The Conscience of Abe’s Turn freedom of speech, defense, and life

I just got finished watching The U.S. vs. John Lennon, an inspiring and provocative film about John Lennon’s peace advocacy, and how the government attacked him for it. This documentary follows Lennon’s life after the Beatles, until his death in 1980, includes interviews with Yoko Ono and many others, and touches on freedom of speech, drug freedom, peace and military warfare, and the politics of power.

As I watched it, several themes impressed me. But nothing impressed me more than that so little has changed since then. In a very real sense, we are replaying, repeating, reliving history. This film makes real that the abuses and perversions of justice that we see today occurred decades ago, and in essentially the same form: public beatings of peaceful protesters, restriction of speech around high-profile political events, abuse of government power for personal and political gain, censorship, political appeals to “patriotism,” fear-mongering against immigrants and “aliens,” all in order to support direct government attacks on the First, Fourth, and Fifth amendments. Have we made that little progress?

Some quotes from the film:  read more »

The Marijuana Policy Project reports on a study examining what happens when we over-inflate the risks of using drugs. The study, recently published in the journal Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, notes that when the kids finally learn the truth, “intentions to engage in threatened behavior may be amplified.”

Of course, this is old news, or at least it should be. Telling someone not to do something just makes them want to do it more, and then lying to them about the dangers just encourages them to ignore you. No kidding? Maybe next we can commission a study to prove that water is wet.  read more »

Last November, in Massachusetts, the ballot asked voters whether to change the state’s marijuana laws. Under the new law, anyone caught with an ounce or less of pot, instead of being arrested and charged with a crime, would simply get a $100 ticket. According to the official election returns, 63% of the voters thought this was a good idea. (Only 33% disapproved, with 4% abstaining.) This made Massachusetts the 12’th state to enact such a law, and this month, Question 2, the new marijuana law, went into effect. Already, police and drug prohibitionists are complaining about it.

Personally, I’m all for Question 2. Marijuana has never killed a single user, being one of the safest drugs ever discovered, much safer than alcohol. And in general, drug prohibition is a farce; alcohol prohibition was a farce in the 1920’s, and marijuana prohibition works no better. It is a policy born of fear, not of reason, and like all such laws, it wastes resources and creates crime, rather than making us safer. According to a 2008 report by Harvard economist Jeffrey Miron, Question 2 will save Massachusetts taxpayers approximately $29.5 million a year in law-enforcement costs alone. On top of all that, our nation’s drug laws are cruel and out of proportion, landing some non-violent drug offenders with longer prison sentences than violent crimes like assault and rape. Let me put it this way: I think cops should be chasing down rapists and murderers, not shaking down pot smokers.

Question 2 not only has a large majority of voters on its side, it also has informed reasoning behind it. This rare conjunction of popular opinion and sound thought should be applauded, not disparaged. But if you thought drug prohibitionists would simply take the informed will of the voters lying down, think again.  read more »

Jacob Hornberger in a post on his blog examines the increased drug prohibition in Mexico.

Yet, what has been the result of Mexico’s attempt to ramp up its efforts to win the war on drugs?

Ever-increasing violence. Ever-increasing murders. Ever-increasing torture. Ever-increasing beheadings. Ever-increasing kidnappings. Ever-increasing military and police budgets. Ever-increasing governmental powers over the citizenry.

In other words, the more ferociously they have waged the war on drugs, the worse the situation has become.  read more »

One of the things that always gets me about TV and movie crime dramas is that the good guys (usually cops, but sometimes PI’s) pull out their guns for the stupidest of reasons. One of the first rules about using a gun—which cops are supposed to know—is never to point it at anything you wouldn’t be willing to put a hole in. This includes other people. You never draw your weapon, except to point it; and you never point it, except to shoot. So in the crime dramas, when the cop pulls out a gun and points it at an unarmed civilian, that’s unrealistic… Or is it?  read more »

I have the Cato Institute’s official blog, Cato @ Liberty, listed in the “Conscience of America” links on this site. Most of the blog posts are quick, easy reading, accessible to the average American (or perhaps slightly above average) on the go. I’ve long been a fan of the Cato Institute, however, even in the many years before they had a blog. As a libertarian think-tank, Cato has long provided me with masses of valuable research on both civil rights and economic rights issues.

