Some links to share…

Thanks to the extraordinary success of the drug war, for the first time in this nation’s history, more than 1% of Americans are in prison. Dominic Holden and Eli Sanders add their thoughts.

Washblog has some thoughtful posts on the same topic, including the frustration from the state’s black community over House Bill 2712 and the real effect of shipping prisoners out of state.

Dan Kirkdorffer posts about Dave Reichert and the environment.

Earlier this week, I responded to a column in a Virginia newspaper that attacked those who are demanding answers about the botched drug raid that left Chesapeake, VA Detective Jarrod Shivers dead. The man who shot him, Ryan Frederick, was incorrectly targeted by the police based upon faulty info from an informant, but Frederick may still face capital murder charges, even though most of his neighbors believe him when he says he thought he was in danger for his life. His supporters held a rally at the jail last weekend.

Finally, this week’s Birds Eye View Contest is up.

The story of former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman and how he ended up in prison is an extraordinary story that I haven’t been paying close enough attention to until recently. 60 Minutes dug into the story over the weekend (video here) and makes it clear what can happen when people who are supposed to be carrying out justice are instead pursuing political ends (and for reasons that are still somewhat unclear, the broadcast of 60 Minutes was blacked out in parts of Alabama for just the Siegelman story). The whole thing is chilling, and Larisa Alexandrovna has a post that rounds up the reporting done at Raw Story and elsewhere.

My friend in the mortgage industry back in Philly sent me a funny Powerpoint presentation that’s floating around to help explain the subprime loan mess. I’ve embedded it here using Powerpoint’s semi-adequate Save as Web Page feature. Enjoy.

UPDATE: Apparently, the link does not work for Mac users. I’ll see if there’s another way I can embed it.

UPDATE 2: ‘Sidereal’ in the comments found it at another link. Click here. That should work for everyone. Thanks!

This week’s Birds Eye View Contest is posted.

Last week, I attended a press conference at the downtown Seattle offices of the ACLU with travel show host Rick Steves. Many people know Rick Steves from his television shows or his books, but one thing that many people don’t know about him is that he’s been a longtime advocate of reforming our marijuana laws. Having spent so much time in Europe, it’s given him a broader perspective on what works and what doesn’t when it comes to dealing with the problems of drug abuse and drug addiction. For example, in a country like Holland, where adults can walk into a licensed coffeeshop and purchase marijuana without penalty, fewer adults and teens use it than here in America, where we still try to send sick people to jail for using it as medicine on the false premise that doing otherwise would “send the wrong message to our kids”.

The contrast between the two approaches is clear for anyone who is willing to put aside the overwraught exaggerations of the dangers of this drug and simply look at the facts. Towards this end, Steves has set up a new website at MarijuanaConversation.org and released a half-hour infomercial-style video that discusses the history and the current state of this country’s war on marijuana. The video is available to Comcast Digital Cable subscribers through On Demand and will eventually be seen on some of the state’s major network affiliates. I’ve already seen the video myself, and I’m hoping that it reaches a wide audience in the state. Little of what was presented was new to me, but it will likely be surprising to those who’ve only learned about marijuana from sources with an incentive to maintain its illegal status.

The national prohibition of marijuana didn’t even begin until 1937 in this country. Before that time, and especially as far back as in colonial days, the hemp plant was a valued resource. It was used for ropes and sails and both The Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were written on hemp parchment. It wasn’t until the early 20th century that there were attempts to make hemp’s psychoactive relative, which had always been known by the term cannabis, illegal. A man named Harry J. Anslinger was put in charge of the new Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which was made up of a number of federal employees whose jobs were rendered useless by the end of alcohol prohibition in 1932. In an attempt to preserve those jobs, he proceeded to drum up a lot of fear about the use of cannabis. In order to draw on America’s racial fears, he began referring to it as ‘marihuana,’ which was the Mexican term for the drug. Despite opposition from a number of medical professionals, Anslinger’s propaganda campaign, which incredibly claimed that marijuana was “the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind” actually worked, and it was made illegal through the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act of 1937.

