Hey, Congressman -- Should the Federal government punish marijuana users?

The Honorable
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, DC 20515

Re: H.R. 5843

Dear Representative:

I encourage you to cosponsor H.R. 5843, a bill to eliminate most Federal penalties for possession of marijuana for personal use, and for other purposes, introduced by Reps. Barney Frank and Ron Paul.

I appreciate that your decision to cosponsor this bill will not be made easily. Nevertheless, this bill is just and should be enacted. Current law is that “marijuana users should be punished.” The justice of that proposition must be demonstrated to defend current law.

As I make the few short arguments that follow that marijuana users should not be punished, the object of H.R. 5843, ask yourself, “is this why it is just to punish marijuana users?”

First, the act of using marijuana is not wrongful. The act does not violate the rights of others or injure others, nor is it a failure to carry out a duty such as paying taxes or caring for a minor in one’s supervision. It is wrong for the government to punish people who engage in the conduct of marijuana use or marijuana possession because the conduct is not wrongful or harmful to others.

It is not an argument to say that it is wrong to drive under the influence of marijuana, for that is different conduct, and is appropriately punishable due to the demonstrated serious risk of grave injury to others. We should note that it is not a federal crime to drive under the influence of marijuana (or any other drug or alcohol), although it is a crime in Maryland and the other states.

Nor is it an argument to say that since some marijuana users drive under the influence, we should punish those who might do so but have not. In America we do not punish people for the conduct of others, nor do we punish people for crimes they have not committed.

In opposing this bill, a thoughtful Representative should articulate why adults who use marijuana deserve a term of imprisonment of up to one year, and a minimum fine of $1000 up to $100,000, plus the costs of investigation and prosecution (21 U.S.C. 844; 18 U.S.C. 3571(b)(5); 18 U.S.C. 3559(a)(6)).

Second, it is wrong for the state to punish a person in order to simply dissuade other persons, such as children, not to engage in that conduct. It is an important social goal to discourage young people from experimenting with marijuana, but that educational purpose does not justify punishing adults who use marijuana. We do not punish, or threaten to punish, cigarette smokers in order to “send a message” to children that they should not experiment with tobacco. Wouldn’t you be outraged if a bill were about to be enacted that proposed to punish adults who use cigarettes or alcohol with arrest, imprisonment and fines for the purpose of discouraging youthful misuse? Indeed, cigarette use has declined dramatically without having to jail any cigarette smokers. Can you think of any conduct that we punish, other than drug use, on the asserted justification that it dissuades children from it. Considering that marijuana has been used, year after year, for the past 30 years by a large cohort of teenagers (i.e., about 20 to 25 percent of high school seniors), the punishment of adults for this communicative purpose has been ineffective, and very costly, as well as unjust.

This is not the same case as punishing a person who actually robbed a bank in order to deter other persons from robbing a bank. It is wrong to punish the innocent to send a message to others. It is not an argument here to insist that marijuana possession is against the law, because it is the justification for the law I am challenging.

Third, the harm that results to marijuana users is too insignificant to justify punishing them to stop them from using marijuana. Compared to many lawful activities, the risk is minor. Numerous “frivolous” legal activities regularly result in more deaths and injuries than marijuana use, such as downhill skiing, white water boating, recreational sailing, mountaineering, sky diving, motorcycle racing, automobile racing, recreational horse back riding, and football playing. It is inconceivable that anyone would propose punishing persons who engaged in those activities in order to prevent them from hurting themselves. The collateral consequences of an arrest and criminal prosecution and, less frequently, imprisonment, certainly outweigh the harm to the individual from his marijuana use.

We have known each other a long time, and I have been, and will continue to be, your ardent supporter. I am confident that you will take this matter seriously.

I encourage you to research the support for this issue in your district, and not make assumptions. I defer, of course, to your much better judgment about the political consequences to any given Member of Congress who co-sponsors this bill when it is based on research.

But in the final analysis, I ask you to weigh the potential political consequences to you if you support this bill against the very damaging consequences to the hundreds of persons who – having taken to heart the promise of the Congress in 1776 of a government of just powers instituted to secure certain Creator-endowed, unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – use marijuana and are punished by the Federal government each year.

With very best wishes,

Sincerely yours,

Cell Phone Application Needed

How about putting a parking garage or lot location reminder on your cell phone.

