Let’s see how the paragraph reads when it’s changed around a bit:

“…Seven million Americans have been arrested since 1995 on homosexuality charges and 41,000 of them are rotting in federal and State prisons—but the public is starting to rebel against “the preposterous war on gays” two political scientists say. Thousands of other homosexuals are confined in local jails as well…”

As of the year 2009, only the farthest right fringe of theocratic social conservatives in the USA would advocate anything like the policy in the second paragraph.

Why is it that so many Americans still don’t find the policy in the first paragraph the least bit troubling to their minds? Even many so-called “social liberals” in the US persist in ignoring or evading that topic.

Furthermore, many social conservatives in the US are still of the mind that the number of people incarcerated for marijuana isn’t nearly great enough. California has had fairly liberal marijuana laws since the 1970s- yet year in and year out, at least through the 1990s, Republican lawmakers in the CA State Assembly and Senate were still introducing measures to re-criminalize pot and make it a more serious offense.

Thank You Miss Rosa

Heston died, NRA’s Mandatory Minimum Didn’t

420 Dysfunction Junction, Incarceration Nation
* Revealing Shattered Lives CC July-August 1999, pp 42-44.
Showing the faces of the drug war;
* Journey for Justice Pedaling for Pot
* I LOST MY FREEDOM AND CAN’T FIND IT ANYWHERE
* November * L.E.A.P. * F.A.M.M.. * M.A.M.A.S. * F.E.A.R. * S.P.R.

Blessed is the Police State?
Exporting DEAmockracy

800,000 Americans Busted Annually For Pot

http://newsbuster.com/Pages/content/800-000-americans-busted-annually-for-pot.html

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Seven million Americans have been arrested since 1995 on marijuana charges and 41,000 of them are rotting in federal and State prisons—but the public is starting to rebel against “the preposterous war on pot,” two political scientists say. Thousands of other pot users and sellers are confined in local jails as well.

“People convicted of possessing even one ounce of marijuana can face a mandatory minimum sentence of a year in jail, and having even one plant in your yard is a federal felony,” progressive organizer Jim Hightower and co-author Phillip Frazer point out in the November issue of “The Hightower Lowdown.”

Police arrest someone in America every 36 seconds on marijuana charges, with a record 872,000 arrests made in 2007, “more than for all violent crimes combined,” Hightower and Frazer point out. They note that 89 per cent of all marijuana arrests “are for simple possession of the weed, not for producing or selling it.”

They argue the drug war “is doing far more harm than marijuana itself ever will,” because (1) it diverts hundreds of thousands of police agents from serious crimes “to the pursuit of harmless tokers”; (2) it costs taxpayers at minimum $10 billion a year to catch, prosecute, and incarcerate marijuana users and sellers; (3) it enables government to snatch the cars, money, computers and other properties of people caught up in drug raids even if they have had no charges filed against them; and (4) it allows “police agents at all levels to trample our Bill of Rights in their eagerness to nab pot consumers.”
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You have a great site!!!!!

“Drug policies have been responsible for a disproportionate share of the rise in the inmate population, with the 40,000 drug offenders in prison or jail in 1980 increasing to a half million today. A substantial body of research has documented that these laws have had virtually no effect on the drug trade, as measured by price or availability of drugs. Most of the drug offenders in prison are not the “kingpins” of the drug trade. Indeed, the low-level sellers who are incarcerated are rapidly replaced on the streets by others seeking economic gain.”

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/12/11/incarceration_nation.php

Incarceration Nation: The US is the World’s Leading Jailer by Michael I. Niman, Buffalo Beat, excerpt:

“The war on drugs, if successful at nothing else, was extremely prolific in filling cells. Drug arrests tripled from 1980 to 1997 with almost 80% of these people being arrested for simple possession. The number of people in state prisons for drug offenses increased eleven-fold from 1980 to 1996. Mandatory sentencing laws stripped judges of their ability to exercise judicial discretion, thus increasing the likelihood that a drug law offender would wind up in jail by almost 450% from 1980 to 1992.

“Part of the blame for this disparity lands with police agencies that are more prone to stop and search African Americans (for infractions such as “driving while in Kenmore”) or carry out the bulk of their drug enforcement operations primarily in African American neighborhoods where their heavy handed tactics meet less political resistance. Statistics show that both practices are racist, as blacks are not statistically much more likely to abuse drugs. Blacks are, however, statistically more likely to be arrested for abusing drugs, making racial profiling a self-fulfilling prophesy.”

http://mediastudy.com/articles/incarceration.html

The American Prison Nightmare by Jason DeParle, excerpt:

“Meanwhile, the “war on drugs” led to the arrest of growing numbers of small-time users and dealers. By the late 1990s, 60 percent of federal inmates were in for drug offenses. The result is an ever-growing prison system, populated to a significant degree by people who need not be there. It was no liberal advocate but Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy who offered a damning view of criminal justice in the United States: “Our resources are misspent, our punishments too severe, our sentences too long.”

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20056

For lots more reading on this subject, just do an online search on “Incarceration Nation”. This is obviously a subject aching for its own TV series.

It has to be liable to crooked doctors somewhere along the lines..not we the normal people of the world.

I finally found out today that ‘Ala Aqu Bar’ means “God Is Great!”

Maybe this crazed shooter (sadly) in Texas felt that no one but himself believed in God or A Higher Power when he snapped.

It is so sad, because I just watched a epic on t.v. of the Viet Nam Veterans, of whom suffered, by being brain-washed to kill.

I have never ever understood it it but there are Men like Massey and Others on this series of whom found the extremely coldest hardest Truth of Life!

To those Men and Women We Are Grateful and finally understand the monsterocity of What We Have Over-Come As One Nation Under God, Almighty, Amen.