Beto!

Breaking news:

Marijuana legalization supporter Beto O’Rourke has just defeated prohibitionist 8-term Congressman Silvestre Reyes in the Democratic primary for Texas’s 16th congressional district.

In early 2009, when he was an El Paso city councilman, O’Rourke championed a council resolution calling for a national conversation on legalizing and regulating drugs as a possible solution to the drug cartel violence just over El Paso’s border in Mexico. The mayor vetoed the unanimously-passed resolution and the council was set to override the veto until Congressman Reyes butted in to the debate and threatened that the city would lose federal funding if it insisted on pushing the legalization conversation. The override vote failed, but the national conversation on legalization has only gotten louder and louder.

Now, O’Rourke is all but certain to be the next congressman from the heavily-democratic district. His voice will fill the anti-prohibition void left by retiring Reps. Barney Frank, Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich.

The O’Rourke victory comes just two weeks after Ellen Rosenblum defeated former U.S. attorney Dwight Holton in the Democratic primary for Oregon’s attorney general, a campaign that largely centered on Holton’s role in cracking down on state-legal medical marijuana on behalf of the Obama administration.

It’s increasingly clear that the era of drug policy reform being a political third rail is over. Supporting clearly failed prohibition policies that cause so much crime, violence and corruption is becoming a political liability.

Watch this anti-O’Rourke attack ad that Reyes put out focusing on the drug policy issue to see exactly what DOES NOT work in politics in 2012: http://vimeo.com/37489037

And see http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/05/border-war-beto-orourke-silvestre-reyes for some more background on the O’Rourke-Reyes race.

[Thanks, Tom!]

This is great news. And despite an attack ad that specifically went after Beto for his legalization viewpoint. An 8-term Congressmen with a power base is defeated by a drug policy reformer.

Things are changing. With Rosenblum in Oregon and O’Rourke in Texas, the notion that being a prohibitionist is the safest political move is changing.

Paul Waldman’s post yesterday — Why Democrats Support the Drug War Status Quo — at The American Prospect seems a bit out of place today.

At the moment, there remains a strong incentive to support the status quo, lest you be targeted in your next race as some kind of hippie-lover. The incentives on the other side, on the other hand, are almost nil. When was the last time somebody lost a race for being too tough on drugs?

Yesterday.

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80 Responses to Beto!

  1. Hope says:

    Yay! Beto!

    I’m so happy. This really is wonderful.

  2. darkcycle says:

    Please watch the falling debris!

    • Duncan20903 says:

      .
      .

      I must remember to collect as many pieces of the wall as I can when it falls. Chunks of the Berlin Wall sold pretty well after it fell. Everybody wants a piece of history.

      Speaking of the Berlin Wall, with my Internet connection down I took the time to watch “The Day After” from 1984. For those who don’t recall the movie was educated speculation of what would happen were the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. to exchange nuclear bombs. The fictional scenario started with East Germany cutting off West Berlin and the invading West Germany. It just goes to show you how darn quickly that wall fell. In 1984 there didn’t seem to be anyone with that idea crossing their minds. People were more worried that E.G. would expand using force rather than disappear only 3 years later. Other than getting to laugh at the “state of the art” technology of the day and the 15 or 20 minutes when people were getting vaporized the movie was a snore fest. Recommended to mitigate insomnia but for no other reason. Perhaps it might be instructive for youngsters who would be interested in a not inaccurate portrayal of how the people of 1984 viewed the cold war.

  3. Dante says:

    This is good news.

    Now, let’s all repeat the process in our Congressional districts. Vote out all the prohibitionists as if they were child molesters. Which they are, if you’ve ever seen what a SWAT raid does to a child. New slogan:

    Prohibition = Child Abuse.

  4. allan says:

    and hast thou slain the jabberwock?

    THUD!

