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Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican in the U.S. Senate who, when he was a state attorney general, gave an award to the infamous police officer who started the Tulia scandal, one of the most notorious incidence of racial injustice in the United States. Willie Nelson is a country singer who is very supportive of drug law reform. So what do these two have in common? The answer is, they are both from Texas. But I didn't discover this fact, in fact, the authoritarian, Bushie senator bragged about it after all:

What do classical pianist Van Cliburn, country great Willie Nelson and rock legend Janis Joplin have in common? They’re all from Texas.

This exchange between Bill Richardson and Stuart Cooper of Granite Staters for Medical Marijuana shows the political wisdom of supporting compassionate policies. Richardson discusses his efforts to protect patients in New Mexico, and describes the broader drug war as a failure, then appeals to Cooper for support:

Richardson: By the way, I hope you can get me some votes. I haven't won too many votes with that one. You should see the letter I got from the Sheriff's Association, but sometimes you gotta do the right thing. It's the right thing.

Cooper: Sir, 80% of New Hampshire voters agree with you.

Richardson: Do they?

Cooper: Yes sir.

Richardson: Will you tell them?

Already on the presidential campaign trail, Richardson was nonetheless surprised to learn that his support for medical marijuana would resonate with a huge majority of voters.

That was July 16. By August 17, Richardson had sent a letter to President Bush demanding that ONDCP stop threatening his state's new medical marijuana program. He also ordered the NM Dept. of Health to move forward despite federal intimidation. All of this is displayed proudly on his presidential campaign site.

The point here isn’t that Richardson is trying to win the favor of voters. He already supported medical marijuana, but stepped up his efforts after learning that it was safe and, in fact, smart to do so. By taking this message to the other candidates, we might get more than just a promise to end the federal raids.

The drug control policy office is betting on stable isotopes to identify unique markers in marijuana, distinguishing it not just by geography but also by its cultivation method — for example, indoor versus outdoor.

"It’s an epidemiological and forensic public health investigation," said David Murray, chief scientist at the agency and director of its Counterdrug Technology Assessment Center. [NYTimes]

Dr. West said his involvement in the project was not tied to any particular policy judgment. "I strongly believe that part of the picture in any policy development has to be the best possible science, and in cases where my work can contribute to that, I think that’s great," he wrote in an e-mail message.

Obviously, to drug policy reformers, the war on drugs is one of the critical issues of our time -- it affects everything, from criminal justice and fundamental Constitutional rights to education to foreign policy to poverty and the inner cities, and on and on.

So it can be baffling to note the degree to which serious discussions about the drug war tend to be missing from the major political blogs on the right and the left.