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  • Breaking News: Global War on Drugs has Failed!!!

    OK. That’s not really news. But this report is kind of a big deal. So says the BBC, the “Global war on drugs has ‘failed’.” Imagine that. The panel included former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, the former presidents of Mexico, Colombia, and Brazil, the former US Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, the current Prime Minister of Greece, George Papandreou, former US Secretary of State George Schultz, and Virgin rich man Richard Branson. That’s a heavy lineup.

    The White House?

    “The White House rejected the findings, saying the report was misguided.” Thanks, Obama. Hope you enjoyed that blow when you were younger. And the fact you weren’t arrested for it.

    The BBC story is worth quoting at length:

    Their report argues that anti-drug policy has failed by fuelling organised crime, costing taxpayers millions of dollars and causing thousands of deaths.

    It cites UN estimates that opiate use increased 35% worldwide from 1998 to 2008, cocaine by 27%, and cannabis by 8.5%.

    The authors criticise governments who claim the current war on drugs is effective:

    “Political leaders and public figures should have the courage to articulate publicly what many of them acknowledge privately: that the evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that repressive strategies will not solve the drug problem, and that the war on drugs has not, and cannot, be won,” the report said.

    Instead of punishing users who the report says “do no harm to others,” the commission argues that governments should end criminalisation of drug use, experiment with legal models that would undermine organised crime syndicates and offer health and treatment services for drug-users.

    It calls for drug policies based on methods empirically proven to reduce crime and promote economic and social development.

    The commission is especially critical of the US, saying it must abandon anti-crime approaches to drug policy and adopt strategies rooted in healthcare and human rights.
    …
    The office of White House drug tsar Gil Kerlikowske rejected the panel’s recommendations.

  • Less/Fewer

    Less/Fewer

    I not a fan of arbitrary grammar rules. And now I’m going to bore you with one.

    I don’t like rules for rules’ sake (eg: split infinitives, ending sentences in preposition, etc.) Along with being based in some bizarre Latin-lover’s 19th-century wet dream, such rules get in the way of style. Rules are supposed to clarify and–to a lesser but still important extent–tell you how not to sound stupid.

    I’ve always wondered about the old less/fewer distinction. People generally say less for everything. I couldn’t figure out if it matters. As I understand it, “fewer” is for things you can count (like anything in the plural); “less” is for everything else. Fewer liberals; less intelligence. Because you can say “two liberals,” but you can’t say “two intelligence.” Yeah, “less liberal” has a different meaning that “less liberals” (when it should be fewer), but so what? There’s still no ambiguity.

    Once again, ViceMagazine comes to the rescue. And this time not with nudity and/or slutty American Apparel ads. From the ever important Department of Dos & Don’t comes this Grammar Don’t:

    Momentarily sidestepping the crotch shorts, public writing project, and twin loneliness mascots, nothing says “I know less than three black people” more than a Coors Light hat that was pre-tattered at the time of purchase.

    Really? How much dothree black people know?

  • Ribbit!

    “We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national surveillance state!” As told to us by a cartoon (“This Modern World” by Tom Tomorrow).

  • Tuesday One-Two Punch (or lash)

    The Blaze(that’s Glenn Beck)
    and Metro(that’s subway). Metro is new material.

    Oh, and there’s a third punch. Let’s call it an uppercut. The Takeaway (National Public Radio) 7:45 AM (which is really the worst possible hour of the day for me to do anything. If it were any early, I’d just stay up all night and be much happier.

  • Flogging on CNN

    I’ll be on CNN, Sunday, from 7:30 to 7:35pm (Eastern Time) with Drew Griffin. I get to sport the suit I got made for me in Thailand. I’ll probably even wear a tie. If you miss the broadcast, don’t worry, you’ll be able to see the same suit again the next time I’m on TV.

  • “You Rascal”

    “You Rascal”

    I like when Clarance Page calls me a “rascal”! He writes in the Chicago Tribune:

    When Peter Moskos’ new book landed on my desk, I wasn’t sure if it was going to be a treatise on crime and punishment or some sort of kinky sex manual.

    Its title: “In Defense of Flogging.”

    You rascal, I thought. Moskos, a former Baltimore cop who teaches law at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, knows how to catch our attention.

    It’s not giving away too much to say that Moskos doesn’t really want to bring back flogging. But he doesn’t like our correctional system, either. And as long as we insist on fooling ourselves with well-meaning fantasies like the “war on drugs,” he says, nothing is going to get better.

    There already are about 14 gazillion other books that will tell you that. So Moskos uses the horror of flogging to focus our minds on the greater horrors that have resulted from the prisons that were invented to replace the lash.
    …
    Against that backdrop, Moskos’ startling invitation to reconsider the whip, cane and cat-o’-nine-tails doesn’t sound so preposterous. At least it gets us thinking.

    Read the rest here.

  • A Barbaric Hoax?

    A Barbaric Hoax?

