who's your nanny?

Weed Is Safer Than Whiskey

So why is the federal government driving people to drink? asks Paul Armentano.

Tallahassee Police Get 23-Year-Old Girl Killed

This story is a couple months old, but everyone should know about it. The video's about 15 minutes long, but watch the entire thing if you can stomach it.

(Thanks to Jack Slater for sending it to me.)

Don't Let People Get Naked in Your Own House

Or drink a beer. Or smoke a plant. Or do anything else they choose to do of their own free will absent harm to anyone else.

Cuz the state, boy, it's comin' for you!

Drug War in Microcosm

An otherwise nonviolent man murdered by police on his own front porch for having the temerity to protect his property from armed trespassers dispatched by the state.

And don't you just love the fact that you and I qualify for the death penalty here in the "land o' duh free" if we simply confront police while unarmed?

Kidnappers Abduct Three Children in South Carolina

The gang of criminals known as the Newberry County Sheriff's Department has kidnapped three small children from a house in which it found just over an ounce of tobacco apportioned into small baggies. Three suspects were charged with possession of tobacco with intent to distribute.

“When deputies arrived at the residence, they ...were able to see in plain view a [tobacco] plant growing at the residence,” said sheriff’s Major Todd Johnson in the press release.

“The officers also observed a partially smoked [Marlboro] cigarette on the porch of the residence.”

For the record, an ounce of tobacco fits in a small sandwich bag. But I have to come clean. The officers didn't really arrest these people for tobacco, they busted them and abducted their children over an ounce of marijuana.

So how many of you were ready to march to South Carolina with shotguns when you thought police confiscated innocent children in the name of tobacco, but couldn't care less now that you know it was actually marijuana?

In order to prosecute victimless "crimes," the state is willing to commit actual crimes by initiating violence against nonviolent people and their property. This is evil incarnate.

Another Taser Shocker

A federal jury has ruled that three Nashville police officers did not use excessive force in the death of a 21-year-old man on LSD who was tased up to 19 times after he stripped naked outside a nightclub.

Apologists for state-sanctioned electrocution will argue that this man shouldn't have been on LSD, that either his actions brought on the treatment he received or the drugs exacerbated the electric shocks and he wouldn't have died otherwise.

Even if this is so, the point remains that a man was killed by government police for "acting strangely" and taking off his clothes in public.

Is Marijuana Legalization a Big Government Scam?

Daniel Flynn explains why the government regulation, taxation, and bureaucracy applied upon marijuana's legalization would result in a market that were much less free than it actually is today.

To be sure, the black market is the free market's answer to onerous government intrusion into voluntary transactions between trading partners. Thus, assuming we must live under the coercive state, Flynn says decriminalization (instead of legalization) is probably as good as it gets for folks hoping to avoid both the slammer and the tax man.

The State Creates Crime

Unfortunately, I was flying home from Mexico last Friday so I had to miss the Great Southern Maryland Police State Orgy, formerly known to most locals as "Tiki Bar Opening" -- the day on which casual partiers flock to Solomons Island to celebrate the symbolic beginning of summer.

As I documented last spring, in recent years the island has become more representative of history's most notorious state-run military regimes on the third weekend in April than the quaint waterfront tourist town that it actually is.

The police will tell you they're on hand -- with fully militarized assault vehicles in tow -- "just in case" things get out of control. In other words, should criminal activity break out, our noble law enforcement officers will be there to protect us!

But what if it's the police themselves who are responsible for the bulk of the criminality at such events? According to The Enterprise, if the cops couldn't locate "criminals" during the Tiki Bar opening, they simply created them through entrapment.

Maryland State Police on covert duty at the Tiki Bar's opening weekend in Solomons report that they arranged a drug deal Saturday with a St. Mary's man and gave him a ride to a home, where he was arrested.

Dustin Richard Cushman, 22, of California was released the next day on $10,000 bond to await a court hearing on charges including the possession of marijuana with the intent to distribute the drug at the residence.

Aside from the fact that there is absolutely nothing inherently immoral about engaging in nonviolent, voluntary transactions with consenting adults, you know you live in a fairly safe area when police officers have to lure people into committing a "crime." (Well, "safe" except for when one must deal with the criminal elite known as the police.)

Like anything else subsidized by taxpayers, government policing is merely another make-work program. Most people believe the police exist to defend us against criminality, so police departments are incentivized to ensure there is plenty of it to keep their officers occupied. After all, if there were no "criminals," there would be no need for government police, right? Think about that the next time your trusty politicos pass their next law.

The Stormtroopers Own Your Castle

Government invaders costumed in paramilitary gear broke into the home of Rita Patterson and William Hanavan on Saturday looking for a drug suspect and narcotics, reports The Buffalo News. Police left the premises without finding any drugs or arresting anyone, but not before terrorizing an innocent family and executing their two dogs "for no reason at all," said 68-year-old Daniel Patterson, who lives with his daughter.

Rita Patterson said she was cooking dinner in the kitchen when she heard loud noises at the side door. Hanavan was upstairs taking a nap, and at first she thought he may have fallen out of bed.

Before she knew what was happening, police wearing masks and helmets and carrying automatic weapons had broken through the door. They tied her hands with a zip tie and put her on the floor.

Her father pleaded with police not to shoot the dogs, but they wouldn’t allow him to grab the dogs and put them in another room, Patterson said.

One of the officers started firing a shotgun at the two dogs, one a pit bull and the other a pit bull-boxer mix.

One of the dogs was shot three times: once in the throat, once in the back and the last time in the leg while trying to run away, Rita Patterson said.

The other dog was cowering behind a table. Neither was a threat to the police, the residents said.

This atrocious behavior is the police state personified. The state's armed thugs have a legal right to trespass on our property brandishing weapons the rest of us aren't even allowed to own, use them in manners that would get private citizens thrown in jail, and are under no obligation to insure their information is even accurate before engaging in tactics that put the lives of law-abiding citizens at risk.

As abhorrent as it was that this family's pets were killed before their eyes, just imagine what might have happened had Hanavan or the Pattersons had the audacity to defend their home and dogs from these terrorists. One unfortunately need not engage in much speculation given that the precedent has already been set.

In the 1995 case Wilson v. Arkansas, the Supreme Court ruled that the Fourth Amendment required police to knock and announce themselves before entering a private home -- a decision intended to protect not only innocent suspects but also police, who could be mistaken by homeowners for criminal intruders (those not protected by government-issued guns and badges, that is). However, the exceptions the court allowed have set into motion widespread and unbridled assaults on our civil liberties that have manifested themselves in the "war on substances the state would rather you not ingest." As Radley Balko explained in Slate Magazine:

But Wilson didn't eliminate no-knocks. In [its] decision, the court recognized three broad exceptions, called "exigent circumstances," to the announcement requirement. The most pertinent of these state that if police believe announcing themselves before entering would present a threat to officer safety, or if they believe a suspect is particularly likely to destroy evidence, they may enter a home without first announcing their presence.

A legal no-knock raid, then, can happen in one of two ways. Police can make the case for exigent circumstances to a judge, who then issues a no-knock warrant; or police can determine at the scene that the exigent circumstances exist and make the call for a no-knock raid on the spot. In the latter case, courts will determine after the fact if the raid was legal.

I don't know about you, but it seems to me that allowing police to determine for themselves the circumstances justifying no-knock entry essentially invalidates any requirement to approach a judge beforehand. After all, the state is the ultimate judge in conflicts involving itself, so the chances that it will rule against itself are between slim and none.

Balko's findings tend to support this assertion:

In the real world, the exigent-circumstances exceptions have been so broadly interpreted since Wilson, they've overwhelmed the rule. No-knock raids have been justified on the flimsiest of reasons, including that the suspect was a licensed, registered gun owner (NRA, take note!), or that the mere presence of indoor plumbing could be enough to trigger the "destruction of evidence" exception.

In fact, in many places the announcement requirement is now treated more like an antiquated ritual than compliance with a suspect's constitutional rights. In 1999, for example, the assistant police chief of El Monte, Calif., explained his department's preferred procedure to the Los Angeles Times: "We do bang on the door and make an announcement—'It's the police'—but it kind of runs together. If you're sitting on the couch, it would be difficult to get to the door before they knock it down."

Legalities aside, no one -- whether the private citizen or the government agent -- has a moral right to trespass on private property with the intent to initiate violence against nonviolent targets, much less carry out these threats by unilaterally inflicting damage to private property and harm on human beings.

Moreover, if you're inclined to excuse such tyrannical behavior even under select circumstances, consider the fact that when police kill innocent civilians during the course of these violent home invasions, they generally receive a paid vacation followed by an inevitable return to active duty; if you or I happen to kill a cop while attempting to defend ourselves from faceless assailants during the course of an immoral SWAT raid, we're looking at the death penalty or life behind bars.