  5. darkcycle says:

    I wonder if our Democratic Congressman up here might be vulnerable. He’s a “law and order” lib. And this is Whatcom County Washington, where the only new jobs created for the last decade were the dispensaries that the DEA just closed. I’d LOVE to see a challenge here. Hell, I’d even try if it weren’t for my “colorful” history.

    • Windy says:

      I’ll be voting for a different person for my “representative” in congress (maybe, depends on who runs, I may not vote that race at all); since redistricting, Larsen no longer is the representative in my (new) congressional district.

      But I desperately hope he IS defeated, he’s an asshat prohibitionist who refuses to acknowledge there is anything wrong with sending over armed and armored thugs violently into homes on the suspicion someone in that home might be non-violently using an “illicit” drug, even as safe an “illicit” drug as cannabis.

      Unfortunately, WA’s two (also dem) Senators are exactly the same kind of prohibitionist asshats as he.

  6. This is exactly what needs to happen -keep shaking that tree til every last prohibitionist falls out!

    If you are represented by a prohibitionist and live in a closed primary state, register with the incumbent’s party so you can vote them out in the primary -this is when your vote has the most impact.

  7. strayan says:

    Did someone mention Texas?

    Check out this doco called “The School to Prison Pipeline”

    http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/docarchive/docarchive_20120410-0905d.mp3

  8. Duncan20903 says:

    .
    .

    Mr. Waldman seems to have missed the Democratic primary for A.G. in Oregon.
    ———-
    Did somebody say they disagreed with the SCOTUS decision in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission? Perhaps it’s time to reconsider?

    Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas) defeated by Beto O’Rourke

    /snip/
    Of Irish descent but a fluent Spanish speaker, O’Rourke is expected to easily win the general election in this heavily Democratic, 78 percent Hispanic district.

    President Obama endorsed Reyes, and former president Bill Clinton campaigned for him. But the eight-term congressman was targeted by an anti-incumbent super PAC, the Campaign for Primary Accountability, which spent $240,000 on the race.
    /snip/

    • darkcycle says:

      …that awful decision is going to be the unwinding of this republic. There may be some beneficial effect, but the side effects of that particular medicine are too horrible to consider.

      • Duncan20903 says:

        .
        .

        It really does sadden me that you’re in favor of ignoring the 1st Amendment. I’m really clueless how ignoring the Constitution is the path to saving our society. Gosh, let the people on the other side of the table do the same thing and you get all bent out of shape. Sorry DC, just like I tell those people, freedom is a two way street. We can’t step on the freedom of others and expect to preserve it for ourselves.

        There’s still no mention in the 1st Amendment that it applies only to natural born human beings. Actually it plainly says that it applies to Congress.

        • darkcycle says:

          I’m against a constitutional “personhood” for non persons. For the purpose of limiting liability and civil action, a limited status is what is called for, not a full extension of a stsus that is for PEOPLE. What, now corporations can vote and serve in the military? If you can’t do those things, you do not have full citizenship.

        • Francis says:

          darkcycle, see what you think of this take on Citizens United and the significance of corporate personhood as it pertains to that case. I’d also add that I’m generally less worried about the “rights of corporations” than I am about the power of government.

        • Duncan20903 says:

          The entire argument that personhood is required is an absurdity of a straw man argument. Here’s the text of the 1st Amendment:

          Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

          Please show me where it says it applies only to persons. You’re as bad as the gun control freaks that try to rewrite the 2nd Amendment to say that the right to bear arms only applies to members of a militia. Worse, at least they have some words that they can pervert to make their case. One of the most wonderful things about our Constitution is that it can be amended. If you really think that the right of free speech should attach only to natural born human beings get to work. Until the time if/when that occurs we have to deal with what we’ve got, which is that our lawmakers are forbidden from passing any law that restricts speech. The Founding Fathers were most certainly aware of the existence of corporations and of their propensity to lobby Congress so it can hardly be argued that this occurred from their ignorance.

