Drug WarRant

Baylen Linnekin over at To The People was a little confused by my reporting of this very ‘rare’ event (tasering a man and setting him on fire), because he thought he was reading another report of the same incident, but no, it was another guy police set on fire with a taser gun.
If taser reps really believe this:

Officials with Taser International — which manufactures the nonlethal weapon that uses a shock to incapacitate dangerous people — said they’ve never heard of anything quite like this before.
“I would call this beyond a rare fluke,” spokesman Steve Tuttle said.

… then why are we looking at this:
Wisconsin:

When officers tried to subdue him, the Taser charge ignited the pepper spray and set his head on fire.

Florida:

A Taser probe pierced the pocket of his khaki shirt — and ignited the butane lighter inside. Crouch’s pocket exploded in flames.

North Carolina:

A man pursued by Cumberland County deputies burst into flames after he was shot with an electronic Taser weapon that delivers a shocking electric current.

I’m sure in the taser companies’ controlled testing zones, those tasers are quite safe, but in real life, there’s things like pepper spray, butane lighters, and gasoline that don’t mix well with high voltage (as well as some peoples’ health).
Note: the last story had one bit of potentially confusing reporting. I was thrown by this sentence:

[Deputy Bradley] Dean shot McKinnon when the man tried to get away and rolled him on the ground to put out the flames.

For a moment, I thought it meant that the deputy saw the man on fire running and shot him with his gun to get him to stop so he could put out the flames, and I thought “That’s a pretty messed up way to stop a burning man.”
Then I realized the correct order of events. 1. Man accidentally gets gasoline on him. 2. Man tries to run away. 3. Deputy shoots him with taser. 4. Man bursts into flame. 5. Deputy tries to put out flames.
As much as this situation lends itself to jokes, the point is clear. Tasers are not some perfectly safe way of subduing criminals, and to the extent that those using it feel that it’s safe, it’s putting the lives of citizens in danger.

I knew that they were thorough and strict regarding the Olympics, but this actually surprised me.

In order to maintain my status as an eligible athlete, I am required to tell USADA where I am 24 hours a day, seven days a week. To help streamline this process, we are given quarterly updates to complete, intended for us to outline the next three months of our lives. We are instructed to put down when and where we will be living, training, working and traveling so that USADA can find us at any given moment. Although this seems relatively simple for most people, it is quite difficult for an athlete whose training and competition schedule is constantly in flux. For every wedding, family emergency, last-minute trip or unplanned change, we must submit a Change of Location form so we can be tracked at all times Ö making athletes feel as though they are under constant surveillance.
The regular tracing of our whereabouts was implemented so that USADA can randomly drug test athletes, with frequent knocks at the door at 6 a.m. or surprise tests at 7 p.m. If a Doping Control Officer arrives to perform a test and the athlete cannot be reached within the allocated time, they are charged with a missed test. After three missed tests, an athlete becomes suspended for one year, and worse, has their reputation tarnished indefinitely.
When a Doping Control officer makes contact with you, you have two hours to meet them in person, at which point they must remain by your side until you give them a successful urine sample. This process can take all day, for even though as elite athletes we are trained to perform under pressure, bladder pressure is a different story. Even the showiest of athletes get stage fright when there is someone standing 2 feet away watching you Ö completely exposed Ö urinate into a cup.

I understand the concerns about having the sport tarnished by performance-enhancing drugs (although why athletes are tested for marijuana baffles me, since pot is hardly a sport-enhancing drug). On the other hand, I know that I would never want to live a life that completely gave up your privacy in that way.

Thanks to your help, in less than two days, our Vigil for Lost Promise has reached first position on Google for both Vigil for Lost Promise and Lost Promise searches (ahead of the DEA propaganda site).
Another way we can educate people about the real lost promise.

I posted an excellent letter from Walter Cronkite that meant a lot to me, and several of you expressed similar feelings. After all, who could object to the common sense expressions of one of the top journalists of our time?
Wait for it…
Yesterday, on Bill O’Reilly’s show:

O’REILLY: Time now for “The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day.”
You know, I admire Walter Cronkite. The man’s nearly 90 years old, still kicking. But there is no question that the former newscaster is a far left guy. Since his retirement from CBS News, he has embraced all kinds of progressive causes.
Here’s the latest. Mr. Cronkite now trying to raise money for the Drug Policy Alliance, a drug legalization outfit that’s partially funded by our pal, George Soros. Cronkite actually signed a fundraising that said in part, “We have locked up literally millions of people of color who have caused little or no harm to others.”
The people Cronkite is talking about are street drug dealers who sell heroin, crack, and meth, among other dangerous drugs. Apparently Walter Cronkite doesn’t feel this is harmful. That view, with all due respect, is insane.
Memo to Walter. Hard drug dealers hurt and sometimes kill people, sir. It is ridiculous you do not understand that.
Mr. Cronkite is welcome to debate me on the issue any time.

O’Reilly wouldn’t last five minutes in a real drug war debate (one where he wasn’t able to turn off his opponent’s mic).
Then again, O’Reilly has one advantage. He makes up his “facts.” From claiming that terrorists in Afghanistan are a source of Ecstasy to claiming that the reason that Holland has lower rates of marijuana use than the U.S. is due to Holland’s lower population. (Link). And, of course, the attack on Christmas was done as part of a well-funded fringe effort to legalize drugs.