Thus, the crux of the matter lies not with legality, but morality. Cory Maye is currently serving a life sentence even though there is no reason not to believe Maye when he said he acted in self-defense when he shot and killed Ron Jones during a drug raid in the middle of the night. Maye testified that police did not announce themselves, and that he ran to his daughter's room to ready a pistol in an attempt to protect himself and his little girl from harm that proved to be imminent. Though Maye said he believed the police were burglars, officers associated with the assault on Maye's person and property testified that they identified themselves as law enforcement officers, and Maye was ultimately convicted of murder.

Because we hold the concept of legality in higher regard than morality, Cory Maye is but one innocent man who may never spend time with his daughter as a free man again. However, morally it doesn't make one whit of difference whether Maye realized the intruders were police officers or not. Human beings who initiate lethal violence against other, nonviolent human beings deserve to be shot. It is the act of the offender that counts, not his attire.

We would be wise to consider the words of Will Grigg, who wrote in an article defending the right to self-defense:

Armed aggressors have no right to self-defense. An armed criminal has no right to shoot back if his victims offer armed resistance. That principle should apply to aggressors of any variety – including police who stage illegal and unnecessary home invasions, or who commit violent acts in the course of unlawful arrests.

It's more than a little ironic that the Supreme Court paid lip service to the "Castle Doctrine" when attempting to distinguish between police and criminal intruders in Wilson v. Arkansas: its decision in the case has guaranteed that the two are one and the same.

I'm Your Pusher

I saw a bumper sticker one day which read, "Don't steal, the government hates the competition." We can now create a new bumper sticker which reads, "Don't deal drugs. The government hates the competition." The Examiner reports 

For decades, the government has authorized, funded and lobbied for studies in which otherwise illegal drugs were given to addicts in cities such as Washington, Bethesda, Baltimore, New York, Minneapolis and San Antonio. The studies continue today and have an array of aims, from documenting the ways cocaine warps the brain to the intensity of pain from morphine withdrawal....

Most government officials are not aware of the experiments, even though they have been going on since at least the 1970s.

I wrote yesterday in my post Conspiracies and Conservatives that general public does not really know what the State is doing. There is no such thing as transparency with the State and there can never be true transparency because there is no way to compel the State to provide information. The only reason this story became public was because ex-drug czar John Walters blew the whistle on these experiments. If his conscience had not compelled him to speak up, the public still would not know about this. If it took three decades for this to become public knowledge, what else could this government be up to? If you think our government is a force for good you will see this failure as an exception to the otherwise honest public servants who compose the State. If you think our government is a criminal gang, this is only the tip of the iceberg of malfeasance.

In another Examiner article, an ex-official defended the program. Bertha K. Madras was President George W. Bush's deputy director for demand reduction under the Office of National Drug Control Policy. She said, “It’s an important ethical issue and I’m glad you raise it, but holy cow, there’s so much more important stuff to focus on...Twenty-three percent of people who show up in health care settings are in need of an [anti-drug] intervention. We need a strategic plan for that.” Who knew that the best way to obtain cocaine, heroin, and crystal meth legally was to sign up for a government program? But the program was even better for drug addicts in that not only did they not have to spend their own money for these drugs, but they got paid to get high. And they didn't worry about getting arrested.

One question to ask is where are the government officials getting the drugs. If Michael Gaddy is correct, one source is Mexico. Another source is the "drug raid." Makes you look at those pictures taken by State agents and media members displaying all the drugs they confiscated differently, does it not?

Of course, this story does not shock me nor will it shock regular readers of this blog. Each day Trevor and I discuss the root failures of the State. One of these failures is that the State compels its subjects to obey laws from which it exempts itself because there is no entity to bind the State. This creates a system of dual law; there is one set of rules for the subjects and another set of rules for the agents of the State. This story is simply another example of the systematic failure of entrusting our safety to a territorial monopolist of law and order and ultimate decision making.

Fighting the 'Drug War' with Food Stamps

Instead of bribing drug users with money confiscated from private citizens, how about we just stop subsidizing laziness, incompetence, and irresponsibility in the first place?

Want government assistance? Just say no to drugs.

Lawmakers in at least eight states want recipients of food stamps, unemployment benefits or welfare to submit to random drug testing.

No one should be forced to support anyone else. The problem here isn't drug use; it's government theft of private property, which is taken from its rightful owners and redistributed to others who put it to less productive uses, thereby decreasing overall wealth.

Nobody has a moral right to tell persons X, Y, and Z what they're allowed to do with their own bodies as long as they hurt no one else. However, politicians muddle this reality as soon as they force "society" to assume ownership over welfare recipients. In short, when you foot the bills, you generally deserve a say in how your money's put to use.

Welfare programs are merely one way in which politicians engineer society to their own liking. They are dependent upon force and fraud instead of freedom, and until we withdraw our consent from such behavior, we'll all remain slaves of the state in one form or another.

Will the Feds Respect States' Rights on Medical Marijuana?

Attorney General Eric Holder has announced that federal narcotics officers will only enforce unconstitutional and immoral federal marijuana laws in states that have not legalized medical marijuana.

That would be a departure from the Bush administration, which targeted medical marijuana dispensaries in California even if they complied with that state's law.

"The policy is to go after those people who violate both federal and state law," Holder said in a question-and-answer session with reporters at the Justice Department.

Well, whaddya know? If this shift in policy actually comes to fruition, I guess we'll no longer be able to say that Barack Obama has followed completely in the footsteps of his predecessor.

While this technically would signal a very small win for civil liberties at the federal level -- on this particular issue, the feds would at least acknowledge limitations on power that the founders intended to apply broadly -- it's hardly an indication that the Obama administration is interested in reforming oppressive drug laws. 

Indeed, though the feds have no business regulating drug use at all, Holder has made it clear that his office still intends to target, harass, terrorize, incarcerate, and even kill regular ol' peaceful marijuana users across the country, to say nothing of people who choose to use other, more dangerous drugs. And according to this report, it's entirely unclear what will become of people like Charles Lynch, who was convicted on federal charges last year for running a legal dispensary in California.

While a little marijuana freedom is clearly better than none at all, I'm a little skeptical of this push to legalize marijuana for medical purposes alone. I happen to be a proponent of outright drug legalization, especially at the federal level, but I can't help but wonder whether this narrow focus on marijuana's medicinal value won't simultaneously perpetuate its stigma as a dangerous drug that should remain illegal for everyone without a bogus permission slip from the state.

Certainly the argument can me made that it's almost impossible to recover lost liberties all at once. After all, Americans are living proof that if the state simply chips away at our freedoms one step at a time -- think progressively tyrannical smoking bans -- we'll apparently consent to anything; so it makes sense that such maneuvering would work when it came to regaining our rights, as well.

Therefore, we should by all means fight for any victory against the state, no matter how minimal, just as long as we keep the big picture in mind: the state is our enemy, and we all have a natural right to behave in any manner we choose so long as it does no tangible harm to anyone else.

What we need to bear in mind with regard to Holder's announcement is that the Obama administration is not contemplating this shift in policy simply because it retains a healthy respect for states' rights. Modern presidents don't just issue policy directives that limit their own power. If this change actually occurs, you can rest assured it will be because it works to the president's benefit in at least some capacity (and one that will likely remain unknown to anyone outside his inner circle).

So take a moment to cherish this supposed win for individual liberties -- but only a moment. You will know true liberty only when the state is disarmed and no longer retains a license to kill merely to preserve its hegemony over our lives.

Ron Paul Schools Stephen Baldwin on Marijuana Legalization

We'll Legalize Anything If We Can Tax It

Part of the reason the drug war continues is because virtuecrats believe that proscribing drugs saves lives. The coercive power of the State is necessary to prevent people from harming themselves, they argue. It's bad enough that virtuecrats believe that they should be running the lives of all people in the country. But these virtuecrats also suffer from the delusion that politicians care about virtue or the lives of its subjects. As anyone who reads this blog regularly knows, the State doesn't give a damn about you or your health. An entity which is willing to threaten violence against your person just for consuming mind-altering products to "protect you" clearly does not have the preservation of your life as a priority.

Here's more evidence that the State does not at all care about your health as the virtuecrats argue it should. California Democratic State Assembly member Tom Ammiano has introduced legislation that would legalize marijuana and allow the state to regulate and tax its sale. Ammiano defended the legislation saying:

"The state of California is in a very, very precipitous economic plight. It's in the toilet...It looks very, very bleak, with layoffs and foreclosures and schools closing or trying to operate four days a week. We have one of the highest rates of unemployment we've ever had. With any revenue ideas people say you have to think outside of the box, you have to be creative, and I feel that the issue of the decriminalization, regulation and taxation of marijuana fits that bill. It's not new, the idea has been around, and the political will may in fact be there to make something happen."

