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You're arguing semantics. Gore ran on, among other things, tax cuts[1] and increased military spending[2]. He supported the Afghanistan War AND the Iraq War[3,4]. He chose Joe Lieberman as VP, who is quite possibly the most right-leaning Democrat in the Senate in the past 40 years[5], who vehemently supported the Iraq War -- so much so that he endorsed John McCain in 2008, supports the death penalty, introduced a bill to strip US persons of their citizenship without due process, supports censorship in entertainment, games, and online. Joe Lieberman is basically George Bush with a stronger grasp of the English language.
Back to Gore: He was aggressively free-trade[6], he wanted to keep medical marijuana illegal and double down on the War on Drugs[7], and he supported a "tough on crime" policy that included expanding the death penalty, mandatory minimum sentencing, and segregated schools for youth offenders[8]. He supported extraordinary rendition (kidnapping)[9] and pushed heavily for backdoors to encryption[10] while VP.

So yes, the GP is exactly right when he says we can't be sure Gore would have been better, and that even if he had done better on some issues, he may have been far worse on others, and thus worse overall.

1 http://www.4president.us/issue...
2 http://cjonline.com/stories/08...
3 https://www.wsws.org/en/articl...
4 http://www.science20.com/news_...
5 http://rightweb.irc-online.org...
6 http://www.ontheissues.org/Cel...
7 http://www.november.org/razorw...
8 http://www.ontheissues.org/Cel...
9 https://seekerblog.com/2007/09...
10 http://content.time.com/time/n...

Your wife is extremely lucky, then. Do some research into the matter, you'll find that in the US, most patients with persistent/chronic pain are undermedicated; doctors are pushed to worry about addiction (prevalence ~3% of chronic-pain patients) rather than told how to identify pseudo-addiction. Here's a couple of relevant articles: here and here (with interesting facts.

I'm a "model patient" yet even with a spinal/brainstem birth defect identified as the cause of severe pain, my doctors just gave me 30 pills of the lowest-strength vicodin until I told my primary physician that the pain was making me suicidal. She said the government makes it a nightmare to give anything unless they have a desperate model patient, and (after many questions) put me on a narcotic patch that makes morphine look like candy.

Even then, despite having a sterling record (never abused meds, used illegal drugs, smoked, only drank enough *once* to get tipsy, or held hands outside a LTR) and surgical records dating back to 1 day old, every six months I'm required by the government to be given a full exam including urine/blood drug tests. I'm lucky, too -- I think it's fucked-up that I'm treated like a criminal for needing pain medication, but at least I can get it, which is more than I can say for the majority of other disabled people dealing with pain that I know...

Sorry, that's wrong. Non-violent offenders only account for 1/3 of the prison population.

http://www.november.org/razorwire/rzold/20/20021

That said, I agree with you that ending the War on Drugs would eliminate our prison overcrowding problem. But the drug trade is, by its nature, violent.

The rapper/actor Ice-T made a very good point about this once. He admitted to an interviewer that he used to be involved in unspecified criminal enterprises. (Ironically, he now plays a cop on TV!) The interviewer asked him if his crimes were violent or non-violent. He responded that all profitable criminal activity is violent, because you have to use violence to keep your profits.

And though he didn't say this, you can see that the WoD is what makes the drug trade so obscenely profitable, and therefore violent. It never manages to wipe out the trade completely, only busting the smaller drug rings that would bring drug prices down if they were allowed to compete with the cartels.

You can't effectively legislate morality, as we demonstrated with Prohibition.

Is prohibition really a moral issue? I drank a glass of egg nog with rum tonight -- am I an immoral person? I can understand morals like "don't kill people and take their stuff", but how is drinking a glass of rum laced egg nog immoral? Or smoking a joint? Or doing heroin? I know that egg nog has a lot of fat and sugar, so it isn't exactly a health drink. Smoking pot is bad for your lungs and doing heroin is bad for the heart, but as long as a person isn't driving around endangering other people after doing any of these, where is the actual immorality?