        • darkcycle says:

          I guess we’ll have to agree to differ on this one, Duncan. My interpretation of the Statement , found in the D of I, “All men are created equal and endowed with inalienable rights (or something to that effect)” is that it can really only be interpreted (extending term “men” as far as possible, I might add) as pertaining to Persons of flesh and blood.

  9. kaptinemo says:

    To paraphrase an old lyric aimed directly at the prohib’s political aspirations:

    “Another one bites the dust. Another one bites the dust. And another-one-gone-and-another-one-gone-and-another-one-bites-the-dust. Hey, we’re gonna get you, too, another one bites the dust.”

    No, it’s not safe to be a prohibitionist anymore, especially when they’ll have to explain how we have money for wrong-house drugs raids but no money for food stamps or school lunches. Put it that way, and watch the prohib’s brains start to emit smoke and reek of hot metal from the mental gear-jamming.

    • Paul says:

      Actually, at the moment we seem to have money for EVERYTHING, but that’s just because Bernanke has his thumb glued to the turbo print button. But sooner or later we are going to have to choose between guns and butter, and people like butter.

      This election is a bright spot, that’s for sure. Imagine when politicians suddenly realize the drug war has become a political loser and start falling all over themselves to prove how much they hate it, and how much they have always hated it.

    • Windy says:

      Kap’n, As a Constitutionalist and libertarian, I oppose food stamps and school lunches being paid for with taxpayer monies, people should be able to keep the money they now pay in income taxes and property taxes and then their children wouldn’t need free school lunches and the family wouldn’t need food stamps.

      I do, however, agree with the rest of what you said.

      • darkcycle says:

        You seem to be operating under a couple of false assumptions. Your first assumption is that everybody has a JOB, therefore income with which to feed their children. Your second is that everybody pays Income and property taxes. What is being deducted from your paycheck isn’t INCOME tax. It’s your social security, medicare and disability. Not one thin dime of that goes to education. Or welfare, or school lunches, for that matter.

  10. Duncan20903 says:

    Good News Everyone! In a stunning laboratory breakthrough:

    Scientists invent hemp!

    Scientists Create Marijuana That Doesn’t Get You High
    by Max Eddy | 10:35 am, May 30th, 2012

    Though the use of medical marijuana is becoming more widely accepted, the plant still carries quite a bit of stigma. Perhaps that’s why an Israeli company has taken it upon themselves to develop a species of the cannabis that doesn’t get you high. Good news, I guess?

    The AFP says that news of the plant was first reported by the Hebrew-language newspaper Maariv Daily. The report says that the plant looks the same, smells the same, and tastes the same, but won’t get you high.
    /snip/

    Well it’s been top secret, but I guess I can tell my good friends here at DWR. I’ve been trying to attach a couple of round thingies on a stick to a crate. In theory, I’ll be able to load things on this crate/round thingie combination and move them from here to there with much less effort. I know, I know, it all sounds very advanced. I’m going to name it after my cloned sheep, Dolly20903.

  11. Curmudgeon says:

    Ouch! I just stubbed my toe on one of these bricks that are falling from the wall. They are really cluttering up the landscape. There are so many of them we could build something really big out of them. May I suggest we build “The Tomb of the Unknown Drug Warriors.” With this many bricks, it would easily hold them all. To those who protest that they aren’t dead yet, you need to read some Poe.

    • Duncan20903 says:

      .
      .

      Why would anyone complain because they’re not dead? Oh OK, lots of people complain just for the sake of complaining. Before we build the tomb we can use the bricks to solve that problem first. It’s always nice to kill two birds with one stone.

    • Matthew Meyer says:

      …with a glass of Amontillado, if you can get it. Two Buck Chuck in a pinch.

  12. Duncan20903 says:

    Yet another example of Francis’ Law in action. How in the world can so many people be so wrong so often?