Of course, actually cutting government spending in California is simply unfathomable. Moreover, the vassal States are prohibited from counterfeiting the necessary funds; the federal government arrogates to itself that right exclusively. Thus, says Ammiano, we need to think outside the box and find things which have a high demand from which we can exact tribute.

The virtuecrats opposed the legislation, of course. "How will we be able to run other people's lives if you legalize this 'dangerous gateway' drug?" That's not what they said exactly, but that's pretty much the gist of all prohibitionist thinking. What these virtuecrats just don't realize is that the State is a criminal gang whose primary purpose is robbery. If the State thought that legalizing all drugs would lead to higher tax revenues than keeping them illegal, you would be able to buy crack and meth with a SnowCone and Jolly Ranchers from an ice cream truck. As long as the State received the tax revenue, it's all good.

It appears to me that Ammiano has done the math and realized that the legalization of marijuana will lead to more revenue from the taxes and the decreased cost of enforcement than what the State pulls in now while marijuana is illegal. Of course, ending the drug war outright would save an untold number of lives from being killed by their protectors. This may be an upside to the depression for as Donald Boudreaux wrote,

"So, if the history of alcohol prohibition is a guide, drug prohibition will not end merely because there are many sound, sensible and humane reasons to end it. Instead, it will end only if and when Congress gets desperate for another revenue source.

That's the sorry logic of politics and Prohibition. "

"Tearful Atlanta Cops Express Remorse for Shooting 92-Year-Old Kathryn Johnston, Leaving Her To Bleed to Death in Her Own Home While They Planted Drugs in Her Basement, Then Threatening an Informant So He Would Lie To Cover It All Up"

Must-read blog post from Radley Balko about the murder of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston and the subsequent cover-up by the police.

Hat tip to Art Carden at the Independent Blog.

Freedom Man on Bill Maher

As usual, Ron Paul knocks it out of the park when it comes to arguing for free choice, fiscal sanity, and a non-interventionist foreign policy, and dispelling myths about the causes of the modern depression.

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow up to Be Teenagers

Time for casual blogging has been scarce the past couple days as my wife and I have been tending to our one-year-old as he battles his first bout with a virus presenting gifts of vomiting and diarrhea, but I had to make time for this police state update from Radley Balko.

Regular readers of this blog are probably well acquainted with the excesses of Maryland's state and local SWAT teams (see here, here, and here for a refresher), but when more than a dozen domestic terrorists can legally storm your house over a teenage boy's misdemeanor marijuana charge, you can be pretty confident that private property rights are a thing of the past.

Here's a snippet of the story, as described by the boy's mother and victim of the Maryland State Police raid:

... At about 3:30 a.m.on January 10, 2008 approximately 16 Swat Team Members of the Maryland State Police entered our home with force with M-16s at the ready. Please note that we are the only county in Maryland that does not have a county police department. While the M-16s were drawn they handcuffed four of us (my oldest son has been living with his girlfriend for sometime now) this includes my 12 year old son. ...

Be sure to read it all for yourself, but note that the woman says police confiscated a shotgun her husband has had since he was 18 after they found a trace amount of pot in the basement.

It is no coincidence that the state confiscates our weapons at every possible opportunity. Not only is a disarmed citizenry more susceptible to the tyrannical edicts of its rulers, but it's also less capable of overthrowing the statist thugs when people finally realize they've had enough.

The only real question I have is, what's it going to take for people to put an end to their own subjugation? What hope is there for liberty when we increasingly permit the state's goon squads to terrorize innocent, nonviolent individuals, pretending that violently invading private homes with automatic weapons is actually less of a crime than smoking a harmless fucking plant?

I don't know if I'll come down with whatever's ailing my little boy, but I've already got a head start on the nausea.

I'm Tired of the Apologies

Two days after Sports Illustrated reported that Alex Rodriguez appeared on a list of over 100 pro baseball players to test positive for performance enhancing drugs in 2003 while he was a member of the Texas Rangers, the superstar decided to come clean about his drug use and today apologized in an interview with ESPN.

"When I arrived in Texas in 2001, I felt an enormous amount of pressure. I felt like I had all the weight of the world on top of me and I needed to perform, and perform at a high level every day," Rodriguez told ESPN's Peter Gammons in an exclusive interview in Miami Beach, Fla.

"Back then, [baseball] was a different culture," Rodriguez said. "It was very loose. I was young. I was stupid. I was naive. And I wanted to prove to everyone that I was worth being one of the greatest players of all time.

"I did take a banned substance. And for that, I am very sorry and deeply regretful."

I call bullshit. I really couldn't care less whether A-Rod's sorry or not because, quite frankly, it's none of my damned business what he puts into his own body. But I'm tired of the apologies. If someone actually regrets taking supplements that helped transform him into a player capable of making $28 million a year to hit a ball, he's got issues. My guess is that Rodriguez knew, albeit at a relatively young age for a professional athlete, exactly what he was doing.

At the risk of sounding like I'm ripping off Radley Balko's excellent letter last week after Michael Phelps apologized for doing a bong hit, I really wish A-Rod would've said, "Dude, I had the opportunity to maximize my athletic potential and value to my organization; to run faster, swing quicker, and jump higher; and I took it.

"You guys drink coffee in order to stay awake and get your work done; you have a couple drinks at happy hour to take the edge off and reduce stress, mostly so you'll be able to deal with getting up the next morning and doing the same crap all over again so you don't get fired. I took some drugs pretty much for the same general reasons. You interview athletes and write articles; I swing a bat. Big friggin' whoop."

Or something like that. 

During his sit-down with Gammons, A-Rod said, "I want to do things to influence children and realize they should learn from my mistake ... [it's] the biggest regret I have in my life because baseball's given me everything."

Everything from all the money you could possibly need to world-class fame to Madonna. Some "mistake."

Violence-Mexico's Newest Export to the US

“…States actually are institutions that create conflicts and then present themselves as the solution to a problem that they themselves have created in the first place.”  Hans Hermann Hoppe

The Examiner reports that the violence associated with the Mexican drug war is now appearing in the US. Some excerpts:

U.S. authorities are reporting a spike in killings, kidnappings and home invasions connected to Mexico's murderous cartels. And to some policymakers' surprise, much of the violence is happening not in towns along the border, where it was assumed the bloodshed would spread, but a considerable distance away, in places such as Phoenix and Atlanta...

In an apartment in Columbiana, Ala., police found five men with their throats slit in August. They had apparently been tortured with electric shocks before being killed in a murder-for-hire orchestrated by a Mexican drug organization over a drug debt of about $400,000.

In Phoenix, 150 miles north of the Mexican border, police have reported a sharp increase in kidnappings and home invasions, with about 350 each year for the last two years, and say the majority were committed at the behest of the Mexican drug gangs.

In June, heavily armed men stormed a Phoenix house and fired randomly, killing one person. Police believe it was the work of Mexican drug organizations...

El Paso, population 600,000, is only a quarter-mile away from Mexico's Ciudad Juarez, which has seen open gun battles and 1,700 murders in the last year. But El Paso remains one of America's safest cities, something Cuthbertson said is probably a result of the huge law enforcement presence in town, including thousands of Border Patrol and customs agents.

In the past year, more than 5,000 people have been killed across Mexico in a power struggle among Mexico's drug cartels and ferocious fighting between them and the Mexican government. The cartels have established operations in at least 230 U.S. cities, according to the Justice Department's National Drug Intelligence Center.

Keep in mind that all of this violence, corruption, death, pain, suffering, and mayhem from which the State claims to protect us is solely due to the State's drug laws which ban the importation and possession of plants it has not approved.

Even Libertarians Need to Vent

I loved this post by Karen DeCoster over at LRC blog on the Phelps' marijuana pictures. Here's the entire post:

Now that Kellogg's has dumped Phelps, I expect the domino effect. USA Swimming also banned him from competing for three months, knocking him out of the Grand Prix event in Texas in March.

