Even the Obama Family Not Spared Drug War Lunacy

This is just sad, especially for George Obama. I have hope President Obama takes this to heart and brings us real change by rejecting the failed prohibitionist policies of the past, crafting a way out of the drug war morass in which this country is mired, dragging so many other nations with us.

Obama's half-brother held on drugs charge

President's relative arrested in Kenya after alleged marijuana seizure

8:38 a.m. ET, Sat., Jan. 31, 2009
NAIROBI, Kenya - The half-brother of President Barack Obama has been arrested for alleged possession of marijuana, Kenyan police said Saturday.
Area police chief Joshua Omokulongolo said George Obama was picked up Saturday and was being held at the Huruma police post in the capital.
Omokulongolo said officers found one joint of marijuana on him.
Obama reportedly denied the allegations.
"I don't know why they are charging me," CNN quoted Obama as saying from jail.
George Obama and the president had the same father but are not believed to have a close relationship.

Considering the Obama administration just a week ago raided a marijuana dispensary operating legally under California law in South Lake Tahoe, I am not inspired by Obama's continued silent acquiescence to the outrageous and failed federal drug policies of the last 37+ years.

Aside from the ostensible failures of these policies, how can President Obama ignore the statistical reality that the drug war has been largely a war by proxy against minorities, especially poor African-Americans? One of Obama's own hometown newspapers tells this sad story.

Stop the madness, President Obama. Americans (and now, your brother) are suffering enough without being criminalized for marijuana or for operating a state-sanctioned above-board business dispensing marijuana. These people have the right to earn a living too and shouldn't have it snatched away by authoritarian thugs.

Show us you truly value freedom and free enterprise for all us lesser mortals, rather than wasting our national resources on the continued folly of a rogue federal law enforcement agency that arbitrarily and capriciously enforces antiquated prohibition laws.

Aside from the billions wasted on this "war" of attrition, it also comes at the life-crushing expense of otherwise peaceable, productive, law-abiding citizens.

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here: chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.” The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba...

A reply to Salon's R. J. Eskrow, and his 11 stupid questions about Libertarians

Posts here have been in short supply as I have been living life and trying to get a campaign off the ground. But "11 questions to see if Libertarians are hypocrites" by R. J. Eskrow, picked up at Salon , was just so freaking lame that I spent half an hour answering them. In the end (but I'll leave it to your judgment), it is not that Libertarians or Libertarian theory looks hypocritical, but that the best that can be said for Mr. Eskrow is that he doesn't have the faintest clue what he's talking about. That's ok, because even ill-informed attacks by people like this make an important point: Libertarian ideas (as opposed to Conservative ideas, which are completely different) are making a comeback as the dynamic counterpoint to "politics as usual," and so every hack you can imagine must be dragged out to refute them. Ergo: Mr. Eskrow's 11 questions, with answers: 1. Are unions, political parties, elections, and ...

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