I park in the same parking garage every day. But I don't park in the same place. I could be confident that I could always park in the same area if I parked on level six. But I want to save time by parking as close to the entrance/exit as possible. That means that from day to day I am parked in a different space on a different level.

Too damn often I can't remember where my car is. Did I park on this level this morning? Or was it yesterday morning?

If I could type into my cell phone the parking space, I could always retrieve it. It could automatically recall the date and time of the entry.

What do you cell phone manufacturers think?

Stewart Mott, R.I.P.

Stewart Mott died on Thursday, June 12, 2008.

He and his foundations were major supporters of many of the people who

provided some of the intellectual heft to progressive Washington.

Washington Post obituary

New York Times obituary

Sam Smith's remembrance

Noting the 75th Anniversary of the Repeal of Prohibition

I don't often agree with the sentiments of Republican speeches made during special orders in the House of Representatives, but I agree whole heartedly with Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) speaking on Dec. 4, 2007 on the 75th anniversary of the repeal of alcohol prohibition.

THE 75TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE END OF PROHIBITION

The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from California (Mr. Rohrabacher) is recognized for 5
minutes.

Mr. ROHRABACHER. Madam Speaker, December 5, 1933, December 5,
2007. So, tomorrow we mark the 75th anniversary of something, and
most people will just pass it by and not be aware that tomorrow
marks the end of America's great and noble experiment. It is the
75th anniversary of the end of the national prohibition of alcoholic
beverages.

With the repeal of prohibition in 1933, that was 75 years ago
tomorrow, the United States ended a social planning policy that
created organized crime in America, crowded our jails with
nonviolent prisoners, corrupted our police, increased urban
violence, and destroyed the lives of thousands of victims of
unadulterated and poisoned substances, substances which if they were
permitted would have been subject to normal market protections of
fraud and quality standards. However, during prohibition, these
substances which were consumed by the American people often poisoned
them and caused them to lose their lives.

Philosopher Santayana told us that those who cannot learn from
history are doomed to repeat it. Have we in Washington learned the
lesson of prohibition that ended 75 years ago?

Why did America reject the prohibition of alcoholic beverages?
Well, when government attempts to control the peaceful behavior of
its citizens, it often sets in motion forces that are more dangerous
than the social evil that they are trying to control. Today's war on
drugs is perhaps an example.

The war on drugs has resulted in a multimillion dollar network
of violent organized crime. The war on drugs has created the deaths
by drive-by shootings and turf wars among gangs in our cities. The
war on drugs has overcrowded our prisons. More than half of Federal
prison space is occupied by nonviolent drug users. The war on drugs
has corrupted our police and crowded our courts. We apparently did
not learn the lesson of the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.

Today, on the campaign trail we hear new calls for prohibitions on
cigarettes, on fatty foods, and even more money should be spent,
yes, on the war on drugs.

But, as we mark the 75th anniversary of the repeal of prohibition,
let us have the courage to learn from the mistakes of the past.
Perhaps it would be better for us to focus our energies not on the
supply side of drugs just as they were doing with the supply side of
alcohol, but instead to focus our efforts on trying to help those
people who are addicted to drugs; perhaps to try to help our young
people, deter our young people from getting involved in drugs;
perhaps to take a whole new approach on this, rather than this
monstrous war on drugs that has done nothing but create havoc in our
inner cities, making so many young people who have been arrested and
their lives destroyed because they will never be able to get a
decent job after one arrest being a teenager.

So many people have been hurt by the war on drugs; yet we keep it
because we want to supposedly help people. Well, I would suggest
that this 75th anniversary of the repeal of prohibition, which was
the greatest failure of American social planning in the history of
our country, let us try to commit ourselves to help ensure that our
young people are dissuaded and deterred from the use of narcotics.

Let us work with those who are, indeed, addicted to narcotics and
help them free themselves from this habit. But let's end this notion
that we can try to control the use of narcotics in our country by
simply controlling the supply. Simply controlling the supply will
not work. We've got to look at the demand side, try to treat people
humanely, and use the limited resources that we have in a much more
constructive way, rather than just creating more police who are
committed to drugs and interdiction and all the rest of the major
expenses, court expenses and others that go into a war on drugs
rather than an attempt to help people who are susceptible to the use
of drugs.

I call the attention of my fellow colleagues to this the 75th
anniversary of the repeal of the prohibition of alcoholic beverages.
(CR-H14135; Dec 4, 2007)

"We couldn't get much higher"

Here's a cute musical satire of our culture's current pharmaceutical fascination, "We couldn't get much higher."

