season 4, I recommend bookmarking this for now -- it gives away many of S4's major beats.) There's also a good deal of spoilerish information on what to expect from Season 5, what David Simon wants to do next, and who's singing this season's version of "Way Down in the Hole." (I'll give that one away...Bubbles' sponsor, Steve Earle -- listen here.) "Simon makes it clear that the show’s ambitions were grand. '"The Wire" is dissent,' he says. 'It is perhaps the only storytelling on television that overtly suggests that our political and economic and social constructs are no longer viable, that our leadership has failed us relentlessly, and that no, we are not going to be all right.'"

Looks like Batman's taking the fight to clean up Gotham City to its source: Javier Bardem and Christian Bale enlist for Joe Carnahan's version of Mark Bowden's Killing Pablo, about the Delta Force hunt for Colombian druglord Pablo Escobar (and one has to believe Bardem will be better in the title role than Adrian Grenier.)

"'Conservatives got everything they could reasonably have hoped for out of the term,' said Thomas C. Goldstein, a Washington lawyer who specializes in Supreme Court litigation." Proving the crucial importance of the Alito-O'Connor switch (and, I'll continue to maintain as my answer to Emily Bazelon's line of questioning, the 2004 election), the Roberts Court flexed its muscle in depressing fashion this week, voting 5-4 (as feared) not only to gut the McCain-Feingold act in the name of "free speech" but also -- seriously, no lie -- to partially roll back Brown v. Board of Education. (In another well-reported case, the majority's inordinate fear of bongs trumped this stalwart commitment to free speech.) So, if you're keeping score, Roberts, Alito, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy came down like this: money good, corruption good, drug hysteria good; clean politics bad, youthful irony bad, integration bad. Oh, wonderful. Suddenly, the announcement that the Court will take a look at the Guantanamo cases doesn't sound so appetizing. Update: Slate's slate of legal observers discuss.

"Given the State Department's $32 billion budget, an additional $1 million for food hardly ranks as a major scandal. But this tangled tale of how an Alaskan tribal company ended up in a South American tropical forest sheds an illuminating spotlight on the often-secretive world of federal contracting, an area of government rife with abuse and poor oversight." Our government in action: Salon's Michael Scherer explains how Alaskan Eskimos won a no-bid contract to feed cocaine-fighting Bolivians, with the help of Senator "Bridge to Nowhere," Ted Stevens. Here's a hint: Halliburton is involved.

HBO's The Wire, lauded around these parts many times over, will be shown from the beginning on BET starting tomorrow night at 9pm. Personally, I'd recommend renting (or buying) the DVDs, so as to avoid commercials and see the episodes uncut (and to allow for the indulgence of binge-watching, which may well become the norm in your household by the end of Season 1.) But, if for some reason you can't be bothered, BET's the place to be tomorrow night.

Newly released -- and somewhat controversial -- FBI files, dating from the former Chief Justice's two confirmation battles in 1971 and 1986, disclose that William Rehnquist battled a painkiller addiction in the early '80s while serving on the Court. "Doctors interviewed by the FBI told agents that when the associate justice stopped taking the drug, he suffered paranoid delusions. One doctor said Rehnquist thought he heard voices outside his hospital room plotting against him and had 'bizarre ideas and outrageous thoughts,' including imagining 'a CIA plot against him' and 'seeming to see the design patterns on the hospital curtains change configuration.' At one point, a doctor told the investigators, Rehnquist went 'to the lobby in his pajamas in order to try to escape.'"

"Thematically, it's about the very simple idea that, in this Postmodern world of ours, human beings -- all of us -- are worth less. We're worth less every day, despite the fact that some of us are achieving more and more. It's the triumph of capitalism...The show is written in a 21st-century city-state that is incredibly bureaucratic, and in which a legal pursuit of an unenforceable prohibition has created great absurdity."

Slate publishes a fascinating extended interview with Wire creator David Simon, which touches on, among other things, why there won't be a Season 6 focusing on Latino immigrants, and what we can expect from Season 5. "Yes, the last season. The last theme is basically asking the question, why aren't we paying attention? If we got everything right in the last four seasons in depicting this city-state, how is it that these problems -- which have been attendant problems regardless of who is in power -- how is it that they endure? That brings into mind one last institution, which is the media. What are we paying attention to?" I can't say it enough -- if you're not paying attention to The Wire, you owe it to yourself to rent Season 1 and start playing catch-up next to immediately. It really is far and away the best show on television, perhaps ever. Certainly, it's the savviest take on American politics ever put to the small screen.

Regarding ballot initiatives, it was a bad night for same-sex marriage and marijuana decriminalization. Still, there's cause for hope around the country in the six state minimum-wage hikes that passed, as well as the repudiation of the stringent abortion law in South Dakota (Justice Kennedy: take note.) Speaking of the Court, its eminent domain decision of last year took a beating in nine states, although California, Idaho, and Washington thankfully repudiated stronger measures that would effectively hobble any kind of federal land regulation.

"Limbaugh likens the agreement to a verdict of 'not guilty.' That isn't remotely true. Newsweek came closer to the mark when it labeled the outcome 'a slap on the wrist.'" Slate's Tim Noah breaks down the pertinent documents in the Limbaugh case.

That font of compassion for drug addicts, Rush Limbaugh, cuts a deal with prosecutors, copping to a lesser charge of prescription fraud that will be stricken from his record should he stay in rehab for 18 months. "A spokesman for the state's attorney's office, Mike Edmondson, said the agreement dropping the charge is 'standard for first-time offenders who admit their addiction.'" Well it wouldn't be if Rush had anything to say about it...