The response to this matter shows us much about the level of intelligence and character of people in America. The horrified response from the media, and people in general, is yet another fine example of the wussified wimps that people have become. No one ever stops to question how it is that marijuana became illegal while much more potent drugs - nicotine and alcohol (and rubber-stamped prescription drugs) - are entirely legal. Going further, no one questions why any of these things should be deemed illegal. That's because they don't want to know the truth behind America's drug war policy. They don't want to think through it and formulate some common-sense conclusions. They don't want to follow the money trail or understand the power and control aspect of government drug policy. They have no problems with the corporatist pharmaceutical companies pushing their drug-addiction lifestyle on hapless, Boobus Americanus types (and on TV nonetheless), but they are horrified(!) by a star athlete taking a hit from a bong. People continue to be pantywaist cupcakes who always live up to the expectation that they will follow behind the tide of trained monkeys and denounce that which they are expected to denounce simply because it has been pronounced "illegal" or "bad" or objectionable. How can anyone possibly believe that smoking tobacco, an agricultural product from the leaves of plants, is any more justifiable than smoking marijuana, which comes from a plant?

In addition, American adults are perfectly accepting of having their normal kids put on Big Pharma's potent, mind-altering, psychiatric drugs, but they are horrified by an exceptional adult athlete - or anyone else - who voluntarily puffs on a measly joint. The categorization of pot smokers as trouble-making, ne'er-do-well, societal misfits is a most disturbing portrait painted by decades of government propaganda justifying its fraudulent and violent drug wars and the placing of peaceful people in cages, like animals, for the "crime" of using (or selling) a drug that has not been approved for general use by the chain of power cascading on down from the gang of monopolists in Washington D.C.

Want to Give Kellogg's a Piece of Your Mind?

Via Chris Brunner at the LRC blog, here is contact information for Kellogg's chief marketing officer Mark Baynes, whom you can write or call to protest the company's decision to dump Michael Phelps for smoking pot.

Mark Baynes
Chief Marketing Officer
+1.269.961.2561
mark.baynes@kellogg.com

Kellogg Company
1 Kellogg Sq
Battle Creek, MI 49016-3599

Other sponsors such as Visa and Speedo have stuck by their man even if sharing disclaimers indicating that they do not necessarily condone Phelps's choice to smoke pot. However, considering almost half the people in the U.S. have tried marijuana at least once and 80 percent of Americans support the legal use of medical marijuana, Kellogg's has essentially traded its support of Michael Phelps for its support of the obscene "war on drugs."

Kellogg's Dumps Phelps

Kellogg's has decided not to renew its sponsorship contract with Michael Phelps after the swimmer was photographed doing a bong hit.

Corporate decisions are made based on how they affect the bottom line, and in the case of Kellogg's it's obvious that management believes continued sponsorship of Phelps would drive more consumers away from its product than it would attract. Their team, their rules.

I've never been much of a "boycotter," inasmuch as I get too fired up about the political positions or voting habits of people who run the companies that make products I like. After all, look at me. If I shunned everyone who didn't buy into my own personal views, I'd probably have to walk to work naked on an empty stomach everyday. And by "work" I most likely mean standing in the middle of the street begging for money.

Considering the widespread acceptance of the putrid drug war, I'm guessing Kellogg's made the right call from a corporate perspective. So this time around, something tells me I'll rather enjoy doing everything I can to convince them they didn't.

Sodomized by the State

Literally.

Baltimore resident Daryl A. Martin has filed a $210 million civil suit against the city's police department for its actions during an incident in 2006 in which he was probed for drugs in front of about 30 onlookers. Or as defense attorneys like to call them: witnesses.

"To the Plaintiff's complete and utter horror, in broad daylight and in the presence [of] the gathered crowd, Moss forced a gloved finger into the Plaintiff's rectum," found nothing, then threw the glove to the ground, the court document states. Shortly thereafter, with no explanation, the officers "sped away."

Talk about your ass-inine war on drugs.

What Michael Phelps Should Have Said

This is about as spot on as you can get, courtesy Radley Balko.

(Via Geoffrey Allan Plauche)

If You Learn to Think Like a Gangster...

You will be able to predict what the State will do. Let's take the movie Lethal Weapon as an example. In one scene Riggs and Murtaugh question Michael Hunsaker about his daughter's death. Hunsaker is the money laundryman for Shadow Company, a band of heroin dealers. The leader of Shadow Company, Peter McAllister, ordered Michael's daughter killed because Michael was having second thoughts about current occupation. While Riggs and Murtuagh are questioning Hunsaker, Mr. Joshua, another member of Shadow Company, assassinates Hunsaker. McAllister does not know how much information Hunsaker told Riggs and Murtuagh, so he has Riggs shot (Riggs does not die, of course). He then kidnaps Murtuagh's oldest daughter to compel Murtuagh to talk.

We can find such plot devices in numerous gangster movies; the Lethal Weapon plot was just the most fresh in my mind. Our government, being the ultimate gang of criminals, also uses such tactics as described by J. D. Tuccille at the Examiner blog. Barry Bonds's trainer, Greg Anderson, has refused to talk to the Feds and has been in jail for over a year. In a effort to get him to talk, IRS and FBI agents raided the home of Anderson's mother-in-law, Madeline Gestas. After the raid, Anderson's attorney, Mark Geragos, commented,

"Monday they faxed a letter, demanding to know whether [Anderson] was going to testify...They’re acting like the Gestapo. Even the Mafia spares the women and children.”

Hell hath no fury like a government agent scorned.

If you want to understand the actions of the State, simply imagine that you are Alonzo from Training Day with even less moral scruples. I have found that this works about 99.9% percent of the time.

Michael Phelps Could've Been High Times Man of the Year

Apparently it's hard to hit the bong when you're a world-famous athlete. Olympic champion Michael Phelps was photographed by a British newspaper while he was inhaling the happy grass and has since offered the standard apology one has come to expect whenever celebrities are caught engaging in behavior that's taboo.

"I engaged in behavior which was regrettable and demonstrated bad judgment," Phelps said in the statement released by one of his agents. "I'm 23 years old and despite the successes I've had in the pool, I acted in a youthful and inappropriate way, not in a manner people have come to expect from me. For this, I am sorry. I promise my fans and the public it will not happen again."

Michael Phelps has nothing to apologize for and it's a shame that he did, given his widespread popularity. Considering the potential for prosecution (though unlikely) and the loss of millions of dollars in endorsement deals, Phelps's decision to kowtow to public pressure was the most likely, if unfortunate, scenario. However, one Michael Phelps standing up to the sophomoric critics of nonviolent behavior would probably do more to advance the cause of freedom than a hundred libertarian bloggers ever could.

After all, if high end watch manufacturers and credit card companies decide to bail on their man, I'm sure NORML would love to pick up Phelps as a spokesperson.

Just Another 'Happy Little Accident'

If you didn't know better, you'd think police departments were headed by incarnations of Bob Ross. Drug raids, especially those of the wrong door variety, obviously aren't perceived by the state and its cronies as activities that consistently put the lives of innocent human beings at risk.

Consider the flip attitude of Gwinnett County (Ga.) police spokesman John Bankhead in response to a botched no-knock raid that terrorized the family of a young woman while she was at work (i.e., raising tax revenue for the state so it can afford to pay thugs to trespass on her property).

“We are doing a complete review of what happened,” Bankhead said. “We will make corrections about procedures and will do additional training if necessary.”

Yeah, that oughta help. Plenty of consolation for the attempted murder of five people, including an infant baby.

(Thanks to Ron Holt for the story)

The Persecution of Terry Clarke

Last week I wrote about a legal battle being fought by Terry Clarke, a Southern Maryland business owner who was arrested last April for firing a rifle in the direction of three men who were hunting by a pond near his house.

Instead of simply charging Mr. Clarke with assault, the state put the thumbscrews to this man by exploiting a drug conviction Clarke received back in 1987 and, because conviced felons cannot legally own firearms, subsequently ran up a litany of weapons charges as well. Facing 41 counts of assault and weapons charges, Clarke was offered a plea deal last week by state prosecutors that could, absurdly, still land him in prison for up to 75 years. I learned yesterday that Clarke decided to accept the deal and plead guilty, hoping the judge will show mercy given that he harmed no one during this incident.

Before I continue, I want to point out that up to this point I've assumed that the three hunters were trespassing on Clarke's property. The report last April mentioned that the incident occurred at a "pond outside his house," but the state alleges the land does not belong to Mr. Clarke. This is irrelevant in any case because it is illegal to initiate violence against someone else even if they're on your property, and it's legal to defend yourself against threats or acts of violence even if you're not on your own property.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm an acquaintance of Terry Clarke's. I don't know him well but as he's the owner of arguably the most popular bar in Southern Maryland, I've spoken with him on several occasions and consider him to be a very cordial and humble person. Therefore, when I first heard of this incident I had a hard time believing this guy would just starting ringing off rounds at people for no apparent reason. Well, a conversation I had yesterday with Clarke's close friend and employee put everything in much better perspective.