Sept. 19, Anniversary of death of President Garfield

Today, The New York Times historical front page is from Sept. 20, 1881, the day after President James Garfield succumbed to the gun shot wounds inflicted on July 2, 1881, by an attorney who failed to get patronage job.

It caused me to reflect that the Presidents elected in 2o year intervals have died in office or been grievously wounded in gunshots.

1840 -- William Henry Harrison, died
1860 -- Abraham Lincoln, assassinated in second term
1880 -- James Garfield, assassinated
1900 -- William McKinley, assassinated
1920 -- Warren Harding, died in office
1940 -- Franklin Roosevelt, died in office
1960 -- John F. Kennedy, assassinated
1980 -- Ronald Reagan, survived attempted assassination

Let us pray that President Bush, who was elected in 2000, remains healthy and the Secret Service safely protects him. It would be a terrible tragedy if he were killed, by an act of violence, or a bicycle mishap, or anything else. His death in office would be terribly destabilizing -- whether he were succeeded by Vice President Dick Cheney or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. If through a terrorist act the President and Vice President were both killed, given the political suspicion and mistrust that pervades the nation, many are likely to charge that the act was motivated to bring a Democrat to the White House.

The crime would be just terrible for the nation.

Mental Illness -- the tension between diagnosis and treatment

Sally Satel has a very illuminating, non-polemical op-ed in The New York Times today.

Taking off on the revision of the DSM by a DSM-V due to come out in five years, she notes that we still know very little about the causes of mental illness.

She points out that a lot of treatment is directed at the symptom rather than an certain underlying condition.

If you think about the role of mental illness in our society -- and who does not? -- this is a very thought provoking little essay.

Food Safety

Consumers Union is organizing support for increased federal action to protect food and consumer product safety.

Here's the letter I sent to my Representative in Congress and my two Senators:

My family eats a lot of seafood because it is healthy, supposedly. To my dismay, I learned today that China is the leading supplier of imported seafood to the US, supplying 16 percent of ALL the fish we eat.

Given the profound gaps in Chinese product and food safety laws and programs, this is a serious danger to me and my family.

Then I learned that FDA inspects only 2 percent of seafood imports and rejects about 1 in 10 shipments.

This is unbelievable! Food production hazards and inadequate inspection are imperiling my family! Such a failure rate demands correction. This seafood rejection rate and the enormous number of recalls of food, toys and other products, demonstrate we need comprehensive reform of our food and consumer product safety programs.

I want to be sure that the food I eat and the products I use are safe. Recalls announced after hazardous goods are in the market and being consumed are too little and too late.

Congress MUST increase the resources of federal agencies that police the safety of the nation's products and food supply. They must conduct more frequent inspections. They MUST impose meaningful penalties for safety violations.

Producers, importers, distributors, and retailers MUST be accountable for the products they import and sell in the United States. We should require pre-shipment inspections and testing, and require certification and traceability for ALL food, products, and their components. The government agencies must have clear recall authority for contaminated food.

We need all these steps to prevent unsafe products from entering our marketplace and our homes. We must effectively protect American consumers at the end of a global production system. When that protection system is breached, we must alert consumers promptly and effectively! Safety in these matters is not an option!

The current Federal food and consumer product safety system is not working! Congress must enact substantial changes in these laws and programs to keep our families safe.

Tags: food safety, imported food, imported seafood, China, product safety, Consumers Union

Sustainability

Sustainability. What a clunky word for such a fundamental concept.

If you think for a moment about anything that you want to endure -- a family, a life, a career, a species, a planet -- the key feature is that "it" must be sustainable.

At a holiday party this weekend several of us got to talking about eating too much. We'll try to eat less in the new year, and lose weight. Isn't it a shame that we crave food that makes us fat? we lamented.

Well, for several hundred thousand years, human beings have struggled to get enough to eat. Our "tastes" evolved to achieve sustainability in an environment of scarcity.

Last month, my daughter's third grade curriculum had a brief unit asking the students to compare the lives of the Pilgrim's at the first "Thanksgiving" with our lives. What I came away impressed with was that for almost all peoples in temperate climates, harvest time is not a time for gluttony. It is a time to complete the careful, prayerful storing away of food for the long winter. When the snow melts, it is not harvest time again -- it is months before there are crops to harvest. Putting food away, saving, conserving were, for all the generations of humanity but the last, the foundation of survival -- sustainability.

