In North Carolina, an undercover Iridell County Sheriff’s deputy successfully buys a small amount of pot. Who did he bust? An undercover officer from the town of Statesville.

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was Dublin, Ireland. Wes also found that the building on the corner was Slattery’s Pub, which is filled with rugby fans in this YouTube video.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

One of the most thoughtful and insightful people in the blogosphere has decided to hang it up. Hilzoy from Obsidian Wings wrote her last post here.

Walter Cronkite – March 1, 2006:

As anchorman of the CBS Evening News, I signed off my nightly broadcasts for nearly two decades with a simple statement: “And that’s the way it is.”

To me, that encapsulates the newsman’s highest ideal: to report the facts as he sees them, without regard for the consequences or controversy that may ensue.

Sadly, that is not an ethic to which all politicians aspire – least of all in a time of war.

I remember. I covered the Vietnam War. I remember the lies that were told, the lives that were lost – and the shock when, twenty years after the war ended, former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara admitted he knew it was a mistake all along.

Today, our nation is fighting two wars: one abroad and one at home. While the war in Iraq is in the headlines, the other war is still being fought on our own streets. Its casualties are the wasted lives of our own citizens.

I am speaking of the war on drugs.

And I cannot help but wonder how many more lives, and how much more money, will be wasted before another Robert McNamara admits what is plain for all to see: the war on drugs is a failure.

I’m not old enough to remember Walter Cronkite as an anchorman, but the post above made me understand the kind of man he was – someone who put truth above everything, regardless of whether or not his words would be uncomfortable for people to hear. As he approached the age of 90, he never lost his willingness to question authority or his ability to see through the lies. Even today, it’s almost impossible to find a news anchor who would say the things that Cronkite wrote in that post. And even if one of them did, I’m not sure we’d be smart enough to recognize how important it was.

UPDATE: Greenwald has more.

UPDATE 2: David Borden has another Cronkite piece on the drug war from 1995.

Pat Buchanan mixes in a little ignorance to his outright bigotry [emphasis mine]:

When asked why the overwhelming majority of justices have been white, Buchanan declined to explicitly cite discrimination, but explained that “White men were 100% of the people that wrote the Constitution, 100% of the people that signed the Declaration of Independence, 100% of the people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, probably close to 100% of the people who died at Normandy. This has been a country built basically by white folks, who were 90% of the nation in 1960 when I was growing up and the other 10% were African-Americans who had been discriminated against. That’s why.”

I think Buchanan needs to brush up on his Civil War knowledge:

In May and June of 1863, 1600 Black troops fighting and dying under the official label of United States Colored Troops (USCT) at Milliken’s Bend, across the Mississippi River northwest of Vicksburg, made General Ulysses Grant’s Siege of Vicksburg a success and brought that “Gibraltar of the Confederacy” crashing to the ground on July 4, 1863.

More people are starting to notice that we’ve had a very big problem in our City Attorney’s office [emphasis in the original]:

The executive committee had recommended a sole endorsement of incumbent City Attorney Tom Carr. But a delegate from the stagehands’ union reportedly stood up, and said that Carr’s involvement in Operation Sobering Thought, a bar and nightclub sting, “really hurt our members and he was too punitive,” said one of the delegates, on the condition of anonymity. Several delegates spoke against Carr, according to another man exiting onto the street, who said, “They think Carr could have been more fiscally responsible” and “he has cost the city a lot of money for his decisions.” The man added, “In the past, delegates spoke up for Carr, but they didn’t like what he has done his last years in office.” Several other members spoke in favor of Carr’s challenger Pete Holmes. Carr didn’t get a sufficient number of votes for an endorsement; in fact, Carr’s was the only executive recommendation that the group didn’t ratify. The executive committee may recommend dual endorsement—or a sole endorsement of Holmes—after the primary election.

Earlier today, Goldy discussed the race for Seattle City Attorney and incumbent Tom Carr’s attempts to misrepresent his opponent’s qualifications for the office. Pete Holmes initially became Carr’s opponent in this race after he became so infuriated by his attempts to deal with him from his position as the attorney on the citizen’s police oversight board that he decided to challenge him. Here’s the latest polling on the race:

The results show a nearly 3:1 lead for Tom Carr, but 70% of the electorate remains undecided. Women and voters 35-49 both have an undecided count over 70%. It’s over 80% for Republicans. Of decided voters, Carr still maintains a margin of nearly 4:1 amongst respondents 50-64 and over 4:1 with those 65 and older.

The vast majority of voters just aren’t paying attention to this race. But they should be. Tom Carr has been the City Attorney for Seattle for the past eight years and has repeatedly shown himself to be overzealous in pursuit of nanny state crusades and completely out of touch with the voters of the city. Dominic Holden recently provided a recap of his horrendous track record:

– Tom Carr fought against I-75, the initiative to make marijuana law enforcement the lowest priority of Seattle Police.

– Since the passage of I-75, Carr has actually prosecuted a higher percentage of the pot cases referred to his office.

– After a citywide sweep called Operation Sobering Thought, Carr tried to send 27 bar employees to jail for up to a year for various offenses such as serving minors (none of them were successfully prosecuted).