I agree with you. I don't think that drinking is immoral, but then again, I don't believe that gay marriage is a "moral" issue either. There's a subset of people who believe that a fair amount of the things which bring pleasure to people in any way are sinful and shouldn't be allowed. Those are the people who are trying to legislate their "morality." There's an interesting article from a few years back called "Tyrany of Legislating Morality" which covered this.

> Our dumb (tm) drug laws are largely responsible [f]or this.

You think?

http://www.november.org/graphs/FedbyOffense.gif

Those are two different statements. Just because people do drink in parks near you doesn't mean that they are allowed to do so.

This is increasingly off topic. Suffice it to say that in Iowa, alcohol is allowed in most parks.

It doesn't sound like you have very good relationships with your neighbors. I would suggest you try working on that and perhaps the problem won't be as significant.

If someone is an anti-pot bigot, there's not much I can do about that. Besides, my relationship with my neighbors has nothing to do with the legal status of Cannabis.

The cop who stopped me asked if I had knives, guns, or grenades. If I had grenades and he found those, would that be wrong? After all, the officer did have just cause to pull me over.

I don't even know what you're trying to argue here. Sending someone to jail for marijuana is simply not justifiable, no matter how it was found.

You have already told us you smoke pot. I'm going to guess you didn't just start spontaneously, and you probably know others who smoke as well. How many of them have been arrested just for smoking pot or having pot on their person? That is, how many of them weren't doing something in public that attracted attention?

I don't personally know anyone, but it happens. Are you going to deny that people like Johnathan Magbie exist? People go to jail for possession.

Are you considering only the physical addiction to smoking pot? Really you should be concerned with the psychological addiction to being under the influence.

You can get "psychologically addicted" to anything, food, sex, the internet. Should people go to jail for doing that too?

I quit caffeine years ago, it was not very difficult, even for someone like me who used to drink nearly a gallon of soda in a day.

I drink about 32 oz of coffee a day I guess. But I'm sure it would be easier to quit smoking pot. I do it every once in a while for a couple of weeks, it helps keep tolerance down. Coffee on the other hand, I haven't missed a day since high school.

Conversely, I know someone who refuses to socialize without smoking a joint. He just went on the pot equivalent of a week-long bender last week and never spoke to anyone. He is psychologically addicted to the state of being under the influence of weed.

And you'd send him to jail for it! No wonder he didn't want to talk to you.

If we are failing at prohibiting it, then why are you so angry? I am content with the laws as they are. You seem to be quite irate over them.

Failing doesn't stop them from hurting millions of people along the way. You'd be irate too if you were persecuted by your own government.

How do you know which drunk person in public will cross that line and which one won't?

You don't. So what? Jail them all and who cares who's innocent?

First, that still doesn't support your conclusion of what I said. You are trying to implicate me as wanting to arrest anyone who has pot. I never said that.

You said you wanted the current marijuana laws were ok the way they are. Current marijuana laws prohibit the possession of marijuana. What other conclusion am I to draw?

It is pretty easy to determine who is under the influence of pot, alcohol, or other substances.

But it's not really. At least for Cananbis.

And if they choose to be in public while under the influence, they are choosing to be oblivious to the risks of their decisions to the public.

I admit, I'm oblivious to the risks involved with me being in public while stoned. I really think they're negligible. If you could demonstrate any risk I pose to the public while sto

"This definitely seems like attack on law and order - when properly authorized and overseen, undercover investigations are one of the few legitimate means of acting to prevent crime in a way that can be ethically and logically defensible for a state."

Bullshit. Informants are often criminals themselves and are paid for their information. Undercover policework walks a very thin line to keep from crossing over into entrapment. Not to mention, almost all of the "wrongdoing" that this network of lies is trying to stop is victimless drug crime.

Here's more
http://www.november.org/stayinfo/breaking06/DrugIn formant.html
http://www.preventgenocide.org/punish/extradition/

Same with marijuana...the same things that make it illegal

Please consider that the "things that make marijuana illegal" are themselves rather unsavory,
such as racism and the manipulation of public policy and law for private gain.