Contemporary society lives in the oblivion of wealth. Historically the"people" distrusted the wealthy who were wastrels. The wealthy who were rulers who did not make sustainability the hallmark of their reign destroyed their realms and are regarded by history as fools, e.g. the Bourbon kings of France.

The challenge of the 21st century will be to reorient our mores and social structures toward sustainability. Can a species as intelligent as ours continue to live in a social structure -- religion, morality, government, economics, habits, social life -- that is inimical to its survival?

What happened in the 1950s, 60s and 70s in America that the value of saving and conserving that was shaping pattern of adults shaped in the Great Depression was lost?

Families must begin saving for sustainability, eating for sustainability, using fuel for sustainability.

We have been blinded by the success of the Market. We assume that if we can afford it -- the food, the gas, the car, the energy wasting house and lifestyle --the expenditure is okay because it is "blessed" by the Market.

Is the Market ever wrong? Of course. Who triumphs in the Market? Everybody? Of course not. The Market can seduce you, can't it?

In what ways can our market-worshipping culture be re-educated about how the market values sustainability?

Tags: market, sustainability, savings, fuel, food, diet, species survival, energy, markets, Sterlingpoints, Eric Sterling,

A Scanner Darkly

On Sunday, October 8, 2006, after a screening of the motion picture, A Scanner Darkly, at the University of Maryland in College Park, I spoke to the audience about the moral and political implications of the story. I was accompanied by Micah Daigle, Field Director, Students for Sensible Drug Policy national office. This event was sponsored by the University's Student Entertainment Events office and the Students for Sensible Drug Policy University of Maryland chapter.

The plot is complex and hard to follow, but the characterizations and acting are excellent, and there are many funny scenes with Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey, Jr., and Rory Cochrane The dramatic acting by Keanu Reeves and Winona Ryder is suspenseful and gripping.

The movie is set in the near future in Orange County, CA, then in grip of a terrible new drug abuse epidemic. The anti-drug police have more pervasive surveillance tools and resources than our current law enforcement agencies, with the ready ability to monitor anybody anywhere. There is such an enormous number of undercover agents who need to operate under extremely tight security that their actual identities are unknown to one another.

The new drug causes brain damage manifested by random hallucinations and paranoia, yet its users become addicted to some effect of the drug, and need to find it to use it. The drug is especially insidious in that it is believed to create a sort of split personality so that a person may be living to two parallel existences. The drug is reputedly deadly, although no deaths from its use are depicted, that I recall. The drug is also pervasive and we find that all of the central characters are addicted to it. The mental illness the drug engenders is portrayed throughout the movie. There is a uniquely effective, widely advertised treatment available that requires living in a secure facility.

As the movie progresses, the integrity of the drug enforcement agency and the treatment business come into question.

The movie is an adaptation of a 1977 novel by Philip K. Dick, one of the leading authors of our time, who is best known as a science fiction writer. His literary executors, the Philip K. Dick Trust, have this to say about the movie.

This essay by Lawrence Sutin (a professor at Hamline University, St. Paul, MN) helps explain Dick's vision and purpose.

My comments:
George Orwell's novel 1984, also a dark vision of the future, helped to define the late 20th century vision of a police state using the model of World War II, the state security surveillance systems of the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany and its occupied territories, and the state propaganda systems developed and used by all the major powers.

A Scanner Darkly, the movie, is influenced by the domestic police practices in the U.S. of the last two decades; by the widespread availability -- if not widespread use -- of cocaine, heroin, club drugs, prescribed psychoactive medications, and methamphetamine; and the late 20th century social concept of a drug epidemic.

In the limited time available to me, I argued that the movie's depiction of the state's failure to control drug misuse and the drug trade by means of an intense prohibition regime reflects a contemporary reality. In dialogue with the audience I argued that the continuation of the drug problem, i.e, our systematic failure to really address it, continues the growth and power of the law enforcement industry, and serves to advance political careers, and certain social agendas.

I argued that combating the prohibition system was a moral imperative that ranked with the importance of the student anti-Vietnam war movement.

I argued that students had a right to demand that the university be truthful in characterizing the health threats students face and demand that university disciplinary policies be based on facts not propaganda. I argued that it was unacceptably disrespectful to students as persons with full legal responsibility for their conduct to promulgate disciplinary policies that reflected falsehoods and prejudice, such as punishing marijuana use more harshly than alcohol use.

