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. “