In Calgary, drug money is at the heart of gang violence:
Greed and infighting between members of a large Asian street gang over drug money splintered the group, leading to a spate of Calgary shootings, stabbings and at least two murders in the past 13 months.
I wonder if these street gangs and their counterparts in the US have lobbyists working to stiffen existing drug laws?
Via The Media Awareness Project.
Alaskans will vote next fall:
Registered voters will get a chance to decide next year whether to legalize private use of marijuana for Alaskans 21 and older.
In one sense it is a good thing that this is on the ballot. The good citizens of Alaska may thumb their noses at their elected representatives.
However, this is not something that should ever end up on the ballot. Nor, in the first place, should legislatures or congresses or parliaments be ruling one way or another on this or similar issues.
Via Via the Media Awareness Project.
In Central Alabama drug related cases keep prosecutors busy:
Giddens estimates that about half of the criminal cases set to go to trial every month are pure drug cases, either possession of marijuana or other controlled substances, distribution, trafficking, manufacturing and others.
The percentage is much higher when drug related cases are added to the ‘pure’ cases.
This makes me think there might be a pretty easy way to find some money to divert to ‘important’ government services.
Via the Media Awareness Project.
For doing this good deed:
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that prosecuting these medical marijuana users under a 1970 federal law is unconstitutional if the marijuana isn’t sold, transported across state lines or used for non-medicinal purposes.
Volokh blogger Randy Barnett argued and won this case and he provides technical details and more links here.
We need more like this:
The decision was a blow to the Justice Department, which argued that medical marijuana laws in nine states were trumped by the Controlled Substances Act, which outlawed marijuana, heroin and a host of other drugs nationwide.
No, what we really need is for the myriad local, state and federal drug laws to be eliminated.
Via Talkleft.
Immune to what? The same thing as the police in the last post: wasting their time (not worth much) and ours with laws that should not exist in the first place.
Nick at Hit & Run tells us about Rep. Doug Ose’s (R-Calif.) current important legislation:
to increase the FCC’s infamous seven dirty words to eight (by doubling up on versions of “asshole”).
No grammatical novice, Ose wants to ban noun forms as well as “verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms” of the words too terrible to speak. Ose is pissed–excuse me, peeved–that U2 frontman Bono got away with saying “fucking” during the Golden Globes Award broadcast a while back.
Ose is not alone in his concern nastiness on the airwaves:
The FCC’s enforcement bureau ruled that Bono’s utterance was neither indecent nor obscene because it did not describe a sexual function.
Sens. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) and 11 Republicans, including Pete V. Domenici (R-N.M.), introduced a resolution last week blasting the FCC’s ruling on Bono.
These critters need to spend more time at home relaxing instead of worrying about our sensitve ears. Get rid of the rules/laws and let folks use the tuner to listen to whatever makes them happy.
Nick closes his post with this question:
Question for all you amateur lawyers out there: Would it be illegal to go on TV and call Ose a fucking asshole who’s wasting everyone’s time with shit like this?
I don’t know about the legality but I do know that the expletives whether used as above or by Bono add no value to the discourse so why use them in the first place.