Via TalkLeft.
It seems the police set a guy’s head on fire in an effort to get him to spit out marijuana he was trying to swallow.

A man whose head caught fire when police simultaneously zapped him with pepper spray and a Taser gun during his arrest last summer faces prison time after being sentenced on a drug charge in the same incident.

The judge sentenced the flambÚed man to 14 months and 12 days in prison.

Our Drug Czar is known for asserting the complete opposite of the truth (like when he blamed drug users for damaging the environment in Colombia, while calling for increased spraying of toxic chemicals).
Here, he does it again when referring to drug use.

“It breaks up families; it destroys learning, memory, retention, self-discipline; it is a catalyst to crime, crime at a very young age; self-destruction, other destruction; child abuse and endangerment,” he said. “And it also is, in terms of its revenue, it takes millions of dollars out of affected communities.” [emphasis added]

Millions of dollars out of affected communities? Is he referring to the voluntary purchase of a product by a buyer from a seller where a large portion of the money ends up outside of the community? Then you might as well blame car dealerships.
But if we really want to talk about the loss of millions of dollars out of affected communities, let’s talk about the millions in tax dollars that we pay Walters to fly around and give inane speeches. Let’s talk about the billions we spend on prisons and the drug war infrastructure. Let’s talk about the loss of tax revenue from keeping drugs illegal.

Unlike some people, I have no problem enjoying the performances by entertainers who have personal views I despise, or who lack basic common sense. Bruce Willis now joins that category.
Link

“I’m talking also about going to Colombia and doing whatever it takes to end the cocaine trade. It’s killing this country. It’s killing all the countries that coke goes into.
“I believe that somebody’s making money on it in the United States. If they weren’t making money on it, they would have stopped it. They could stop it in one day.”

Yes, Bruce, people are making money from it. But no, you couldn’t stop it in a day, or a century.
Go back to licking your toxic cappucccino foam.

The DEA has gotten even more offensive than usual:

FEB 15–(Washington, D.C) The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)
announced today the first-ever Candlelight Vigil to be held at DEA
Headquarters in Arlington, Virginia on June 8th, 2006 to 2,500
members gathered for the XVIth Forum of the Community Anti-Drug
Coalitions of America (CADCA).
The “Vigil for Lost Promise” will be a first of its kind remembrance,
and the first of its kind of hope: hope and confidence that our work
is shielding others from the great tragedy of drugs. The DEA along
with its partners will bring together those who have lost loved ones
–and their promise– to drug use and abuse.

For the DEA to do this…
along with such sponsors as Joyce Nalepka and Drug Free Kids: America’s Challenge, NIDA, and the Partnership for a Drug Free America…
is downright sickening.
It is the prohibition promoted by these groups that have contributed to drug deaths.
So they have a special website for this vigil at www.vigilforlostpromise.com (I’m not making it a link because I don’t want to give them links right now — you’ll see why) Go ahead and type it into your browser and check it out.
Now check out a similar-looking site with very different content at http://www.vigilforlostpromise.org
That page links to both Drug War Victims and a description of my view of the lost promise idea.
If you have a web page and would like to help on this, simply place a link to http://www.vigilforlostpromise.org with the words ‘Vigil for Lost Promise’ as the linked words. With some help, we can make the .org site come up first in Google searches.

Nice editorial in the North County Times:

If parents want to test their kids for drugs, the kits are cheap and available these days. But Vista Unified School District and other public officials should stick to education. […]
It just doesn’t make sense. Research shows that kids are better able to stay off drugs when they play sports or join clubs like the debating society, the school newspaper or the chess club. Why would officials want to discourage such participation by treating kids like criminals —- forcing insecure adolescents to give urine samples?
And although there are some authorities who say drug testing helps kids say no to pushy peers, there is at least one credible study that found mass testing fails to reduce rates of drug use by students.
Then there is the matter of federal intrusion into local policy: We don’t want the White House telling school districts how to handle student discipline any more than we want our school officials to demand urine from our children. […]
Yet the Vista school district and President Bush would invade the bodies and trample the privacy of an overwhelming majority of drug-free students in order to deter or catch a few who need help.
Mass drug testing crosses an old and noble line that has properly corralled officials since the founding of the republic. What makes the American system work so well is that government officials must leave the people alone in most circumstances. Intervention in people’s lives requires some clear evidence that they are doing something wrong.
Officials often drift to less freedom in the name of greater security, requiring the public to reassert that fundamental right to be left alone. […]
But mass drug testing is an offense against liberty; no government, federal or local, should subject a broad category of innocent children to indignities in hopes of catching a few in destructive behavior. What a terrible lesson for Vista’s children.

Powerful words.

The piece from the Wall Street Journal mentioned here yesterday, is being discussed at Free Republic.
Every time drugs come up there, it’s an explosion. You’ve got a good group of intelligent libertarian conservatives mixing it up with wacked-out social conservatives led by drug warrior robertpaulsen.
Fun to watch.