According to Clarke, the hunters actually hit his house with buckshot. I have no reason to believe this was done intentionally, but Clarke apparently went outside to tell the men to leave so it wouldn't happen again. When they didn't leave, he shot at some ducks about 40 yards away from the hunters and said something to the effect of, "There, now you have nothing to shoot." It was at this point that the men left and called police, telling them they were shot at.

If this explanation of events is accurate, it is ridiculous that Mr. Clarke was charged with first-degree assault in the first place, as it would be clear that he didn't shoot "at" anyone. Of course, given that we know how much effort the police here in our neck of the woods put into investigating alleged crimes, it comes as no surprise to me that they would simply take the hunters' word alone and immediately charge Clarke, leaving him to deal with the legalities of the matter.

But police couldn't just stop there once they realized Clarke was imprisoned over two decades ago on a cocaine charge. Instead, they tacked 34 weapons charges onto initial charges of assault after confiscating other guns from Clarke's house. Even though none of the weapons was used in this alleged assault. Even though Clarke was originally convicted of a nonviolent offense.

It's tyrannical enough that the state prevents nonviolent felons from protecting themselves for the rest of their lives using the most efficient means known to man; it's outright unconscionable that the state of Maryland is seeking to put Mr. Clarke behind bars for the rest of his life on charges that have nothing to with the case at hand, and despite the fact that Clarke harmed no one (!). The putrid "war on drugs" is about to claim the life of another man by essentially forcing Clarke to pay once again for a crime whose sentence has already been served.

To give you an idea of how despicable these charges against Clarke really are, consider the fact that even if he had accidentally killed one of the hunters absent a prior drug conviction, he'd probably only be looking at five to ten years with the very real probability of serving only a couple.

Plea deals might be great if the police are dealing with guilty suspects because they ensure that actual criminals will pay in at least some capacity for their crimes. But as I mentioned in last week's post, the state's game centers around trumping up charges as much as possible with the intent to get defendants to plead out -- regardless of innocence or guilt. Despite what anyone tells you, cops and prosecutors don't give a hoot whether you're innocent or guilty. Contrary to every sense of justice, their merit is judged by the convictions they obtain.

There is no "right" choice in a plea arrangement if you're innocent. If you decide to take your chances with a jury, you might be acquitted, but there's a very real possibility the state will prevail. After all, they will lie and cheat in the attempt to get their almighty conviction. On the other hand, if you decide to take the plea, as Terry Clarke has, you are compelled to admit guilt, in which case attempting to convince a judge of your innocence is futile.

Under such circumstances Mr. Clarke's guilty plea hardly "proves" his guilt; it merely proves that the state has succeeded in getting a man to surrender in a no-win situation. Even if Clarke were guilty of assaulting the hunters, it is not immoral to merely possess weapons that have not been used to cause tangible harm to someone else -- no matter what the state and its laws claim. In a just society, crimes are only committed when one intentionally initiates violence against someone else's person or property.

Coincidentally, I'd also like to point out that Clarke has appealed to both the St. Mary's and Calvert County sheriffs, whom he has supported while in office and also during their respective campaigns. Both have refused to vouch for Clarke's character in court by saying that such a measure would be "too political." So there you have it, folks. If the head of a police force doesn't care to speak out in support of justice for someone who's actually backed him financially and in the voting booth, do you really think he cares about anyone else?

In closing, I'll leave you with a story about Terry Clarke and his business partner, Pat Donovan, as relayed by a friend this morning.

Last summer, Terry and Pat were approached by a local Calvert County deputy, who was also a member of the Fraternal Order of Police. A fellow officer was paralyzed during an accident involving his police cruiser and would never walk again.

The FOP wanted to have a fundraiser for the officer and his family, and the organization hoped to raise money to help purchase a handicapped-accessible van. Terry and Pat not only sponsored the benefit at their bar with all the officers, but they also purchased the van for the injured officer. 

During the benefit, both Terry and Pat asked not to be mentioned as the ones who bought the van. They just wanted the benefit to be about the injured officer. This gesture meant the world to the injured officer and his family, but to Terry and Pat, it was just another way to help someone in need.

Even if you don't know Terry Clarke, maybe you know someone who's been through a similar ordeal. Or you realize that the state disguises persecution under a cloak of "justice" every day, and you could be next.

Whatever the case, Mr. Clarke is now the one in need of some help. You can call the St. Mary's County state's attorney's office at 301-475-4590 if you'd like to tell them he deserves leniency from the judge.

No 'Change' to Evil Drug War under Prophet Obama

I must be tripping because I could've sworn federal DEA agents conducted violent raids on nonviolent marijuana businessmen during the eight blissful years of the Bush administration.

Apparently not, however, because I just read that Obama's drug enforcement agency has raided a medical marijuana dispensary in California, where such shops are legal under state law, in order to prevent peaceful, voluntary trade between entrepreneurs and customers expressing personal choices in pain relief.

I'm overcome with all this "Change!"

The War on Drugs: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

Last April I wrote about the arrest of Terry Clarke, an owner of the Tiki Bar in Solomons, Maryland who was arrested on 41 counts of assault and weapons charges for shooting a rifle in the direction of three hunters trespassing on his property.

Yesterday the state of Maryland offered Clarke a plea deal that could still result in 75 years (!) in prison. (For these charges, you'd think he was actually accused of shooting at an almighty police officer!)

A copy of the agreement filed in court lists the maximum penalties that could be imposed for three counts of second-degree assault, a single count of reckless endangerment and eight weapons violations, and states that three counts of first-degree assault and 26 more weapons charges in the indictment would be dismissed.

This is how the criminal state works. Prosecutors trump up as many charges as possible to intimidate defendants in the chance that they'll plead guilty to lesser charges. This allows the state to boast its "leniency" even as it knows innocent suspects willingly accept prison sentences in hope of avoiding a life behind bars for crimes they didn't commit.

I'm not necessarily suggesting Clarke shouldn't pay a penalty for his actions if, in fact, he violently threatened people who were not threatening him. Even in a stateless society, it would be immoral to threaten lethal force against someone who does not initiate violence. If it weren't, there would be a lot more reports of girl scouts and vacuum cleaner salesmen being shot on people's doorsteps.

In short, one cannot do tangible harm to someone else simply by walking onto his property and ringing a doorbell. Similarly, even if the three hunters trespassing on Clarke's property did so knowingly but in the process neither threatened nor caused harm to Clarke himself, Clarke would not have been justified in initiating violent measures to get them to leave (if this is indeed what transpired). In contrast, Clarke certainly had the right to order trespassers off his property, and if they had failed to leave, that in itself justifiably could have been viewed as a threat of violence against Clarke. Moreover, Clarke also could have been entitled to damages if the hunters shot wildlife on his property without permission.

Unfortunately, however, these details essentially are neither here nor there. Clarke is being run through the mill by the state for the supposed "crime" of possessing illegal firearms as a result of a prior felony conviction. To wit:

The indictment filed last spring by grand jurors alleged that Clarke, now 45, illegally possessed the rifle – along with an Israel Military Industries model UZI B 9mm rifle, a .44-caliber Desert Eagle handgun, an IMBEL .45-caliber handgun, a Kel-tec CNC Industries sub-2000 9mm rifle and four shotguns — after being convicted of a felony narcotics trafficking offense.

The indictment accused Clarke of unlawfully receiving ammunition clips, participating in illegal weapons transactions, and participating in a ‘‘straw purchase" of four of the weapons, a term commonly referring to a gun sale to a third person on behalf of someone who cannot legally own a firearm.

In reality, Clarke probably should be happy he isn't also facing federal "racketeering" charges -- bogus crimes alleged by the government in order to punish mere behavior (such as paying a third party to obtain goods the state deems illegal).

But as for the matter at hand, the state of Maryland isn't even really going after Clarke for his alleged assault -- the plea offer eliminates charges of first degree assault, which under Maryland law means that a person has caused or attempted to cause "serious physical injury" to another. Absurdly, prosecutors are trying to lock this man away primarily on charges associated with a nonviolent drug conviction over two decades ago.

In any just society, the accused would only stand trial or pay reparations for acts or threats of tangible harm to others. In the case of Clarke's alleged assault, if he wanted to avoid trial or even admit to mishandling a rifle, he would in all likelihood be able to pay the men to settle the issue and that would be that. That's what should happen if indeed one violates the rights of another. Locking someone up in a cell and forcing taxpayers to foot the bills to house and feed people who are either innocent or simply guilty of making a stupid decision accomplishes nothing.

Keep in mind that Terry Clarke caused no tangible harm to any of the three men hunting on his property. Also consider the fact that charging papers state that the rounds he discharged landed a full 40 yards from the hunters. Clarke's insistence that he was shooting at birds to scare them away from the hunters seems just as plausible as the hunters' contention that Clarke was shooting at them.

