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Radley Balko reports that we might now know the identity of the confidential informant who mistook Japanese maple trees for marijuana, leading to the death of a police officer and murder charges against an innocent man.

The informant had a conflict with Ryan Frederick, so he broke into his house, misidentified his plants, and told police Frederick was growing marijuana. When police raided the home, Frederick mistook them for burglars and opened fire, killing a police officer. He's now sitting jail, awaiting trial for killing a cop.

This utterly tragic and absurd situation is the natural and predictable byproduct of our mindless war on drugs, which allows incompetent idiots with ulterior motives to provide probable cause for violent police raids.

Radley has some background on the case here.

Update: From comments, "If a police officer ran into traffic and got killed, would the driver who hit the officer be charged with murder?" I think that analogy comes pretty close to being fair. Frederick wasn't growing marijuana. He had no reason to think the people bursting into his home were anything other than common criminals, so he defended himself in good faith. The officer was killed because he went somewhere he didn't belong. It's a tragedy, to be sure, but it's certainly not Frederick's fault. Not in the slightest.

Freshman Virginia Sen. Jim Webb's name has come up as a possible Democratic VP candidate. Judging from his new book, A Time to Fight, the decorated Vietnam vet might be a good choice. "The time has come to stop locking up people for mere possession and use of marijuana," he writes. "It makes far more sense to take the money that would be saved by such a policy and use it for enforcement of gang-related activities."

Webb, who took office in 2007, criticizes the drug war and prison-industrial complex: "Either we are home to the most evil population on earth, or we are locking up a lot of people who really don't need to be in jail, for actions that other countries seem to handle in more constructive ways." [celebstoner]

The man appointed head of the advisory council for the misuse of drugs once called for ecstasy to be downgraded to a class B drug, politics.co.uk can exclusively reveal.

Professor David Nutt, who replaces Sir Michael Rawlins as chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) this afternoon, made the comments at a science and technology committee hearing in 2006.

"I think the evidence base for classification producing deterrence is not strong and we see that with a number of drugs," he said. [politics.co.uk]

Deputy Drug Czar Bertha Madras delivered this gem in Colorado as she promoted random student drug testing to school administrators:

"We are not waging a war on drugs; we are waging a war of defense --
a defense of the basis of humanity, and that is our brain," said Dr.
Bertha Madras, the White House deputy drug czar in charge of reducing
demand for drugs. [Denver Post]

This is the same woman who argued against distributing overdose prevention kits, claiming that overdoses would teach people not to use heroin. So no, she's actually not very interested in "defense" against the harms of drugs.

She supports drug testing programs that don’t work, but opposes overdose prevention programs that do. Her ideas would make considerably more sense if her job were to make the drug problem worse.

Update: In comments, Giordano asks "Is Dr. Madras’ brain on the defensive?" Yes, I think that's exactly what's going on here.

Go after the Democrats for their proposals to lower sentences for crack cocaine to make them equal to those for powder cocaine. (Instead, McCain should urge raising penalties for regular cocaine.)