Drug WarRant

The Republican Party Platform is complete (not that anybody pays attention to a party’s platform, but it’s still interesting to see what they come up with).
Again, it’s rather remarkable the degree to which drug policy is avoided. No mention of the terms: cocaine, marijuana, heroin, drug war, drug policy, 4th Amendment, etc.
Interestingly, they they have a section about ridding the streets of violent gangs, but never mention drugs in that section — instead they use it to bemoan that they’re “composed largely of illegal aliens.”
In their section of “Locking up Criminals” they note:

We support mandatory sentencing provisions for gang conspiracy crimes, violent or sexual offenses against children, rape, and assaults resulting in serious bodily injury.

Does that mean that they don’t support mandatory sentencing for drug offenses?
They do have a section on Illegal Drugs, but it’s quite vague

Continuing the Fight against Illegal Drugs
The human toll of drug addiction and abuse hits all segments of American society. It is an international problem as well, with most of the narcotics in this country coming from beyond our borders. We will continue the fight against producers, traffickers,
and distributors of illegal substances through the collaboration of state, federal, and local law enforcement. We support the work of those who help individuals struggling with addiction, and we support strengthening drug education and prevention programs to avoid addiction. We endorse state and local initiatives, such as Drug Courts, that are trying new approaches to curbing drug abuse and diverting first-time offenders to rehabilitation.

And the war on drugs internationally is mentioned once (other than a passing reference to illegal drugs in Afghanistan):

In an era of porous borders, the war on drugs and the war on terror have become a single enterprise. We salute our allies in the fight against this evil, especially
the people of Mexico and Colombia, who have set an example for their neighbors.

I got a sad chuckle out of this one…

Securing Our Civil Liberties
Because our Constitution is based on the principles of individual liberty and limited government, we must always ensure that law enforcement respects the civil and constitutional rights of the people. While we wage war on terrorism in foreign lands, it is sometimes necessary for intelligence agencies and law enforcement officials to pursue terrorist threats at home. However, no expansion of governmental powers should occur at the expense of our constitutional liberties.

One little item raised a bit of a flag in the section on “Protecting Law Enforcement Officers.” It included:

Criminals should be barred from seeking monetary damages for injuries they incur while committing a crime.

Not sure, but I wonder if that means that you wouldn’t be able to seek damages if you had a gram of pot and they smashed down your door, and accidentally killed your dogs and your mother-in-law, and shot off your right leg with a .50-caliber machine gun in the process of arresting you.
One last interesting bit — highlighted in a boxed statement is the following:

The innocent have far fewer rights than the accused. We call on Congress to correct this imbalance by sending to the states for ratification a constitutional amendment to protect the rights of crime victims.

There are so many things wrong with that first sentence…

Radley Balko notes another community that has gone ultra-militarized (and, as he says, “Who wants to set an over under on the first time they use this thing to bust a pot dealer?”)
Police Mag (March, 2008)

The Richland County (S.C.) Sheriff’s Department has acquired an armored personnel carrier complete with a turret-mounted .50-caliber belt-fed machine gun for its Special Response Team.
Sheriff Leon Lott told the Columbia State newspaper that he hoped the vehicle, named “The Peacemaker,” would let the bad guys know that his officers are serious.
“We don’t look at this as a killing machine,” Lott told the paper. “It’s going to keep the peace. We hope the fact that we have this is going to save lives. When something like this rolls up, it’s time to give up.”

Of course, such an article really demands a picture. I was looking to see if they had an image of the APC, but I didn’t expect this dramatic pose (although I should have — they sure love to pose with their military toys).

That appears to be Sheriff Lott in shirt and tie surrounded by his personal army.
They had a contest to name the armored personnel carrier and decided on “The Peacemaker.”

Sheriff Lott stated that the name selected from the entries will be ‹The PeacemakerŠ because that is the APC‰s purpose and the bible refers to law enforcement in Matthew 5:9 ‹Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of GodŠ.

