A few items of interest:

– Glenn Greenwald has a couple of tremendous posts this week, taking on the Obama Administration’s reluctance to give up numerous aspects of the Bush Administration’s attempts to expand the power of the executive, and on the flip side, looking at the right wing loonies who are now beginning to talk about Civil War against Obama, only weeks after finishing their 8-year stint crying about how it’s unpatriotic to question the President.

– CNBC recently aired a good hour-long special on the economic aspects of northern California’s marijuana industry. It can now be seen in its entirety on Hulu. A Zogby poll this week showed that 58% of west coast residents believe that marijuana should be regulated and taxed like alcohol and cigarettes.

– I also recently watched a documentary on the case from Tulia, Texas, where a corrupt cop named Tom Coleman working for a drug task force managed to get over 10% of the town’s black population in jail before lawyers were able to prove that he was lying. I don’t think it’s being shown again on PBS, but hopefully it’ll be online soon.

– The story about the corrupt judges in Northeastern Pennsylvania who were getting kickbacks to funnel kids into private detention facilities is just amazing. This is stuff that would be shocking in the third-world, let alone America. And there are now allegations that one of the judges has been closely linked with mob figures for whom he used his position on the bench to extort money from journalists who’d been investigating them.

– Neal Peirce has a good editorial in the Denver Post today on Obama and the drug war.

And one Democrat, Jim Hargrove of Hoquiam. Here are some highlights and lowlights from Wednesday’s hearing on the marijuana decriminalization bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Sam Quinones writes about Mexico in the Foreign Policy online magazine:

I’d recently lived in Mexico for a decade, but I’d never seen anything like this. I left in 2004—as it turned out, just a year before Mexico’s long-running trouble with drug gangs took a dark new turn for the worse. Monterrey was the safest region in the country when I lived there, thanks to its robust economy and the sturdy social control of an industrial elite.

…

That week in Monterrey, newspapers reported, Mexico clocked 167 drug-related murders. When I lived there, they didn’t have to measure murder by the week. There were only about a thousand drug-related killings annually. The Mexico I returned to in 2008 would end that year with a body count of more than 5,300 dead. That’s almost double the death toll from the year before—and more than all the U.S. troops killed in Iraq since that war began.

But it wasn’t just the amount of killing that shocked me. When I lived in Mexico, the occasional gang member would turn up executed, maybe with duct-taped hands, rolled in a carpet, and dropped in an alley. But Mexico’s newspapers itemized a different kind of slaughter last August: Twenty-four of the week’s 167 dead were cops, 21 were decapitated, and 30 showed signs of torture. Campesinos found a pile of 12 more headless bodies in the Yucatán. Four more decapitated corpses were found in Tijuana, the same city where barrels of acid containing human remains were later placed in front of a seafood restaurant. A couple of weeks later, someone threw two hand grenades into an Independence Day celebration in Morelia, killing eight and injuring dozens more. And at any time, you could find YouTube videos of Mexican gangs executing their rivals—an eerie reminder of, and possibly a lesson learned from, al Qaeda in Iraq.

Of course, when it comes to the traditional media’s coverage of the drug war, the devastation in Mexico isn’t as interesting as whether or not Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane was going to arrest Michael Phelps.

Last week’s winners were YLB, who first guessed that it was Oslo, Norway and Don Joe, who found the link.

And to clear up a question that arose last week in the comments, the reason that I don’t select locations in places like Africa is because there are no views there yet. And as wes.in.wa points out, if they ever do get views for cities like Kampala, this contest gets a lot more interesting.

Here’s this week’s view, good luck!

Dominic Holden gives his perspective on the choice of Chief Kerlikowske for Drug Czar.

That’s what the PI is now reporting:

Seattle police Chief Gil Kerlikowske has been appointed to a law enforcement post within the Obama administration, which would return him to Washington, D.C., after almost a decade as Seattle’s top cop.

A administrator in the Seattle Police Department said Tuesday that Kerlikowske notified commanders that he would be appointed as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, a cabinet-level post often referenced as the White House “drug czar.”