My conclusion is that the students had a duty and a right to get active on campus around drug policy issues.

Tags: drug enforcement, drug treatment, law enforcement, police, A Scanner Darkly, University of Maryland, SSDP, justiceanddrugs, Sterling on Justice and Drugs

Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. lays out a very damning case in Rolling Stone magazine that the Republicans conspired to swing the 2004 election from Kerry to George W. Bush.

Kennedy provides a very detailed analysis of the myriad problems. The focus is on Ohio where he explains more than 300,00 votes that were likely to be for Kerry were kept from being counted. He identifies voting machines that counted for Bush when Kerry was selected.

The range of misconduct, much of which he lays at the feet of Kenneth Blackwell, Secretary of State of Ohio and a co-chair of the Bush campaign is vast: the deliberate sabotage of the voter registration process, disregard of new voter registrations, wholesale purging of voter registration lists in selected areas, failure to send absentee ballots, failure to provide sufficient numbers of voting machines in selected precincts, efforts to intimidate votes not the vote, and numerous acts on election day to skew the outcome including discarding votes.

If you have not read this report, it is well worth the time.

Tags: presidential election, Kerry, G.W. Bush, Blackwell, Ohio,

Subverting America's Moms to sell, sell, sell

Business Week reports that Proctor and Gamble has recruited 600,000 moms for the word of mouth sales project, called Vocalpoint.

By crafting product messages mothers will want to share, along with giving them samples, coupons, and a chance to share their own opinions with P&G, the Cincinnati consumer-product giant is using personal endorsements to cut through advertising clutter. "We know that the most powerful form of marketing is an advocacy message from a trusted friend," says Steve Knox, Vocalpoint's CEO.

The program is a state-of-the-art method for reaching the most influential group of shoppers in America: moms.

Bush Administration send up by Robert Smigel on Saturday Night Live, May 20, is hysterical

If you are not a fan of the Bush Administration, you will find it impossible not to laugh at the Robert Smigel comic from the May 20 Saturday Night Live. The video is posted on Crooks and Liars. The entire audio portion is composed from speeches, press conferences, Senate testimony, or media interviews by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld. Make sure your mouth is empty when you watch it.

Cheney Affirms GOP Opposition to Gun Control

The National Rifle Association has argued for years that the only legitimate form of gun control is hitting your target. Saturday, Feb. 11, 2006 Vice President Dick Cheney, working to bolster the GOP's conservative base for the 2006 elections, ostensibly aiming at a covey of quail, discharged his .28 guage shotgun into a Texas millionaire lawyer, Harry Whittington, hitting him in the cheek, neck and chest. The birds got away, and Democratic chances to take control of the Senate were seriously weakened, according to the conventional wisdom. But an anonymous NRA spokesman worried that Cheney's extreme stance in opposition to gun control might be misused by liberals for partisan political purposes. "We have always taken an unorthodox view toward political speech," he joked. "We believe in massive firepower when it comes to the Congress, but this is a new one for us."

Katharine Armstrong, who owned the ranch where the shooting took place described it as a "peppering." "This is something that happens from time to time. You know, I've been peppered pretty well myself," said Armstrong, which explains why many Republicans are so indignant with civil libertarian apoplexy when the police pepper spray demonstrators without provocation. Whittington was in stable condition in a Corpus Christi hospital on Sunday.

Whittington was immediately assisted by the medical personnel who always accompany the Vice President and was taken to the hospital in the Vice President's ambulance. Democrats attacked this as an abuse of tax payer funds. "Once again we see this Administration bend over backwards to save the life of a millionaire!" fumed an anonymous spokeswoman for the Democratic National Committee. "And aren't quail some kind of endangered species?" she muttered.

Illegal wiretapping defended and the meaning of words

The President's scheme for warrantless wiretapping outside the structure of FISA cannot be defended by pointing to the Congressional authorization to use force against Afghanistan. When he argues that the word "force" includes domestic surveillance he really is saying that laws composed of words no longer have meaning to him and his legal advisors. He feels free to make up or disregard the law at his whim.

The revelation of this scheme, by the way, cannot endanger our national security. That the United States is using every conceivable technology and technique to detect and monitor potential terrorists cannot be news to any such terrorist. Revelation that the NSA is monitoring telephone calls without warrants, when those calls could have been monitored by the FBI by following FISA, cannot make any difference to the activities of potential terrorists, and thus the revelation cannot endanger national security.