    Marijuana Compound Treats Schizophrenia with Few Side Effects: Clinical Trial
    By Maia Szalavitz
    May 30, 2012

    A compound found in marijuana can treat schizophrenia as effectively as antipsychotic medications, with far fewer side effects, according to a preliminary clinical trial.
    /snip/

    ———- ———- ———- ———- ———-

    Somebody please blow my brains out? There’s a goodfellow.

    Why Drugs Are Getting a Bum Rap in the Miami Face-Eating Attack
    Despite what the police — and most media — would have you believe, drugs are unlikely to have been the sole cause of the bizarre, violent behavior seen in the Florida ‘zombie’ case.
    By Maia Szalavitz
    May 30, 2012

    The case of the Miami zombie — a horrific attack last Saturday in which a naked man chewed most of the flesh off another man’s face before being shot and killed by police — is now being attributed to various devilish drugs.

    Some police officers say he overdosed on some kind of new, highly potent LSD; others have blamed cocaine. A police union representative told MSNBC.com: “Whenever we see that a person has taken all of his clothes off and has become violent, it’s indicative of this excited delirium that’s caused by overdose of drugs. What’s happening is inside their body, their organs are burning up alive.”
    /snip/

    Here I thought everyone knew that you can’t kill a zombie. They’re already dead! Oh, and they eat people’s brains, not their faces! Not for nothin’ but this just isn’t your grandpa’s LSD.

    • Duncan20903 says:

      There’s a couple of real knuckleheads commenting on the Miami zombie story. Simply precious stuff.

      • darkcycle says:

        ugh, enough of that death stuff. That massacre that happened today in Seattle happened at a place that I have hung out. When the Last exit on Brooklyn closed, many regulars moved up to the “Cafe Racer”. Especially those itinerant bikers like Moi. The victims were friends of friends. Right now it looks like a random crazy person. He was seen in a bar a few blocks away acting strange, but the cops haven’t caught him yet.

        • Duncan20903 says:

          .
          .

          It was Ms. Szalavitz’s sheer masterpiece of writing that compelled me link the zombie story. You really should give it a read. No gory details, unless you count the way she beats the hysterical rhetoric to a pulp as gory. I had actually skipped the story at least six times today until I saw her byline attached.

        • darkcycle says:

          The guy in Seattle shot himself.

        • Duncan20903 says:

          Say, how’s that gun “control” thing working out up there in Washington?

    • Servetus says:

      The Miami face muncher is like the chimpanzee who freaked out on Xanax®. Why not blame Xanax instead of coke or acid?

      This is a clear cut case of drug discrimination framed by inter-special ethnocentrism. Rather than zombies, I predict the truth in this case will link to evidence that chimpanzees are human. Think not? Think World Wrestling Foundation.

      • Duncan20903 says:

        .
        .

        Because people aren’t programmed to blame it on Xanax®. Aside from that, isn’t Xanax a diazepine? Don’t those seven-membered heterocyclic compounds with two nitrogen atoms usually put people to sleep?

        Did everyone notice the update in Ms. Szalavitz’s article? Now there are people blaming it on 4-methylephedrone AKA “bath salts” or synthetic cocaine. I’m willing to bet that the tox screen comes back with a verdict of sober. But I’m going to hedge and add a secondary bet that the verdict is drunk on legal booze. Either way nobody notices the correction on page 64 and we might hear for years how this lunacy was generated by “drugs”.

        • Servetus says:

          Never heard of Xanax being used as a soporific. It’s supposed to be an anti-anxiety attack medication. Sleeping pills, such as acetylized quinazolinones, aka ‘ludes, usually make it impossible for someone to walk between two pool tables without crashing into each one, much less show the coordination to attack someone. A frenzied attack of the type we’re seeing in this case would seem to require something very different from a downer.

          Diazapines can have a more positive use, however. For instance, there’s the valium diet. This involves taking five valium before you eat so the food falls out of your mouth.

          Also, since schizophrenics are 20-times more likely to murder someone, I’m betting on a genetic defect as the basis for the attack.

