As someone who has learned to distrust isms, I have also learned that it is important to at least keep track of them, lest the ism people sneak up and stop me from doing what I want to do.

Reading this Reason article, I was drawn to an emerging ism – bioconservatism.

Lawler, a member of President George W. Bush’s controversial Council on Bioethics, tried to make the case that using technology to radically extend human lifespans, and boost human intellectual, emotional, and physical capacities, will end in coercion. Those who don’t want to take advantage of the kinds of enhancements that biotechnology, nanotechnology, and cognitive technology will offer, argues Lawler, will ultimately not have a choice about using them.

But is that so? If anyone should be concerned about coercion, it is the transhumanists who rightly fear that bioconservatives like Lawler will try to use the power of the state to halt the research that would lead to the development of enhancements would enable them to improve their life chances and those of their children.

I advocate a liberal tolerant approach: People who reject enhancements for themselves and their progeny are free to do so, whereas those who want to upgrade their mental and physical capacities are also free to do so. Lawler believes, however, that the tolerance I favor must inevitably give way to coercion. What does he mean by “coercion?”

Lawler sees competition as a form of coercion. I don’t think it is. If I don’t like something, I don’t have to use it. The other day I complained about a Facebook feature I didn’t like, but I’d be the first to acknowledge that there is no obligation to use Facebook. Hell, I don’t even have to own a telephone if I don’t want to. The feeling that I “should” is not actual coercion. Coercion is when the government says I have to be on Facebook or own a phone, the way I have to have to be on the power grid. No one can make me have my hips replaced if they go bad, but the fact that the technology is there and is constantly improving, that my doctor would tell me I’d be a fool not to have it — none of that is coercion.

Bioconservatism fascinates me, though. Here’s the Wiki definition:

Bioconservatism (a portmanteau word combining “biology” and “conservatism“) is a stance of hesitancy about technological development especially if it is perceived to threaten a given social order. Strong bioconservative positions include opposition to genetic modification of food crops, the cloning and genetic engineering of livestock and pets, and, most prominently, rejection of the genetic, prosthetic, and cognitive modification of human beings to overcome what are broadly perceived as current human biological and cultural limitations.^[1][2]

Bioconservatives range in political perspective from right-leaning religious and cultural conservatives to left-leaning environmentalists and technology critics. What unifies bioconservatives is skepticism about medical and other biotechnological transformations of the living world.

Hmmm…. Does “prosthetic modification” include braces for the kids’ teeth, dental implants, hip replacements, and orthopedic surgery involving the insertion of metal plates and screws? How about fillings in teeth? I mean, where do we draw the line? And are these people merely personally opposed, or do they want the government telling us what we can and cannot have done to our bodies?

There are some real nutjobs out there, and while there are probably “reasonable” bioconservatives (maybe they’d let kids have braces, but not allow hip and knee replacement surgery), I certainly hope this WorldNetDaily piece does not typify the bioconservative philosophy.

….the emergence of trans-humanism is just part of the warping of the human race.

“The intention of Lucifer is to rule this world. He has probes that he’s sent out in these orbs that I believe are collectors of human conversations. Our conversations are intercepted by these probes, and these probes can then sort of make designer diseases for your mind. I realize it’s pretty far out thinking. But when you read in the book of Ephesians, it says ‘Put on the whole armor of God,’ and we’re warned about certain ways of behaving because we are being monitored by these fallen angels,” he said.

“Their desire is to destroy us and to twist us, and trans-humanism is part of their twisting. They’re behind all of these things that afflict humanity,” he said.

“We have been invaded. These forces are animating politicians: They don’t realize they’re being assailed, and many of the thoughts they have are coming from the fallen realm. Many of the doctors and the lawyers and all kinds of people in prominent positions of authority are being affected by this invasion, not knowing that they’re being listened to, and their voices are being dissected and designer diseases or mental diseases are being injected into their minds. They think they’re their own thoughts and they’re not. It’s the twisted one who has successfully disguised himself as their own voice,” he suggested.

Geez. What if my thoughts are not my own, and I’m thinking that they are? I better start thinking long and hard about this before the transhumanists totally brainwash the thoughts I have left!

Beware!

And remember. Enabling deaf children to hear by means of cochlear implants has seriously been called “cultural genocide” by activists normally thought of as being on the left.

Those who adopt corrective technologies such as the cochlear implant in an attempt to conform affirm that deafness is in fact a disability that can and should be corrected. Alternately, one can resist the conforming process, thereby resisting the label and the association of deafness as a disability in need of correction.