Our system of government is designed to maintain a rule of law. When the Executive operates outside the rule of law, it is the duty of the Congress to take steps to maintain checks and balances.

Assuming that we are not at a stage in which impeachment is warranted, then what are the tools that Congress has, and should use, to curtail abuses by the president?

Members of Congress must, at a minimum, express their rejection of lawless behavior by the Executive, even if the opportunity for sanctions through "the power of the purse" or oversight hearings and investigations are limited.

Obviously to introduce a resolution of impeachment is an extremely serious allegation. Unfortunately its importance was undermined by the frivolous misuse of this important congressional power by the Republican majority against President Clinton.

I fear that it is time for Members of Congress to begin to study the proper use of the Constitutional power of impeachment, and to sharpen their understanding of "high Crimes and Misdemeanors." (Article II, section 4).

If the President is insisting on highly expansive or creative interpretation of the meaning of words in a Congressional authorization of "force" to include "electronic surveillance," then it is time for Members of the House Judiciary Committee to begin to publicly clarify their understanding of the meaning of an important constitutional term, "high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

My recollection, having studied the literature of impeachment on several occasions, is that "high Crimes and misdemeanors" are not criminal offenses in the traditional sense, but are uniquely political offenses against the state, such as abuse of power. An example of such an abuse of power would be to authorize unlawful and unconstitutional activities that violate civil liberties. Another example would be misrepresenting national security intelligence for the purpose of tricking the Congress and the Nation into supporting a war.

A fine speech....

George Bush's second inaugural speech reads well, doesn't it?
If only the speech revealed a conscience or character consistent with its content.
Freedom, O Freedom! Freedom, O, Freedom.

Washington Post analysts point out that the Administration has extremely close ties to some of the most repressive regimes in the world -- governments that top the list for human rights abuses.

Since this President has demonstrated his reluctance to reflect, it is unlikely that he will consider the meaning of his speech to the various conditions of Americans.

For example, could a person who is seriously ill, whose physician has recommended using marijuana medically, comprehend that this inaugural speech might ultimately apply to him or to her? Tthe patient would believe this only if he were consuming cannabis non-medically.

Sadly, such a powerful speech does not signal a new begining or change in direction in the President's policies. This speech should be compared to the packaging of a box of cereal promising freedom . . . from heart attack.

If one succumbs to cynicism when reading this speech, one can only associate with the speeches of Big Brother in George Orwell's novel, 1984. The President extols freedom in soaring terms on the day in which the political elite of the nation is embraced by forces of security force that are unprecedented in the history of inaugurations. Even after assasinations in 1963 and 1968, there was far more openness to the American people to witness and participate in the inauguration than there was today.

There are 2.1 million Americans behind bars convicted, or more accurately, coerced into pleading guilty, to some offense. Tens of thousands of them are dangerous, but at least a quarter -- roughly a half million Americans -- and in some jurisdictions, probably one-half the prisoners, are not a threat if released now, and supervised and re-integrated into society. These 2.1 million Americans are more numerous than all the farmers in America. But instead of being farmers, these prisoners are a crop harvested in the courts, and waited to benefit the prison industyr.

The security of Inauguration Day, and the imprisonment of so many Americans, reflects an official fear of the American people that is so great it is unprecedented.

But do read the speech, it is uplifting. One's exhilaration reading its powerful themes last about as long as ..... a hit of crack cocaine.

Losing this Election -- It hurts

Lakshmi Chaudry writes powerfully in Alternet about the pain of Tuesday's election:

All the blame-mongering in the world can't erase the pain or, more importantly, the fear. My mind can handle the body blow of defeat, but it's the slow, seeping chill of dread that is harder to fend off. . . .

No, it's not about losing an election, but the fear of losing faith. Liberals have always believed that if we did everything right – got the truth out; got the people out – we would prevail. In the past, I could tell myself it was the wrong candidate, wrong strategy, wrong party – some reason why people didn't show up at the polls or vote for the "right" guy. Not any more. . . .

John Edwards was right in a way. There are two Americas: one that values tolerance, justice, and equality; the other that believes in Divine Will. But now that the Democrats lost the election – and control over every branch of government – I get to live in their America. And Carville wants me to talk to these guys? Or is he really saying that I need to be more like them? After all, it's not like I have any values that might be worth holding on to. Why not just put my silly liberal preoccupations with choice or sexual freedom aside so we can all come together as one nation – one nation under God, Guns, and (hating) Gays.