    • Chris says:

      http://www.newsday.com/news/nation/girlfriend-recalls-miami-face-eating-zombie-s-morning-1.3752692

      The man being depicted by the media as a “face eater” or a “monster” is not the man she knew, she said. He smoked marijuana often, though had recently said he wanted to quit, but he didn’t use stronger recreational drugs and even refused to take over-the-counter medication for simple ailments like headaches, she said. He was sweet and well-mannered, she said.Eugene’s girlfriend has her own theory on what happened that day. She believes Eugene was drugged unknowingly. The only other explanation, she said, was supernatural — that someone put a Vodou curse on him.

      Hmm..

  13. Room for Debate on ending the WOSD over at the Times seems a bit more balanced this time (featuring Otto Perez Molina and Ethan Nadelmann). I’m sure some incisive comments would be appreciated.

    http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/05/30/should-latin-america-end-the-war-on-drugs/?hp

    • allan says:

      spot on comment at Waldman’s pf

    • strayan says:

      Get a load of this.

      Viridiana Rios – doctoral fellow at the Harvard Kennedy school:

      Furthermore, incentives to battle for territorial control — the cause for much of the Mexico’s surge in homicides — will remain in place. Turf will still be an asset for extortion and kidnapping.

      Is this idiot arguing that turf wars will intensify over the market for kidnapping and extortion because gangsters will stop fighting over the drug trade?

      • kaptinemo says:

        Yes, she is…despite it being obvious that every citizen of Mexico would have to be kidnapped to equal the loss from the drug trade. And who will do the kidnapping? Every citizen of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador?

        These prohibs can no longer hide just how intellectually bankrupt they are. Have they no idea of how embarrassing that looks, that an argument that specious is supposed to be taken at face value without critical dissection? Which would be successfully concluded in a handful of seconds?

        (Facepalm) Some days, I want to have compassion for them, but I soon snap out of it when I realize that this kind of intellectual bilge is used as an excuse to continue to hurt those who are largely harmless when left alone. Ivory tower types oh-so-genteely discussing the finer nuances of ‘drug control’ policy over tea and crumpets as if it were an intellectual exercise, while the victims of their policies bleed and die. The sort that never get the trench mud-and-blood on their Pradas. What we contemptuously referred to in the military as REMFs (Rear Echelon MoFos). The kind of people that can do this. And no, it’s not stretching things, when you realize that their goal is indeed our elimination; Richard Miller had it right all along.

        • Peter says:

          the miller book was a eureka moment for me. government scapegoating has always been a way to distract the public away from the reality of gov policies. you can see the scapegoaters shift attention to the nowadays easier target of sex offenders as the catch all boogie men. back in the thirties ib germany the easiest target was the jews

      • Duncan20903 says:

        .
        .

        I like to point out the example of Canada during the days of the 18th Amendment, particularly how much money Seagram’s made because of that particular U.S. idiocy. Christ on a cross these prohibitionists are simple minded idiots. “If things were different they’d be exactly the same.”

        …and how many people in Canada died because of drinking alcohol prohibition? Was it even as many as one?

      • Duncan20903 says:

        We’ve got to keep (some) drugs illegal because otherwise the criminals will get into REAL mischief!

      • allan says:

        I commented (politely)(more or less…) on the Rios pap… still not posted

        • strayan says:

          It’s there Allan.

          The drugwarrant crew are bringing the house down!

          Francis, Allan, Gart, Duncan are hitting the prohibs hard.

        • darkcycle says:

          Damn. Missed all the action. Well, I better get over there and see if there’s anything left for me.

        • allan says:

          I sees it now… poor Ms Rios has had her HS level paper effectively decimated. Props to all!

          As some know, I’m on a dial-up modem. Because of a bad phone connection (the 40 y.o. line running under the road) for the last few years I’ve slogged along at 16.6 kbps… finally got a service man who knew his shit out here and he has since bypassed the old line and I now hit up to a blazing 40 kbps… which makes pages actually load in a reasonable amt of time. It was nice to be able to comment w/o having to wait 1/2 an hour for a page to load. You may be seeing more of me on these pillages. Huzzah!