So for the more in-depth advocate, who wants to be deeply informed about the issues, here are just a few of the informative articles and papers I’ve read recently on civil rights, courtesy of the Cato Institute:  read more »

Via TCPalm.com:

PORT ST. LUCIE — A planned trick on a friend involving a bag of parsley turned into an arrest for a 15-year-old local boy, according to a police report released Monday.

The 15-year-old boy and a 13-year-old boy told police Friday morning they were headed to another friend’s home. At the time, they were walking across Crosstown Parkway during school hours.

The elder boy said he was going to play a trick on his friend. He said he had a bag of parsley that he was going to make his friend think was marijuana. The parsley, which he got from his kitchen cabinet, was in a clear plastic bag and appeared similar to pot.

The last time the boy smoked marijuana allegedly was the day before.

The 15-year-old boy was arrested on a charge of possession of a counterfeit controlled substance with the intent to deliver.

Because we all know that parsley is a gateway substance that leads to harder herbs, like basil and oregano… not to mention rosemary.

In any case, that’ll teach him to freak out the men with guns even more than they’re already scared of a 15-year-old kid.

Fucking idiot douchebags.

-TimK

P.S. Yeah, I know. They’re only “doing their job,” right? Two comments: (1) Bullshit. (2) Get another job.

Relying on the word of an informant, over a dozen officers stormed into Ryan Frederick’s home on the night of January 17, 2008, in yet another botched, no-knock drug raid, looking for Marijuana. Ryan was in bed, grabbed his gun. End result: two cops dead.

Now, the prosecutor wants to move the Ryan Frederick case to a different venue because of “adverse and inaccurate publicity.” The judge said, no, we’ll try the case here.

Says Radley Balko:

I’ve never heard of a change of venue being granted to prosecutors over the objections of the defense. None of the defense attorneys I’ve asked about the case could, either.

That Ebert [the prosecutor] even tried I think shows that he knows his case against Frederick is coming apart at the seams.

On top of that, the defense is saying the warrant used for the raid was invalid, because the evidence used to support it was gotten by breaking into Ryan’s home.

Ryan’s next pretrial hearing is scheduled for December 5, and the trial is scheduled to start January 20, 2009.

-TimK

The ACLU is decries that Oregon voters chose to increase mandatory minimums for drug users.

Now, mandatory minimums are generally misguided, and anti-drug laws indeed have a whole host of problems. But for our purposes, one the worst problems is that every time the government mounts a new offensive against consensual acts (like drug use), innocent people end up getting caught in the middle. So much for living in a free country.

May the Lord have mercy on the voters of Oregon, because they’ve just given their own government another weapon it can use against them.

Thanks to Radley Balko for a pointer to this comment by Prince George’s County Executive Jack Johnson regarding the Cheye Calvo case.

The Prince George police had raided Cheye Calvo’s home, looking for drugs. Turns out, I guess, he didn’t have anything to do with drugs after all. Oops.

(Yeah, I know. Even if you’re not familiar with the Calvo case, you’ve heard this story before. But bear with me, because it gets more interesting.)

Meanwhile, however, SWAT team members with itchy trigger fingers held him and his mother-in-law at gunpoint, after shooting his two dogs. No, that’s not quite right. Actually, the cops handcuffed them and interrogated them for hours, while his dogs were marinating nearby in pools of their own blood.

Scenarios of this type play out every week in the U.S. of A., home of the brave, land of the handcuffed and interrogated. What makes the Calvo case different is that Calvo is a politician: Mayor of Berwyn Heights, Maryland. And that means the police raid really was a mistake. Oops again.  read more »