Our Truth In Strange Places Award goes this month to the new US Attorney for Northern California, Joseph Russoniello, who said, in regard to cracking down on medical marijuana,

“We could spend a lifetime closing dispensaries and doing other kinds of drugs, enforcement actions, bringing cases and prosecuting people, shoveling sand against the tide. It would be terribly unproductive and probably not an efficient use of precious federal resources,”

HR 1955 recently passed the House of Representatives by a pretty emphatic 404-6 vote. This overwhelmingly approved act, entitled ” the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007,” was introduced by Jane Harman, a California Democrat who, like her more famous counterpart Nancy Pelosi, is not the kind of radical new-ager that you might think of when you think California Democrat. Jane is a big fan of the Rand Corporation, which calls itself ”a non-profit institution that addresses the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world.”

note: this commentary was originally broadcast on WRFN-LP, Nashville Tennessee, on the Green Hour radio show. Other stories from the show can be found at my main blog, Deep Green Perspective.

Our truth in strange places award this month goes to Senator Christopher Dodd, of Connecticut, one of the long-shot contenders for the 2008 Democratic nomination, who said in the course of the Oct. 30 debate, in defense of his call for decriminalization of marijuana,

“We’re locking up too many people in our system here today. We’ve got mandatory minimum sentences, they are filling our jails with people that don’t belong there.

“My idea is to decriminalize this, reduce that problem here. We’ve gone from 800,000 to 2 million people in our penal institutions in this country. We’ve got to get a lot smarter about this issue than we are. And as president, I’d try and achieve that. “

YOU N’ ME

Fill the kids’ heads full of factoids

Fill the kids’ heads full of pills

Keep ‘em moving, keep ‘em busy

Never give ‘em time to breathe

Teach obedience from the get-go

Wonder why they go insane

If one example epitomizes creeping fascism in America, it is the recent Florida incident in which John Kerry did nothing while police tasered and arrested a student who asked him a rambling question about why Kerry had not contested the 2004 election and why nobody had moved to impeach Bush. Did Kafka write the script for this? Andrew Meyer had a non-soundbite question. He was trying to lay out enough background so that his question made sense, and had in fact gotten to his point, when University of Florida police moved in, manhandled him to the back of the room, put him on the floor and tasered him, while Kerry droned on, making jokes about the incident( “I’m afraid he’s not able to come up here and swear me in as President.”) and everybody in the room just sat and watched. Later, Kerry claimed he was not aware that Meyer was being tasered. Hey, the guy was screaming “Don’t taser me!” I guess this kind of answered his question about why Kerry didn’t contest the election. All that’s necessary for evil to triumph, they say, is for good people to do nothing.

Joe Bageant cuts to the heart of why drugs are illegal in his essay "The Simulacran Republic":

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As my late friend Timothy Leary put it, "An enormous industry, similar to the national projects of pyramid-building in Egypt, cathedral-building in medieval Europe, and prison-camp building in Stalinist Russia has emerged in America -- the production of political martyrs, fallen heroes and concept outlaws. ... The essence of 'news' is, of course, the modern version of Roman coliseum shows and gladiator combats."

a friend of mine rewrote this from a teaching by the Tibetan master Longchenpa:

When opening the door, imagine that you are opening the door to realization for all sentient beings.

When entering through the doorway, practice Bodhicitta by wishing that all sentient beings attain enlightenment.

Now, what I'm about to tell you is not particularly anything new. It's just one of those things that comes more and more into focus as time goes on, and so it's good to haul it out every now and then and see what new pieces of the puzzle have emerged, kind of a “connect the dots” picture in which more and more dots appear, until the picture transitions from a broad outline into a richly detailed diagram.

If you want to gauge how far out of kilter our country's legal system has gotten, consider my friend Bernie, who was busted for growing marijuana to give to people with medical needs. The feds tried to put him away for a five year mandatory minimum, but for reasons I will go into shortly Bernie pulled eighteen months in a halfway house (which my informants tell me is actually tougher than jail) and two and a half years of “supervised release,” plus the federal government wants to effectively fine him a million dollars by confiscating the farm where Bernie has lived for the last forty years. And, they have appealed his parole and are asking that he be given even more than five years. Please notice it's the feds doing this. If Bernie's case had stayed at the state level, he would have been dealing with two years of probation and an eight thousand dollar fine, and would not be faced with losing his home. Those are the broad outlines. The more I ponder the details, the more I have to mourn what a Kafkaesque mockery “justice” has become in this country.

A recent Nashville newspaper featured a story about a young teenager who went to a party where she was offered marijuana, which she tried. She decided she didn't like it, and when she went home she told her ma about it—ma rewarded her honesty by grounding her and taking away her cell phone. Thanks, ma!

Nashville's "alternative weekly (the editor is a professed Republican!) recently printed an article about zero tolerance and one teenager's encounter with it. They called it "Less Than Zero," and you can read it at
http://www.nashvillescene.com/Stories/News/2007/02/01/Less_Than_Zero/ind... Here's the letter I wrote them on the subject:

WELL GEE WHIZ--I bet Gordon and Constance Gee are getting tired of that joke, among many others, by now. Anyway, nobody is going to be asking for any Gee whiz. Class structure in America has never been more clearly delineated. The wife of the Chancellor of Vanderbilt University can be outed as a pot smoker in the Wall Street Journal, and all anybody does is titter. For the rest of us, it's a different story.