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Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr is the first presidential hopeful to speak out regarding the brutal drug raid in Berwyn Heights, MD that resulted in the death of the mayor's two dogs:

The former Republican Congressman from Georgia released a statement on his presidential campaign website about the July 29 Prince George's police and sheriff's raid on the home of Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo.
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The raid, he wrote, "illustrates how the drug war threatens the liberties of all Americans."

He said he believed that law enforcement has become more arrogant and less accountable, usually with very little public attention, and promises that as president, he will improve the situation.

"As president I will ensure that federal law enforcement agencies set a good example for the rest of the country," he said. "In a Barr administration, government officials will never forget that it is a free people they are protecting." [Washington Post]

I'm still getting used to hearing words like these from former drug warrior Bob Barr, but I'll take it. Barr, despite his unfortunate history, is now speaking out against abusive drug war policing with a vigor unmatched, or even attempted, by the major party candidates.

Unfortunately, we can be reasonably sure we won’t hear a word about this from Obama or McCain. Sure, it is an ugly national controversy with a fairly obvious right and wrong side. And yes, a careful statement promising to defend the rights of innocent, everyday people against government abuse would be politically safe, in and of itself. After all, there's nothing anti-police about standing up for professionalism in law-enforcement.

But implicit in all this is the central question of how far we as a society are willing to push the limits of peace and freedom in the name of a war on drugs that has already exhausted many of us to the point of unrestrained bitterness. It's a conversation that can't be avoided once Cheye Calvo's name is spoken and one which the major party candidates remain hesitant to explore. Their silence becomes increasingly hard to explain as it becomes steadily more apparent each day that the drug war blood bath sometimes doesn't discriminate as well as it's supposed to.

(This blog post was published by StoptheDrugWar.org's lobbying arm, the Drug Reform Coordination Network, which also shares the cost of maintaining this web site. DRCNet Foundation takes no positions on candidates for public office, in compliance with section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and does not pay for reporting that could be interpreted or misinterpreted as doing so.)

The more "progress" Mexico makes in its U.S.-funded war on drugs, the more of this sort of thing we can look forward to:

TIJUANA, Mexico, Aug 12 (Reuters) - American businesswoman Veronica was stepping out of her car in California when two men forced her into the passenger seat at gunpoint, pushed her teenage daughter into the back and drove them into Mexico.

Taking advantage of lax Mexican security at the San Diego border, and with U.S. authorities focused mainly on those entering the United States, the kidnappers took the two women to Tijuana in January and held them for a month before their family paid a $100,000 ransom.
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An unintended consequence of Mexican efforts to weaken drug gangs, drug traffickers around Tijuana are turning to abducting U.S. citizens and residents in southern California and holding them in Mexico as a new way to get funds, U.S. and Mexican authorities say. [Reuters]

This is precisely why there is no such thing as progress in the drug war. The enemy doesn’t give a f$%k about anything. The harder you push, the harder they push back. New criminal opportunities emerge within the culture of violence and corruption the drug war produces and we haven't seen a fraction of the brutality that's in store for Mexican and American citizens if our governments insist on fighting this out in the streets.

The concept is simple: the harder we try to win the drug war, the greater the crime and violence we must endure. There is no threshold to be crossed, no day of reckoning for the warlords we've nurtured and empowered by placing an infinite tax-free economy in their icy death grip.

Just watch as violence against Americans leads to calls for more drug war funding, which in turn leads to more violence against Americans. The drug war itself is the coal that sustains this raging fire and anyone preferring to believe otherwise should probably just go ahead and turn off their TV.

In the wake of the acquittal of the Lima, Ohio, SWAT team member who killed Tarika Wilson -- and with DC-area local Mayor Cheye Calvo pressing the issue of SWAT raids following the killing of his two dogs -- it bears reminding what the root cause was of both these horrible events and of many others -- a stupid, reckless, cowboy mentality, in which law enforcers who are supposed to be protecting us think it's fun and games until someone loses an eye (or a life). I've posted the following graphic before, but I'm posting it again, because it says it all. It appeared at the top of the Lima SWAT team's web page prior to the Wilson killing, before they took it down: Any questions?

