Drug WarRant

Bye.
A special few of those propaganda distributors who won’t be missed (including some who have been gone awhile): :

• Scott Burns, former Deputy Director, ONDCP
• Andrea Barthwell, former Deputy Director, ONDCP
• “Dr.” David Murray, former Policy Analyst, ONDCP
• Bertha Madras, former Deputy Director, ONDCP
• Karen Tandy, former DEA Administrator

Unfortunately, Acting DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart will be staying for a little longer.
Update: Walters no longer listed on the staff bios page.

As his last act as President, George W. Bush commuted the sentences of Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean.

Ramos and Compean are serving 11- and 12-year prison terms, respectively, for the Feb. 17, 2005, incident near Fabens, Texas.
After a high-speed chase, a smuggler named Osvaldo Aldrete-Davila abandoned his van, which held 743 pounds of marijuana. The agents shot him as he ran away. They didn‰t report the shooting, and they threw all the shell casings they could find into the river. Only later did they claim they‰d spotted a gun.

That’s right. They shot at an unarmed man running away, eventually hitting him in the rear, then realized that they were in the wrong, so they let him go and tried to cover up the shooting.
Apparently President Bush was concerned that the sentences were overly harsh. After all, all they did was, under color of authority, shoot at an unarmed man and then cover it up. It’s not like they did drugs or anything.

This is from a while ago, but seeing it today over at Radley’s place, I thought it was something important to watch if you haven’t already.

Alabama

MONTGOMERY – State prisons aren’t likely to receive a budget increase for the next budget year, so state prison Commissioner Richard Allen said Thursday he saw no reason Thursday to mention a dollar figure during legislative budget hearings. […]
For the new fiscal year, Allen said his agency will focus on how to “dampen down” the number of new inmates.
Those programs will center on sentencing reform, community corrections, new goals for pardons and paroles and a supervised re-entry program.
“The Sentencing Commission’s job is looking at new bills and telling legislators what the impact is going to be” on the Department of Corrections, he said. “Sentencing reform requires them to consider alternate means of sentence. Those are very very important.”

In the past, legislators have passed laws for tougher sentences and adding new crimes as if there was no cost. This is a good sign that those days may be ending.

There were some significant unintended consequences to legalizing pot…

Letters to the editor at the El Paso Times, mostly from locals, on the City Council controversy.
Very interesting to see the contrast (and the mental disconnect on the part of most of the city council opponents).

Change.org (not to be confused with Change.gov) has completed it’s series of votes on ideas and came up with the top 10, which includes:

Legalize the Medicinal and Recreational Use of Marijuana.
“Marijuana has been proven to relieve the suffering of the chronically ill, as well as disabled patients undergoing chemotherapy, and other forms of medical treatments, yet using it for medical purposes continues to be a crime in most of the country. We should make it legal not only in medical cases, but for recreational use as well.”

This idea, along with the other 9, will be presented to the new President and will also be given a national campaign.
Right now, they’re soliciting suggestions for how to implement a national campaign to promote the idea.
So go over there and suggest.
Note: The individuals over at Change.org who are clogging up the suggestion board with complaints that the top 10 issues are presented unranked (instead of with marijuana at #1) are not helping. They sound petty and are distracting from the important next step.
Here’s the suggestion I made.

“bullet” Radley notes that Obama and the Dems want to spend a lot of money for Byrne Grants and COPS programs — the very things that push the excesses in drug war policing. Tell your Representatives that you don’t want them, or at least to fix them so that COPS grants aren’t used for SWAT and Byrne Grants are determined by number of arrests.
“bullet” At Grits for Breakfast: Houston judges from both parties say reduce drug possession penalties

Here’s an astonishing development: Sixteen of 22 Harris County felony court judges, including seven Democrats and nine Republicans, say they favor reduction of low-level drug possession in Texas from a state jail felony to a Class A misdemeanor. […] Houston Rep. Harold Dutton has filed HB 287 that would enact the change in the law the judges are requesting.

“bullet” The Drug Czar’s office is leaving us a pile of… Well, a 44 page document claiming success “making the drug problem smaller” in the past 8 years. They hightlight a couple of those “successes” — cherry-picked data on their blog.
And of course, the real answer is: No, they didn’t make the drug problem smaller, but they sure made the drug war problem bigger!
“bullet” A number of people have been writing about Herring v. United States — yet another incursion into the already decimated Fourth Amendment.

• Jeralyn at TalkLeft: More Criticism of the Supreme Court’s Herring Decision
• Fourth Amendment.com: Yes Virginia, there is a Barney Fife exception to the exclusionary rule.
• New York Times Editorial: The Fourth Amendment Diluted (see also this NY times article)

“bullet” An outstanding article by Jacob Sullum in this month’s “Reason:” Bongs Away!
How the crusade against drug paraphernalia punishes controversial speech. Read it.
“bullet” I’m going to have some more to say about this one… Oakland to fire 11 cops in search warrant case [thanks, Tom]
“bullet” Obama’s marijuana prohibition acid test by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman
“bullet” Tony Newman: Five Ways We Can Build a Movement to Stop This Idiotic War on Drugs
“bullet” Going the wrong direction — Oregon: Sentence Rules Have High Costs

Facing grim cutbacks in state programs and services, legislators also will have to pay for a new tough-on-crime sentencing measure approved by Oregon voters.

“bullet” DrugSense Weekly
“bullet” “drcnet”

The Obama administration has started releasing videos of staff addressing questions/ideas in the Citizen’s Briefing Book.
Of course, nobody has yet addressed a drug policy question. Most of the videos are about non-controversial questions and the responses are practically just an agreement. Tom Daschle actually answered the question “Do healthy children learn better?” (The answer was “yes.”)
The one exception so far is Dr. Steven Chu, who has a much longer video that includes interesting discussions about global warming, smart grids, manhattan-style projects for energy independence, and more (including the need to encourage science-based developments that rival Borlaug’s dwarf wheat). Intelligent, scientific discussion. Nice to see in our government again.
Again, I don’t expect drug policy to be addressed. But the fact that any questions are being addressed means that our questions are being seen. And they’re being seen as important to the people.

It’s official – John Walters has been given his new lucrative position. No, it’s not in drug testing like so many of us assumed — unfortunately, he’ll be in a position to continue to damage our criminal justice and foreign policy.

John P. Walters, who has served as the Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) since December 2001, will join Hudson Institute as Executive Vice President effective January 20, 2009.
At Hudson, Walters will build on his broad public policy experience, including running the cabinet-level ONDCP, to develop research-based initiatives in fields ranging from crime and drug policy to international affairs.

The Hudson Institute is a far-right conservative think tank focusing on defense, crime, and international issues such as the Middles East and Latin America.