        • Duncan20903 says:

          .
          .

          I left a squirrel trap out last night and caught a rat. He had gotten his head caught between the bars trying to escape and couldn’t get away. When he saw me he started making a sound like a very shrill car alarm. I picked up a stick and beat him with it until his eyeballs literally popped out of his skull. The only reason I mention this is because someone mentioned beating up prohibitionists. I presume I wouldn’t have any problem doing the same thing to a form of life lower than a rat. I might actually enjoy doing it!

        • kaptinemo says:

          Since I was late to the party, I didn’t see much point in unloading the usual ordnance, as has been previously stated, the DWR crew have essentially carpet-bombed with daisy-cutters Ms. Rio’s pathetic offering. And what gets me is this: it’s people like her, that government wonks look to for policy guidance, that are the Very Serious Peopleâ„¢? I’d sooner seek advice on having a happy sex life from celibate priests.

          It’s like I said, aren’t these people the least little bit embarrassed at such sophomoric articles? It’s the equivalent of a 5th grader’s “What I Did On My Summer Vacation”. If she’s there on scholarship, Harvard should get its’ money back…

  14. Irie says:

    “Drug-treatment professionals don’t often interact with the roughly 85% of users who don’t become addicts; cops don’t spend much time with people whose drug use doesn’t lead to misbehavior; and journalists don’t generally focus on the uneventful. Therefore, their views on drugs are distorted.”

    Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2012/05/30/why-drugs-are-getting-a-bum-rap-in-the-miami-face-eating-attack/?iid=hl-main-lede#ixzz1wRPvbONS

    This is sooooooo true!

    • strayan says:

      Any self-respecting drug treatment professional should be well aware of that bias: http://books.google.com.au/books?id=ElF3ngoNO34C&lpg=PR3&dq=self%20change&pg=PA1#v=onepage&q&f=false

    • Servetus says:

      There is a variation on this theme involving Philip Zimbardo’s studies, in which he advertised for volunteers for a psychology study that became the basis for his book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil.

      Zimbardo made the mistake of mentioning in his ad that the study involved incarceration experiments, which resulted in a distinct skew in the types of volunteers he received. This would imply that the judicial-industrial-complex is probably largely populated by a potentially perverse personality type who is fascinated and attracted to persecution and punishment.

      • kaptinemo says:

        I’ve long come to suspect that, just as I observed while in the military, there are certain personalities that for whatever their reason, actively seek out positions within society to legally channel their inner ‘Dirty Harry’.

        It never made sense to me: we give missile launch crews yearly psych evaluations so that we can be sure no nuts have their fingers on the nuclear launch buttons…but we don’t screen the very people we have walking amongst us with 4 pounds of death on their hips…who are far more likely to need such screening, due to both personality problems and vocational stresses. You are vastly more likely to become a victim of such a walking time bomb than you are of being vaporized by a nuke.

        • Duncan20903 says:

          .
          .

          They’d have to significantly increase the pay scale if they refused to employ psychotics, malignant narcissists and sociopaths. Most people would have to be nuts, starving or very well compensated to take that on as a career.

  15. Is It the Beginning of the End for the War on Pot? http://huff.to/KuypjI

  16. darkcycle says:

    Well. Thank the computer fairy. I have a network back. I no longer need to run to the study to post. (I’ve also decided that my home office is no longer a home office, it is my “Study”. I share my “study” with my cat, who calls the closet her “toilet”. It’s good to not spend lots of time in my study, since my cat has never buried anything in her entire life.) *sigh*. My life has some challenges.

  17. warren says:

    This moron thinks hippies still exist?