Consider the following link (an amicus brief by University of Buffalo School of Law
Associate Professor of Law Jeffrey M. Blum) to gain some historical perspective
http://www.november.org/dissentingopinions/Blum.ht ml

Don't you mean, "legalized again." Cocaine was legal in the US http://november.org/stayinfo/breaking2/Armistice.h tml

And no, it was not in coca-cola.
http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/cocaine.asp

One thing that would help a lot would be for more people to be aware of Jury Nullification. While the laws would still exist, unjust laws would be ignored.

There are some good links on this subject at:

• http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/z enger/nullification.html
• http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/j/p/jph13/Jury Nullification.html
• http://www.greenmac.com/eagle/ISSUES/ISSUE23-9/07J uryNullification.html
• http://www.friesian.com/nullif.htm
• http://www.november.org/razorwire/rzold/04/0412.ht ml

As the saying goes There are four boxes to be used in defending our freedom: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Use them in that order.

Is this just? Would you like it if all judges were like this?

If the judge were omnipotent, he'd grow me a replacement arm in 3 seconds, and that would be justice, and I'd like it a lot. (He could also go and punish the guy, but only proportionally to the harm done, which means years in jail, not millenia in Hell)

Human traditions of justice only make sense because we have a need to deter crime, as we lack the power to completely heal its effects. God allegedly has that power.

And so, we have Jesus , the son of God, who takes our place and our punishment.

If what you just wrote was the actual Christian dogma, it'd be fine. But they don't claim that- they say Jesus only takes your punishment if you call on him. A perfectly loving Jesus would save even those who don't love him back, instead of demanding reciprocity... which is exactly the line I started the big thread with. (Have you read ToTC? Good book, with a strong anti-Christian parable for the climax)

I think if you really want a good explanation for this, you should check out this web page.

That says nothing. It's based on using the older definition of sacrifice- today it means "give up something of value", but it once meant "to make sacred or holy". I already explained how the cruxification didn't meet definition 1. It doesn't meet definition 2 either, because Jesus was already sacred, holy, and belonged completely to God (Himself).

That wasn't a sacrifice, because you can't pay a man with something he already owns. If you try and he lets you get away with it, then he's essentially decided let you off without payment at all, which is something you claimed God's sense of justice won't let Him do.

She's apparently a vocal opponent of the drug war. i would say US government vs marijuana smokers though, as it'd resonate more with the audience here :)

While the story topic is nice, IMHO, the ALA's work in publicizing Ashcroft's demand that libraries remove information about certain US laws from their libraries is far, far more important of a public service!

Everyone's favorite tyrant AG John Ashcroft wanted ordered the American Library Association to destroy all copies of the federal laws on asset forfeiture and to prevent disclosure of their content. Thanks to quick action and a lot of publicity by the ALA and others, the fascists backed off.

There are actually only 10 U.S. states in which convicted felons permanently lose their voting rights, and six more in which they lose them but may later petition to have them restored. (More info here and here.)

I agree that it should be unconstitutional, just like poll taxes and similar measures devised to exempt from voting rights such persons as the states saw fit to exempt. (I'm borrowing a little euphamistic language from the U.S. Constitution, here.)

...AIDS education is equivilent to baptist religion in the United States of America.

...Citizens of the United States of America pay 2-3x as much for US Made Rx drugs than any other people in other countries pay for US Made drugs. And George W Bush's recent seniors drug bill just made it illegal to go to canada to purchase drugs.

...Internal Government agencies murder and jail for life farmers for producing state sanctioned crops.

...freedom of speech is nonexistant in the United States of America.

...soldiers are given amphetamines to enhance battle skills.

...infanticide of children in poverty is commonplace

...
of course the list goes on...

Could you please relay that message to your senators and representatives? In 1900, Coca-Cola put cocaine in their soft drinks. In 1991, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a mandatory sentence of life-without-parole for possessing 0.672 kilos of cocaine was not "cruel and unusual". Our government is quite capable of handing out outrageous sentences for petty offenses.

