Mexican Drug War, American Drug Use

Finally government officials are getting real about the cause of the drug trafficking coming through Mexico. It's the drug users in the United States.

If the United States would make American-grown pot legal, then a whole lot of people would not have to die. Yes, there are more drugs being trafficked from Mexico than pot, but that would be most of it.

I can't believe I've come to this conclusion. For years, I would snort with derision as some kid stood at a polling place on election day asking if I'd sign a petition to have pot legalization on the ballot.

And let's not forget the American guns used in all this Mexican killing (thank you, Virginia). And the American cash used to buy the drugs.

The Mexican drug war has its roots in the tastes and habits of the American people.

Yes, We Are Torturing People

Let me ask you a question. Suppose you picked up a gun and shot someone and then claimed that you did not shoot him. Instead you say you were poking his internal organs with a projectile piece of metal, but weren't shooting him at all. Would that be enough to absolve you from charges of shooting someone? No.

So, too, do the claims of this Administration fall short of convincing in the area of toture.

Let me ask further what would happen to the lawyers who advised you that the above legal theory was sound? They would be brought up on ethics charges and possibly disbarred. That's what WILL HAPPEN to the lawyers who advised our men and women in uniform that waterboarding prisoners is legal. Even if we call them detainees.

Now I can hear all sorts of lawyers shrieking about legal definitions and what tests apply, etc. But I would caution anyone about to commit a Federal crime that such distinctions, as between "prisoner" and "detainee," don't often last very long. And when detainees are recognized as prisoners, the interrogators will become torturers in law as well as life.

David Hicks and the Gag Order

How can the military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay detention camp, which still operates under the authority of the U.S. Constitution, issue an unconstitutional parole agreement?

The gag order on David Hicks, which is part of his plea agreement for getting out of that hellhole, orders David Hicks not to speak to any media about what he was doing in Afghanistan or his time at Guantanamo Bay. Such a plea agreement would be illegal in the United States, except that it has been issued by the military tribunals set up just for the purpose of justifying illegal detentions.

And the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear the cases of the detainees. Their decision will be remembered in the same breath as the Japanese detention case in World War II.

In the linked article, the leading Australian law officer mocked the idea that David Hicks would ever be deported for breaking the gag order, openly sneering at the illegality of it. Too bad our own Supreme Court can't bring itself to do the same thing.