Garrison Keillor- War on Drugs: A Foul Tragedy

[Deborah]

'War on Drugs:' A Foul Tragedy

By Garrison Keillor, In These Times. Posted December 6, 2005.


A marijuana grower can get life in prison without parole, while a murderer might be in for eight years. No rational person can defend this.  
We Democrats are at our worst when we try to emulate Republicans -- as we did in signing onto the "war" on drugs that has ruined so many young lives.

The cruelty of the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984 is stark indeed, as are the sentencing guidelines that impose mandatory minimum sentences for minor drug possession -- guidelines in the 1986 Anti-Drug Abuse Act that sailed through Congress without benefit of public hearings, drafted before an election by Democrats afraid to be labeled "soft on drugs."

As a result, a marijuana grower can land in prison for life without parole while a murderer might be in for eight years. No rational person can defend this; it is a Dostoevskian nightmare, and it exists only because politicians fled in the face of danger.

That includes Bill Clinton, under whose administration the prosecution of Americans for marijuana went up hugely, so that now there are more folks in prison for marijuana than for violent crimes. More than for manslaughter or rape. This only makes sense in the fantasy world of Washington, where perception counts for more than reality. To an old Democrat, who takes a ground view of politics -- What is the actual effect of this action on the lives of real people? -- it is a foul tragedy that makes you feel guilty about enjoying your freedom.

If suddenly on a Friday night the red lights flash and the cops yank your teenage son and his little envelope of marijuana into the legal meatgrinder and some bullet-headed prosecutor decides to flex his muscle and charge your teenager -- because he had a .22 rifle in his upstairs bedroom closet -- with a felony involving the use of a firearm, which under our brutal sentencing code means he can be put on ice for 20 years, and the prosecutor goes at him hammer and tong and convinces a passive jury and your boy's life is sacrificed so this creep can run for Congress next year -- this is not your cross alone to bear. If the state cuts off your right hand with a meat cleaver on my account and I don't object, then it is my cleaver and my fingerprints on it.

I don't dare visit Sandstone Federal Prison here in Minnesota for fear of what I'd see there: People who chose marijuana, a more benign drug than alcohol, and got caught in the religious war that we Democrats in a weak moment signed onto. God help us if we form alliance with such bullies as would destroy a kid's life for raising cannabis plants.

Garrison Keillor is the host and writer of "A Prairie Home Companion," now in its 26th year on the air.

http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/29113

[Anonymous]

The drug war is the greatest infringment on personal liberty in our time. And nobody seems to mind.  :silly:

[Antigen]

The operative term here is "seems". Just remember, kiddies, the Moral Majority is neither.

Our youth can not understand why society chooses to criminalize a behavior with so little visible ill effect or adverse social impact... These young people have jumped the fence and found no cliff.

http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/library/studies/nc/ncmenu.htm' target='_new'>Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse

[Deborah]

Congress's Shameful Retreat From American Values
By Garrison Keillor
The Chicago Tribune
Wednesday 04 October 2006

I would not send my college kid off for a semester abroad if I were you. Last week, we suspended human rights in America, and what goes around comes around. Ixnay habeas corpus.

The U.S. Senate, in all its splendor and majesty, decided that an "enemy combatant" is any non-citizen whom the president says is an enemy combatant, including your Korean greengrocer or your Swedish grandmother or your Czech au pair, and can be arrested and held for as long as authorities wish without any right of appeal to a court of law to examine the matter. If your college kid were to be arrested in Bangkok or Cairo, suspected of "crimes against the state" and held in prison, you'd assume that an American foreign service officer would be able to speak to your kid and arrange for a lawyer, but this may not be true anymore. Be forewarned.

The Senate also decided it's up to the president to decide whether it's OK to make these enemies stand naked in cold rooms for a couple of days in blinding light and be beaten by interrogators. This is now purely a bureaucratic matter: The plenipotentiary stamps the file "enemy combatants" and throws the poor schnooks into prison and at his leisure he tries them by any sort of kangaroo court he wishes to assemble and they have no right to see the evidence against them, and there is no appeal. This was passed by 65 senators and will now be signed by President Bush, put into effect, and in due course be thrown out by the courts.

It's good that Barry Goldwater is dead because this would have killed him. Go back to the Senate of 1964 - Goldwater, Dirksen, Russell, McCarthy, Javits, Morse, Fulbright - and you won't find more than 10 votes for it.

None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Ideal. Mark their names. Any institution of higher learning that grants honorary degrees to these people forfeits its honor. Alexander, Allard, Allen, Bennett, Bond, Brownback, Bunning, Burns, Burr, Carper, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran, Coleman, Collins, Cornyn, Craig, Crapo, DeMint, DeWine, Dole, Domenici, Ensign, Enzi, Frist, Graham, Grassley, Gregg, Hagel, Hatch, Hutchison, Inhofe, Isakson, Johnson, Kyl, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Lott, Lugar, Martinez, McCain, McConnell, Menendez, Murkowski, Nelson of Florida, Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor, Roberts, Rockefeller, Salazar, Santorum, Sessions, Shelby, Smith, Specter, Stabenow, Stevens, Sununu, Talent, Thomas, Thune, Vitter, Voinovich, Warner.