While marijuana use at that time was fairly limited, the 60s brought about a massive increase in the drug’s popularity. It became a symbol of the counter-culture movement that was challenging many of the more socially conservative norms that developed through the Depression and World War II. When Richard Nixon was in the White House in 1970, he assigned a special commission to look at the dangers of this increased level of use and to recommend solutions. The Shafer Commission surprised Nixon by saying that marijuana is not very dangerous at all and recommending that it should be decriminalized. Nixon completely ignored the commission and launched what we now know as the modern “war on drugs.”

Today, nearly 100 million Americans have used marijuana, including our current and former Presidents, and numerous members of Congress. Yet it still remains illegal under federal law for anyone in this country to possess it or grow it. Over 800,000 people were arrested last year on marijuana offenses, over 700,000 for simple possession. Minorities, especially blacks, are more likely than whites to be arrested for possession and more likely to go to jail for it. While few of those 700,000 actually do serve jail time, the overall costs to taxpayers for maintaining this nationwide prohibition amounts from somewhere between $7 billion and $40 billion per year, depending on whether or not you try to factor in the potential revenue from taxing its sale. It is currently this country’s #1 cash crop.

As the generation who grew up in the 1960s nears retirement age, many of them have been finding that marijuana really does have the medical uses that the physicians in the 1930s said it did before being shouted down by Anslinger’s angry mob. Thirteen states now have laws that allow medical marijuana use when approved by a doctor, but the Bush Administration continues to deem those laws invalid under federal law, sending federal agents throughout those states to close down medical marijuana facilities that are legal under their respective state laws. Despite petitions and lawsuits, marijuana is still classified as a Schedule I drug, meaning that the federal government deems it to have no medical use and to be more dangerous than both cocaine and amphetamines. In another rebuke to that ridiculous classification, the American College of Physicians, a group of 124,000 doctors, gave their endorsement last week for the medical use of marijuana.

I’m hoping for the best when it comes to this effort by Steves to start a new conversation and to reach out to more people with the message that our approach to marijuana in this country is fundamentally flawed. There’s a major divide between how the politically active online community sees our marijuana laws and how it’s viewed among other demographics. I get very little disagreement when I discuss marijuana legalization online, even from many of the right-wing folks who disagree with me on almost everything else. The unnecessary cost to taxpayers and the overbearing nanny state aspect of the federal marijuana prohibition resonate with conservatives, while the racial disparities and the effects on voting eligibility and the lack of opportunity for those with past convictions resonate with liberals. But Steves’ message is powerful because it reaches another very large group: parents.

As anyone who’s ever watched his travel show knows, Rick Steves has a family, and a big part of why he’s doing this is because he sees our marijuana laws as a detriment, rather than a benefit, for his own kids. Like any good parent, he doesn’t want his children to be involved with marijuana. But through his travels, he’s discovered that our marijuana laws are extremely counterproductive on that front. By choosing outright prohibition instead of a model that allows for the strict regulation of its sale for adults, it’s actually much easier for children in this country to get marijuana than it is for them to get a bottle of whiskey or a pack of cigarettes. The person who sells marijuana doesn’t check ID and doesn’t face a strict penalty for selling to a minor. As a result, young people themselves often become part of the supply chain. This is something that happened during alcohol prohibition as well and was one of the big reasons why many people began to turn their backs on that failed social experiment. The special that he recorded hits this point extremely well and I imagine that it will resonate with a lot of parents in this country who have seen marijuana prohibition both as children and adults. While they certainly don’t want their kids to be involved with drugs, as one young mother in the audience noted, it’s much worse for a young person to have a criminal record. And that’s why it’s time to start this conversation now.

UPDATE: SeattleTammy sent me an email with a link to a review she wrote of Burning Rainbow Farm, one of the best books for grasping the sheer lunacy of marijuana prohibition. If you’re in Seattle and want a copy, head to Jackson Street Books and grab one.

