Programming Notes and Open Thread

“bullet” At the Cato Institute today, at 4:00 pm (Eastern)

Should No-Knock Police Raids be Rare-or Routine? (POLICY FORUM)
Featuring Cheye Calvo, Mayor, Berwyn Heights, Maryland, Radley Balko, Senior Writer, Reason and author of Overkill: The Rise of Paramilitary Police Raids in America, Peter Christ, Co-founder, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. Moderated by Tim Lynch, Director, Project on Criminal Justice, Cato Institute.
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“bullet” Radley Balko took questions at Art of the Possible last night. The discussion is in the comments of the post.
“bullet” The Last King of Potland. An interesting article. Canadian accused of major shipments of pot is caught when the U.S. convinces Mexico to turn back his plane with a stop in Texas, where he can be arrested. Now he can’t hire a lawyer, nor can his parents on his behalf, because the U.S. will seize the lawyer’s fee, so he has to apply for a public defender.
“bullet” Marijuana Could Be a Gusher of Cash If We Treated It Like a Crop, Not a Crime by Steven Wishnia
“bullet” I may talk about this more later — An article at MSN titled What if we legalized all drugs? at least brings up the question in a mainstream media article. And it poses some of the reasons why it might be worth considering. So it’s a step forward. At the same time, it is woefully incomplete as to the costs of prohibition, and the academics interviewed in the article (Peter Reuters and Mark Kleiman) as usual fail to engage the primary discussion and instead get trapped in one of their favorite side loops — one that is only partially relevant.