To paraphrase Sir Walter Scott: Mark their names and mark them well. For them, no minstrel raptures swell. High though their titles, proud their name, boundless their wealth as wish can claim, these wretched figures shall go down to the vile dust from whence they sprung, unwept, unhonored and unsung.

Three Republican senators made a show of opposing the bill and after they'd collected all the praise they could get, they quickly folded. Why be a hero when you can be fairly sure that the court will dispose of this piece of garbage.

If, however, the court does not, then our country has taken a step toward totalitarianism. If the government can round up someone and never be required to explain why, then it's no longer the United States as you and I always understood it. Our enemies have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They have made us become like them.

I got some insight last week into who supports torture when I went down to Dallas to speak at Highland Park Methodist Church. It was spooky. I walked in, was met by two burly security men with walkie-talkies, and within 10 minutes was told by three people that this was the Bushes' church and that it would be better if I didn't talk about politics. I was there on a book tour for "Homegrown Democrat," but they thought it better if I didn't mention it. So I tried to make light of it: I told the audience, "I don't need to talk politics. I have no need even to be interested in politics - I'm a citizen, I have plenty of money and my grandsons are at least 12 years away from being eligible for military service." And the audience applauded! Those were their sentiments exactly. We've got ours, and who cares?

The Methodists of Dallas can be fairly sure that none of them will be snatched off the streets, flown to Guantanamo Bay, stripped naked, forced to stand for 48 hours in a freezing room with deafening noise. So why should they worry? It's only the Jews who are in danger, and the homosexuals and gypsies. The Christians are doing fine. If you can't trust a Methodist with absolute power to arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can you trust?

--------

Garrison Keillor is a syndicated columnist and host of "A Prairie Home Companion."

[Dr Phil]

Library volunteers just say no to drug testing

By KAREN VOYLES
Sun staff writer
October 07. 2006 6:01AM

BRONSON - Levy County's public libraries are struggling to get books checked out or reshelved because retirees who usually handle many of those chores have balked at a requirement that they "pee in a cup" as part of a mandatory drug test for all county volunteers.

"It's not like we are a high-risk group for coming in drunk or high or stoned or whatever," said one volunteer. "This is just a common-sense issue - why are we spending tax money to test 75-year-old grandmothers for marijuana? We should be using that money to buy more books and computers."

The situation has gotten to the point where the pool of 55 volunteers has dwindled to two and the number of hours worked by volunteers in the county's five libraries plunged from 330 in September 2005 to 11 this September, according to county library records. None of the former volunteers contacted by The Sun wanted to be publicly identified in a story about drug-testing.

"A large part of the problem is how the test is administered - it is an affront to some people's dignity, especially people who grew up in another generation," said the county's library director, Bonnie Tollefson.

Most of the volunteers are between the ages of 60 and 85. Under the county's year-old contract with First Lab, all drug tests are done on urine samples that are collected in plastic cups while a lab employee stands within hearing distance of the person providing the sample.

County officials said they realize that some people may find the test intrusive.

"But our public risk management insurance says we should treat volunteers no differently that any other employees," said Levy County Coordinator Fred Moody. "This is just the days that we are in and we know that there are some people who aren't happy about this, but it is something we are requiring if anyone wants to volunteer."

Moody said the drug-testing as well as background checks required for library volunteers are identical to what is required of all county employees and volunteers, including dozens of unpaid firefighters and hundreds of Community Emergency Response Team members from among the 36,000 county residents.

In Alachua County, where the library district has more than 250 employees who donate 17,500 hours a year, adult volunteers undergo a background check, but no volunteers, adults or teens, undergo drug tests.

Levy County pays the $33 cost of testing and background checks for all its volunteers. The process began about a year ago on an agency-by-agency basis for current volunteers and just recently got around to the libraries.

Tollefson, who said that as a county employee she supports the policy, understands that a large part of the resistance is the test the county contracted to use.

"We have a number of volunteers who are older, and I think about how my mother - who is 83 - would react to a test like this," Tollefson said. "She would find it degrading, be totally offended and find it an affront to her dignity. Many of our volunteers feel the same way."

Additionally, the volunteers were initially told they needed to drive to Gainesville to provide a urine sample at a specific medical laboratory.

"And I told them that the only way I am going to be driven into Gainesville these days is in an ambulance," said a former volunteer. "When you get to be my age, driving in that much traffic is a hazard to me and everybody around me."

To overcome the transportation concerns, the county arranged for the testing to be done at each of the county's five public libraries later this month.

Moody said that when the county signed the contract with First Lab to provide drug-testing a year ago, urine samples were the only means considered.

"We didn't know that there were other options," Moody said.

On Friday morning, he told The Sun he would begin looking into alternative, less-intrusive tests, such as the mouth swabs now used by the Florida Department of Corrections and other government agencies.

http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dl ... 6210070330

[Anonymous]

This is why it is important for us to excercise civil disobedience by SMOKING MARIJUANA.  It is your civic duty as a free AMerican to SMOKE MORE POT.  By SMOKING MARIJUANA, you are opposing the evil forces that would exert control over every aspect of your life.  Stay high, stay free. :smokin:  ::armed::  :smokin: