Now I’m a full-blown opponent of the death penalty. I think it’s immoral, impractical, unfairly administered, and has way too much potential for error. I also reject the notion that a free individual can assign that duty to someone else (nominally called “the government”) and escape personal responsibility. I’m thrilled that Illinois has finally abolished it completely.
Still, I find this story about the DEA seizing an execution drug from the state of Georgia morbidly amusing.
Georgia Execution Drug Is Seized
The Drug Enforcement Administration has seized a key execution drug from the Georgia prison system because of concerns about how the state imported the drug from overseas.
Like other states, Georgia last year was forced to import thiopental sodium from England due to a U.S. shortage of the drug, which is used to carry out lethal injections.
“Questions came to light with how the substance was imported” by Georgia, said DEA agent Chuvalo Truesdell, declining to elaborate. He said the DEA will retain control of the drug while it conducts an investigation, which could last up to six months.
Good thing the DEA’s all over that. Importing drugs without proper federal clearance could result in dangerous drugs that might end up killing someone…
Must be a tough job seizing execution drugs from states and tracking down those pesky medical marijuana dealers in Montana.
if they want to upset Kali ma. So be it.
Yeah, that was downright weird. Maybe it is the beginning of an Obama admin back door approach to weakening the death penalty?
Surreal? Try Kafka-esque.
I feel like I’m living a real life version of “Year of the Jackpot”, where everything goes upside-down, inside-out, black-is-white, bleedin’ bughouse crazy.
The DEA sporadically kills innocent people suspected of using almost-completely-harmless cannabis…and then interdicts a shipment of officially sanctioned lethal drugs used to execute criminals. Pardon me while my head explodes…
The DEA has, for years, stuck their nose into anything and everything they could in order to justify their existence. Somewhere along the way, they went off the reservation and are now a rogue agency. I believe they have become a type of junior CIA, with spy networks and operations all over the world. Drugs are their last concern, they just use the war on drugs to get funding.
In this day and age of economic distress and budget slashing, why is it that NOBODY (in Congress) is calling for the reduction/elimination of the wasteful, useless, unpopular and demonstrably corrupt DEA?
It seems to me that the problem is structural: the federal government is a coalition of entities that operate it for their benefit. The FDA is operated by pharmaceutical and big Ag industries for their benefit; the SEC is run by the brokerages for their benefit; Treasury is run by the banks for their benefit; and so on. That the CIA and DEA are operating as self-serving entities is consistent with this model – and with its corollary that we citizens are clients of these entities, consumers of their output. We should be grateful for three hots and a cot as clients of the prison industrial complex, right?
Too many of these self-serving entities have a vested interest in maintaining the prohibition of cannabis – and so without breaking the whole system, cannabis will never be re-legalized.
Expecting that corrupt gang of monkeys in congress to change anything is like expecting Lucy to let Charlie Brown kick the football.
You do know that the hummingbird with the Washington Monument tied to its tail made it to Mars in 1933, right?
Ya but – since then the forces of evil have consolidated their control and so diminished the democratic elements of the federal government that I seriously doubt prohibition would ever be repealed by the current gang of bought and paid for careerists masquerading as representatives.
COnsider:
1) Alcohol prohibition required a constitutional amendment – cannabis prohibition was legislated based on a clear abuse of the commerce clause, adjudicated by a cowed supreme court in Wickard v. Fillburn (same abuse as in Raich v. Gonzalez, where a sick woman growing cannabis for her own personal use on her own property was determined to be subject to federal sanction due to the intersate commerce clause, despite no interstate movement and NO COMMERCE!);
2) various states ended alcohol prohibition within their jurisdictions by the simple expedient of keeping it illegal but removing all penalties. By doing this they avoided federal preemption. One of these was Montana. This is the same legal strategy used in Washington State’s I-1149, which would legalize adult use, possession, sale, and transport of cannabis by removing penalties.
3) Montana has already had one case of a cannabis case which was thrown due to jury nullification – why should this not happen again?
My point is that it is at the State and local level that we will end prohibition – trying to get anything done at a federal level is wasted effort unless you have $40 million or more to buy yourself a senator.
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All I can say is we’ll see. IMO Marie Antoinette would have been buried with her head still attached if the powers that be were as omnipotent as you give them credit for.
Thats a hummingbird drone right? You know they might as well spy on the martians while there to make sure they arent violating marijuana laws…
I need a break!
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2011/03/16/end_the_drug_war,_save_black_america#
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You and me both pal. Lately I sit and look at some of these comments made by the ignorati and think “these people are just too stupid to reason with” and I get a cold, gak like feeling of utter disgust. I suppose this supports the notion that the general public shouldn’t have access to rocket launchers. They’re just too tempting to employ when I run into these clowns, and besides, likely wouldn’t give more than a fleeting sense of satisfaction.
I apologize for having such feelings of violence. But sometimes tar, feathers, and running them out of town on a rail feels like it would be such good clean fun.
Montana and Section 280(e) have got me seriously bumming out.
150,000 of us could own Montana. Unfortunately I don’t think it’s possible to get potheads to form a voting block.
I’ve gotta say I think we need to pull out more references to drinking alcohol prohibition.
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Well I found it. New York’s Mullan-Gage Act was implemented in April of 1921. New York didn’t even keep their State prohibition laws on the books for 3 full years.
How much more surreal can the DEA get?
How much surreal you got?
As much as we give them.
As much as we let them get.
He who will not reason is a bigot;
he who cannot is a fool;
and he who dares not is a slave.
~ William Drummond
“Prohibition… goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control mans’ appetite through legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not even crimes… A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our Government was founded”
~ President Abraham Lincoln, December 1840 (attributed)
I am against Prohibition because it has set the cause of temperence back twenty years; because it has substituted an ineffective campaign of force for an effective campaign of education; because it has replaced comparatively uninjurious light wines and beers with the worst kind of hard liquor and bad liquor; because it has increased drinking not only among men but has extended drinking to women and even children.
~ William Randolph Hearst,
initially a supporter of Prohibition,
explaining his change of mind in 1929.
From “Drink: A Social History of America”
by Andrew Barr (1999), p. 239.
Henry Ford originally made his cars to run on ethanol, so farmers could create their own fuel. (He saw farmers really as his customers originally, since nearly all of us were farmers).
Along comes John D. Rockefeller, who wants people to use oil. He provides money to the anti-alcohol movement in order to make Prohibition a reality, and stop the ethanol fuel industry and promote the use of fossil fuels.
The documentary is called: Fuel
Al Capone and Watergate were red herrings to divert the countries attention from the Fascist acts of eliminating competition. Booze/Ethanol or Ganja//Hemp.
“I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country… Corporations have bee enthroned, an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money-power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until the wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”
~ Abraham Lincoln, November 12, 1864
Henry Ford’s first Model-T was built to run on hemp gasoline and the CAR ITSELF WAS CONSTRUCTED FROM HEMP! On his large estate, Ford was photographed among his hemp fields. The car, ‘grown from the soil,’ had hemp plastic panels whose impact strength was 10 times stronger than steel; Popular Mechanics, 1941.
Who Killed the Electric Trolley?
At the center of the conspiracy was National City Lines, an Enronesque company that suddenly arose in 1937, ostensibly run by five barely educated Minnesota bus drivers, the Fitzgerald brothers. Yet the Fitzgeralds miraculously marshaled millions of dollars to buy up one failing trolley system after another. Soon, through a patchwork of subsidiaries, the brothers owned or controlled transit systems in more than 40 cities.
In the early 1900s, Henry Ford and other futuristic, organic, engineering geniuses recognized (as their intellectual, scientific heirs still do today) an important point – that up to 90 percent of all fossil fuel used in the world today (coal, oil, natural gas, etc.) should long ago have been replaced with biomass such as: cornstalks, cannabis, waste paper and the like.
I second that break !
I wonder if it is her? She could have followed my link:
You must be Karen Tandy; who else would spew such nonsense, twisted logic and ignorance?
“These substances are already legal through legal channels and are “controlled substances” for a reason. ”
What utter piffle! Substances like marijuana, meth, cocaine, heroin etc are prohibited. How could you possibly claim otherwise?
Prohibition is not regulation, not even in the slightest.
Who, now, controls the purity? : The cartels and the street punks
Who sets the age limits? : The cartels and the street punks
Who decides the opening hours? : The cartels and the street punks
Who settles the trade disputes? : The cartels and the street punks
And who gets to keep all of the profits? : The cartels and the street punks
Karen, I know you’re never ever going to be able to take that small step into reality, not even once prohibition has been finally banished to the annuls of history. You are clearly the type of person who forms and then clings to false beliefs despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This is a mental phenomenon known as “motivated reasoning” –Rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or disconfirms a particular belief, you actually seek out information that -in your mind at least- confirms what you already believe. Thankfully, such an erroneous modus operandi is easily spotted by others, who are in possession of the normal ability to see through your cognitive dissonance of elaborate and spurious rationalizations based on faulty information.
http://townhall.com/columnists/johnstossel/2011/03/16/end_the_drug_war,_save_black_america#
Malcolm, you’re spinnin’ your wheels with those troglodytes. The people who wrote some of those comments don’t show enough intelligence to follow a line of reasoning more complex than “Hungry, eat” or “Drugs, bad”.
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I stand corrected. Upon further reflection I don’t recall reading that Mr. Lincoln favored enforcement of temperance under the color of law and you’re correct, promoting temperance as a lifestyle choice is worlds apart from attempting to force people to do what you think that they should.
I ran across a great quote today in the Billings Gazette comments.
Malcolm, you’re spinnin’ your wheels with those troglodytes.
Don’t worry DC; it’s not for their benefit; I’m simply providing statistics and arguments for those still capable of processing lineal thoughts.
go get ’em mal! sorry i don’t have the time to be there with you, but i’ll be back as soon as i can.
Will be eagerly anticipating your return Brian!
Excuse my convoluted vernacular but I have to raise my standards for this lot over here.
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Malcolm, a few weeks ago I stumbled across the fact that Mr. Lincoln almost certainly never said the phrase attributed to him below and was in fact a prohibitionist.
From our friends at the Schaffer Drug Library:
http://www.druglibrary.org/Schaffer/lincoln.htm
http://www.druglibrary.org/Schaffer/LincolnQuote/lpq0001.jpg
Someday a prohibitionist may actually think to look up the context of that quote and call you on it. Sure, it doesn’t seem that likely that a prohibitionist might think but they do seem to do so by random chance from time to time.
Thanks Duncan! I checked out your link. I’ve just gone through my stuff and removed it. One can never be to sure.
I use these a lot lately (may have come from somebody on this board)
“And here we come to the vital distinction between the advocacy of temperance and the advocacy of prohibition. Temperance and self-control are convertible terms. Prohibition, or that which it implies, is the direct negation of the term self-control. In order to save the small percentage of men who are too weak to resist their animal desires, it aims to put chains on every man, the weak and the strong alike. And if this is proper in one respect, why not in all respects? Yet, what would one think of a proposition to keep all men locked up because a certain number have a propensity to steal?â€
– Felix Mendelsohn, 1915
“I am against Prohibition because it has set the cause of temperance back twenty years; because it has substituted an ineffective campaign of force for an effective campaign of education; because it has replaced comparatively uninjurious light wines and beers with the worst kind of hard liquor and bad liquor; because it has increased drinking not only among men but has extended drinking to women and even children.â€
– William Randolph Hearst,
initially a supporter of Prohibition,
explaining his change of mind in 1929.
From “Drink: A Social History of Americaâ€
by Andrew Barr (1999), p.239
Do you see the word “attributed” dunk?
The one you conveniently left out of the c&p.
Do you know what it means?
There are enough sources of the gist of the quote, to attribute it to Lincoln. He was an advocate of Temperance and that in itself says he was not a prohibitionist. Hearst may have scrambled the meanings to push his agenda. As he did with “Marihuana, Cocaine, Opium, Mexicans, Chinese, Negroes and Jazz Musicians”. But past History tells what they started with, Temperance. The same as Sinclair Lewis’ fascism or Anslingers 100,000 negroes quote or anyone else “attributed”. Just because it isn’t a public speech or article doesn’t mean it isn’t a true quote. I think it’s probably a partial summation of Lincoln’s life by a politician in the 20’s. Or hearsay at a party in the early 1900’s. Or accurate but mistaken location and time. Not important to the point. True accuracy is paramount, if its possible. This I regard as irrelevant and impossible to prove or disprove. It probably resurfaced by reformers in the 50’s and 60’s. But regardless, the statement is factual. 10 years ago I remember this discussion with Schaffer, over the same link you provided. Note he said: it is my opinion he probably did not… Mine too, I agree with him “probably”. I think his name is Chris. But those who miss the point of the quote and focus on the author. It’s typically a diversion to avoid the context of the quote with meaningless unknowns. But if it lets you sleep at night by not worrying about it… here ya go…
Dear US House of Representatives,
“Prohibition will work great injury to the cause of temperance. It is a species of intemperance within itself, for it goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man’s appetite by legislation, and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A Prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded.â€
~ DdC U.S. Resident.
Post, 17 Mar. 2011, to US House of Representatives
Lincoln was against Prohibition and supported Temperance,
the same as the Woman’s Christian Temperance League.
Rockefeller and Hearst were originally for alcohol Prohibition to remove ethanol from the farmers. Once his crude oil diesel and gasoline infrastructure was set up the Prohibition was repealed. Except for quantities needed to fill a tractor. Same scam to remove Hemp in the name of “marihuana”. Moneysluts killing Americans for profit. You’d be surprised at how many want to appease them.
Al Capone and Watergate were red herrings to divert the countries attention from the Fascist acts of eliminating competition. Booze/Ethanol or Ganja//Hemp.
It’s still Fascism…
The Elkhorn Manifesto
“A clique of U.S. industrialists is hell-bent to bring a fascist state to supplant our democratic government and is working closely with the fascist regime in Germany and Italy. I have had plenty of opportunity in my post in Berlin to witness how close some of our American ruling families are to the Nazi regime. . . .
“Certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy. They extended aid to help Fascism occupy the seat of power, and they are helping to keep it there.”
– William E. Dodd, U.S. Ambassador to Germany, 1937
WILLIAM RANDOLPH HEARST, the newspaper and magazine tycoon.
The expected rebirth of cannabis hemp as a less expensive source of pulp for paper meant his millions of acres of prime timberland, and investment in wood pulp papermaking equipment, would soon be worth much less. In the 1920s, about the same time as the equipment was developed to economically mass-produce raw hemp into pulp and fiber for paper, he began the “Reefer Madness” hoax in his newspaper and magazine publications.
ANDREW MELLON, founder of the Gulf Oil Corporation.
He knew that cannabis hemp was an alternative industrial raw material for the production of thousands of products, including fuel and plastics, which, if allowed to compete in the free-market, would threaten the future profits of the oil companies. As Secretary of the Treasury he created the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, and appointed his own future nephew-in-law, Harry Anslinger, as director. Anslinger would later use the sensational, and totally fabricated, articles published by Hearst, to push the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 through Congress, which successfully destroyed the rebirth of the cannabis hemp industry.
A prominent member of one Congressional subcommittee who voted in favor of this bill was Joseph Guffey of Pennsylvania, an oil tycoon and former business partner of Andrew Mellon in the Spindletop oil fields in Texas.
THE DU PONT CHEMICAL CORPORATION, which owned the patents on synthetic petrochemicals and industrial processes that promised billions of dollars in future profits from the sale of wood pulp paper, lead additives for gasoline, synthetic fibers and plastics, if hemp could be suppressed. At the time, du Pont family influence in both government and the private sector was unmatched, according to historians and journalists.
STANDARD OIL OF NEW JERSEY (Now Exxon)
“Four months after the United States entered World War II, the Justice Department obtained an indictment of Exxon and its principal officers for having made arrangements, starting in the late 1920s with I.G. Farben involving patent sharing and division of world markets. Jersey Standard agreed not to develop processes for the manufacture of synthetic rubber; in exchange, Farben agreed not to compete in the American petroleum market.
Why Do You Think They Call it DOPE?
* Cannabis Hemp: The Invisible Prohibition Revealed
* The Elkhorn Manifesto
* Marijuana and Hemp: The Untold Story
* The Nation of Apathetic Puppets By John Pilger
* Maintaining Dysfunction
THE OIL WAR OF 1872
Practical, inexpensive fire-resistant construction material, with excellent thermal and sound-insulating qualities, is made by heating and compressing plant fibers to creat strong construction paneling, replacing dry wall and plywood. William B. Conde of Conde’s Redwood Lumber, Inc. near Eugene, Oregon, in conjunction with Washington State University (1991-1993), has demonstrated the superior strength, flexibility, and economy of hemp composite building materials compared to wood fiber, even as beams.
Isochanvre, a rediscovered French building material made from hemp hurds mixed with lime, actually petrifies into a mineral state and lasts for many centuries. Archeologists have found a bridge in the south of France, from the Merovingian period (500-751 A.D.), built with this process. (See Chenevotte habitat of Rene, France in Appendix I.)
Hemp has been used throughout history for carpet backing. Hemp fiber has potential in the manufacture of strong, rot resistant carpeting – eliminating the poisonous fumes of burning synthetic materials in a house or commercial fire, along with allergic reactions associated with new synthetic carpeting.
Plastic plumbing pipe (PVC pipes) can be manufactured using renewable hemp cellulose as the chemical feedstocks, replacing non-renewable coal or petroleum-based chemical feedstocks.
So we can envision a house of the future built, plumbed, painted and furnished with the world’s number-one renewable resource – hemp.
The Drug War Gravy Train
At least six major U.S. magazines have submitted anti-drug articles they have published over the past year to the government’s Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), in an attempt to qualify for thousands of dollars of financial credits under the same federal advertising program that has benefited the television networks, Salon has learned.