In the aftermath of the election, it feels like I've not just ceded my country, but also my self. I've become just one among the sea of anonymous losers whose concerns and issues are simply not relevant any more. In the space of a single night, I've become invisible.
It's hard – right now, at least – to fight that sense of irrelevance, the loss of purpose. I was exhausted and in tears the night we dropped the first bombs over Iraq. But I was back at work the next morning, determined to do my best. The fight was still ahead of me.

What if -- number 1

What if the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court had not, in Nobember 2003 ruled that barring two persons of the same gender from marrying violated the Massachusetts Constitution?

Bush Accountability

Andrew Sullivan has a a useful perspective, which gives me comfort:

ACCOUNTABILITY: Here's an email with which i (Andrew Sullivan speaking) concur entirely:
"I didn't vote for Bush for lots of reasons. But it seems to me that maybe the result, much as it was not what I wanted, will be good for the country. We are in the middle of a war whose outcome is very much in doubt. We have a fiscal policy that may or may not prove successful. Issues that have seemed remote to many like abortion and the Patriot Act's definition of rights and privacy are likely to become more immediate over the next few years. Had we changed leadershi now, it would have been difficult to assign accountability, for good or bad, for these policies and decisions. I always feared, in fact, that Kerry would have had little chance of success in the face of a conservative chorus of "everything was going in the right direction in Iraq when we handed it over to you". Whatever the result, over the next few years we all will be better able to asses the success or failure of many things that are unfinished now, and hold one team accountable."

Exactly. My main fear with a Kerry victory is that the hard right would never have given him a chance in the war, and would have savaged him as commander-in-chief in order to pave the way for a victory in 2008. Ratcheting the country back to fiscal sanity would also have been a thankless task. Now, Bush will face the consequences of his own policies and we will be able to judge him on that. He has no excuses any more. I hope he succeeds in Iraq, in reforming social security. But no one should give him an easy pass if he fails.

Drug Czar playing politics, again, with methamphetamine plan

On Monday, October 25, 2004, in Missouri, White House "drug czar" John Walters unveilled a fancy "national action plan" two weeks after Senator John Edwards unveilled the Kerry-Edwards proposal in Newton, Iowa, on Oct. 11.

Methamphetamine has been a growing epidemic in the western U.S. for a decade. Regulatory controls of the precursor chemicals -- not prohibition -- has been found, in an indepth study by Steve Suo of the Portland, Oregonian, to have been effective in reducing overdoses and crime related to methamphetime use.

So action is necessary.

But I have three points.

• Walters released this plan in a purely partisan political manner.
• Walters and the Bush Administration haven't done anything important on methamphetamine for almost four years.
• This plan exposes what they could have done and didn't.

> "Drug czar" John Walters responded in a partisan political manner. He unveils the action plan accompanied by the Republican Minority Whip and issues a press release that quotes two Republican Senators and two Republican governors -- Taft from Ohio and Fletcher of Kentucky.

No Democrats were involved in the release of the "national" action plan.
> Oregon Senator Ron Wyden (D) has been working on methamphetamine abuse issues since at least 1986 when methamphetamine amendments he had to the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 were enacted.
>Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack (D) has been working on the problem of methamphetamine abuse since he took office in 1997. (His state is the immediate northern neighbor of Missouri where the press conference took place).
>There are two Democratic co-chairs of the Congressional Methamphetamine Caucus, Reps. Rick Larsen (2nd-WA) and Leonard Boswell (3rd-IA).
> California Senator Diane Feinstein (D) has worked on methamphetamine issues and sponsored control legislation for a decade.

> DEA Administrator Karen Tandy refused to answer questions from the Portland, Oregonian about DEA's regulatory and enforcement failures. One company kept shipping pseudoephedrine, a key methamphetamine ingredient, after 47 "warning" letters from DEA to stop. The most recent "warning" letter was sent in May 2003, the Oregonian expose says.

> The National Action Plan is filled with bureaucratic fluff: "assess" this, "develop guidelines" for that, "increase research" for something else.

> If the Administration was interested in substance, not partisan political fluff, in the time it took prepare the fancy "action plan," they could have told the DEA General Counsel, you have 30 days to prepare regulations for publication in the Federal Register to control the imports and distribution of ephedrine and pseudoephedrine -- and that could have been announced.

Sterlingpoints.com from Eric Sterling