Wow.
You know, I was raised studying the Bible and had a special interest in the Sermon on the Mount. In all my reading of the beatitudes, I never once imagined Christ astride an Armored Personnel Carrier complete with a turret-mounted .50-caliber belt-fed machine gun, surrounded by apostles in SWAT gear, as he said to the crowd “Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.”

“bullet” Tonight someone searched Google for the words: Can they shoot you?
… and it brought them to my site.
Yes, they can.
…
“bullet” Lot of bodies piling up in Mexico. THEHIM’s thoughts are right on target:

Part of me really wants this issue to be discussed in the upcoming debates. The wiser part of me knows that our cable news knuckleheads don’t have a prayer in hell of figuring out why this is all happening – and it will just keep promoting the idea that we have to build walls and shake our fists at the bad guys.

Since you guys can’t get enough of talking about politics, let’s get another thread going here…
“bullet” It appears that the St. Paul Minnesota cops are taking a break from their armed home invasion drug raids and instead doing armed home invasion preemptive protestor raids. That’s right — they’re using armed assaults on people who have not yet protested the Republican Convention, but might be planning on it. Welcome to America.
“bullet” It may be good that Ron Paul is not in St. Paul. His followers are gathering outside the twin cities for their own convention in Minneapolis, since Paul was not invited to speak at the Republican convention. Rally for the Republic sounds like an interesting party (check out the video High Tide on the bottom of that page — fascinating if only for the beauty of the technique).
“bullet” Interestingly, it could end up with a Ron Paul Convention and protestors sharing the Twin Cities with no Republican Convention to counter. Republican officials are considering postponing the convention because of Hurricane Gustav.
Update: More of this please. People making connections between protestor raids in St. Paul, and the drug war. Mona with *This* is the Face of Fascism, John Slade with Tricks of the Drug War – RNC activists under harassment campaign
Further update: Feds are involved in these raids. — no surprise, really, but it’s confirmed.

“bullet” NORML’s Allen St. Pierre delivers a smack-down to the ONDCP in the latest episode of the battle on The Hill. Go join the fun.
“bullet” “drcnet”

Breaking: It appears to be McCain-Palin (although that’s not confirmed as of this writing).
She admits to having tried marijuana, but says she didn’t like it.
Update: Confirmed.

Must read: Bolivian Is an Uneasy Ally as U.S. Presses Drug War by Simon Romero in the New York Times

The refrain here in the Chapare jungle about Americans is short but powerful: ‹Long Live Coca, Death to the Yanquis!Š
So when President Evo Morales recently came to the area, raising his fist and shouting those words before his supporters, the irony was not lost on an elite wing of the Bolivian military that survives on American support.
‹We depend on the Americans for everything: our bonuses, our training, our vehicles, even our boots,Š Lt. Col. JosÚ Germ½n Cuevas, the commander of a Bolivian special forces unit that hunts down cocaine traffickers, said at a military base here in central Bolivia.

The contradictions abound…
Morales must protect the critical, historical, non-cocaine coca industry in his country or face the wrath of his people and the destruction of their economy. And yet…

For now, Mr. Morales and the United States remain uneasy bedfellows. Mr. Morales has been hesitant to sever ties with the United States, especially since it provides Bolivia with about $100 million in development aid each year. It also grants duty-free access for Bolivian textiles, an economic lifeline for his country.
On the American side, officials argue that a sharp increase in coca cultivation could drive more cocaine to the United States, even though it is currently a negligible market for Bolivian cocaine. A deeper reason may be that the antidrug money gives them a rare window into Mr. Morales‰s government.

Yes, of course, the use of anti-drug money to control other countries.

Indeed, Mr. Morales has said that the decades of American aid to Bolivia had as much to do with asserting control over puppet governments as with fighting drugs or helping people. Earlier this year, he dissolved an intelligence unit that received American money, and he announced that Bolivia would stop sending officers to receive combat training in the United States.

Of course, America complains about Bolivia, even though Bolivia is trying to balance responsible use of coca with cooperating with the U.S.

Coca cultivation has increased during his two years in office, but instead of booming, it has simply climbed, up 8 percent in 2006 and 5 percent in 2007, according to the United Nations.
That still places Bolivia far behind the world‰s largest coca producer, Colombia. Despite being the Bush administration‰s most ardent ally in the region, Colombia had a 27 percent increase in coca cultivation last year, and remains the top source of cocaine smuggled to the United States.
While American officials publicly congratulate Mr. Morales for keeping cultivation from exploding, they are privately pointed in their criticism. ‹Let‰s put it this way: It‰s going in the wrong direction,Š said an American official at the United States Embassy in La Paz about Mr. Morales‰s drug policies, speaking anonymously because of tense relations with Bolivia.

Yes, complain about Morales, complain about Chavez, when the largest cocaine source in the world is in territory supposedly controlled by a U.S. puppet. (Interestingly, so is the location of the largest illegal heroin source.)
Our foreign policy is so dysfunctional and juvenile. We’re ridiculed worldwide behind our backs for our stupidity, even as countries make supportive noises to collect their drug war handouts so that we can spy on them. And if they don’t collect their handouts, they face our wrath.

… the Musical!

From the folks at Funny or Die

… without any mention of drug policy (except from protestors)
And, as Matt Welch notes, the Democratic Party Platform does not contain the words “drug war,” “war on drugs,” “Fourth Amendment,” “marijuana,” or “cocaine.”
And my reaction is… “whew.”
Because, quite frankly, I knew that nothing resembling reform was going to come in a party convention. For some strange reason, the political masters consider it to be more politically dangerous than using euthanasia to abort gay immigrant assault weapons in a vegetative state.
So, if there was to be any mention of drug policy, it was more likely to be a “we need to get tougher about drugs in our streets” charge, which pleasantly, I did not hear.
But it’s nice to dream what it would be like if politicians could talk about drug policy reform. I imagined it at various moments through Obama’s speech tonight…

It‰s a promise that says each of us has the freedom to make of our own lives what we will, but that we also have the obligation to treat each other with dignity and respect. […]
Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us. […]
The challenges we face require tough choices, and Democrats as well as Republicans will need to cast off the worn-out ideas and politics of the past. […]
I will also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less š because we cannot meet twenty-first century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy.

The principles that our politicians espouse are not incompatible with drug policy reform. It’s just that the notion of drug policy reform is incompatible with politics.
On that note, it was interesting to read Paul Armentano’s post about Nancy Pelosi’s recent confrontation regarding medical marijuana.
Pelosi said:

“We have important work to do outside the Congress in order for us to have success inside the Congress for [the] use of medical marijuana. … [W]e need peoples’ help to be in touch with their members of Congress to say why this should be the case.”

Paul Armentano’s reaction:

I humbly submit that those of us who work ‘outside’ the so-called ‘hallowed halls’ of Congress have done our part. It’s now time for our federally elected officials, in particular Speaker Pelosi and Democratic Presidential Nominee Obama, to pledge to do theirs.

The thing is, I believe that both Paul and Nancy are right.
Paul’s right — we’ve done the work, we’ve made the case, we’ve done more than enough for our elected representatives in a fair world to take on the charge.
But, annoying as she is, and as frustrating as it is that she is unwilling to make the sacrifice to put if forward, Pelosi is also right. And it’s not about medical marijuana. It’s about drug policy reform as a whole. Throughout history, there have been a handful of issues that fit in this same predicament. The politicians are never going to lead in this area. Once the people have risen up with overwhelming outrage, the politicians carefully, slowly, haltingly, will shuffle into line behind them. Only when the people hold the politicians accountable for the damage caused by the drug war will Congress find their courage.

This editorial seems to be identifying some slight issues with the mayor….

Mayor Frank Paterra — who, by all indications, would not care if Charleroi slid into the Monongahela River as long as it did not involve crack cocaine — concerns himself only with his personal war against illicit drug trafficking. […]
But in virtually the same breath, he called on council to cut other departments to pay for more police.
“I need an army to fight a drug war,” he said. “I need soldiers, and they’re not giving it to me. They need to prioritize the needs of this community.”

I never knew that the position of Mayor of Charleroi, Pennsylvania was also Commander-in-Chief of the army.
That’s Charleroi, Pennsylvania. Population 4,871