The affirmation of the infirmity understanding of deafness leads to the search for new and better technologies to address deafness, including stem cell research and gene transfer therapies that aim to ultimately eliminate the birth of deaf infants. This work is done partially to eliminate the stigma of deafness. These advanced techniques, if “successful,” will have the effect of regulating and eventually eliminating Deaf culture, language, and Deaf people altogether. These attempts are seen by those adopting a cultural understanding of deafness as parallel to eugenics or genocide. Although the term eugenics implies the reduction or elimination of deafness through compulsory exogamous marriage and sterilization or through gene therapy, genocide evokes a more active attempt to eliminate a group of people or a culture. The word genocide recalls vast pogroms and systematic killing, however, the slow elimination of a minority group can occur by the destruction of the distinct elements that bind the collectivity, such as language, customs, and art forms. Because the infirmity model of deafness aims to eliminate the need for American Sign Language (ASL), the loss of this language could result in the loss of the culture itself. In this way, language death, or glottocide, can lead to the loss of cultural identity, and may represent the denial of the basic human and civil rights of children to speak their native language.

Wow. It’s obvious that there are anti-technology nuts from across the spectrum. Should the word “conservative” be attached to all who oppose advances in healing technology?

Perhaps “bioreactionary” would be a better word.

I’d say that my life is not their business, but such arguments are lost on those who think it is.

I did not miss tonight’s debate, and I saw Rick Perry and Mitt Romney fly at each other like fighting cocks. Perry accused Romney of hiring illegals, and Romney denied it, because (so he says) he never hires anyone directly. I see both of their points, but the Nevada audience obviously recognizes that it’s tough to know who you hire when you hire a contractor. It was an entertaining scrap.

But – I am sorry that the moderator never saw fit to ask any of the candidates about an issue on the front page of today’s WSJ. The federal government is confiscating legal businesses without due process of law.

TEWKSBURY, Mass.—The $57-a-night Motel Caswell, magnet for hard-luck cases, police patrol cars and the occasional drug deal, is the unlikely prize in a high-stakes tug-of-war between conservative legal activists and the government.

The motel’s owner, spurred by a recent Supreme Court decision, is trying to convince a federal court that the Constitution bars the U.S. Department of Justice from seizing his property, where guests have been found guilty of drug offenses. The owner, Russell Caswell, isn’t accused of any wrongdoing. But he stands to lose his business nonetheless under a law that calls for the forfeiture of properties linked to crimes.

Mr. Caswell’s federal court case challenges the U.S. government’s ballooning asset-forfeiture system that in more than 15,000 cases last year confiscated cash, cars, boats and real estate valued at $2.5 billion. While many asset forfeitures are tied to convictions, the federal government can seize properties stained by crime even if owners face no charges.

“People shouldn’t lose their property if they haven’t been convicted of any crime,” said Scott Bullock, a lawyer for the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm in Arlington, Va., that has joined in the motel’s defense. “Mr. Caswell hasn’t even been accused.”

Civil rights groups, libertarians and attorneys defending against seizures say the government is overstepping its bounds in a practice that has swelled in the past decade to encompass some 400 federal statutes, covering crimes from drug trafficking to racketeering to halibut poaching.

Sigh.

Nothing new about it. This issue is so old in this blog that I could scream. I am glad to see it on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, though, and I think it is disgraceful that the candidates were not asked what they think.

What, if any, are the limits of the federal government’s power?

You’d almost think CNN didn’t care.

We now know why Rick Perry thinks making pot legal may not be the best idea for Texas. The Texas economy is dependent on the dope trade.

Before a federal judge sentenced him to 20 years in prison earlier this year, prosecutors established that between 2006 and 2010 Herrera had been a conduit for more than 660 pounds of cocaine flowing from Mexico’s Gulf Cartel into the United States, a key link on a smuggling chain that distributed drugs to Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Chicago and beyond.

For better or worse Herrera pumped a fair amount of money into the Texas economy, which is getting renewed attention because of Gov. Rick Perry’s campaign for the GOP presidential nomination and his proud declaration that his low-tax and low-regulation policies have enabled Texas to weather hard times — the “Texas Miracle.’’

Clearly, drugs were flowing across the Texas border with Mexico long before Perry became governor and will continue long after he’s gone. And drugs do not have the same level of economic impact on Texas as oil and gas, farming and ranching or legitimate trans-border commerce.

But experts who have studied the impact of drug money say it is undeniable that in a tough economy, trafficking has helped boost employment and economic growth in the state’s border regions, from the Rio Grande Valley to Laredo to El Paso.

As William Burroughs is reputed to have said, “Dealing is harder to kick than using”.

H/T Drug Policy Forum of Texas

Cross Posted at Power and Control

I am having trouble with the logic in a piece I read earlier which indicts the baby boomers in part because of the depraved antics of their “leaders.” These people not only caused an entire generation to become dysfunctional, they also drove today’s teenagers into cannibalism and drinking blood:

Cool was indeed oppressive — and let’s talk about what drove the Vampire to drink blood:

Kerouac drank himself to death, essentially slow suicide. (But he was really cool each step of the way! So who cares if he was miserable?)
William S. Burroughs — the muse behind Ginsberg and the rest of the beats — was a heroin addict who killed his common law wife.
Cobain regularly injected himself with heroin, committed suicide, and married Courtney Love (three acts that are all variations of the the same thing).
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas author Hunter S. Thompson was an alcoholic and a drug addict who committed suicide in 2005.
Mailer had SIX wives and his drinking was legendary.

