Sam Smith's Progressive Review summarizes the beguiling story http://prorev.com/2006/10/fading-days-of-asa-hutchinson.htm of Barry Seal, a major cocaine smuggler who operated undisturbed in Mena, Arkansas while Asa Hutchinson was the Republican United States Attorney and Bill "Vacuum Cleaner Nose" Clinton was Governor.

(Eric Sterling, president of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation, joins us as a regular blogger in the Speakeasy.)

“It's a good thing I had a bag of marijuana instead of a bag of spinach or I'd be dead by now,” Willie Nelson said recently.

In my latest post on my blog, I speculate about the moral implications of the Nevada and Colorado Initiatives.
Significance of Colorado and Nevada marijuana initiatives -- even if they lose

Immediately after Labor Day in September 1986, the leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives brought to the floor the hastily conceived and written Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986. At the top of the national political agenda was the war on drugs. Catastrophic concepts like mandatory minimum sentences were forced back into the federal justice system. Certification of other nations as meeting U.S. anti-drug standards was required, poisoning America's image and relations with peoples around the world. The voices of reason were largely silenced by the echo chamber of anti-drug hysteria.