A couple items

“bullet” The ACLU has a new website (thanks to Grits for Breakfast for the info) on informants: Unnecessary Evil: Blind Trust and Unchecked Abuse in America’s Informant System
It’s a fascinating site, with horror stories, legal resources, and some excellent recommendations for policy changes. They also have a new blog with some interesting items.
Check it out.
“bullet” John Walters is off bragging about his “successes” in the cocaine drug war, but the Associated Press doesn’t give him a free pass anymore: US drug czar touts cocaine shortage, despite conflicting supply data

This year’s apparent shortage could prove to be just as short-lived, the 2008 National Drug Threat Assessment found.
Even while acknowledging previously announced shortages during the first half of the year, the report prepared by the Justice Department’s drug intelligence center found “cocaine availability may already be returning to previous levels in some areas.”
The report did not say which markets were being replenished or how quickly, only that the shortage observed between January and June “was not the result of decrease in cocaine production.”

Oops. Did they just call Walters a liar?

More likely, it was the result of a crackdown on prominent Mexican traffickers, violent feuding among that country’s cartels and surging demand for cocaine in Europe. […]
“Nobody believes there’s not enough drugs in the system to satisfy global demand,” Jess Ford, author of the GAO study partly based on the most recent government data, told The Associated Press.

“bullet” Oh yes, and I almost forgot…
Swiss Study Finds Marijuana Use Alone May Benefit Some Teens This is interesting, but keep in mind that, from my limited reading of it, the headline is improperly worded. I’m guessing that the study found not a causal affect, but rather a relationship between moderate marijuana use and well-adjusted teens. (In other words, it may be that well-adjusted teens tend to seek out a mild social rebellion, or that moderate use of marijuana goes hand-in-hand with certain positive social activities, etc. — not necessarily that marijuana use caused benefits (although that’s also possible)). What this, of course, does show is that the whole “loser” epithet pushed by the drug czar, is nonsense.