By definition, baby boomers are people born between 1945 and 1964.

Let’s start with Kerouac. Born in 1922, he had a lot of problems and died an alcoholic. A notoriously right wing alcoholic, by the way. Not only was he not a baby boomer, he was old enough to be the father of every last one of them.

As to the rest, William S. Burroughs (who radiated contempt for coolness and who always wore a suit and tie whenever I saw him) was born in 1914. Thompson was born in 1937, Mailer in 1923, Ginsburg in 1926, and Jimi Hendrix in 1942. They are all too old to be baby boomers. And the other one, Kurt Cobain, was born in 1967, which makes him too young! Why are there no baby boomers in the indictment?*

Now, I realize it is petty to point out the ages of people whose lives constitute an indictment of another generation, for there is no question that they were influential. But did they really cause today’s “vampires” to drink human blood? How? Because they were drunks and drug addicts who wrote? Because they committed suicide?

What about Ernest Hemingway? Was he not simply another alcoholic who committed suicide? True, he was fifteen years older than Burroughs, but wasn’t he at least as influential? He was a great leftist, sympathetic to Castro. and get this:

“Careful reading of Hemingway’s major biographies and his personal and public writings reveals evidence suggesting the presence of the following conditions during his lifetime: bipolar disorder, alcohol dependence, traumatic brain injury, and probable borderline and narcissistic personality traits”

So why isn’t he to blame? And how about beloved playwright Eugene O’Neill, an alcoholic from a drug addicted family? Why isn’t he also seen as having set this country on the road to ruin and spawned the present generation of blood-sucking ghouls?

Oh, I almost forget William Halsted, a knife-wielding drug addict who is considered the father of modern American surgery. What could be more depraved than that bloodthirsty monster?

Obviously, they all must have been very cool, right? Because it’s like, incredibly cool to be an alcoholic and a drug addict.

That’s why this country is so totally into vampirism.

Similarly, most of the country has gone gay because of the influence of the demonic Alfred Kinsey. Talk about cool!

The leaps in logic which are required make me feel like violating Godwin’s Law.

Darwin caused Hitler. And who could be cooler than that?

Actually, another famous American hipster, born in four years before Hitler, Ezra Pound.

I should close with his timeless indictment of usury.

Perfect poem for the anti-banking times we live in. When will today’s hipsters rediscover him?

But what is cool? Roger L. Simon offers a new definition which is similar to what mine once was:

cool was oppressive. It told you how to be and what to be. In some ways cool was the inverse of itself. It was the enemy of freedom while pretending to be its apostle. Nowadays there is nothing more square than to be cool. So feel free to be whatever you want to be.

Cool when I was a kid meant not being affected by others and doing what you wanted. Being told what to do is not cool. Or does that depend on who does the telling? I had long hair until everyone did, then I cut it short. So I think there’s a definition problem. Then as now I hated anyone telling me what I should think, and I don’t tell others what they should think. Even in the days of the coolness stereotype (which I rejected) I always thought it was cool to be square. So while I can handle it now being square to be cool, I find myself going in circles.

Can a circle be square?

*  Courtney Love is technically a last minute baby boomer, having been born in 1964. But did she in any way inspire that generation? She was five years old at the time of Woodstock, and by the time she became known to the public, that generation was already middle aged. I would argue that she is a Generation Xer, and not a Baby Boomer. But I guess the boomers are responsible for the X kids, because after all, weren’t the parents of the boomers responsible for them?

The rule is that we are responsible for the actions of others, but our own actions are other people’s fault.

The cool people made me be square!

Occupy Wall Street? You might as well send them a check.

The only way to get business out of government is to make government smaller. There is no “government” solution to the government problem.

Update: I see comments here and there around the www about how messed up these kids are. I dunno – Wall Street pretty much owns government. Aside from the part the Drug Cartels control. They got the problem right. They got the answer wrong. What they want is smaller government. Something no faction in America favors. They all have their pet projects for improving moral and social conditions that REQUIRE Big Intrusive Government (that would be BIG. And if this were a movie it would be controlled by Mr. Big or perhaps his brother). Ah. Well. Maybe when the kids grow up they will become libertarians.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Whether it masquerades as “multiculturalism” or not, that this sort of thing is going on in American public schools ought to worry everyone:

Students in a Texas public high school were made to stand up and recite the Mexican national anthem and Mexican pledge of allegiance as part of a Spanish class assignment, but the school district maintains there was nothing wrong with the lesson.

It happened last month in an intermediate Spanish class at Achieve Early College High School in McAllen, Texas — a city located about 10 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border.

Wearing red, white and green, students had to memorize the Mexican anthem and pledge and stand up and recite them in individually in front of the class.

That didn’t go over well with sophomore Brenda Brinsdon. The 15-year-old sat down and refused to participate. She also caught it all on video…

Etc.

Forcing kids to swear allegiance to a foreign country is not fun and games, nor is it child’s play.