Here are a few interesting items from this week:

Travel show host Rick Steves is helping to launch an initiative to get more people talking about this country’s marijuana laws, which he’s found in his travels to be incredibly counterproductive compared to how it’s dealt with in other countries. The 30-minute video he produced is available to Comcast Digital Cable On Demand subscribers and will hopefully also be shown on some of the local networks in the state. Scott Morgan and Dominic Holden have more.

With the help of The Daily Show, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) demonstrates the complete uselessness of the Senate by being more concerned over the destruction of taped football practices than over the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes because the Patriots beat the Eagles in the Super Bowl a few years back. And speaking of New England, Congress, and sports, the only Republican Congressman left in all of New England right now is Christopher Shays, whose district is the closest one in those 6 states to New York City. Now, because of his statements on Roger Clemens, New York City sports radio hosts Mike and the Mad Dog are going after him and trying to help his Democratic opponent, Jim Himes.

Yesterday’s tragedy at Northern Illinois University is being explained to us as a completely normal young person who just stopped taking his medications. Why is it that before we had these medications at all, we didn’t have people going on mass murder sprees all the time? There seems to be something very odd about how we view mind-altering drugs as being one of two extremes – those that make you crazy when you take them and those that make you crazy when you stop taking them.

And finally, I think this is what you get when you elect a president who spent much of the early 80s getting balls-out wasted and playing Space Invaders.

This is an open thread.

This week, as I’ve tried to wrap my head around what the hell actually happened at the Republican caucuses on Saturday, the most important person in helping me understanding it all was Pudge from Sound Politics. He was heavily involved in the process and he’s managed to clear up a few misperceptions I had. First, and most importantly, the primary purpose of the Republican caucus on Saturday was not to select their preferred Presidential candidate. It was to select people to be delegates for the next level in their multi-tiered caucus system. That last part sounds a lot like what we did in the Democratic caucuses, but in ours, the number of delegates to be allotted for each candidate was apportioned according to the numbers of people supporting each candidate in the caucus. In the Republican caucus, there was no such criteria at all. They could’ve sent whichever delegates they wanted, regardless of who they were planning to support. Second, because the delegate form had no indication for presidential preference, many of the precinct captains across the state didn’t report their results correctly, which is what ultimately resulted in Boss Esser throwing up his hands Saturday night and just saying, “Fuck it! McCain wins!” and why it’s Wednesday and they’re still only at 96%.

Now as someone who tends to be a stickler for things like democracy and fairness, I prefer the way the Democrats did things. Pudge, on the other hand, does not:

In the Republican Party, the precincts decide for themselves on what basis to elect their delegates. In the Democratic Party, the precincts are required (by the “elite” “party bosses”) to select delegates based on presidential preference.

You see, by being forced to use a system that democratically allots the number of delegates for each candidate, we’ve completely limited our freedom to be able to send delegates based upon who’s the best dressed, or the tallest, or who can play the meanest harmonica. What the hell is wrong with us?

“Republicans went through extensive training on how to run a caucus, deal with issues, be scrupulous in observance of the rules, and report results. Discipline has always been our strong suit.”

– The Crackpiper, 2/9/08 5:00 PM

CommentThread.IsOpen = true;

On Friday, the day before the caucuses here, former Mike McGavick staffer Timothy Goddard gave this as one of the reasons why the Republican base should STFU and just support McCain:

Point two–A McCain loss will embarass the Washington State Republican Party

Particularly when McCain coasts to an easy victory in the primary on the 19th. It will demonstrate that the local party activists and caucus-goers are woefully out of touch with the Washington State Republicans who actually supply the votes. Remember those? They’re important. Now, it may be true that we activists are out of touch, and if it is, we need to figure out how we can rectify that situation. But personally, I’d rather it were not pointed out in such blatant fashion.

Because of the timing of our caucus and primary, and that of recent political events, we’re a party uniquely positioned to embarrass itself. That’s one opportunity I sincerely hope to avoid taking. Our party needs to gain influence over the voters of this state, both friendly and otherwise, and caucusing for Huckabee will diminish it, instead.