So, Hearst reversed his opinion on the prohibition of alcohol, huh? Unfortunately, he threw all those fine words out the window when he worked so very hard printing lies and propaganda in all his newspapers to help get prohibition of marijuana.
Looks like someone beat me to criticism of Hearst, I was away for a bit and didn’t refresh the page before posting.
Once Rockefeller had the crude oil infrastructure there was no need to prohibit alcohol. Especially since the farmers were now restricted from distilling large quantities. Hemp on the other hand could still be a problem to the crude oil poly fibers, cottons chemical use and trees, steel, meat, dairy, fish and plastic. Nixon was forced to deal with it after Leary overturned the Marijuana Tax Act in 1969. Behind closed doors while the world watched Watergate unfold. Remember there were only three major news sources. None during Hearst reign as yellow journalism king. Simple fascism business 101. Remove the competition, sell more product, make more profits. But coincidences seem to work pretty well for most. The wording is the key. Prohibition is a completely different animal than Temperance. The WCTL wanted temperance and only had a few chapters until Rockefellers $5 million donation. Rockefellers lobby and Congressional connections and Hearst’s monopoly on stories. Doesn’t seem to be that far fetched to me. And farmers still can’t distill their own fuel needs from Harvest waste like stalks and leaves. As they did before prohibition. It’s our health vs their profits. Not capitalism, Fascism or Corporatism, the marriage of state and corporations. We’re borrowing hundreds of billions of dollars for interest on loans to bailout banks and Wall St. While the Koch roaches go after teachers? Give me a break.
Ganja/Hemp
I’m originally from Pittsburgh. We had a Whiskey Rebellion so I don’t believe Americans have ever been against drinking. Temperance is acting responsible and keeping it away from kids and domestic violence was a side effect of drunkeness they were opposed too, not prohibiting drinkling. That was a weasel play by politicians and big business. Same as the Ganjawar.
Prohibition: The Noble Experiment
* Although the temperance movement claimed Dr. Benjamin Rush (1745/46-1813) as one of its primary inspirations, he actually promoted moderation rather than prohibition. The temperance movement often had difficulty getting facts right. 3
* Early temperance writers often insisted that because of their high blood alcohol content, “habitual drunkards” could spontaneously combust and burn to death from inside. 4
* A temperance publication wrote of drinking parents who gave birth to small children with a “yen for alcohol so strong that the mere sight of a bottle shaped like a whiskey flask brought them whining for a nip.” 5
* One temperance “scientific authority” implied that inhaling alcohol vapors might lead to defective offspring for at least three generations. 6
Because the temperance movement taught that alcohol was a poison, it insisted that school books never mention the contradictory fact that alcohol was commonly prescribed by physicians for medicinal and health purposes.
During Prohibition, temperance activists hired a scholar to rewrite the Bible by removing all references to alcohol beverage. 8.a
The Ku Klux Klan (KKK) strongly supported Prohibition and its strict enforcement.
National Prohibition not only failed to prevent the consumption of alcohol, but led to the extensive production of dangerous unregulated and untaxed alcohol, the development of organized crime, increased violence, and massive political corruption. Amazingly, some people today insist that Prohibition was a success!
The “Father of Prohibition,†Congressman Andrew J. Volstead, was defeated shortly after Prohibition was imposed.
The American Temperance Society was established here in 1826. The original goal was moderation in the consumption of alcohol.
Temperance Movement Roots
Timeline of alcohol fuel
[(Ethanol)], an [(alcohol fuel)], is an important fuel for the operation of internal combustion engines that are used in cars, trucks, and other kinds of machinery.
* Since ancient times ethanol has been used for lamp oil and cooking, along with plant and animal oils.[1] Small alcohol stoves (also called “spirit lampsâ€) were commonly used by travelers in the 17th century to warm food and themselves.
* Before the American Civil War many farmers in the USA had an alcohol still to turn crop waste into free lamp oil and stove fuel for the farmers’ family use. Conflict over taxation was not unusual; one example was the Whiskey Rebellion in 1791.
* In 1826, Samuel Morey uses alcohol in the first American internal combustion engine prototype….
… In 1919, Prohibition of beverage alcohol in the U.S. leads to suggestions for more ethanol use as an anti-knock blend with gasoline.[15] Farm belt politicians are split on ethanol as a fuel. While distillers could have a new market for their alcohol, some thought that allowing any distillery to stay open would be a “bargain with the devil.†… continued
According to Sinclair, Hearst’s newspaper employees were “willing by deliberate and shameful lies, made out of whole cloth, to stir nations to enmity and drive them to murderous war.” Sinclair also asserted that in the early 20th century Hearst’s newspapers lied “remorselessly about radicals,”