"This is certainly not the first time that politics has trumped science at the FDA. Another recent example: the agency's decision to block over-the-counter availability for emergency contraceptives in the face of overwhelming evidence that the treatment is safe and effective...From my standpoint as a doctor, the question is this: What do you do when federal agencies become so politicized that their recommendations can't necessarily be trusted?" In Slate, pediatrician Sydney Spiesel begins to doubt the FDA's credibility these days, particularly after their recent and apparently blatantly political decision against medicinal marijuana. "Marijuana as a medicine -- whatever its risk and benefits are eventually determined to be -- may turn out to be much less important than the question of whether we can count on agencies like the FDA to be honest in their dealings."

"Secretary Rumsfeld's energetic and steady leadership is exactly what is needed at this critical period. He has my full support and deepest appreciation." In response to the growing calls for Rumsfeld's resignation among retired top brass, Dubya chooses instead, as per his usual M.O., to hug Rummy tighter to his breast. (full text.) And, in related news, Salon's Michael Scherer and Mark Benjamin argue that Rumsfeld was "personally involved" in at least one questionable interrogation at Gitmo in 2002.

A defeat for medicinal weed is a victory for federal authority under the Interstate Commerce Clause in today's 6-3 Supreme Court ruling upholding federal laws against marijuana. Wrote John Paul Stevens in the majority opinion, "[t]he Controlled Substances Act is a valid exercise of federal power, even as applied to the troubling facts of this case." (The losing side consisted of Justices O'Connor, Rehnquist, and Thomas.) This is a tough one. I think prosecutions of sick people seeking medicinal marijuana to alleviate their daily miseries are grotesquely ill-conceived, but, then again, I'm not for rolling back federal power to pre-Civil War levels, either. And, for what it's worth, "some lawyers who have followed the controversy closely predicted that the ruling, while disappointing, would not bring sweeping changes, since most marijuana prosecutions are undertaken by state and local officials rather than federal authorities."

It's official...John Ashcroft is out at Justice. I have no doubt Dubya's second-term replacement will be comparably grotesque. Still, can't say I'm sad to see him go. Update: Dubya chooses White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez, who, despite his loyalty to Bush, seems like a step up...although his signing off on the Abu Ghreib terror memos gives me pause.

One bright spot concerning the next four years: Apparently, John Ashcroft isn't sticking around for a second Dubya term. His possible replacements include deputy Larry Thompson, Dubya stooge Marc Racicot, or White House counsel Alberto Gonzalez (the torture memo guy...he'll fit right in.)

The fallout from the forthcoming and much-awaited Kitty Kelley book on the Bushes breaks on Drudge today, with Kelley exposing a new twist on what has basically amounted to an open secret: In the book, Kelley "quotes...former sister-in-law Sharon Bush who claims: 'Bush did coke at Camp David when his father was President, and not just once either.' Other acquaintances allege that as a 26-year-old National Guard, Bush 'liked to sneak out back for a joint or into the bathroom for a line of cocaine.'" Again, not surprising, given other stories, previous rumors, and Dubya's nervous habit of incessant sniffling, but it's nice to see heroic Bush's wastrel years finally get some play. Perhaps the media will manage to put two and two together.

Good riddance, Nick and Norm. In what alcoholics commonly refer to as a "moment of clarity," the ONDCP thankfully gives up on their controversial and often misleading drugs-and-terror ad campaign. Perhaps the admin's drug warriors have figured out what Dubya can't seem to recognize - some arguments have to be made without resort to 9-11. Or perhaps the ad gurus finally figured out the simple error in their twisted logic: No prohibition, no inflated drug profits. Not that complicated. Update: Medley offers a concise summary of recent developments - Instead of reducing ineffective spending, [ONDCP] is eliminating the research that shows its spending is ineffective. Brilliant.

If our new Ministry of Information is run with half the honesty and integrity of our ONDCP, it looks like everything will end up just swimmingly. Turns out Dubya's drug czar grossly misrepresented marijuana potency several times in order to help bury the recent Nevada referendum.

Salon delves into the case of Noelle Bush before Florida's courts. Who would've guessed that a Governor's daughter would receive special treatment, or that GOP lawmakers would prescribe different rules for the masses than they would their own family members?

The bid to allow recreational marijuana use in Nevada gains steam, prompting much gnashing of teeth at the ONDCP.

Giving new meaning to the term "War on Drugs," the Air Force is giving pilots uppers and downers for bombing raids. If it's anything stronger than a Red Bull, it's probably not a good idea, as no doubt many Afghan civilians can attest. (Via Genehack.)

Noelle Bush gets rehab, the poor and black get hard time. Salon surveys the coalition to overturn NY's Rockefeller laws. (Via Quiddity.)

Bob Herbert takes aim at the Rockefeller drug laws, now almost thirty years old. The ethnic differentials in the enforcement of the drug laws are extraordinary. While there is wide use of illegal drugs across the ethnic spectrum, including among whites, 94 percent of the people doing time for drug offenses in the state of New York are black or Hispanic. Indeed, according to one of the laws' original sponsors, "New York now sends more African-American and Latino men to prison each year than it graduates from its state colleges and universities."

In a burst of common sense the likes of which we're probably not going to see Stateside for some time to come (except maybe in Nevada), Britain relaxes its cannabis laws to focus on more dangerous drugs.