I’ve been critical of Kerlikowske in the past (specifically about the way SPD has dealt with complaints of police violence), but I’ve never thought of him as an overly aggressive drug warrior. Maybe I’ve never seen that side of him, or maybe the ONDCP will have some more sensible leadership than it has. I’m not sure yet. I’m curious what those who have followed his career more closely than I have think.

After reading Goldy’s post below, I had to check out whether or not the number of people who voted Yes on I-25 in November 2007 outnumbered the total number of votes cast in the special election they voted to have.

Almost…

King County Initiative 25 – 11/07

YES 240998

Director of Elections – 2/09

Ballots Cast: 249086

So, either there were really less than 10,000 people who both voted NO on I-25 and then voted in this election, or there were a large number of people who went to the polls in November 2007 to demand that our elections director be elected, then didn’t even have the motivation to fill out a ballot that was sent to their house and mail it back in.

Hooray for apathy!

Last week’s contest had two winners. Tommy Thompson was the first to guess the location (Santa Fe, New Mexico). Wes.in.wa was first to post the link. Here’s this week’s, good luck!

The voter-approved Death with Dignity Act takes effect on March 4. Robb Miller of Compassion & Choices of Washington writes in the Bellingham Herald about the kinds of questions that patients should be asking their care providers now if they are considering using this new law.

The University of Washington and Harborview Medical Centers have already decided to participate in the program, but other care facilities around the state likely won’t. Either way, I’m optimistic that Washington will experience the same improvements in terminal care that Oregon has had. As Robb writes:

The act’s benefits will extend well beyond the terminally ill. In Oregon, the law spurred conversation, education and improvements in end-of-life care across the board. Oregon experienced dramatic increases in those who died at home rather than in hospitals — something almost all of us prefer. More patients were referred to, and entered, hospice care, and did so earlier, receiving benefits that are helpful to all facing the end of life. Better use of pain medication resulted from more open and frequent conversations with physicians about end-of-life care.

This is one benefit of allowing the choice of death with dignity that I didn’t touch on much during the campaign. For organizations that oppose this choice for moral or other ethical reasons, they’ll be motivated by seeing their patients going elsewhere to choose this option to focus more energy towards improving end-of-life care.

No one intends to force physicians or care organizations to participate in this program, but that doesn’t mean that they won’t benefit from it. Giving people greater choice over their own medical decisions ultimately forces all health care providers to get better.

Thanks to everyone who read through my series last week. Just as a followup to the last part, where I talked about the botched police raid on a small town mayor’s residence in Maryland, the Washington Post has a far more in-depth look at the case.

Here are some more updates on stories I’ve been following, and some other news of note:

[Read more…]

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa in only 16 minutes. It was Middlesbrough, UK (link here). Here’s this week’s, good luck!

I hope everyone enjoys the game today.

As HA/JOA expands here to incorporate different subjects into its offering, sports will certainly be part of that. We’re already working on setting up a Sounders blog, but we want to hear about what else to cover. If you have any interest in being a sports blogger with us, drop me an email (linked on my name above).

I’ve mentioned before that I work with a student group at the University of Washington called AIESEC. I had been involved as a student with the chapter at the University of Michigan back in the mid-90s, and began helping out the UW chapter soon after I moved here. The organization runs a worldwide internship exchange program and has chapters across the world. It’s the largest student organization in the world.

Recently, the Financial Times printed an article about AIESEC’s expansion into China [PDF]. When I was a junior in Ann Arbor looking for overseas internship opportunities, China wasn’t an option (I wound up going to Helsinki). That would change for students in later years, and it was largely because of a very motivated AIESEC member from the University of Washington, Lili Hein.

I’ve known Lili for almost a decade now, and what she and others did back then to convince the Chinese Ministry of Education to embrace the AIESEC program was extraordinary for a college student. Recently, the AIESEC alumni blog AIESEC Life posted an interview with Lili and Joel Sanders. Joel is a former University of Colorado AIESEC member who was also a big part of that effort.

The AIESEC chapter at UW just wrapped up its winter recruitment drive, but it’s never too late for interested folks to sign up – and change the world.