Radley Balko points out this remark from Berwyn Heights Mayor Cheye Calvo, which I think ranks among the best commentary we've heard in the press following a botched raid:

"The reality is that this happens all the time in this country and disproportionally in Prince Georges county and most of the people to whom it happens don’t have the community support and the platform to speak out. So I appreciate you paying attention to our condition but I hope you’ll also give attention to those who may not have the same platform and voice that we have." [CNN video via Rawstory]

This was broadcast nationally on CNN, which clearly takes the paramilitary drug raid controversy to a level we haven't seen previously. Unfortunately, the rise of this issue from a frequent topic at drug policy and libertarian blogs to a full-blown national concern has followed the path many of us reluctantly predicted: something horrible had to happen to an appropriate spokesperson.

We knew it was just matter of time, but I wasn't expecting it to come so soon. Maybe I should have. In the short-term, we can look forward to likely reforms in Prince George's County and hopefully even at the state-level in Maryland. But what this means in the long-term is that future incidents carry greater potential to be recognized by the press as part of a disturbing pattern. Too often, botched drug raids generate obligatory local media, while the larger issue goes unaddressed. Bloody fiascos are dismissed as isolated incidents only to be forgotten and eventually repeated.

Let it therefore be understood now and remembered when the time comes that there is nothing isolated or unusual about innocent people and pets being shot during poorly executed drug raids. It happens all the time and this latest controversy should provide an ample imperative for those covering such incidents in the future to connect the appropriate dots.

One of the few remaining tactics for effectively defending our marijuana laws is to prevent them from even being discussed:

The TV program is titled "Marijuana: It's Time for a Conversation," but it's unlikely many viewers of network stations will be talking about it.

Of the three local network stations, only one agreed to run the show, produced by the American Civil Liberties Union and hosted by travel writer Rick Steves. [Seattle Times]

Ack, we mustn't expose anyone to the crazy ideas of Rick Steves! Wait, isn't he that really nice Lutheran guy who hosts a popular travel show on public television? So then why should we be terrified of him?

Jim Clayton, vice president and general manager at KOMO, the ABC affiliate, refused to sell time. The show, he said, promoted marijuana use.

"The last I checked, it's illegal," Clayton said. "We don't use our public airways to promote illegal things."

Um, pardon me sir, but we're actually trying to massively reduce illegal activity. I wouldn’t have thought this to be intellectually challenging, but if we were to change our marijuana laws, then it wouldn't be illegal. See? This doesn’t promote illegal activity. Marijuana laws create illegal activity and we'd like to discuss that.

Of course, marijuana reformers are constantly accused of childishness. We are dismissed as self-interested hippies waiving the banner of personal freedom whenever it suits us, while refusing to engage in serious conversations about empirical data and sound public policy. Yet, what can be said about those who serve as gatekeepers in the marketplace of ideas and abuse their authority by arbitrarily blocking discussion of ideas they find objectionable?

In truth, it is often opponents of the reform argument who act childishly, feigning irrational concerns that simply permitting debate will somehow aggravate the drug problem. Such behavior must be recognized for what it is: a great insult to the intelligence of the public.

PolitickerMD sent us a copy of their latest editorial cartoon, about the killing of two dogs by a Prince Georges County, Maryland, SWAT team: Click here for the original article. By the way, the Lima, Ohio, SWAT team, whose officer was just acquitted for the killing of Tarika Wilson and the maiming of her infant child, killed two dogs too. They shot people on one floor and dogs (pit bulls) on another. To be fair, the guy they were targeting supposedly unleashed the pit bulls on the officers who came after him downstairs. But that's no excuse -- he was defending himself from invaders of unknown nature who as far as he could tell intended to kill him -- had they not sent in a SWAT team for this minor situation, none of it would have happened at all.