I went to a Democratic caucus on Saturday. It was chaotic and even frustrating at times, but one thing that I can’t complain about was whether or not it was democratic (in the small ‘d’ sense). It most certainly was. The initial presidential preferences were tallied, the amount of delegates chosen were based strictly upon the amount of support there was for each candidate. As I slowly heard what had been happening at the Republican caucuses, I noticed that things weren’t happening the same way. I think Timothy Killian is correct in his explanation here:

The rules of the Washington State Republican Party Caucus states that “there is no formal system applied in the Precinct Caucuses to relate the presidential preference of the Caucus participants to the choice of the precinct’s delegates.” In other words, unlike most other caucuses wherein delegates are tied in some formal way to the preferences of caucus attendees, each individual precinct was free to determine their delegate in any manner they chose. (See here).

As a result, a given precincts presidential preferences could break out this way:

Huckabee: 10
McCain: 8
Paul: 3
But, their delegates, which are unrelated to the above preferences, could break out this way:

Huckabee: 1
McCain: 2
Paul: 1

Pudge’s post at Sound Politics that Goldy references below seems to confirm this. Unlike the Democratic caucuses where the delegates were apportioned by support, at the Republican caucuses (from the link above):

There is no formal system applied in the Precinct Caucuses to relate the presidential preference of the Caucus participants to the choice of the precinct’s delegates. The participants at each Precinct Caucus alone determine if presidential preference is to be a factor in such choice and, if so, how it is to be applied.

In other words, the mathematical formula that Democrats used to determine delegate apportionment doesn’t seem to exist on the Republican side. If you look at the overall results, it looks like most of the Republican caucuses sent delegates who more-or-less represented the voters of their precinct, but there are definitely more than a few cases where Republican caucusers are claiming that they were “shut out” of the process:

Kim Davis, for example, said she felt like proper procedures weren’t followed at her precinct.

Davis, 47, a Huckabee supporter, said caucus-goers at her table were not given the opportunity to make the case for their candidate nor to vote on who among them would get to be delegates.

“Several McCain supporters just decided for the table and filled out the form,” she said. “I got bamboozled.”

The social conservatives in the Republican Party have long been bamboozled by the corporate bigwigs who actually run it, but it’s interesting to watch the bamboozlement happen at the grass roots level.

I’m definitely arriving at the same conclusion as Killian:

In summation, it may very well be that Huckabee won Washington State. Or maybe McCain won. At this point, we have no way of knowing. What we do know is this: Luke Esser is willfully mispresenting the results of the Washington State Republican Caucuses.

The entire media world has now reported that John McCain was the winner in Washington, but that result is not based on the actual results of the caucus preferences.

I invite the media to more closely scrutinize this.

I second that.

UPDATE: From commenter ‘rhp6033’ in the thread below (and I apologize for sending Christmasghost towards another mental breakdown there…), King5’s Robert Mak is looking into irregularities in the Snohomish County vote:

One Snohomish County caucus chairman told KING 5 that the delegate preferences are “dramatically different” than the attendee counts.

The Snohomish County Republican Party does not have the delegate preferences from many of its caucuses and is working to obtain them.

Easily over a thousand people showed up at my North Seattle caucus sites (in the 46th LD), split up between a church and a school near Northgate. Our precinct (46-2280) had 8 delegates, which started out 6 to 2 for Obama and stayed that way after a fairly intense debate between the two sides to woo over the half-dozen or so people who signed in uncommitted. After the first tally, I asked for a clarification on whether or not there were even enough uncommitteds to alter the delegate count, but that failed. For some reason, the precinct captain thought that the uncommitteds would be more interested in trying to convince more people to be uncommitted (so that there would be an uncommitted delegate) than in choosing a side. The uncommitteds were rightfully baffled by this as was everyone else. Anyway, 30 wasted minutes later, the uncommitteds (and maybe one or two others) re-voted and it was still 6 to 2.