At most, Clarke should be facing three counts of assault and a reckless endangerment charge, and given the specifics of the case it would be foolish to assume that prosecutors could automatically obtain a jury conviction. But of course the state knows this, so it has also exploited immoral drug laws just to increase its chances of getting its man. There's the state's idea of justice for you!

I'd love to see Clarke tell prosecutors to stick it on principle alone, but you could hardly fault him for succumbing to the state's iron fist in hope of eluding a prison sentence that could find him confined to a government cage for the rest of his life. However, if I were looking at a possibility of 75 years even with a plea, I think I'd rather take my chances that a jury wouldn't punish me nearly as severely as a judge would in the event I were compelled to admit guilt.

I don't know whether Terry Clarke actually assaulted those hunters or not, but one thing is clear regardless: He couldn't possibly have acted as criminally as the state is right now in its efforts to convict him.

Your Weekend Vice Crackdown Roundup

The state's war on vices continues apace:

- Police in Mississippi kidnap two children from the home of 27-year-old entrepreneur Leonard Roosevelt Buckley.

- From the "cops are allowed to buy drugs but you're not" file: a man and pregnant woman were arrested in East St. Louis yesterday for engaging in non-violent free trade with consenting adults.

- Two people arrested in Arkansas for non-violently serving the needs of their customers.

The gang of thieves known as the state will do anything to prevent us from evading its extortion payments it likes to call taxes. It will stalk, rob, and kill us for having the audacity to try to make a living without submitting to its coercive mandates -- even if in the process that means murdering other people by mistake (for which, of course, it is almost never held accountable, even when the police have been caught in lies and cover-ups after the fact).

And then, to add insult to injury, it honors and rewards its own criminal behavior when its victims attempt to protect themselves from its violence.

The Supreme Court Hearts the Police State

This post is dedicated to all you conservatives out there who actually believe your Roberts-led Supreme Court majority will "restore" rights abducted by liberals, or even preserve individual liberties that, quite literally, are fleeting by the year. (Hint: The high court will never overturn Roe v. Wade.)

Rights to life, liberty, and property are not "granted" by any government. They simply exist naturally and ubiquitously. They are your rights no matter what. Therefore, governments can merely suppress them. Unlike the burglar who steals your wallet, the state can't even "give back" your rights after it's "stolen" them; these rights are still in your possession even if the state and its jackbooted thugs initiate limitless violence to prevent you from expressing them.

Case in point: Yesterday's appalling Supreme Court decision to allow evidence collected by police during an unlawful arrest to be used against a defendant. According to USA Today's Joan Biskupic:

When police mistakes that lead to an unlawful search arise from "negligence … rather than systematic error or reckless disregard of constitutional requirements," evidence need not be kept from trial, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the 5-4 majority in the case from Alabama.

He was joined by the four other conservative justices: Antonin Scalia, Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.

The four liberal justices — Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Paul Stevens, David Souter and Stephen Breyer — dissented. They said that because the search violated the Fourth Amendment's protection against unreasonable searches and seizures, the evidence should have been excluded. "The most serious impact of the court's holding will be on innocent persons wrongfully arrested based on erroneous information carelessly maintained in a computer database," Ginsburg wrote for the dissenters.

I'm the first to admit there's not much to like about any of the robed totalitarians who sit on the Supreme Court, but Ginsburg hits this one on the head given the specifics of the case, which Biskupic explains thusly:

A warrant clerk in Coffee County, Ala., mistakenly told a police investigator that a warrant from a nearby county was out for Bennie Dean Herring, who had driven to the Coffee County Sheriff's Department to get something from his impounded truck. The Dale County computer error was quickly discovered. But by the time the warrant clerk alerted the police investigator, Herring had been arrested and found with an illegal pistol and with methamphetamine in his pocket.

Given the fact that police didn't even have a valid warrant to search Herring in the first place, they most certainly didn't have a warrant to search for guns or drugs. What's more, this search wasn't even conducted by federal investigators; Herring was searched by county police and only then indicted on federal gun and drug possession charges, which ultimately accounted for his case being heard by the Supreme Court.

Worst of all, even though the feds are well on their way to controlling everthing we do by turning just about any behavior they disapprove of into a federal crime, this ruling could very well be enforced against every state in the union via the putrid incorporation doctrine. Yay, freedom!

No doubt there are conservatives and liberals alike who cheer this decision, if only in support of the evil drug war. However, despite immoral laws and tyrannical politicians and prosecutors, each of us has the right to do what we like with our property so long as we do no tangible harm to anyone else -- and that includes the right to pollute our own bodies with drugs or carry firearms down the street.

Instead of upholding the natural rights of all citizens, the Supreme Court has violated them once again -- and in the process rewarded police negligence, which will result in more and more sanctioned abuse of the innocent at the hands of the state. And to take Justice Ginsberg's admonition a step further, such abuses won't merely be restricted to computer glitches and to innocents who've already been arrested; warrants will now essentially be meaningless, as they will be written narrowly and applied broadly as police will have license to search for anything and everything once they've gained legal access to your home. Indeed, what few protections the Constitution originally afforded are long, long gone.

This case was a no-brainer for anyone willing to apply a literal interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, which requires police to obtain, via probable cause, a warrant for any person or thing that is to be searched or seized. It does not give police the right to seize any property they just happen to stumble upon while searching for someone or something else.

Well, until yesterday anyway.

More Change We Can Believe In

Just kidding, of course. Here the Obama regime's prospective surgeon general speaks out against marijuana legalization.

How very "liberal" and "progressive" of the newbies. And different from current policy, I might add.

What a joke. 

An Example of the State's Protection Racket

Yahoo! reports that an anti-kidnap expert has been kidnapped in Mexico. Officials believe the kidnapping is an attempt by organized crime to show its power. I think that there are two important quotes which demonstrate that the State is essentially an anti-social institution which creates the very insecurity it claims to stabilize.

The first:

Hundreds of people are kidnapped in Mexico every year and the number of victims has increased sharply as drug gangs, under pressure from President Felipe Calderon's army-backed crackdown, seek new revenues to fund their operations.

The second:

More than 5,300 people have been killed in drug violence across Mexico this year as cartels fight each other over smuggling routes to the United States and clash with Mexican security forces seeking to restore security.

The Mexican State, under pressure from the US State, has outlawed certain drugs and created a black market. Both States have initiated violence against people who would otherwise be engaged in free trade. There are very high profits to be made in these black markets; thus, entrepreneurs enter the market to provide these goods. To succeed in this market, however, a different set of skills is required than those in legal markets. Since disputes cannot be arbitrated legally, they are settled with violence. Moreover, one must also be skilled in bribery so that if he is caught by the police, he can buy his way out of trouble. Therefore, a successful drug dealer will be quite efficient at murder and bribery, and we should expect to witness a great increase in both.

Moreover, bribery leads to distrust within the very law enforcement agencies created to combat the problem. Law enforcement must then initiate violence against its own members in order to ferret out agents who are on the take.

From this example, it should be clear that the Mexican and American States are indeed the prime cause of insecurity. They create violence through their drug laws. This is how a security racket works. The racket provokes crime to create a need for its services. The worse the crime gets, the more the people believe that the money and freedoms they give up are necessary. Until the scales fall from the eyes of the people and they see the State for what it is, peace has absolutely no chance of being realized in this world.

Time to End the War on Humans and Legalize All Drugs

Police in the U.K. raided an elderly couple's house because a plant in their garden apparently smelled like cannabis.

Ivor and Margaret Wiltshire bought the 'moss phlox' four years ago for £2 and it quickly spread through their front and back garden.

But the common garden plant, Latin name Phlox subulata, which grows vivid pink flowers in the spring, gives off a pungent aroma similar to the drug.

The smell was so strong the couple's next-door neighbour was even threatened by a local drug gang who broke into their home and demanded: "Give us the weed man".

Weeks later Ivor, 77, and Margaret, 79, returned home to find the drugs squad had battered down their front door and searched their property.

The difference between being confronted by a private drug gang and those on the public dole is that you can usually hold private gang-bangers to account in a court of law.

And what if Mr. and Mrs. Wiltshire were home at the time of this immoral government invasion and actually had the audacity to defend their property with lethal force, as is their natural right? To ask this question is to answer it.

On the 75th anniversary of the 21st amendment (which repealed Prohibition as outlined in the 18th), there's no better time to finish the job and end the evil war on humans in the name of plants by legalizing all drugs.

Abolish Government Police

Before they kill us all.

Thankfully, a potentially deadly situation in southern Maryland was averted this week when the state's attorney called off a state police SWAT team before it killed another civilian who was threatening or harming no one.

