Pat, Holder was quite clear that he's trying find a way to prosecute cases that currently aren't being taken. We're talking about people who've already been arrested.

Your claim that they're planning "more arrests" is simply not supported by the facts. If you can show me where he said they were looking to increase arrests, I will correct myself. If not, you should consider fixing the title of your post.

What will they do with $ 3-billion in Byrne Grants for drug task forces? Buy girl Scout cookies?

The Holder statement speaks for itself:

"And with marijuana sales central to the drug trade, Mr. Holder said he was exploring ways to lower the minimum amount required for the federal prosecution of possession cases."

Your qualification for existing cases is simply not in the Holder statement.

When the federal government lowers the threshold it licenses and green lights the states to do the same.

The issue is not 500 pounds, 490 pounds or one ounce. The issue is more prosecutions for any amount. the issue is Hillary Clinton pointing to American DEMAND as the problem. Demand is users not dealers. Possession is targeting users.

When it comes down to it they are talking about escalating the freakin drug war. More prosecutions means more drug war. More Byrne Grant money means more drug war. I don't give a flying fart how you parse it, rationalize it or deny it. The Obama administration is talking about prosecuting and funding MORE DRUG WAR.

"The issue is not 500 pounds, 490 pounds or one ounce."

Of course it is. Are you kidding? There's a monumental difference between prosecuting a couple pretty big cases that were previously allowed to slide, as opposed to sending the DEA after the vastly larger number of personal users. Aren't you pleased to learn the context behind Holder's remark? It's still bad, I agree, but not nearly as bad as it sounded.

I oppose this for all the same reasons you do. Nonetheless, we all have an interest in figuring out what precisely the attorney general means when he's says something like that. The information I've provided is relevant, right?

Is entirely your assumption.

I don't try to figure out what people are saying I take their word at face value. I learned, as a journalist, to NOT put words into the mouths of others.

The context of Clinton, Holder and Obama with Mexico has been to place intensified emphasis on American consumption. American DEMAND. You, I and they all know that more busts in the distribution is useless. That ultimately, to the drug warriors, reducing demand means more arrests and coerced drug court imposed rehab of users.

Holder setting an lower threshold for federal prosecution lowers the bar all the way down the food chain. Adding money for more local drug task forces, more drug courts and prisons warrants filling those prisons with the more, more, more or the same users they have been filling those prisons with for decades.

Everything that I have seen of the Obama Administration tells me that they are escalating and militarizing the war on drugs. EVERYTHING. That is wrong. 100% wrong in every way, shape and form. Escalation will hurt everyone in America. No matter how you choose to parse or compartmentalize it.

First, we don't even have Holder's actual words, so none of us has a monopoly on what he meant. All we know is what NYT says he said.

Second, you're giving me a hard time for putting words in peoples' mouths when you wrote a blog post called "Obama Plans Intensified Pot Arrests," even though Holder has not reportedly said anything about increasing arrests. You're entitled to your interpretation, of course, but don't accuse me of making assumptions when you're quite clearly doing the same.

Third, it is a fact that state prosecutors have been complaining about the 500 pound federal threshold very recently. Do you honestly doubt that this is what Holder was referring to? There will be more reporting on this soon and we'll know whether or not my interpretation is correct. Notwithstanding your larger concerns about Byrne Grants, etc. (which I share, of course), do you agree or disagree with my interpretation of Holder's comment as a reference to the 500 pound threshold?

First. You are attacking the messenger, the New York Times. Personally, I have more confidence in the Times reporting than I do your interpretation of their reporting.

Second. Byrne Grants require more arrests to validate their existence. And Holder saying that he is looking to lower the threshold for prosecution requires more arrests going forward. This is not a moment in isolation but rather a shift on policy going forward. Any other interpretation is ludicrous.

Third. Yes, I honestly doubt that your 500 pound theory is specifically and categorically all that Holder was talking about. To think as you do tortures reason, ignores common sense and denies history. I totally disagree with your assertion that Holder had to be speaking only in the context of prosecutors bitching for more latitude in existing cases.

I hope that my title betrays how long I have been watching this issue.

...I'm sure you'll join me in hoping you're wrong. I'm not expecting a reduction in federal marijuana prosecutions under Obama, but nor am I concerned that we'll soon see the Dept. of Justice going after individual users in small-time possession cases.

in my analysis of authoritarian drug warriors. Thus far that has never been the case. Escalation is all that they know.

And we will never really know what Holder means since I am the only person on the planet to really try to challenge him about it. I have no real voice so we will never know.

In the 1990's the state courts got clogged with all of the crack cases due to Clinton's increased enforcement and the federal government had to lower their threshold to push more cases into federal courts. This resulted in the horrific prison racial disparity statistics and prisons being filled to over-crowding.

Now the Democrats intend using the same reduced threshold tactic for pot to shove more cases into the federal courts. When the campaigning Obama decried the racial disparities in incarceration rates he was not talking about sending fewer blacks to prison. He was talking about sending more whites to prison to balance the statistics. This is one of the tactics he intends using to do that.

This is the war on drugs. Expect the worst and hope for nothing.

And nothing is all that I expect as long as reform organizations are content sitting in offices at keyboards playing the online activist fantasy game instead of getting out in the real streets of America and loudly demonstrating the intensity and scale of the opposition to this damned war. Computer activists are like appliances. As easily ignored as TV's, refrigerators and computers. dismissed as casually as Obama did a couple of weeks back. Masses in the streets cannot be denied or so easily denigrated.

NO MORE DRUG WAR!

NO MORE DRUG WAR!

State prisons are over-flowing and the federal government is simply putting a relief valve into the system by taking more cases into federal court. This is the crack scare in the late 1980's all over again but with pot. The transfer of crack/powder coke cases to federal courts then has been proven to be an atrocity. A crime against humanity. But here they are doing the same fucking thing only this time with pot volume and the reform leadership is busy making excuses for it.

The more I look at this the angrier I get. Not just at the Obama administration who I always knew would be a drug warrior administration. But I am really getting angry at the reform organizations that are making excuses while an atrocious history repeats itself.

Instead of parsing the size of busts we should be focusing on the over-burdened system from top to bottom and demanding that Holder look for ways to reduce the volume of people being put into the prisons.

I just reread the Fox article and notice that there are no actual comments from the Obama White House. It is all Fox reporter assertions and innuendo/analysis.

Fox is trying to stir the shit and make it stink.