    • darkcycle says:

      You better believe they still exist, bucko. I can direct you to many, many old Hippies. Just because they moved out of Greenwich and The Haight doesn’t mean they were all abducted and taken away.
      Son, if you want to find the Hippies, I can tell you whereabouts to look. Look ye in Eugene, seek them in Index, (in my best Yoda voice) find them you will in Bellingham and in Redwood. Poke around the Grand Coulee and the Okanagan and Pend Orielle (pronounced “ponduray”).
      In short, son if you want to find the Hippies, they’re mostly hanging out with Bigfoot.

      • Windy says:

        Yes, and down around Alger and Bow Hill. One of my classmates has hermited himself in that area, last time I saw him he looked exactly like that most popular painting of handsome Jesus. But that was at least 15 years ago; I suspect he now looks more like a grizzled, grey in the beard castaway. Perhaps I’ll find out if he deigns to attend our 50 year HS reunion, this summer.

  18. Francis says:

    I think this could potentially signal a very strong “tipping point” effect. For years, many people who support drug policy reform haven’t insisted that the candidates they support be good on this issue because they didn’t believe that they could. Of course, the problem with that attitude is that it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy. But that principle also works in the other direction. As it becomes increasingly apparent that you can make sanity on drug policy a litmus test, more people will do so which will have the effect of validating that belief.

    Ron Paul’s candidacy definitely had that effect on me. As I’ve said before, I finally know what it feels like to actually support a candidate. And I’m not going back. And more importantly, I’m not alone.

    • Windy says:

      No, you absolutely are NOT alone, there are tens of thousands of us and hopefully by November a hundred million.

  19. Mr Ikesheeny says:

    That American prospect site seems hosed, no sense killing that pop-up just to amplify centerism!

  20. Jeff Trigg says:

    We need to do this in every state. Target a drug warrior and take them out. One at a time if need be until the message is clear. Drug reformers in that state need to pool their resources, find their champion, and go out and win. We know it can be done, lets do more of it.

    I’m in Illinois, and its already too late for 2012, but I’m all in for 2014 assuming I’m still here. Jehan Gordon, a Peoria Democrat state representative, has been a vicious drug warrior in Springfield that I would love to see gone. Perhaps its time to start a PAC to retire her in 2014 before she qualifies for a lavish pension and further expands the drug war in Illinois. Its too bad the people running NORML in IL are hostile to everyone that isn’t a Democrat sycophant. We need a better organization in this state that actually wants to accomplish something.

    • Windy says:

      Agree that far too often the “drug reform” organizations are unwilling to see the rabid drug warriors on the left, or the hard working reformers on the right, both seem to be verboten for nothing more than partisan reasons.

      • Duncan20903 says:

        It’s a phenomenon that certainly is not peculiar to those on our side of the table.

        • Windy says:

          Oh, I agree with that, but it seems the most prominent reform organizations are pretty heavily democrat in tone and tenor. I would like for them to be much more libertarian, instead. You know, full freedom for EVERYONE rather than regulated freedom for just the ones I like (which is what we get from both left and right).

  21. Francis says:

    OT: Here’s a refreshingly honest / depressing / unintentionally-hilarious comment from the Christian Science Monitor:

    I dont actually have anything against Marijuana, I’ve got something against the filthy weirdo’s who are always pushing to legalize it.

    Its just one of those intuitively obvious things like the gay marriage agenda or feminism,

    if it’s good for fruitcake white kids with dreadlocks and bongos, then there’s obviously something wrong with it.

    I thought you weirdos would get a kick out of it.

    • kaptinemo says:

      ‘Weirdos’. Huh.

      Even when I had hair, as a son of a Marine it was never longer than the ‘regulation’ 2 inches. Dreadlocks? Help yourself, but this rock-headed, bald-pated old engineer never had any interest.

      I looked then and look now as straight as they come…and toke whenever I can. Multiply me by scores of millions, and you see why the prohibs cannot ever hope to win, as they keep believing their own propaganda as to ‘who’ is a merri-joo-wanna ‘addict’…and what they look like.

