Drug WarRant

This disturbing post from Glenn Greenwald details some revelations that have come from the documents related to the firing of U.S. attorneys.
It was revealed that the DOJ (and other agencies within the government, including the DEA) have resisted the idea of videotaping interrogations.

The DOJ solicited the views of all federal law enforcement agencies — the FBI, ATF, DEA, U.S. Marshall’s Service — and each of them vigorously opposed mandatory recording. In doing so, one of the principal arguments was that they wanted to conceal from jurors the conduct of law enforcement agents in interrogating defendants and obtaining confessions, because that conduct would appear coercive and improper to jurors.

As Glenn notes:

The difference between recording v. no recording is not whether the conduct of federal agents will be an issue in a trial. The difference is whether there will be an accurate or inaccurate record of what these law enforcement agents are doing to extract statements and obtain confessions. Yet here, every federal law enforcement agency is expressly arguing against recordings because they want to conceal from the jury what they did (or because they want to conceal what the defendant actually said).

Welcome to America.

Just watched Willie on the Colbert Show. A fairly brief appearance and he really didn’t get a chance to talk much, but he did get to sing a few notes. During the show, there must have been a dozen marijuana references, including one from Ambassador Richard Holbrooke (who also sang with Willie and Stephen), with Willie dutifully adding “Wheat? I thought they said ‘weed.'”
Everybody loves Willie. And everybody knows he smokes pot. And nobody thinks that it’s wrong.
Five minutes with Willie Nelson can wipe away the effects of months of reefer madness lies from prohibitionists, and you start to believe that everything really could be OK.
I think America would be a much better place if our leaders all spent a couple of hours in Willie’s trailer.

“bullet” An outstanding guest post from Rev. Alan Bean of Tulia Friends of Justice at Grits for Breakfast: Talking Snitches in Atlanta. Grits also has a disturbing story about the procedural and scientific sloppiness in urine testing that ends up determining the fate of parolees.
“bullet” About that super-skunk marijuana that the British journalists are smoking that apparently is more than 100% THC and immediately causes drooling idiocy (which might explain their articles if it were true)… Transform covers it in How the Independent on Sunday got it horribly wrong on Cannabis, and Scott Morgan has The Truth About Marijuana Use in the UK and Philip Smith wonders if madness awaits him around the corner.
“bullet” The Sibel Edmonds story isn’t going away. A couple of years ago, I mentioned this connection between Turkish mafia, Dennis Hastert, drug smuggling, neocons, and the State Department. This story has significant potential implications on what we are doing in the drug war in Afghanistan. To get caught up, read What the heck is Sibel Edmonds’ Case about? And why should I care? over at Daily Kos.
“bullet” Radley has the scoop on the new fatally-flawed, but well-intentioned Georgia No-Knock Bill.

Via Transform comes this article in the Australian Age:

… the recently released report on amphetamines and other synthetic drugs by the federal Parliamentary Joint Committee on the Australian Crime Commission is a brave document.
Most notably, in contrast to the report from the House of Representatives Standing Committee, the committee unanimously supported harm minimisation and recommended that “harm-reduction strategies and programs receive more attention and resources”.
In its conclusions, the committee said “prohibition, while theoretically a logical and properly intentioned strategy, is not effective”. It also argued that “the current national approach to illicit drugs – supply reduction, demand reduction and harm reduction – will achieve greater outcomes if a better balance between these approaches can be reached”. In common parlance, this means there should be less emphasis on law enforcement and more on education and drug treatment.
Unfortunately, it is a rare event when any government body decides to make drug policy recommendations that are based on evidence. The report was not received warmly by the Government.

Familiar story. Think U.S. Shaffer report in 1972. Think Canadian Senate Report 2002. Shunned in their own countries.
Transform sees hope, and offers a tease…

…coming soon is a major new document produced by Transform with the sole aim to aid rational debate on drug policy. ëTools for Debate‰ will be a groundbreaking point-of-reference for anyone wishing to challenge non-rational policy positions, no matter how persuasive the rhetoric.