Taking that oath constitutes an act of expatriation, and if the kids were adults it would automatically cause the loss of their U.S. citizenship.

Irresponsible of the teacher, to say the least. And I am sure the teacher can’t be fired, because the union would never allow it.

What’s next? Forcing students to perform the Shahada?

MORE: As commenter Sigivald pointed out, the above link explains that above acts are potentially expatriating, and not automatically. My mistake.

Facebook can be a very awkward, um, “place.” Is place the right word? Not long ago, an irritating thing happened to me for the second time. I was put on a group I did not join. A lot of people have been complaining about Facebook allowing this, and they say it presents opportunities for scam artists, but this was no scam artist; it was a friend who is trying to build support for his cause. Whether I agree with the cause is not the point; I sort of do, sort of don’t. The point is that I did not join it. As I said the last time this happened,

What I did not join, I did not join. Just because Facebook says I am a member does not mean I am, because if that is the criteria for membership in something, that thing is bogus, and it is inherently wrong to have to unjoin it.

So much for that exercise in passive-aggressive wishful thinking. So much for trying to be nice and ignoring it, for I did that only to be treated to a stream of unwanted advocacy emails. And of course, arguments. Worse yet, when I finally decided to actually go to the group I saw evidence that it is being manipulated by someone I cannot stand, and with whose name I absolutely refuse to be associated in any way, shape or form. So I found myself forced to act not because of anything I did, and even though I don’t think I should have had to, I felt obligated to “quit” a group I had never joined. I don’t like being put in a position of hurting anyone’s feelings, and seriously, I don’t blame my friend who meant well and is utterly sincere (if maybe a tad too zealous). It is Facebook that created this malevolent problem. It is to be expected that in politics people get excited about what they believe in, but sending an invitation is one thing; making someone a group member is quite another. It is wrong to allow this. By being forced to quit, I felt forced to do something I consider inherently wrong.

But still… Did I quit? “Quit” is in quotes above because I am conceptually puzzled. Is it possible to “quit” a group you never joined? Doesn’t the word “quit” by definition mean that you had to start the thing in the first place? Or is it possible to be be joined instead of join, and to be in a “place” you never went?

I don’t want to have to be someone who can be said to have “quit” that group, OK?

It might sound petty, but I am really steamed. I should not have had to quit, and I don’t think I did quit because I was never there! See my problem?

Surely there is reality somewhere. It’s just that it has managed to elude my grasp.

Where is there?

A Mitt Romney fan I am not. But I think the Mormon bashing which has been going on is out of line and un-American, and Romney’s enemies would do well to keep in mind that it could very well trigger a backlash in his favor.

Right now, the anti-Mormon stuff is mainly on the right wing fringes, and this WorldNetDaily piece is typical:

When asked for specific rituals she considers bizarre, Erickson claims Romney and other Mormons take part in clandestine marriage ceremonies involving “outrageous” customs. Explaining her own Mormon wedding, she says she was forced to completely disrobe against her will.

“It was horrific,” she told WND. “There I was standing naked. They brought this bowl of water, and started washing my body down and whispering prayers over my body. They stopped over the right and left breast, the navel and knees and prayed specific prayers.”

To help ensure the general public did not learn details of the rituals, she says believers took a symbolic knife to feign their own murder if members spilled the beans of what really goes on behind closed doors.

“They actually had us slashing our guts open and our guts falling to the ground if we told people of the secret dogma of the ceremonies,” Erickson said.

Wow. Sounds like those evil Mormons are not much different than some of the cannibals and vampires I’ve been reading about lately.

I hasten to add that it’s not just the WND crowd who want to save us from this wicked slasher cult.

While the left has been generally silent (save the gay activists in California during the Proposition 8 hysteria), sainted atheist Bill Maher has chimed in, specifically agreeing with leading Romney religious critic Pastor Robert Jeffress about Mormonism being a “cult.”

Yawn. If Mormonism is a cult (which I don’t think it is — and I say this as someone who has had friends who joined actual cults), then so are many religions. While I don’t like much about Romney, as I explained several years ago, I find his Mormonism refreshing, because it opens up the possibility of alternative forms of Christianity being accepted within the rubric of the Christian mainstream.

I don’t like religious hegemony, and I cannot help notice that those who criticize Romney’s religion usually insist that their own views of the unknown constitute the ONLY view. Whether some form of fundamentalist Christianity (like Jeffress) or atheism (like Maher).

At the rate this nonsense is going, pretty soon the anti-Mormon WorldNetDailyists will end up in bed with the anti-Mormon gay activists.

What a party!

Grace when she was part of a Great Society, before she became part of an Airplane.

And remember to feed your head.

Yep. The above gentlemen have started a computer chip company. GreenArrays. And you thought making chips was a young man’s game? It is true the young guys can work harder. But old guys can work smarter. And with enough coffee, on occasion they can work just as hard.

The chip company is more than old news to many of my readers.