      They never really understood that the comedic geniuses of Cheech and Chong were poking fun at them through the very same false stereotypes (i.e. ‘hippies’) that, predictable as an Eastern sunrise, were accepted as Gospel by the prohibs. They were suckered and rolled down the hill for years and never seemed to get that they were suckered and rolled all that time.

      (At least, they didn’t until they started to read at places like Pete’s Couch. Then they began to understand the full import of their being so easily snookered.)

      ‘Weirdos’? ‘Weirdos’ who still believe in patriotism, who still believe in the inherent promise and potential of this country, no matter how much it’s been driven off the rails by the very people who say they’re for freedom and liberty but are hell bent on relieving you of those qualities with their damnable prohibition. I’ll prefer the company of, and sit down to table with said ‘weirdos’ rather than the prohib’s head-blind, self-righteous, vindictive, priggish selves, any day.

      • Duncan20903 says:

        .
        .

        I took the liberty of looking up the word “weirdo” in the dictionary:

        weird·o
           [weer-doh]
        noun, plural weird·os. Informal.
        1. an odd, eccentric, or unconventional person.

        Nah, no way a guy who presents himself as a fictional 19th century submarine captain driven by a thirst for vengeance and a hatred of imperialism qualifies there.

        • kaptinemo says:

          (Big smile) The ‘real’ Nemo also had a hatred and disgust of the hypocrisies inherent in what so many blithely call ‘civilization’.

          As in the prohibs are considered the paragons of ‘civilization’ as they chainsaw your door, terrorize and/or or shoot you, your family, your pets, etc. all in the name of ‘saving’ you from inanimate objects.

          The social conformity enforcement organs of ‘civilization’ always wind up being used in uncivilized ways and means, and nations that crowed about their moral superiority were almost always the ones most suspect with regards to their human rights records. Verne understood that all too well, having been born in a country that, historically recently for his day, had been turned into a charnel house.

          It’s a damn good thing I don’t behave like my adopted ‘Net persona. Like that fictional person, I’d lost nearly everything at the hands of the prohibs, and am not above a little payback. That I’ll settle for regaining the legal right to use a relatively harmless herb rather than engage in mass murder of our future former oppressors shows that I am far more ‘civilized’ than my namesake would have been.

  22. Duncan20903 says:

    .
    .

    With great regret I present proof positive that the world is certainly going to end on 12/21/2012 (or thereabout):

    Five House Members Pledge to Continue Rep. Ron Paul’s Fight For Saner Marijuana Policies
    Mike Riggs | May 31, 2012

    Four House Democrats and one House Republican recently published statements saying that the fight for saner marijuana laws will not end with the retirements of Congressmen Ron Paul (R-Texas) and Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who introduced legislation last year to repeal the federal prohibition of marijuana.

    Democrats Charlie Rangel, Sam Farr, Steve Cohen, and Barbara Lee, as well as Republican Dana Rohrabacher wrote into Politico’s Arena, a forum for policymakers and advocates, to answer the question, “Will the push to legalize pot fade away?” To a one, they answered “no.” /snip/

    Charlie Rangel? The Charlie Rangel from Harlem New York?? The same Charlie Rangel who chaired the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control back in the 1980s??? The foaming at the mouth prohibitionist Charlie Rangel???? OK ‘fess up, who’s the wise guy that planted the body snatcher pod in Mr. Rangel’s home? Well it doesn’t matter, you know who you are. Good work.
    ———- ———- ———- ———- ———-
    It also looks like we have a genuine need for a supply of tin foil hats.

    Lawmakers nudge spy agencies into anti-drug fight on U.S. public land

  23. Mr Ikesheeny says:

    My pet peeve is CBS stenography of the WOsD.My proposed target drug warrior is Marsha Kramer.

  24. thelbert says:

    here’s something i ran across at the dentist’s office: http://www.constitution.org/scot/arbroath.htm

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