One painful aspect of the public debates over the opioid-addiction crisis is how much they mirror the arguments that arise from personal addiction crises. If you've ever had a loved one struggle with drugs -- in my case, my late brother, Josh -- the national exercise in guilt-driven blame-shifting and finger-pointing, combined with flights of sanctimony and ideological righteousness, has a familiar echo. The difference between the public arguing and the personal agonizing is that, at the national level, we can afford our abstractions. When you have skin in the game, none of the easy answers seem all that easy. [continues 666 words]
With the usual fanfare and self-regard we have come to expect from the New York Times editorial board, the prestigious paper has changed its mind about pot. It now believes that the federal ban on the substance should be lifted and that the whole issue should be sent back to the states to handle. Not only did it issue a big Sunday editorial (the equivalent of a secular fatwa in my native Upper West Side of Manhattan), but it has since been flooding the zone on the issue with essays from members of the editorial board. [continues 645 words]
With the usual fanfare and self-regard we have come to expect from the New York Times editorial board, the prestigious paper has changed its mind about pot. It now believes that the federal ban on the substance should be lifted and that the whole issue should be sent back to the states to handle. Not only did it issue a big Sunday editorial (the equivalent of a secular fatwa in my native Upper West Side of Manhattan), but it has since been flooding the zone on the issue with essays from members of the editorial board. [continues 493 words]
With the usual fanfare and self-regard we have come to expect from the New York Times editorial board, the prestigious paper has changed its mind about pot. It now believes that the federal ban on the substance should be lifted and that the whole issue should be sent back to the states to handle. Not only did it issue a big Sunday editorial (the equivalent of a secular fatwa in my native Upper West Side of Manhattan), but it has since been flooding the zone on the issue with essays from members of the editorial board. [continues 646 words]
With the usual fanfare and self-regard we have come to expect from The New York Times editorial board, the prestigious paper has changed its mind about pot. It now believes that the federal ban on the substance should be lifted and that the whole issue should be sent back to the states to handle. Not only did it issue a big Sunday editorial (the equivalent of a secular fatwa in my native Upper West Side of Manhattan), but it has since been flooding the zone on the issue with essays from members of the editorial board. [continues 661 words]
With the usual fanfare and self-regard we have come to expect from the New York Times editorial board, the prestigious paper has changed its mind about pot. It now believes that the federal ban on the substance should be lifted and that the whole issue should be sent back to the states to handle. Not only did it issue a big Sunday editorial (the equivalent of a secular fatwa in my native Upper West Side of Manhattan), but it has since been flooding the zone on the issue with essays from members of the editorial board. [continues 643 words]
On Jan. 1, the Centennial State (it hasn't yet changed its nickname to "The Rocky Mountain High State") became the first place in the country to legalize marijuana sales for recreational purposes. And Brandon Harris is stoked. The 24-year-old Harris drove 20 hours from Cincinnati, along with a smoking buddy, to be the first Ohioans to buy legal pot in Colorado. "It's such a big day in history," Harris, told the Washington Times. "The fact that we don't have to be criminals and can just smoke, and not be looked down on, or have to mess with the local police." [continues 607 words]
On Jan. 1, the Centennial State (it hasn't yet changed its nickname to "The Rocky Mountain High State") became the first place in the country to legalize marijuana sales for recreational purposes. And Brandon Harris is stoked. The 24-year-old Harris drove 20 hours from Cincinnati, along with a smoking buddy, to be the first Ohioans to buy legal pot in Colorado. "It's such a big day in history," Harris, told the Washington Times. "The fact that we don't have to be criminals and can just smoke, and not be looked down on, or have to mess with the local police." [continues 697 words]
On Jan. 1, the Centennial State (it hasn't yet changed its nickname to "The Rocky Mountain High State") became the first place in the country to legalize marijuana sales for recreational purposes. And Brandon Harris is stoked. The 24-year-old Harris drove 20 hours from Cincinnati, along with a smoking buddy, to be the first Ohioans to buy legal pot in Colorado. "It's such a big day in history," Harris told the Washington Times. "The fact that we don't have to be criminals and can just smoke, and not be looked down on, or have to mess with the local police." [continues 697 words]
There are few areas where I think common sense is more sorely lacking than in our public debates over free speech, and there's no better proof than two recent Supreme Court decisions. But before we go there, let me state plainly where I'm coming from. First and foremost: The more overtly political the speech is, the more protected it must be. The First Amendment was not intended to protect pornographers, strippers or the subsidies of avant-garde artistes who think the state should help defray the costs of homoerotica and sacrilegious art. This isn't to say that "artistic" expression doesn't deserve some protection, but come on. Our free-speech rights were enshrined in the Constitution to guarantee private citizens - rich and poor alike - the right to criticize government without fear of retribution. [continues 658 words]