What is new is that they have started a blog. It will be chock full of tips and entertainment – if banging bits entertains you. GreenArrays Tech

And in that vein I too have started another blog. GreenArrays and Forth. Which will document my explorations as a beginner. A journey similar to the one I made at IEC Fusion Technology.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia says the drug laws were a mistake.

“It was a great mistake to put routine drug offenses into the federal courts,” he told the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday. The Wall Street Journal went on to report Scalia’s belief that the laws forced Congress to enlarge the federal court system, and diminished “the elite quality of the federal judiciary.”

This isn’t a new problem. Chief Justice William Rehnquist complained as far back as 1989 that the war on drugs was overwhelming the federal judiciary. In 1995, Kathleen F. Brickley, an academic, found that “the Federal system is strained to capacity due, in large part, to the government’s war on drugs.”

There also seems to be a quota system that has been strained beyond the breaking point. Which seems to be the reason some cops were fabricating drug charges.

A former NYPD narcotics detective snared in a corruption scandal testified it was common practice to fabricate drug charges against innocent people to meet arrest quotas.

The bombshell testimony from Stephen Anderson is the first public account of the twisted culture behind the false arrests in the Brooklyn South and Queens narc squads, which led to the arrests of eight cops and a massive shakeup.

Anderson, testifying under a cooperation agreement with prosecutors, was busted for planting cocaine, a practice known as “flaking,” on four men in a Queens bar in 2008 to help out fellow cop Henry Tavarez, whose buy-and-bust activity had been low.

Real investigations take time. And sometimes they don’t pay off. Sometimes they do and the cops need to find some other people to keep their numbers up.

It is a difficult job and no one should be doing it.

H/T Drug Policy Forum of Texas

Cross Posted at Power and Control

What is racism?

The above question is virtually unanswerable, because racism has become more of a political term than a racial term. It has joined a whole host of words which have lost their original meaning and taken on political meanings that often defy basic logic.  In two earlier posts I struggled over which of the following would be more racist for a Republican: to support Herman Cain or to oppose Herman Cain. I concluded that it would not matter, because Republicans are racist by definition. That is because the left now has a de facto monopoly on the word “racism.”

They literally own it.

Their treatment of the Herman Cain phenomenon is the most perfect example of the utter absurdity of this process I have yet seen. While I do not support him (for reasons having nothing to do with his race), I marvel over the fact that if I did I would be guilty of racism. After all, he is a self-made black man who grew up in the segregated South, and who overcame genuine racism and achieved the American Dream, as well as Martin Luther King’s dream. Can anyone imagine having to explain to Dr. King if he were alive today how it can be that a white man supporting him constitutes racism?

Of course, it is pure politics, and it is grounded in a deeply held article of faith on the left that all Republican opposition to Obama is racist. Because Cain opposes Obama, he too becomes racist. Even though he is racially and culturally more black than Obama, like Clarence Thomas and Condoleeza Rice he ceases to be black because of his politics.  So those who support him are not really supporting a black man; they are supporting a race traitor who has forfeited his right to be black.

In a marvelous leap of Orwellian logic, race itself is now conditioned on politics; you only get to be a member of your race if you hold certain opinions.

So, Cain is not black, and his supporters are all racists.

I hope I have made that more clear than it looks.

I don’t know why, but dumb ideas always seem to start in California and spread elsewhere. The latest is a demand that San Francisco restaurant patrons pay a mandatory 25% tip:

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF/99.7 Now) – It’s a question many of us ask when we go out to a restaurant. “How much should I tip?” Whether your service is good or bad, San Francisco Restaurant workers want to implement a 25% standard tip onto your bill for you. Is this fair?

Many in the food industry say “…yes, it’s about time.” However, many “foodies” are not as happy with the idea. According to an article in the San Jose Mercury News, for the most part, people, on average tip between 15% – 20% and the restaurant worker actually has to claim 15% of that to the IRS.

Opinions that sway against the increase said that “…the whole purpose of a tip is to reward service.” They feel the new tip increase should be earned and if more is needed, then they must step up their service so that the increase justifies a larger tip amount.

Actually, there is a growing movement within the food industry towards mandatory tip sharing by employees. Coupled with mandatory tipping, this would mean that there would be no incentive for waiters persons to try in any special way to please their customers, the result being that customers will start cutting restaurant meals out of their budgets, and more and more restaurants will simply go out of business.

I think it’s tough to graft the entitlement idea onto something that is entirely optional, which restaurant eating is. No one has to eat out, and tips are in theory supposed to be earned.

Furthermore, I consider myself a generous tipper, but 25% seems a bit steep.

We don’t usually do this sort of thing around here. You will note there is no donation button anywhere. I’m going to add one temporarily because I could use some help with a project. Think of this as sort of a kick starter for something that could prove useful in fairly short order.

======

As you may or may not know I’m working on a very interesting microprocessor. You can see a picture of it on my workbench with USB cables going to the computer I’m typing on. Convenient. Internet and development system all in one. Everything is talking nice and following commands.