Could you please relay that message to your senators and representatives? In 1900, Coca-Cola put cocaine in their soft drinks. In 1991, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a mandatory sentence of life-without-parole for possessing 0.672 kilos of cocaine was not "cruel and unusual". Our government is quite capable of handing out outrageous sentences for petty offenses.

Jury Nullification
Jury Nullification
Jury Nullification
Jury Nullification
Jury Nullification:History, questions and answers about nullification, links
Don't believe what the judge told you, as far as I can tell.

This libel suit is just one part of an ongoing battle, one between the police/prison industry, and the general public.

If you are interested in Virginia's prison problem, including the so-called "supermax" prisions, and the insane shit that goes down at one of them, check out the following sites.

Committee to end the lockdown at Marion (old)

Drugsense

Human Rights Watch

November.org

In Virginia, prison is a big business, we import criminals to fill our prisons, and it's used as a source of revenue. On-duty cops are paid state funds to lobby the state legislature for harsher laws. Police, as a organized group, should not have a political voice, they are supposed to enforce the laws, not create them.

I'm no liberal, I believe in strict enforcement of sane laws. But when you have police writing the laws, to protect and expand their own industry, it does not serve the public's best interest.

One has to wonder how many innocent people are taken from their homes, or all their property confiscated, or even worse: executed.

How's this for a start?

Someday we may see people trying to escape the US as those did in the day of the communist eastern bloc countries...

The exodus has already begun.

The War on Drugs has been responsible for massive amounts of federal asset seizures. I can't remember if it was Bush or Reagan, but one of 'em enacted a law that gave the federal law enforcement agencies the abillity to seize your goods if they even SUSPECTED you were involved in some form of drug trade or possession, and they don't have to disclose the "evidence" that led them to believe you were guilty. This resulted in a lot of innocent people taking it in the bung.

I see a parallel here in recent events. The government has just come up with another way to criminalize otherwise innocent people. We already have a greater percent of the population incarcerated than any nation (but, hey, it's good for the economy!).

The scariest thing, to me, is that if the government spent as much time and money trying to educate us about drugs, rather then spend it on propaganda, we might not have so many lives destroyed. Similarly, if we spent as much time and money on finding a peaceful solution to the terrorist problem, instead of bombing the hell out of people and whittling away at US Citizens' civil liberties, maybe we could get somewhere.

Meanwhile, I'm a bit scared that my political beliefs will get me thrown in a jail. Please, you may not agree that we shouldn't be bombing Afghanastan, and you may not agree with my politics, but every single American is in danger of losing our freedoms. And that's what we are supposed to be fighting for in the first place, isn't it?

Speak out!

• Explanation of Jury Nullification from the Mendocino Eagle
  

Cops killing and destroying the lives of innocent people (aka "asset forfeiture", see http://www.november.org/essay1.html for some more along these lines), drug dealers killing each other and other innocent people, insane amounts of money corrupting government and law enforcement, is all justifiable "collateral damage" to prevent a relative handful of abusers from killing themselves?

Oh, wait, I forgot. Since our justice system is so overburdened that it can't provide justice (and actually punish people who hurt/maim/kill other people, drunk drivers for example), we have to assume that it never would work even with the source of the overburden (nonviolent crimes being prosecuted with higher priority than typical murder and assault cases) removed.

I really suspect this is a Troll, too bad it's moderated up as "insightful", given that it's SO un-insightful.

All you have to do is look at our attempt to prohibit alcohol consumption for a beautiful example of what is wrong with "the War on Drugs". Deaths due to poisoned product and gang war, as well as corruption of all kinds, escalated amazingly during prohibition, and most of those factors faded out after re-legalization of alcohol. People who just wanted to provide a product and make money became legitimate businessmen, in a regulated industry. Deaths still occur due to alcohol, but they are a significantly smaller percentage of the population than during prohibition, and reforms to have mandatory sentencing for things like alcoholic manslaughter would do a lot more to keep us safe than mandatory sentencing for a pot smoker caught in his own home.