There are few areas where I think common sense is more sorely lacking than in our public debates over free speech, and there's no better proof than two recent Supreme Court decisions. But before we go there, let me state plainly where I'm coming from. First and foremost: The more overtly political the speech is, the more protected it must be. The First Amendment was not intended to protect pornographers, strippers or the subsidies of avant-garde artistes who think the state should help defray the costs of homoerotica and sacrilegious art. This isn't to say that "artistic" expression doesn't deserve some protection, but come on. Our free-speech rights were enshrined in the Constitution to guarantee private citizens -- rich and poor alike -- the right to criticize government without fear of retribution. [continues 655 words]
President Bush hoped to tone down and sober up the immigration fight Monday night. But it amounted to a soft "shush" at WrestleMania. The most interesting part of this political and ideological cage match is that few of the usual labels have much utility. The president and Sen. Edward Kennedy agree on a lot. Weekly Standard editor and Fox News sage Bill Kristol declares himself a "liberal" on immigration and "soft" on illegal immigration. Both the Weekly Standard and the editors of The Wall Street Journal consider National Review to be part of the mob of "yahoos" trying, in Kristol's words, to drive the GOP "off a cliff." [continues 597 words]
Rush Limbaugh should be ashamed of himself. And you know what? He probably is. Proud and successful people who end up going into rehab under a cloud of scandal pretty much always feel shame. That Rush Limbaugh has condemned drug use over the years and called for the punishment of illegal drug users probably makes Limbaugh feel even worse. Handing your enemies the noose is never a pick-me-up. Limbaugh's detractors are having a grand time at his expense. Garrison Keillor noted that Limbaugh's addiction explains how the talk show host could manage to listen to himself all these years. Don Imus, a former cocaine addict, declared with characteristic nuance, "Rush is a fat, pill-popping loser." Imus continued: "Suck it up, fatso, and stop taking 100 pills a day or whatever." [continues 660 words]
Profile of a conservative columnist as drug suspect Recently, I was pulled over for speeding by a policeman just across the Wyoming border in South Dakota. I was going about as fast as everybody else around me. My wife and I were driving back from Fairbanks, Alaska, in a bug- and-mud-splattered 1991 Cadillac with Alaska plates. Pale, unshaven and unkempt, I looked like I'd been handcuffed to the radiator in my basement for a week, and my wife was simply out cold. Only our dog, Cosmo, looked alert from his perch in the backseat. [continues 740 words]
Recently, I was pulled over for speeding by a policeman just across the Wyoming border in South Dakota. I was going about as fast as everybody else around me. My wife and I were driving back from Fairbanks, Alaska, in a bug-and- mud-splattered 1991 Cadillac with Alaska plates. Pale, unshaven and unkempt, I looked like I'd been handcuffed to the radiator in my basement for a week, and my wife was simply out cold. Only our dog, Cosmo, looked alert from his perch in the backseat. [continues 709 words]
What The Osbournes Tells Us About Drugs. Toward the end of the Clinton administration, pundits got themselves into a tizzy over the fact that the U.S. government was giving what amounted to tax write-offs to television networks for incorporating anti-drug messages into their programming. The policy died at the hands of the hypocritical media establishment, which has no problem with the government forcing tobacco companies to fund multimillion-dollar ad campaigns against their own legal products, but sees, in the words of the New York Times, "the possibility of censorship and state-sponsored propaganda" in an anti-drug scene in a drama about an emergency room. [continues 1391 words]
Whether or not the movie "Traffic" wins the Oscar for best picture, it still qualifies as the movie of the year, at least in Washington. Senators and policy wonks are invoking it as the motivation for new hearings - and a new focus on drug treatment. Let's not get ahead of ourselves. If the movie helps drug-use prevention and treatment efforts, that's great. But before we start basing our drug policies on the message of a single movie, we should be clear about what that message is. [continues 600 words]
Fight addiction, and facile solutions. It is the editorial position of National Review that narcotics should be legalized in the United States. In 1996, National Review's editors declared, "it is our judgment that the war on drugs has failed, that it is diverting intelligent energy away from how to deal with the problem of addiction, that it is wasting our resources, and that it is encouraging civil, judicial and penal procedures associated with police states." Five years later, little has changed to make that conclusion any less reasonable. We spend billions more dollars, we incarcerate millions more people, we consume, if not more, than certainly as many, massive (and unknowable) quantities of drugs as ever. But that doesn't mean that the editors of National Review were necessarily right. [continues 1788 words]
Where John McCain Paid A Price Sunday H. L. Mencken once wrote, "There is something about a national convention that makes it as fascinating as a revival or a hanging. It is vulgar, it is ugly, it is stupid, it is tedious, it is hard upon the higher cerebral centers and the gluteus maximus, and yet it is somehow charming. One sits through the long sessions wishing heartily that all the delegates and alternates were dead and in hell -- and suddenly there comes a show so gaudy and hilarious, so melodramatic and obscene, so unimaginably exhilarating and preposterous that one lives a gorgeous year in an hour." [continues 1239 words]