    Mansfield Frazier write in The Daily Beast:

    At first glace, the title of Peter Moskos’ new book, In Defense of Flogging, strikes you as a barbaric hoax being perpetrated by some sort of right-wing ideologue or kook. In fact, it initially appears to be an idea so outrageous, so provocative, as to not even rate a second thought; something to immediately be dismissed out-of-hand. Indeed, how can anyone—who considers themselves the least bit humane—even consider such an outdated form of punishment as flogging, even for the most serious and monstrous of law breakers?

    But Moskos, an assistant professor of Law, Police Science and Criminal Justice at New York’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and a former Baltimore cop to boot, is painfully serious (pun intended). And the timing for his book could not be better, considering a recent Supreme Court decision that upheld a ruling ordering California to release about 46,000 inmates in an attempt to relieve its overcrowded prisons.
    …
    Moskos writes that both ends of the political spectrum should look approvingly upon flogging as a substitute for prison. “If you’re a conservative, flogging holds appeal as efficient, cheap, and old-fashioned punishment for wrongdoing… it’s a get-tough approach… and nothing is tougher than the lash. If you’re a liberal and your goal is to punish more humanely, then you must accept that the present system is an inhumane failure.”

    In Defense of Floggingforces the reader to confront issues surrounding incarceration that most Americans would prefer not to think about. While Moskos makes a compelling moral argument for allowing those convicted of crimes to be given a choice, he might have been better served if he had made it a financial argument instead. Most American taxpayers will willingly allow someone to be flogged into insensibility if it means they’re going to save a few bucks.

    Speaking about timing, I spend about four pages in my book talking about that Sheriff Joe Arpaio, specifically how his “get-tough” policies don’t work. So that S.O.B. better not quit on me! (I do begrudgingly applaud him for at least coming up with some ideas that are liked by inmates–and yet the same ideas are often derided by liberal critics as cruel and barbaric!)

  • Corporations are people too!

    Explain something to me.

    Campaign donations aren’t supposed to buy politicians, right? Because that would be bribery. But corporations give money for “access” or some other BS like that, right? And you can’t limit the money they give to politicians, because, say the courts, corporations are people too.

    And corporations are usually legally bound to maximize profits for their shareholders, right? So any donation from corporation to politician must therefore be shown to increase the corporation’s profits. Corporations don’t spend millions on lobbyist because they want to do a public good through tax reform. So say a company gives a million dollars. Then they must get more than million dollars back in legislative action or inaction. If not, they wouldn’t be fulfilling their legal obligations to their shareholders.

    You give politicians money, they do something, and you get your money back and then some. This is just bribery, right? Except it’s legal. Hell, it’s more than legal: it’s constitutionally protected.

    I am missing something?

  • Call me old-fashioned…

    …But something always bothers me when police break down your door and kill you. Doesn’t seem necessary.

    update:

    The tactics here are terrible. Why are they standing in front of the door? I wouldn’t answer a call for a lost lolcat without standing off to the side. In fact, even today, 10 years later, I still do.

    And what’s with that last extra shot? “Pop.” Did he flinch?

    I’ve also read that they didn’t let paramedics in for a while because the scene wasn’t secure. The whole point of entries like this is to make the scene secure. Or is it just to play with toys.

    I have no idea what kind of guy the dead guy was. And to some extend I don’t care. If was so potentially dangerous, why wasn’t it no-knock raid? And if it wasn’t, why not ring the doorbell? As the old joke goes, “It can’t hurt.”

    When the man inside his own home was shot by police officers who busted down his door, the home owner (OK, maybe he was a renter) was holding a gun. The safety was on. Now I’m not a fan of guns, but if I still had one and somebody busted down my door, damn right I would be carrying it. And my gun didn’t have a safety.

    Further update: This is from The Agitator:

    This isn’t like watching video of a car accident or a natural disaster. This doesn’t have to happen. You’re watching something your government does to your fellow citizens about 150 times per day in this country. If this very literal “drug war” insanity is going to continue to be waged in our name, we ought to make goddamned sure everyone knows exactly what it entails. And this is what it entails. Cops dressed like soldiers breaking into private homes, tossing concussion grenades, training their guns on nonviolent citizens, and slaughtering dogs as a matter of procedure.

    The action starts at around 6 minutes into the video.

    And please keep in mind, it’s not like we’re suddenly winning the war on drugs because of these tactics.

  • “I swear to uphold…”

    When I was a cop, I rather enjoyed swearing to uphold the constitutions of the United States and Maryland. It seemed like quite an honor. (Even if the actually oath was done very matter-of-factly in some cubical by a woman who didn’t seem to care. And honestly, I’ve never read the Maryland Constitution.)

    Oath Keepers is an organization set up to persuade America’s police officers and soldiers to refuse to carry out unconstitutional orders. Fair enough. But somehow it’s considered controversial and right wing.

    There’s an interesting interview with the founder, Stewart Rhodes, in Reason magazine.