The nutshell: A woman allegedly calls police around 10:00 p.m. saying her son has been shot somewhere in the vicinity of her house. Police arrive at the house and see a woman alone holding a weapon. Police doubt the "viability of the call" based on the woman's behavior but nevertheless proceed to erect a barricade around the property and evacuate nearby homes. Maryland State Police Special Tactical Assault Team Element (S.T.A.T.E.) "was to arrive on the scene at about 11:50 p.m."

S.T.A.T.E. is synonymous with SWAT, but you have to love the sheer audacity on display here. I guess "SWAT" just doesn't adequately convey the feeling that the government is ubiquitous, ready to meddle in virtually every aspect of our lives.

It's unclear in the report whether or not the police paramilitary unit made it to the scene before the state's attorney called off this standoff on grounds that there was no crime, but it really makes one wonder what little it takes these days before police reflexively dispatch their SWAT teams.

Even if you believe the state should have a monopoly on policing, SWAT units are only warranted under extreme circumstances like hostage or fugitive situations, or under similar circumstances where there is an immediate threat to innocent life -- like when a gunman takes up position on a roof across from an elementary school. In other words, the SWAT team itself should not be the primary threat when it arrives on the scene.

For all the terrible decisions made by government law enforcement agents, the state's attorney clearly made the right call during this incident. Unfortunately, however, it's highly likely that he only rendered this judgment due to eerily similar events two years ago this month, when Maryland state and local police murdered Jamie Dean after needlessly escalating a standoff to the point where they could justify shooting an innocent man.

Thanks primarily to the "war on drugs" and the arrival of "homeland security" departments across the country after 9/11, the number of paramilitary police units has not only risen dramatically across the U.S. since the 1980s, but they have been called upon much more frequently in recent years. And instead of being used to protect civilians, they are today being used primarily on civilians.

As the fallout from the tragic Dean episode and this past summer's unprovoked attack on Berwyn Heights mayor Cheye Calvo indicates, public police agencies are almost never held accountable for immoral, unilateral, violent attacks on their innocent, nonviolent targets.

Until Americans rid themselves of the statist parasites known as government police and instead take responsibility for protecting themselves by either acquiring arms or hiring private security firms that actually have an incentive to keep their customers alive, innocent civilians will continue to find themselves enemies of the state.

Cory Maye, Cont. (On Apologies, and More)

I'd like to revisit my post on the Bush pardons for a minute and reiterate my apologies for neglecting to realize that the president couldn't legally pardon Cory Maye even if he wanted to. As reason magazine's Radley Balko kindly pointed out, presidents are constitutionally permitted pardon authority only for federal crimes. Therefore, because Maye was tried and convicted in a Mississippi state court, he could only be pardoned by Gov. Haley Barbour.

And while I'm enjoying this plate of crow, I might as well apologize to reader David for the title of my original post, which reads "Bush Pardons Cory Maye." David read this at my Examiner blog and wrote to tell me that while he agreed with my sentiments, he didn't appreciate the misleading title of the post. In fact, he said he actually shouted in celebration when he read it, thinking that Maye had indeed been freed, and then he admonished me for using the headline as some sort of "stunt."

I've already personally replied to David, but I will reiterate here that while I apologize that he took offense to the title, I do not regret using it. For one thing, this was a blog post, not a news headline. As far as I know, I'm under no obligation at the Examiner to write dryly or elicit no emotional reaction from readers. In fact, the entire point of creative writing is to grab and hold the reader's attention, and I freely admit that my objective was to get viewers to 1) notice the post, at which point they would either learn or be reminded of the plight of Cory Maye, and 2) to get upset when they realized Cory Maye is behind bars for protecting himself and his little girl from home invaders. So if that means a few readers have to get mad at me to likewise take offense at such a horrible injustice, I think that's a small price to pay. Indeed, I trust David will appreciate, or at least understand, my motives once he reads my explanation.

Now, as for my mistake itself, I'm obviously embarrassed that I made it. Credibility is everything in writing, and it's unfortunate that I stumbled on something as fundamental as the concept of federalism. However, I'm sure I'm not the only writer out there who's ever had a "D'oh!" moment, and considering the fact that Cory Maye was rounded up and incarcerated courtesy of the war on drugs -- all sorts of federal funding, policies, and mandates are unconstitutionally conveyed to the states in the process of waging it -- it isn't too difficult to infer, if mistakenly, some presidential authority over the victims.

Which gets me thinking: Even though extraconstitutionality is the order of the day, and it clearly isn't logically appropriate to argue the acceptability of presidential abuse of authority simply on grounds that sometimes it could be used for "good" when it's so frequently used for evil, why isn't it incumbent upon a president to free those who have been unjustly robbed of their liberty as a direct result of his policy?

Moreover, given that I oppose the state in its entirety in the first place, does federalism necessarily trump our natural right to be free of immoral imprisonment? Cory Maye, among hundreds of thousands of others today who are incarcerated for victimless crimes, is in prison because the federal government has dismantled the Constitution for decades precisely to increase its control over the rest of us.

If the feds can immorally beat, torture, and even kill us despite our supposed constitutional protections against abuses of authority, it would make little sense to argue that they have no moral obligation to reverse such injustice. As far as the libertarian is concerned, the apparatus of the state and its attendant man-made laws are superseded by natural rights and moral law, which are imperative to any free society.

Bush Pardons Cory Maye

Just kidding. Cory Maye, perhaps the country's most unfortunate living innocent victim of the government's criminally inept, violent, and unacceptable war on drugs, still faces life behind bars for justifiably killing a police officer during a raid on his house in the middle of the night in 2001.

President Bush deserves credit for his latest round of pardons, and especially for freeing those convicted of victimless crimes. But while this list of 16 lucky individuals is far too short -- there are hundreds of thousands of nonviolent drug offenders in prison today who should similarly be freed -- it is a travesty that Maye did not make the cut.

There's little reason not to believe Cory Maye when he says he thought the police officers trespassing on his property were random criminals, but it's irrelevant even if he did know they were cops. Everyone has a moral right to protect himself and his family from armed thugs breaking into his home with guns drawn, even if the intruders have state-issued costumes, badges, and firearms.

UPDATE: Thanks to Radley Balko for writing to correct something I overlooked entirely:

While I of course agree with your sentiment, I'm fairly certain that Bush doesn't have the power to pardon Cory Maye.  The president can only pardon people convicted of federal crimes.  Maye was convicted in state court, so the pardon would have to come from Haley Barbour.

I regret the error.

How Eric Holder Could Really Make History

With Eric Holder's conditional acceptance of Barack Obama's offer to serve as the country's top law enforcement official, there predictably has been a lot of celebration over what would be an historic appointment of the U.S.'s first black attorney general.

Aside from elections and political appointments, though, the United States made history earlier this year when it was reported that it leads the world in manufacturing prisoners -- in terms of both the absolute number of incarcerations and percentage of population.

With nearly half a million people imprisoned over nonviolent drug crimes -- blacks make up more than half of those convicted on drug offenses -- if Holder truly wants to make history, he should, upon assuming his post, immediately recommend the presidential pardon of every single inmate who has fallen victim to the federal war on drugs.

High Crimes

I don't know about you, but I sure feel safer knowing that Maryland police have arrested Brett Evan Ward, a nonviolent enemy of the state charged with the high "crime" of engaging in voluntary trade between consenting adults.

Officers recovered 3.61 pounds of marijuana, $1,310 in currency and four vehicles.  The marijuana has an estimated street value of $10 thousand.  Also recovered were numerous smoking devices, a scale and empty zip-loc bags. 

Officers did not "recover" Ward's plants, money, and vehicles. They seized them. Confiscated them. Robbed him.

If it isn't bad enough that Maryland's totalitarians make the possession and sale of a plant a crime, they also assume the right to steal any other property you might have within eyeshot of the contraband.

Land of the free, baby. Land of the free!

Meet Your New VP

You're not actually staying up to watch the vote count, are you?

Here's a look at some of the damage Joe Biden's done in the past couple decades, courtesy of Radley Balko. Yeah, this stuff became law as a result of his work in the Senate, but don't expect to recover freedom lost while he's rubbing elbows with Our Holy Savior in the White House.