[Created at this cool page]

Ron Paul had a disappointing finish in Alaska, placing 3rd behind Romney and Huckabee. I think the most fascinating thing about the Ron Paul Revolution is that if Paul officially drops out now, half his supporters will be deciding whether to support Obama, while the other half will be deciding whether to assassinate him.

I had missed this news from a week or so back, but Gene Johnson from the AP (who is a friend and co-rec soccer teammate of mine) alerted me to this hilarious bit of irony on Seattle’s new strip club:

There’s no word yet on whether neighbor-appreciation night will include black robes and gavels, but Seattle’s first new strip club in 20 years is going in less than a block from the federal courthouse.

And from his chambers on the 14th floor, U.S. District Judge James Robart — who struck down the city’s ban on new cabarets two years ago — has a bird’s-eye view.

“There is some irony there,” said Marty McOmber, a spokesman for Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels.

Déjà Vu Showgirls is planning to open the club, the city’s fifth, in the basement of Fantasy Unlimited, an erotic boutique and movie theater less than a block from the courthouse.

As long as I live, I will never understand the weird hang-up this city has with strip clubs.

Finally, opium production our attempts to eradicate opium in Afghanistan continue to fuel the Taliban. As always, the AP report fails to mention several relevant points. The first being that the reason that the Taliban can impose a 10 percent tax on the opium production is because our eradication efforts allow them to set up a protection racket. The second being that unless western nations can greatly reduce the demand for the illegal drugs that rely on the opium production, a woman in a burqa will be planting the Afghan flag on the moon before we ever succeed in stopping it.

Don’t Ask McCain – video powered by Metacafe

I saw this at the blog of Lew Waters, a local right-winger who has pronounced the GOP dead over McCain’s impending nomination. For the nativists who see increased numbers of Mexican-American families in this country as a threat, McCain’s unwillingness to even discuss the issue will only play into their paranoia, and 2008 will be another milestone in their efforts to destroy their party.

Commenting about Goldy’s dismissal from KIRO this week, Mark Gardner at WhackyNation provided the following analysis:

Besides being an embarassing ass on the air, Goldy’s show appealed to a not very valuable demographic: Liberals. Just think how they spend their money (drugs, booze, tatooes and porn, etc.) and how little money they have. Not a very appealing demographic for advertisers.

After several failed attempts in the comment thread at defending his thesis, Gardner then reversed course and said he was only kidding. As an avid reader of WhackyNation, however, I found myself bewildered and unsure of myself. All of this time, I’ve assumed that Gardner, Guzzo, and the nutty professor were serious people presenting serious views. This illusion has been shattered. Now I’m wondering what else I’ve read at WhackyNation that was only in jest.

Was Lou just kidding when he argued that gambling should be outlawed nationwide? What about boxing? Or alcohol?

Was Mark only kidding when he tried to claim that the value of oceanfront real estate was proof that global warming was a hoax?

What about when Lou wrote that Hitler and Mussolini both won the Nobel Peace Prize? Did I miss the punch line?

And back in September, when Lou called for the liquidation of all weapons manufacturers in the world and then 24 hours later defended our right to own guns, which of those two posts was serious and which one was in jest? What about the time he called for a ban on all billboards, but then criticized people who complain about advertising? Can someone from WhackyNation please clarify which of those views was the serious one and which one was for laughs?

When Professor Manweller questioned the intelligence of southern Republicans because they voted for Ron Paul over Rudy Giuliani 2 to 1, I assume he was only kidding because any idiot could have used Google to see that voters in Michigan, Iowa, and Nevada voted that way too.

And I feel dumb that I didn’t consider that when Lou called David Postman a Socialist propagandist that he was just having a little fun with a fellow journalist.

All of this time, Mark, I never realized how much you guys are just a jolly bunch of jokesters. I always thought you were writing stupid post after stupid post because the three of you truly were idiots. Boy do I feel dumb knowing that you’ve only been pretending to be idiots.