But you will note that there is a hole on the left side of the photo where my oscilloscope should go. That is because both of my previous scopes have gone belly up on me. I need a scope to continue my experiments and complete a design I have been working on. And this is what such a ‘scope would look like. A Tektronix 475.

Which brings me to my point. I need some help to get such a ‘scope. They can cost up to $500 depending on what is available and the reputation of the seller. If you can help:

And for those of you moved by sentiment: 13 Oct is my birthday. I was born on a Friday. My lucky day.

Cross Posted at Power and Control

As Moe Lane documented in August, the DEA (the front line outfit in the War on Drugs) is a major partner in the “Fast and Furious” scandal, and wants to avoid at all costs being the fall guy:

It would appear that the DEA does not want to be the fall guy in Operation Fast & Furious*, either: DEA head Michele M. Leonhart admitted in a letter to Senator Grassley (Judiciary) and Rep. Issa (Oversight) that her organization was in fact involved in the investigation, and provided support for it. This is a significant admission by Ms. Leonhart, given that (as Bob Owens** of Pajamas Media reminds us) there is an existing allegation by the former head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, & Explosives (BATFE) Phoenix office that the DEA was a full partner in the proceedings.

The DEA is, of course, under the jurisdiction of the Justice Department…

But the scandal (especially the DEA’s role in it) will not go away. As Bob Owens documented yesterday, there is simply no avoiding the simple fact that the DEA figures largely in the “Fast and Furious” scandal now threatening to engulf the Obama administration. According to Congressman Issa, Fast and Furious was “a joint operation in which DEA knew more than ATF”:

In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa revealed for the first time that the Drug Enforcement Administration was far more involved in running the operation than the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives:

It wasn’t an ATF operation. They were part of that. It was a joint operation in which DEA knew more than ATF.

This directly conflicts with prior statements by DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart — she claimed that the DEA only played a supporting role and that her DEA agents in El Paso and Phoenix were only “indirectly involved in the ATF operation through DEA-associated investigative activity.” She further absolved her agency by claiming that “DEA personnel had no decision-making role in ATF operations” associated with Fast and Furious.

The DEA’s higher-profile role will not absolve ATF personnel for their roles in carrying out the plot politically, but it could potentially make a difference in future criminal proceedings if ATF agents on the front lines of the operation thought they were participating in a legitimate law enforcement operation.

Unfortunately for the Department of Justice, the higher level of collusion between different federal law enforcement agencies that report to the attorney general make it even more unlikely that Eric Holder and other senior DOJ personnel were unaware of the real goal of the operation.

Considering that Holder may ultimately have to be thrown under the bus, this puts Obama and his crew in the tricky position of how to run the most efficient damage control operation possible — one which will minimize political fallout.

If the DEA is in fact the primary culprit, then making them the fall guy is a no-brainer. But what about the political implications? Doing something hostile to the DEA poses inherent problems for Obama, because the agency is a major independent fiefdom, with the president only theoretically its boss. People who ascribe imaginary dictatorial powers to “The One” forget that American presidents have long since ceased to be literally in charge of the Executive Branch of government. The President is an elected figurehead whose literal power is a bit like that of the Queen of England, who could theoretically dissolve Parliament but if she did it would be fatal to the monarchy.

So it would behoove him to proceed very, very cautiously against the sainted warriors who keep us all safe from marijuana, and who have mega millions to spend on things like political advocacy:

The 2010 DEA budget was directed toward three of five major goals of U.S. drug eradication:^[14]

• Demand reduction ($3.3 million) via anti-legalization education, training for law enforcement personnel, youth programs, support for community-based coalitions, and sports drug awareness programs.

• Reduction of drug-related crime and violence ($181.8 million) funding state and local teams and mobile enforcement teams.

• Breaking foreign and domestic sources of supply ($1.0149 billion) via domestic cannabis eradication/suppression; domestic enforcement; research, engineering, and technical operations; the Foreign Cooperative Investigations Program; intelligence operations (financial intelligence, operational intelligence, strategic intelligence, and the El Paso Intelligence Center); and drug and chemical diversion control.

A lot of people have been marveling over Obama’s wholesale 180 degree flip-flop on his previously declared hands-off stance towards medical marijuana. In fact, as I read the details, I was baffled, because so many Americans are sick of the drug war and sympathetic to medical marijuana legalization that the hands-off policy that was Obama’s campaign promise would seem to carry minimal political cost. So I kept asking myself why? Why would this lefty community organizer, who is the most pot-friendly president America has ever had, be so willing to betray a significant campaign promise which would not have carried much of a cost. Why has the president become “just another drug warrior“?

And as Glenn Reynolds asks, why the silence on the left?

If the DEA is destined to be made the official Fast and Furious fall guy, I am beginning to understand why. The DEA is a hard-core group of of anti-marijuana fanatics, who see any softening of the nation’s marijuana laws as a dire threat to their turf. Whether seen in terms of overall seizure tonnage, numbers of people arrested or in prison, the term “drugs” translates arithmetically into marijuana. It is no exaggeration to say that from the DEA’s political and bureaucratic standpoint, marijuana is the backbone of the war on drugs. A president who messes around with marijuana literally messes with their bread and butter.