The primary thing that was left over after the end of prohibition, unfortunately, was the money and corruption, and if you don't think that money helped buy prohibitions of other things to keep the money flowing to the mob and such, you're the one smoking something you shouldn't.

Rather than give some unknowledgable bureaucrat the authority to say who can and cant use what ad system and when, why don't you organize a boycot of websites that use doubleclick. The liberal media would love to cover it. You will either see a competitor to doubleclick with a privacy agreement rise up, or websites will yank 3rd party ads off of their website. Most webmasters would prefer to see them go anyway.

Just because something is 'bad' (drugs, medical bills, salary, investments), it is not going to get better with government regulation. The internet is where it is because the government stayed away from it for quote some time. Good!

And remember... faceless corporations are an easy target for FUD because they seem inhuman or uncaring. But behind that faceless corporation are thousands of employees and investors... people with families, people who hire others, VC firms that feed other businesses, a replenishing fountain for the economy. In this case, our 'faceless' corporation supports hundreds of thousands of websites, which in turn are our new foundation of free speech and communication.

Don't create a 'golem' by unleashing an Imperial Federal Government with the power to control what DBA's can or can't store. You will never get the monster to go back to where it came. Vote Libertarian.

Let me first start by saying that the issue of drugs is probably the only area on which I have anyway conservative views - but even I can see that the 'War on Drugs' launched by America is not only a failure, but a catastrophy.

I would almost say world-wide catastrophy.
Sites like november.org give a smattering of alarming statistics about the effects in America of the war on drugs(for example "The average sentence for a first time, non-violent drug offender is longer than the average sentence for rape, child molestation, bank robbery or manslaughter..."). Walter Cronkite takes a dim view of the war here. Also, some surprising 'mistakes' of the war on drugs can be found here.

But here's where the international aspect comes in: most of the War on Drugs aid that is being sent to foreign(i.e. non-US) nations is being mainly used to support regiemes that otherwise might topple. For instance Marxist rebels in Columbia have found themselves pitted against a regieme supported by War on Drugs money and soldiers trained by American 'advisors'. As freerepublic.com puts it :"Formally, all U.S. aid to Colombia, which produces most of the world's cocaine and most of the heroin consumed in the United States, is intended for anti-drug rather than counter-insurgency efforts. But in practical terms, the distinction is fading...". Ironic, considering it's pro-government paramilitaries that control the larger proportion of the drugs trade...the very same paramilitaries that routinely commit genocidal raids on villages that have tried to remain neutral...the very same paramilitaries that wander Columbia armed with American made weaponary such as MP-5s and secure in their training from American soldiers...oops! I mean advisors. No-one's saying that the rebels are angels - they too have participated in the drugs trade and kidnapping and so on. I'm just saying when a policy has got it so wrong, both on the American domestic front and on the foreign front, why is the policy persued so fanactically by certain Americans?
Anyway....just to be more on topic, I saw C4's 'Traffikk', pretty good. I hope the film 'Traffic' hasn't dulled the message too much so as to render the message unreadable to the vast majority of people(i.e. non-slashdotters 8).

8)

Let me first start by saying that the issue of drugs is probably the only area on which I have anyway conservative views - but even I can see that the 'War on Drugs' launched by America is not only a failure, but a catastrophy.

I would almost say world-wide catastrophy.
Sites like november.org give a smattering of alarming statistics about the effects in America of the war on drugs(for example "The average sentence for a first time, non-violent drug offender is longer than the average sentence for rape, child molestation, bank robbery or manslaughter..."). Walter Cronkite takes a dim view of the war here. Also, some surprising 'mistakes' of the war on drugs can be found here.

