A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, Leonie M. Brinkema, recently sentenced four young people to terms in the penitentiary ranging from 46 months to 20 years. The four, whose ages ranged from 19 to 21, were convicted of drug-war crimes relating to the possession and distribution of heroin. Faced with what the Washington Post described as "grim-faced" prosecutors and "bewildered" defendants, Brinkema imposed the harsh sentences because four other young people had died from "overdoses" of the heroin. What idiocy. All that Brinkema has accomplished is compounding the tragic deaths of four young people by destroying the lives of four other young people. Will those harsh jail sentences reduce the supply of drugs? No. [continues 529 words]
Mackenzie Phillips, daughter of the founder of the Mamas and Papas pop group and a former star in the television sitcom "One Day at a Time," was arrested last week and charged with possession of narcotics. The arrest took place while Phillips was going through the security screening at Los Angeles International Airport. There are two things wrong with this picture. First, aren't those airport security checkpoints intended to stop terrorists and hijackers, not drug addicts? Why should airport gendarmes have the authority to take people into custody for possession of items that are unrelated to terrorism or hijacking? [continues 290 words]
Don't ever suggest that federal bureaucrats are not smart. Take, for instance, the DEA, the federal agency that has the responsibility of waging the war on drugs, a war that has obviously failed to achieve its objective after 30 years of warfare, not to mention all the collateral violence that the drug war has spawned. Amidst growing discussion and debate in the mainstream media on the libertarian idea of ending the war on drugs by legalizing drugs, guess what the DEA is using as a way to distract people's attention away from that solution. [continues 426 words]
After several consecutive months of bad news for U.S. officials - the Marine massacre at Haditha, the disclosure of secret CIA renditions and torture camps in former Soviet-bloc countries, the weekly deaths of American troops, and the daily kidnappings, beheadings, and suicide bombs in Baghdad - U.S. officials and pro-occupation supporters received a big morale booster with the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, or as Australian Prime Minister John Howard put it, "a huge boost for anti-terrorist forces in Iraq." [continues 694 words]
Conservatives never cease to fascinate me, given their professed devotion to "freedom, free enterprise, and limited government" and their ardent support of policies that violate that principle. One of the most prominent examples is the drug war. In fact, if you're ever wondering whether a person is a conservative or a libertarian, a good litmus-test question is, How do you feel about the war on drugs? The conservative will respond, "Even though I believe in freedom, free enterprise, and limited government, we've got to continue waging the war on drugs." The libertarian will respond, "End it. It is an immoral and destructive violation of the principles of freedom, free enterprise, and limited government." [continues 585 words]
Both conservatives and liberals have waged their war on drugs for decades, and they have reaped nothing but drug gangs, drug lords, robberies, thefts, muggings, murders, dirty needles, overcrowded prisons, decimated families..... Conservatives never cease to fascinate me, given their professed devotion to "freedom, free enterprise, and limited government" and their ardent support of policies that violate that principle. One of the most prominent examples is the drug war. In fact, if you're ever wondering whether a person is a conservative or a libertarian, a good litmus-test question is, How do you feel about the war on drugs? The conservative will respond, "Even though I believe in freedom, free enterprise, and limited government, we've got to continue waging the war on drugs." The libertarian will respond, "End it. It is an immoral and destructive violation of the principles of freedom, free enterprise, and limited government." [continues 602 words]
Newly appointed Drug Enforcement Chief Karen P. Tandy has announced that her goals will be to target drug organizations, dry up their money supply, and dismantle them entirely. Wow! What a novel and profound idea! Now, why in the world didn't previous DEA chiefs think of that before now? But wait a minute! I think they did! What about all the cartels that have been targeted and destroyed since Tandy graduated from law school in 1977, six years after President Nixon declared war on drugs? Do the Medellin and Cali cartels come to mind? And what about all the drug lords who have been busted over the years, such as Carlos Lehder and Antonio Noriega? Surely Tandy knows about them. [continues 434 words]