If the DEA feels they are being made the fall guy by a president who has already betrayed them by a pot-friendly stance, I think it is reasonable to assume that they would respond by hitting the trenches, and going after him politically with everything they have.

But if he has carefully covered his tracks by being a DEA-friendly and DEA-compliant president, then they, the DEA, will be ingrates who will not sound credible if they accuse the president of betrayal in the war on drugs.

This is of course speculation on my part. But I cannot think of a better explanation for the puzzling question of why Obama has thrown medical marijuana has been thrown under the bus. And become just another drug warrior.

I’m no longer puzzled.

(The president’s fast and furious ass covering now makes infinite sense.)

A commenter at my post Dopers Are Ruining The Country misconstrued something I had written. Which got me looking for music by the Chambers Bros. I found this link to a recording of the Brothers at the Fillmore in ’68. A concert/dance I may have attended. I saw them somewhere around that time. Me and the posse from my hippie house on Webster Street in Bezerkeley. Any way:

The Chambers Bros. – Time – 22 minutes of listening pleasure.

Glenn Greenwald is having a look at Steve Jobs and how illegal drugs ruined his life.

It’s fascinating to juxtapose America’s reverence for Steve Jobs’ accomplishments and its draconian drug policy with this, from the New York Times‘ obituary of Jobs:

[Jobs] told a reporter that taking LSD was one of the two or three most important things he had done in his life. He said there were things about him that people who had not tried psychedelics — even people who knew him well, including his wife — could never understand.

Unlike many people who have enjoyed success, Jobs is not saying that he was able to succeed despite his illegal drug use; he’s saying his success is in part — in substantial part — because of those illegal drugs (he added that Bill Gates would “be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once”). These quotes (first published by a New York Times reporter) have been around for some time but have been only rarely discussed in the recent hagiographies of Jobs: a notable omission given that he himself praised those experiences as an integral part of his identity and one of the most important things he ever did.

I’d trade all the burnouts and drop outs who couldn’t handle their drugs for another Steve Jobs. Maybe we could get 20 more like him.

In short, the deceit at the heart of America’s barbaric drug policy — that these substances are such unadulterated evils that adults should be put in cages for voluntarily using them — is more glaring than ever. In light of his comments about LSD, it’s rather difficult to reconcile America’s adoration for Steve Jobs with its ongoing obsession with prosecuting and imprisoning millions of citizens (mostly poor and minorities) for doing what Jobs, Obama, George W. Bush, Michael Phelps and millions of others have done.

It is all about connections. And Black people for the most part ain’t got none. So guess who is going to jail? Clue – not white folks (very much).

Jobs’ praise for his LSD use is what I kept returning to as I read about the Obama DOJ’s heinous new policy to use the full force of criminal prosecutions against medical marijuana dispensaries in California. In October, 2009, I enthusiastically praised Eric Holder and the DOJ for appearing to fulfill Obama’s campaign promise by refraining from prosecuting medical marijuana dispensaries in compliance with state law (a “rare instance of unadulterated good news from Washington,” I gushed). As I wrote:

Criminalizing cancer and AIDS patients for using a substance that is (a) prescribed by their doctors and (b) legal under the laws of their state has always been abominable. The Obama administration deserves major credit not only for ceasing this practice, but for memorializing it formally in writing.

Yet now, U.S. Attorneys in California will expend substantial law enforcement resources to persecute medical marijuana dispensaries that sell to consenting adults even though those transactions have been legalized by the voters of California and 16 other states (to see what a complete reversal this is of everything Obama and Holder previously said on this subject, see here).

The article goes on at length discussing our All American Drug Prohibition. And finishes with this update:

UPDATE: In The Los Angeles Times today, a former Deputy Chief of the L.A.P.D. details how drug prohibition “has cost our country more than $1 trillion in cash and much more in immeasurable social harm”; “the damage that came from the prohibition of alcohol pales in comparison to the harm wrought by drug prohibition“; and “that ending today’s prohibition on drugs — starting with marijuana — would do more to hurt the [drug] cartels than any level of law enforcement skill or dedication ever can.”

Ah but think about all the government functionaries out of a job. And America out of Jobs.

H/T Drug Policy Forum of Texas

Cross Posted at Power and Control

Now that Herman Cain has moved into the number two position, I thought I would try to ascertain his position on the War on Drugs. From an Atlantic interview:

So what if the root cause is the demand for drugs here in the United States?

If the root cause is demand in the United States, crack down on the laws against illegal drug use. That’s what you do.

Notice Cain did not say “crack down on illegal drug use.” Whether “crack down on the laws against illegal drug use” was inartful phraseology or whether it indicates that he is not pleased with the laws against illegal drug use, who knows? (I suspect the former in light of his other statements.)