But here's where the international aspect comes in: most of the War on Drugs aid that is being sent to foreign(i.e. non-US) nations is being mainly used to support regiemes that otherwise might topple. For instance Marxist rebels in Columbia have found themselves pitted against a regieme supported by War on Drugs money and soldiers trained by American 'advisors'. As freerepublic.com puts it :"Formally, all U.S. aid to Colombia, which produces most of the world's cocaine and most of the heroin consumed in the United States, is intended for anti-drug rather than counter-insurgency efforts. But in practical terms, the distinction is fading...". Ironic, considering it's pro-government paramilitaries that control the larger proportion of the drugs trade...the very same paramilitaries that routinely commit genocidal raids on villages that have tried to remain neutral...the very same paramilitaries that wander Columbia armed with American made weaponary such as MP-5s and secure in their training from American soldiers...oops! I mean advisors. No-one's saying that the rebels are angels - they too have participated in the drugs trade and kidnapping and so on. I'm just saying when a policy has got it so wrong, both on the American domestic front and on the foreign front, why is the policy persued so fanactically by certain Americans?
Anyway....just to be more on topic, I saw C4's 'Traffikk', pretty good. I hope the film 'Traffic' hasn't dulled the message too much so as to render the message unreadable to the vast majority of people(i.e. non-slashdotters 8).

8)

More frightening are prisons actually run by private corporations. There is huge potential for fraud, abuse, and violation of the intent of the prison system, as well as little evidence that these corporations actually save money; most evidence shows that they cost more money through various hidden costs. Texas I believe, along with California, are leaders in this field. Read The Nation article carefully before making any more uninformed posts. As you can see, corporations actually do benefit from the production of more prisons.

I've known users (not dealers) that have had their door broken down in the middle of the afternoon. No knock, just BOOM! and a bunch of guys dressed in black combat gear bust in and start ordering people around using some very derogatory terms I won't mention here.

Why? Because an upset friend called into crimestoppers and said my friends were expecting a ten-pound brick of marijuana delivered to that house on that day, and that they wanted to sell it to neighborhood kids. On top of that, they said my friends had a small arsenal, including semi-automatic assault rifles (not true) and grenades (absolutely not true). This nessessitated the "no-knock" entry and SWAT team and full assualt gear. Never mind there was no evidence -- none -- never mind they only had an anonymous informant, they still raided the house.

Say what you want, it was an anonymous tip, and there's no way to track down the person that made it, unless they were foolish enough to try to get their crimestopper reward.

End of story, some marijuana was found and my friends went to jail. While they were in jail (for about $15 of marijuana) someone in the neighborhood walked through the busted door and cleaned out their apartment. The police said it wasn't their problem -- even though they caused it.

I had a friend lose a new Honda Civic because he was unfortunate enough to get caught driving with a small amount of coke in the console. My aunt almost lost a rental house because a tenant was selling drugs out of it -- even though she had no knowledge of it. I've had friends call in anonymous tips to get back at enemies, ex-girlfriends, you name it.

After a while you wonder about the cost of it. Drug use (legal and illegal) has it's cost to society, but the cost of the drug war is far higher. It's created an insane black market, one rich enough to buy governments, a navy (see drug submarine that was found half-finished, think they don't have another?), and a military force. There are some nations that don't have these kinds of resources. It's also created a police force high on power and without normal checks and balences. One that runs rampant over civil rights and imprisions more people per capita than even Stalinist Russia. What's the cost on that? Broken homes, children without parents, people with promising futures cut short. Rapists and murders going free so we can keep non-violent drug users imprisoned with mandatory minimums.

The parallels with prohibition are scary. Notice the decline in crime after prohibition. Notice the increase since we've gotten serious about the war on drugs. Something's not working, let's stop throwing money at it and try a different course.

november.org

Nor a lying, (former) cocaine addict. Is Pat Paulson still around?

http://www.yahooka.com/
http://www.hightimes.com/
http://www.lycaeum.org/
http://marijuana.newscientist.com/
http://www.hemp.net/~ramus
http://www.druglibrary.org/ schaffer/History/whiteb1.htm
http://www.s ptimes.com/News/72699/TampaBay/Stakes_high_in_man_ s_.shtml
http://www.dqc.org/~james/
http://www.november.org/
http://www.pdfa.net/
http://mall.turnpike.net/~jnr/think.htm