Biden has sponsored more damaging drug war legislation than any Democrat in Congress. Hate the way federal prosecutors use RICO laws to take aim at drug offenders? Thank Biden. How about the abomination that is federal asset forfeiture laws? Thank Biden. Think federal prosecutors have too much power in drug cases? Thank Biden. Think the title of a “Drug Czar” is sanctimonious and silly? Thank Biden, who helped create the position (and still considers it an accomplishment worth boasting about). Tired of the ridiculous steroids hearings in Congress? Thank Biden, who led the effort to make steroids a Schedule 3 drug, and has been among the blowhardiest of the blowhards when it comes to sports and performance enhancing drugs. Biden voted in favor of using international development aid for drug control (think plan Columbia, plan Afghanistan, and other meddling anti-drug efforts that have only fostered loathing of America, backlash, and unintended consequences). Oh, and he was also the chief sponsor of 2004’s horrendous RAVE Act.

What? Sorry, I'm bored! I can't believe the networks actually preempt shows like House to cover this election crap.

NYPD: Criminal 'Crime-Fighters'

A gang of cops allegedly attacked and sodomized a Brooklyn man for allegedly smoking a joint in a subway station.

[Michael] Mineo was walking from his home to the Prospect Park subway station on Empire Boulevard at Flatbush Avenue at about 2 p.m. on Oct. 15 when two uniformed officers spotted him allegedly smoking a joint.

They chased him into the station, and at some point, Mineo allegedly swallowed the marijuana. Five cops tackled him near a token booth, where they beat him and stood on his neck, said [Mineo's attorney Stephen] Jackson and the law-enforcement sources.

One officer then allegedly pulled Mineo's pants down and shoved a police radio's antenna into his rectum.

The cops then hauled a bleeding Mineo into a police car and issued him a desk-appearance ticket before cutting him loose, Jackson said.

They also warned him not to report the incident or they would upgrade his charge to a felony, according to the attorney.

Jackson said his client heard one of the officers yell, "No! Don't do it!" as his pants were being pulled down. His roommate and co-worker, Jason Amolsch, found him yelling that the "cops violated him."

The report notes that this alleged assault is reminiscent of the 1997 police assault on Abner Louima, but whereas Louima was black and his attackers white, Mineo is white and his alleged attackers white, black, and Hispanic.

This difference, however, is largely irrelevant. While there undoubtedly may be racially-motivated attacks by police, much more dangerous is the monopoly on the use of force every single one of them, regardless of race, wields over the rest of us.

It's pretty clear our PC police state has merely given us the pleasure of being beaten by a more colorful contingent of government thugs.

(Via Anthony Gregory)

13-Year-Old Busted for Taking Medical Marijuana to School

Hey, if you're gonna get suspended for having aspirin or broken pencil sharpeners in school, you might as well go whole hog!

Sadly, no doubt the neoprohibitionists will seize on this episode as yet further proof that we need to outlaw the evil, evil plant even when used for legal pain relief. 

John Edison, Jr: Poster Child for Maryland Tyranny

After a month of being blown off by the state of Maryland and forced to languish in a government cage while awaiting continuation of an initial hearing to have his rape case heard in a juvenile court, 16-year-old John Edison, Jr. was officially denied his request to be tried as a minor for the alleged rape of a 12-year-old girl.

St. Mary's Circuit Judge Marvin Kaminetz heard two days of testimony about John K. Edison Jr. before ruling that the case should proceed ahead, out of concern for the public's safety.

"The court does consider this against tipping the scale in favor of the defendant," the active retired judge said, noting the administrative handling of two prior assault allegations against the boy, including one where an "authority figure" in the county's school system was the victim.

Edison's arrest last July on the rape charge expanded that pattern, the judge said.

"It's more aggressive behavior, antisocial, scary to the public," Kaminetz said. "I do consider him to be a danger to the public. That tips the scale in favor of the state."

Apparently allegations are now considered proof of guilt in this wonderful American justice system of ours.

Not only has Edison been confined in an adult jail without bond since July 5 on nothing more than a young girl's accusation of rape, but now the state of Maryland is also justifying his trial as an adult by holding previous assault allegations -- not convictions, mind you -- against him.

What's worse, Judge Kaminetz entirely ignored the medical examiner's report that there was no physical evidence found on the girl to suggest she was the victim of a violent physical or sexual assault.

Dr. Pieter Esterhay from the emergency room at St. Mary's Hospital in Leonardtown testified that a listing of the girl as a victim of a sexual assault was based solely on the patient's allegation that it occurred.

Kaminetz said he would not consider the hospital's listing of the sexual assault claim in his decision, and said that he concurred that Edison could be amenable to treatment.

This is sheer insanity. "We've got the robes and the guns," the state seems to be saying loud and clear, "and we don't give a damn what the evidence shows, even if there's virtually none to speak of. We've decided you're guilty and that's all there is to it." This is tyranny writ large.

Even if we assume that John Edison is guilty of rape, it's difficult to explain the state's hard-on for this kid. The prosecution is painting the picture that Edison is some violent menace to society -- even though there is no medical evidence suggesting a crime even occurred, and, in fact, the medical examiner reported the girl's hymen still intact.

Even if Edison took things a little too far after he and the girl began fooling around consensually and she suddenly changed her mind, he's nevertheless being treated as if he boasts an existing criminal record for armed rape or robbery, or as if he was actually apprehended after breaking into the home of a random victim and holding her at knifepoint.

Instead of acting like adults and using even a fraction of common sense in reviewing the facts of this case, the state's lawyers and judges are falling for a story concocted by two little girls who were caught hanging out all night and into the wee hours of the next morning with older boys. I know kids have never been known to lie before, but this is absurd in the extreme and almost too ridiculous for words. The state is showing nothing but extreme prejudice against Edison.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the state recently turned up DNA evidence proving that Edison was with the 12-year-old girl, which is unsurprising given that they spent the better part of an entire day together. And no doubt the prosecution will argue that although the girl's medical exam came out negative, it still doesn't "prove" Edison didn't rape her (even though it argues that Edison committed a violent rape). But here's my question: If the medical examiner had testified that the girl's exam indicated she actually had intercourse, would the prosecution insist that that didn't necessarily indicate she'd been raped? To ask that question is to answer it, as the prosecution's job is to obtain convictions, plain and simple.

As it stands, John Edison remains imprisoned in an adult jail awaiting a December trial on charges of second-degree rape and second-degree sexual offense with a 12-year-old girl. I'm not a doctor, and I understand that in some rare cases a female's hymen can actually remain intact even if she is the victim of rape. I also realize that sexual assault can come in a variety of sickening forms -- especially where children are concerned -- and an intact hymen doesn't necessarily mean an assault didn't take place. However, the state of Maryland is arguing that Edison is guilty of a violent rape, which would almost certainly result in at least some bruising and tearing around the girl's vaginal region. And whereas I'm not a doctor, Dr. Pieter Esterhay is, and he has testified that the 12-year-old's exam revealed no indication of abuse.

Sadly, something tells me the state really won't care about this inconvenient little fact as it charges forward with its quest to demolish the life of John Edison.

The Brutality of the International War on Drugs

Alternet.org has a piece on the brutality of the drug war in Mexico and the possibility that the Mexican government may decriminalize drugs.

via Walter Block at the Mises blog.

The State Steals Children

This time because drugs apparently can jump into kids' digestive systems magically.

What's next? Confiscating our children because we're caught drinking or smoking around them? Or feeding them Twinkies?

Your Vote Matters

But not how you think, says Wilt Alston. It merely lends tacit support and approval to the greatest evil ever concocted: the State.

Whuthufu..??

Wait a second .. what the .. but I thought Bruce Ivins WAS the anthrax killer! I mean, that's what the FBI insisted as they drove the man to suicide.

I would type something along the lines of "incompetent government..," but my writing teachers always told me not to be redundant.

We're All Idiots

The cocaine stopped his heart. Yeah, the cocaine. Not the 50,000 volts of electricity running through his body. Nothing to see here. Move along.

PITTSBURGH - A Pittsburgh-area man who died shortly after being zapped with a police Taser died from cocaine intoxication that stopped his heart, and there is no evidence the electric shock contributed to his death, a medical examiner said.

Andre Thomas died about an hour after he was subdued by police in the Pittsburgh suburb of Swissvale just before midnight Aug. 4. Thomas' family contends excessive police force, including the Taser, caused or contributed to the 37-year-old man's death.

Allegheny County Medical Examiner Dr. Karl Williams announced Wednesday that he concluded Thomas "died of a direct consequence of the consumption of cocaine." Thomas' blood-pressure medicine could have contributed to the cocaine-fueled "acute delirium" that caused cardiac arrest, Williams said, but the medical examiner stopped short of listing it on the death certificate.

Come on? Can't we denigrate blood pressure medicine, too, in order to justify electrocuting human beings?

Tyrants-by-Proxy

That's exactly what we are when we empower a government to lock us in cages for carrying a dried plant in our pocket.

Well, either that or we're just self-loathing imbeciles. Or both.

Say it with me now: "Land of the free!"