The next question involved the role of federalism in the drug war context, and he seemed a bit sympathetic to delegating power to the states:

Is it a state matter or a federal matter? For example, if one state wants to crack down on its drug laws and have stiffer penalties, and another wants to decriminalize use or have medical marijuana, is that a state prerogative? Or should federal law be the guiding force here?

I think it is both, but the state should take the lead in most instances on those issues. There could be some circumstances where it’s better for something to be issued as a federal statute. But the best approach, that not withstanding, is for the states to put their solutions on the table. We have very a wasted resource in this country. Why not use the 50 states. Give them the power. Empower them to solve their own problems with respect to immigration and other issues. And we can learn from them.

Notice that he did not condemn conflicting state marijuana laws. Saying the state should take the lead is not as bad as saying federal law should always control.

Let me say right now that if Cain were to come out and condemn the War on Drugs, I would endorse him wholeheartedly.

I would even be willing to accept being charged with racism.

John Stossel has more from Cain in a recent interview:

While Cain says he wants less government, he also supports bans on abortion and gay marriage, and the war on drugs. The failure of the war on drugs is obvious to me. I wondered why he didn’t see it.

“First, get serious about restricting the amount of illegal drugs coming into this country. … I refuse to accept defeat by simply legalizing it.”

To me, that wouldn’t be accepting defeat. That would be proclaiming individual liberty.

If the repeal of unjust laws constitutes “accepting defeat,” did the repeal of Prohibition represent defeat? Defeat of what? Americans drank before, during, and after the 18th Amendment, just as they used drugs before the drug war and continue to do so now. The only people who are defeated by relegalization of formerly legal substances are the people who profit from the illegality along with those are paid to prosecute and imprison their fellow citizens.

Cain is a businessman. He has to realize that illegal drugs are a big business because of simple economics. Illegality means artificially high prices on low-worth substances. He has to know that. So why would he want to help guarantee huge profits for criminals and cartels?

As to an economic argument for keeping drugs illegal, I am unable to come up with a sound one, other than that the drug enforcement economy would suffer. But that is another artificial economy created by government, as is that of the illegal suppliers.

Government creation and stimulation of an illegal economy is simply bad business. To not recognize that simple fact, but to go on throwing good money after bad, constitutes accepting defeat. That’s because in economic terms, the drug war is inherently a defeat. We are creating and funding our enemies.

I think that refusing to continue to fund an enemy is not an accepting defeat, but rejecting defeat.

If they are to win in 2012, Republicans are going to need all the help they can get.

Which is why I like the Occupy Wall Street protests. These utterly ridiculous and outrageous people — who in a fit of comical hubris are calling themselves “the 99%” — have even managed to generate a decidedly unsympathetic piece in the New York Times (which is saying something):

Panini and Company Cafe normally sells sandwiches to tourists in Lower Manhattan and the residents nearby, but in recent days its owner, Stacey Tzortzatos, has also become something of a restroom monitor. Protesters from Occupy Wall Street, who are encamped in a nearby park, have been tromping in by the scores, and not because they are hungry.

Ms. Tzortzatos’s tolerance for the newcomers finally vanished when the sink was broken and fell to the floor. She installed a $200 lock on the bathroom to thwart nonpaying customers, angering the protesters.

“I’m looked at as the enemy of the people,” she said.

The anticorporate participants in Occupy Wall Street, which began three weeks ago, say they have no intention of leaving soon. The protest has been building in size, with sister demonstrations erupting in other cities, and politicians, labor leaders and celebrities adding their support. But for many neighborhood businesses, the protest’s end cannot come soon enough. In interviews, business owners said they were especially annoyed that the organizers of the grass-roots movement neglected to include portable toilets in their plan to bring down Wall Street.

Residents, too, say they are losing patience.

Mothers have grown weary of navigating strollers through the maze of barricades that have sprouted along the streets. Toddlers have been roused from sleep just after bedtime by chanting and pounding drums.

Heather Amato, 35, a psychologist who lives near the protest area, said she felt disturbed by some of the conduct of the protesters. She said she had to shield her toddler from the sight of women at the park dancing topless. “It’s been three weeks now,” Ms. Amato said. “Enough is enough.”

Etc.

Plus, there are wonderful photos of public defecation, there’s video of raving thugs like this anti-Semitic asshole, and best of all their wildly dysfunctional histrionics are being imitated by like-minded brats all over the country.

All that and more will surely resonate with the voters. Especially those who are in the 53%.

I got an e-mail today from some political organization complaining about the Solyndra deal in these terms.

Start with labor costs. Thanks to the influence of labor unions, Solyndra paid its employees an average of about $100,000 per year. In China, a salary of $100,000 is unheard of. Most factory workers get paid about $.80 per hour. Rarely do they make more than $200 per month. America cannot compete in the face of this disparity.

Sure we can. We just won’t do it by throwing labor at problems. We will have to use our brains. A commodity that is more than evidently in very short supply. Especially among the politicos.

Cross Posted at Power and Control