From CNN

If the justices conclude Joseph Frederick’s homemade sign was a pro-drug message, they are likely to side with principal Deborah Morse. She suspended Frederick in 2002 when he unfurled the banner across the street from the school in Juneau, Alaska.
“I thought we wanted our schools to teach something, including something besides just basic elements, including the character formation and not to use drugs,” Chief Justice Roberts said Monday. […]
“It sounds like just a kid’s provocative statement to me,” Justice David Souter said. […]
The outcome also could stray from the conservative-liberal split that often characterizes controversial cases.
Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote several opinions in favor of student speech rights while a federal appeals court judge, seemed more concerned by the administration’s broad argument in favor of schools than did his fellow conservatives.
“I find that a very, a very disturbing argument,” Alito told Justice Department lawyer Edwin Kneedler, “because schools have … defined their educational mission so broadly that they can suppress all sorts of political speech and speech expressing fundamental values of the students, under the banner of getting rid of speech that’s inconsistent with educational missions.”
Justice Stephen Breyer, in the court’s liberal wing, said he was troubled a ruling in favor of Frederick, even if he was making a joke, would make it harder to principals to run their schools.
“We’ll suddenly see people testing limits all over the place in the high schools,” Breyer said.
On the other hand, he said, a decision favorable to the schools “may really limit people’s rights on free speech. That’s what I’m struggling with.” […]
What if, Souter asked, a student held a small sign in a Shakespeare class with the same message Frederick used. “If the kids look around and they say, well, so and so has got his bong sign again,” Souter said, as laughter filled the courtroom. “They then return to Macbeth. Does the teacher have to, does the school have to tolerate that sign in the Shakespeare class?”
Justice Antonin Scalia, ridiculing the notion that schools should have to tolerate speech that seems to support illegal activities, asked about a button that says, “Smoke Pot, It’s Fun.”
Or, he wondered, should the court conclude that only speech in support of violent crime can be censored. “‘Extortion Is Profitable,’ that’s okay?” Scalia asked.
A clear majority seemed to side with Morse on one point, that she shouldn’t have to compensate Frederick. A federal appeals court said Morse would have to pay Frederick because she should have known her actions violated the Constitution.

More from Reuters

“It’s political speech, it seems to me. I don’t see what it disrupts,” a sceptical Justice David Souter said.
“And no one was smoking pot in that crowd,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, referring to the group of students standing near the banner as the Winter Olympic torch relay passed by in January 2002. […]
Justice Anthony Kennedy asked Kneedler if the principal could have required the banner be taken down if it had said “vote Republican, vote Democrat”.
Kneedler replied the principal has that authority.

It’ll be June or July before we have a decision.
Update:
Much more:

• SCOTUSblog, as always, has great analysis: here, here, and here
  

  The Supreme Court on Monday toyed with the notion that public school officials should have added discretion to censor student speech that they may interpret as advocating use of illegal drugs. But this was only a flirtation, not a warm embrace. During the argument in Morse v. Frederick (06-278), a clear majority of the Justices showed significant skepticism about creating a wide exception to the curb on suppression of student speech that the Court spelled out in 1969 in Tinker v. Des Moines School District
  As blog colleague Marty Lederman has pointed out in the post below, a sweeping exception to Tinker had the visible support Monday of only Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr., and Justice Antonin Scalia, who seemed to be competing to lay out the most generous view of officials’ discretion to enforce school-preferred messages.

• Hearing transcript available here (pdf)
• Coverage from PBS

The most important student free-speech conflict to reach the Supreme Court since the height of the Vietnam War…

Yes, today is the day that nine Supreme Court Justices convene in the highest court in the most powerful country in the world and discuss…

Oh, I wish I could be there when Ken Starr, who has already altered the national status of blow-jobs, explains to the Supreme Court that “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” threatens the fabric of our nation and our educational system.
Of course, the reality is that this is a serious case. At its worst, the Supreme Court (no friend to any case involving even the hint of drugs) could rule that schools have broad authority to regulate student speech that is contrary to their educational message, even if they are not in school and the speech is not disruptive.
And there’s also a deep significance as to the philosophy of educating citizens. It concerns me that authoritarians are pushing to train young people that the proper order of things in a free democracy is submission to authority. Get used to peeing in a cup on demand. Get used to being controlled in what you think, what you say. That’s what the world is about.
For the most comprehensive look at the case, check out my resource guide:
http://bong.drugwarrant.com
If you’re in DC today, SSDP will be holding a rally at the Supreme Court .

“bullet” The Drug War Roundup this week focuses on building a wall. Tons of good stuff.
“bullet” I’ve been wondering for some time just what this “skunk” is that the British media seem to be smokin’ and why is it that they seem to be the only ones?

