Sometimes, I think that if there was anywhere left to colonize, I would go there. I wouldn't need to write a Constitution for me and my fellow exiles. I'd simply use the U.S. Constitution and add after each article and amendment, "We really do mean this."

I would add a few thing into the Constitution -- The right to privacy and unfettered travel would be explicit.

This is just so ridiculous that it is barely worth commenting on other than to say I think some law enforcement should be going to jail.

I have to say I agree with both Patrick and Jim. This is so outrageous to me. Things are getting so out of hand I get paranoid to leave my house sometimes. That is crazy!

This is just one of the many reasons I'm not afraid of the criminals, I'm afraid of law enforcement. And it just gets worse.

"A growing number of legal scholars, including Bruce Fein, who served as a high-ranking Justice Department official during the Reagan administration, are calling to end the prohibition on marijuana and treat it like alcohol by regulating and taxing it at the state level."

Legalizing marijuana will put a lot of government workers out of work. I don't imagine that's going to be happening anytime soon.

SWAT teams are routinely used these days for things having nothing to do with drugs or organized/violent crime. It was a federal SWAT team that raided Gibson.

End The War At Home: Stop Killing People In Pot Raids

Couldn't agree more.

A growing number of legal scholars, including Bruce Fein, who served as a high-ranking Justice Department official during the Reagan administration, are calling to end the prohibition on marijuana and treat it like alcohol by regulating and taxing it at the state level.

Good for him, and others like him. I think the trend is certainly toward legalization (or at least decriminalization) but I fear there is still a long way to go.

Our local travel guy Rick Steves is an outspoken advocate for reform of marijuana laws.

Jim P., what about a special provision to keep the prison system from being overcrowded, like a provision that minimizes or eliminates all prison time for non-violent or victimless offenders?

"what about a special provision to keep the prison system from being overcrowded, like a provision that minimizes or eliminates all prison time for ... victimless offenders?"

If there are no victims, how can there be an offender?

Well I'm about to face a fine for telling the Census Bureau to go to hell.

I quite agree with legalization. My only argument is what the taxation levels should be. I thought in the past $5 to the fed. Quite frankly the government no longer has a revenue problem. Its a spending problem.

I wanted to say: I asked, a long time ago, who compared legalizing drugs to legalizing slavery. I found out - it was, believe it or not, the late executive editor and NYT columnist, A. M. Rosenthal!

Search on his name and drugs.

Rosenthal died in 2006.

The Sept. 1989 New York Times column I was thinking of is "The Case for Slavery." You can find it online.

And here's part of what he wrote in January 2001:

.....Using a well-financed and skillful propaganda machinery they keep spreading the message that the drug war has failed. They tell us the supply, mostly provided by Latin American and Asian killer-gangs, cannot be cut off. For years these Americans have been saying their goal is legalization - but now say it rarely in print.

They know the public would not buy that. So with money from some really rich billionaires, they use innocuous labels like "reform" and present referenda disguising narcotics as necessary for treating sick folk. The truth is that narcotics are already available when necessary, but with strict medical regulations, not the fuzzy rules that lead to legal drug clubs and drug parties.

This is a sly crawl to legalization. But for shameful reasons - a glitzy social network, a press that is mushy about drugs, the chic influence of a handful of prominent writers and academics - the government anti-drug drive has failed to do real combat with the pro-druggy lobby. It has not directed the disgust of society against them, particularly against those who finance the war against the drug war. Even using the phrase "drug war" causes officials and journalists to sneer. Anti-drug Americans outnumber and organizations outnumber the legalizers, open or concealed, by about 10-to-1.

But you would never guess that by the press coverage anti-drug organizations like National Families in Action don't receive despite the enormously valuable information they distribute, or maybe because of it.

The politically correct and socially vile propaganda against fighting drugs has persuaded some normally sensible people to believe the war is being steadily lost. That is a lie; since the mid-'80s the monthly use of illegal narcotics has dropped 42 percent. Most anti-drug people and organizations fully understand the importance of therapy in fighting narcotics. Government and anti-drug private donors provide therapy with money. Legalizers provide their mouths.

They pretend that prisons are stuffed with Americans imprisoned for a puff of pot. But Gen. McCaffrey said in The Washington Times that in fiscal 1998 only 33 federal defendants were in for offenses involving less than 5,000 grams of marijuana and only 55 for crimes involving 25 grams of cocaine or less. More than 70 percent of 221,000 state inmates were in for trafficking in drugs, not just possessing them. Eighty-two percent returned to cells with records of earlier crime.........

(snip)

I can only wonder if he ever read what Sam Harris wrote in "The End of Faith," 2005:

.......Even if we acknow­ledge that stop­ping drug use is a jus­ti­fi­able social goal, how does the fin­an­cial cost of our war on drugs appear in light of the other chal­lenges we face? Con­sider that it would require only a onetime expenditure of $2 billion to secure our com­mer­cial sea­ports against smuggled nuclear weapons. At present we have alloc­ated a mere $93 million for this purpose. How will our pro­hib­i­tion of marijuana use look (this comes at a cost of $4 billion annu­ally) if a new sun ever dawns over the port of Los Angeles? Or con­sider that the U.S. gov­ern­ment can afford to spend only $2.3 billion each year on the recon­struc­tion of Afgh­anistan. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are now regrouping. War­lords rule the coun­tryside beyond the city limits of Kabul. Which is more important to us, reclaiming this part of the world for the forces of civil­iz­a­tion or keeping cancer patients in Berkeley from relieving their nausea with marijuana? Our present use of gov­ern­ment funds sug­gests an uncanny skewing — we might even say derange­ment — of our national pri­or­ities. Such a bizarre alloc­a­tion of resources is sure to keep Afgh­anistan in ruins for many years to come. It will also leave Afghan farmers with no altern­ative but to grow opium. Happily for them, our drug laws still render this a highly prof­it­able enterprise........

I found out - it was, believe it or not, the late executive editor and NYT columnist, A. M. Rosenthal!
____________________________

He may have been one reason why my mother has referred to the New York Times (not quite in these words) as a conservative rag.

The reason the federal government will not legalize marijuana is that criminals in congress and other government agencies are directly involved in the smuggling, distribution and money laundering of the profits.

Our only option is to remove the criminals in congress, white house and law enforcement to establish a constitutional government again. It is time to water the tree of liberty!