– Carr used city resources to unsuccessfully appeal – all the way up to federal court – a free speech case against a balloon artist who claimed he didn’t need a permit to do his thing at Seattle Center, and has threatened to waste even more money appealing it to the Supreme Court.

– He aggressively impounded the cars of people with unpaid parking tickets until the state Supreme Court ruled that he was breaking the law. The fiasco later cost the city $1.3 million in a class-action lawsuit.

– He once briefly attempted to threaten several Seattle Times reporters with jail time if they didn’t reveal their confidential sources.

As Dominic mentioned, the office of City Attorney in most other places is not an elected official. While it feels nice to have direct influence over the person who does this job, what tends to happen instead is that political creatures like Carr can hold onto an office because voters tend to have too little bandwidth to follow these smaller races. But this one’s too important for that now, and Seattle really can’t afford another four years of this.

Over at EffU, I broke down the dumbest post to appear at the orange clown car this year, Jim Miller’s bizarre follow-up attack on Rick Steves for things that only seem to exist in Miller’s imagination.

Last week’s contest was won by N in Seattle. The correct location was Lariat Loop Rd. just outside of Golden, CO.

Here’s this week’s, good luck!

– I’m planning to follow the City Attorney’s race pretty closely this year. Tom Carr has always struck me as a disingenuous hack, but Josh has some concerns about the Holmes campaign. Even with those concerns, I feel compelled to support Holmes in this race, especially when he runs against someone who claims to be against prison overcrowding yet tries to send bar employees to jail for not properly checking id’s.

– A number of California TV stations are refusing to air ads in support of marijuana legalization despite the fact that 56% of the state supports legalizing marijuana and the Governator has asked to have an open debate on the subject.

– Mother Jones has devoted its latest issue to the drug war. This story about a Mexican reporter trying to seek asylum in the United States after he reported on corruption in the Mexican Army is chilling. Contrast that with the work of legendary moron Ruben Navarrette Jr, who safely cheers on the entire corrupt mess from the comfort of his San Diego home.

– The story of Eric Frimpong is not that well-known yet, and I’m struggling to understand why. It’s the story of a young man from Ghana who was destined to play professional soccer, but who is now serving a six-year prison term in California for a rape that he almost certainly did not commit.

– The overly aggressive police raid on San Diego Congressional candidate Francine Busby’s fundraiser was sparked by a neighbor who appears to have called in a bogus 911 complaint.

– One of the reasons why alcohol prohibition lasted for only a short amount of time was because people remembered the time before it and could easily see the progression towards more crime that it brought. In Copenhagen, the same thing is happening. Up until 2003, a small section of the city called Christiania tolerated cannabis and hashish sales. Since 2003, when the city cracked down, the drug trade has spread across the city, creating more crime. Now, 59% of Copenhagen residents want Amsterdam-style coffeeshops.

Wow:

But as for whether another pursuit of national office, as she did less than a year ago when she joined Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., in the race for the White House, would result in the same political blood sport, Palin said there is a difference between the White House and what she has experienced in Alaska. If she were in the White House, she said, the “department of law” would protect her from baseless ethical allegations.

“I think on a national level, your department of law there in the White House would look at some of the things that we’ve been charged with and automatically throw them out,” she said.

There is no “Department of Law” at the White House.

[via Atrios]

A remorseful blogger apologizes for making Sarah Palin resign. I can’t even guess what’s going to happen next in this train wreck. Will some major ethics violation be revealed? Will she change her mind about resigning and just pretend on the 24th that she never actually quit? With someone this nuts, anything is possible.

Last week’s contest was won by ‘Truth Teller’ in only 12 minutes. It was the National Gallery in Ottawa, Ontario.

This week’s is a little more rural, good luck!

– Iran’s religious establishment is dissenting from Khamenei.

– Soldiers in Colombia are killing innocent civilians and dressing them up as members of FARC in order to collect reward money (which comes out of our aid packages to their government).

– Norm Stamper excoriates Democrats for not using their power to roll back the drug war:

And the cause of this “drug war dementia”? I’m guessing it has something to do with a brilliant 2004 poll on the topic of medical marijuana. The poll asked two questions, the first confirming what had already been shown over and over again: that about 70 percent of people support the idea of legalizing marijuana, at least for medical purposes.

But then, pollsters asked something interesting:

“Regardless of your own opinion, do you think the majority of people support making marijuana medically available, or do you think the majority opposes making marijuana medically available?”

The result? In Rhode Island, where the poll was conducted, only 26.5 percent thought that most people support medical marijuana.

The lesson here? While many of our elected representatives privately support serious changes to our failed drug laws, they believe they are alone. They think if they stick their necks out they’ll be handed their heads come election time.

I’d argue that another aspect of this are the special interests within law enforcement and the pharmaceutical lobby who don’t want Americans to have greater freedom of choice when it comes to the substances they put in their bodies. But having politicians recognize that the public would be overwhelmingly on their side should they choose to move forward with drug law reform is a necessary first step.

I have a quick message for everyone still on the “Sarah Palin in 2012” bandwagon.

If you want to live in a country run by a woman who tries to silence the media, uses public resources for her own personal projects, believes in her own lies as if they are true, and pretends to be God, there’s already a country like that.

It’s called North Korea.