Record numbers of teenagers are requiring drug treatment as a result of smoking skunk, the highly potent cannabis strain that is 25 times stronger than resin sold a decade ago.
More than 22,000 people were treated last year for cannabis addiction – – and almost half of those affected were under 18. With doctors and drugs experts warning that skunk can be as damaging as cocaine and heroin, leading to mental health problems and psychosis for thousands of teenagers, The Independent on Sunday has today reversed its landmark campaign for cannabis use to be decriminalised. […]
“Once it has hit the frontal lobes of the developing adolescent, you just don’t know whether they’ll recover or not.”

Well, thehim’s been wondering the same thing, and he may have an explanation.
“bullet” Also via thehim, check out this Open Letter to Bill Richardson by the strangely named xxdr zombiexx.
“bullet” Interesting concept: If the police attack you illegally in your home, you have the right to resist.

This editorial in the Sacramento Bee got my attention:

Why Finance More Drug War Failures?
Two days after President Bush promised $3.7 billion more in aid to fight cocaine trafficking in Colombia, Sacramento police and federal Drug Enforcement Administration agents announced the largest crack cocaine bust in the city’s history. Police seized seven pounds of crack and two pounds of pure cocaine Tuesday. The drugs’ estimated street value was a modest $375,000.
The juxtaposition of the two events, the president’s promise of yet more aid for drug fighting in Colombia and the record cocaine seizure in Sacramento, is instructive. Over the last seven years, U.S. taxpayers have spent $4.7 billion to finance Plan Colombia, under which the Colombian government sprayed millions of acres with herbicides to eradicate coca fields and launched military offensives against guerrillas. It has had minimal impact on the availability or price of cocaine in the United States. […]
Critics within Colombia point out that U.S.-financed eradication efforts have produced thousands of refugees and that the spraying kills not just coca but legal crops such as cassava, plantains and sugar cane, leaving small farmers with nothing. Money promised for economic development for alternatives to the lucrative drug trade never materialized. Meanwhile, coca growing has moved to new areas within Colombia, including the country’s fragile national parks, and other countries in the region, destabilizing them in the process.

Exactly. We’ve been throwing money away on eradication and just causing more problems.
Excellent editorial. Until…

U.S. efforts should be focused in our own communities, on, in his words, “an obligation to reduce the demand.” Don’t waste billions more in Colombia. Fight drug traffickers on the U.S. streets. Use the money for local police and prosecutors, for drug treatment and education, for economic development, housing, job training and after-school programs. [emphasis added]

And it ends up talking about how these are the best ways to “win a war on drugs.”
Sigh.
If they’d just left out the parts I bolded, it would be a good editorial, but instead it’s just more of that muddle-headed thinking that surely some kind of fighting is necessary since we’re in a “war.” So while everybody seems to see that the war isn’t working, you’ve got some people saying “The problem is, we’ve got to kill more Colombians,” and someone else saying “No, no, you’re wrong — that doesn’t work. We’ve got to kill more Americans.”
Some days it feels like I’m watching a house on fire. And one idiot wants to put it out with a machine gun. The other one wants to use grenades. And I’m standing there with a bucket of water and they look at me like I’m crazy.

It’s a fun little story: Bolivia wants drink giant to drop ‘coca’ from Coca-Cola
Mostly a publicity stunt as part of Bolivia’s efforts to improve the image of their exceptionally useful coca plant, and work toward making it once again an important part of their legal economy. But it may have struck a nerve

Coca-Cola released a statement on Thursday saying their trademark is “the most valuable and recognized brand in the world” and was protected under Bolivian law.
The statement repeated the company’s past denials that Coca-Cola has ever used cocaine as an ingredient — but was silent on whether the natural coca leaf was used to flavor their flagship soda.
Bolivian coca growers say that only a few years ago the company used to purchase tons of their leaves annually. They express frustration that Coca-Cola can use their beloved coca leaf — yet not defend it to a suspicious world.
“Instead of satanizing the leaf, they need to understand our situation,” said David Herrera, a state government supervisor for the coca-rich Chapare region. “They exported coca as a raw material for Coca-Cola, and we can’t even freely sell it in Bolivia.”

This got me thinking about the Coca Cola™ trademark.
If Bolivia and some of the other countries end up successfully navigating the international obstacles to allow the use of coca leaves in a variety of commercial products (toothpastes, analgesics, food products, etc.), soft drinks would be a natural.
And if somebody made a cola using coca leaves, it would be, by definition, a coca cola. Theoretically they could use those words on their product and advertisements (not as their brand name, but as a descriptor). So you could have Pepsi’s coca cola, for example.
I don’t know very much about trademark law, but it seems to me that a lot of lawyers could get very rich over this.
And I also wonder what the Coca Cola™ company is willing to do to avoid this situation even coming up…