Category Archives: Drug War

Letter of the Week: Your Home is the Government's Castle' By Carolus

I have very ambivalent feelings about drug legalization, though I can certainly understand the arguments that have been advanced for it in libertarian circles. The thing I oppose here is the destruction of the fourth amendment that this type of thing represents and the gross abuse of such ‘no-knock’ warrants by prosecutors, judges, and police.

Such warrants are routinely sought by careerist DA’s, rubber-stamped by moronic judges, and carried out with blind stupidity by police. The list of innocent victims of such abuse grows every day. While there might be a rare in extremis instance where such a raid might possibly be justified (against a cell of jihadis preparing an terrorist attack, for example), that’s not what’s going on day after day in city after city.

Instead, we end up with innocent victims of prosecutorial, judicial, and police misconduct and incompetence, for whom there is zero recourse. Yes, there will no doubt be an official investigation and yes, no doubt the shooting of the 92-year-old woman will be ruled “justified.” It’s as predictable as the sun rising in the east. I think a more appropriate response for this type of wanton stupidity would be: 1) the summary dismissal with prejudice of the officers involved (meaning they will never wear a badge again); 2) the removal of the prosecutor who sought the warrant; 3) the summary removal of the jurist who signed the warrant. In all, the guilty parties should have their careers ruined for good.

If a doctor screws up and kills a patient, the odds are high that he will be carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey by hungry trial lawyers via malpractice suits. If prosecutors, judges, and police screw up and an innocent person dies, they are all quite immune from lawsuits since they are acting in official capacity as government employees.

–CAROLUS

Drug-War Goons Gun Down Granny

Criminal Injustice, Drug War, Private Property

It goes without saying that the late Kathryn Johnston, a heroic 92-year-old pistol packing Atlanta resident, had every right and reason to open fire on the goons who were in the process of breaking down her front door. But they were the law, so they shot her dead.

Armed to the teeth, wearing bulletproof riot vests, and carrying riot shields, these big, “brave” men killed a very old lady in her own home. She was armed with a “rusty old revolver,” meant to repel the neighborhood rapists and drug dealers.

The goons have backup. Although neighbors say Miss Johnston lived alone, the Assistant Chief of the Atlanta Police Department and the County district attorney are claiming their “undercover officers bought illegal drugs from a man at the house in the afternoon and the officers returned in the evening to execute a ‘no knock’ warrant, which is used in cases where officers believe that a suspect may have time to hide evidence or escape if given time to answer the door…”

According to FMNN columnist, Radley Balko

a ‘no-knock’ raid occurs when police forcibly enter a private residence without first knocking and announcing that they’re the police. These raids are often launched on tips from notoriously unreliable confidential informants. Rubber-stamp judges, dicey informants, and aggressive policing have thus given rise to the countless examples of ‘wrong door’ raids we read about in the news. In fact, there’s a disturbingly long list of completely innocent people who’ve been killed in ‘wrong door’ raids.
No-knock raids are typically carried out by masked, heavily armed SWAT teams using paramilitary tactics more appropriate for the battlefield than the living room. No-knock raids have been justified on the flimsiest of reasons, including that the suspect was a licensed, registered gun owner (NRA, take note!)

Basically, the protocol followed is for the police to announce themselves, wait a couple of seconds, and then force the door. Imagine how scared and confused a 92-year-old woman would have been. She probably knew nothing about the “no-knock” abomination and failed to spot the “comforting” sight of the marked patrol car in front of the home she thought was her castle, but was in fact the government’s.

Capitulating On Canada (But Only a Bit)

Canada, Democracy, Drug War, Free Speech, Individual Rights

In response to readers’ responses to “Canada: Crap County“:

To be fair, in many aspects, Canada is less regulated than the US. Their SEC, for example, has nothing on our soviet-style apparatus. They do not conduct the kind of war on drugs we prosecute. Writers here are right: subjugation exists on a continuum and we are sliding toward enslavement. Still, as far as regular folks go—people like us who are not likely to come to the SEC’s attention, and care more about keeping our property and guns than toking it up—the US is far and away the better place.
When you go through customs, Canadians will want to tax you; Americans to ensure you aren’t a terrorist. In the US, although heavily circumscribed, the right to self-defense still exists. In Canada one can’t even purchase mace—it’s illegal, as is self defense—practically. As an outspoken writer, I’m safe in the US. So far, at least. In Canada, there’s a “human rights commission.” As in Europe, it prosecutes and can bankrupt those it deems guilty of “hate” speech. I’ll be staying in the US.

Addicted to that Rush

Criminal Injustice, Drug War, Media, The Zeitgeist, War on Drugs

It seems authorities are Addicted to that Rush; they can’t stop badgering Limbaugh about his consumption choices. Having arbitrarily decided that ingesting pain-killers is infinitely worse for individual and “society” than compulsive eating, bungee jumping, alcohol or tobacco consumption, the policy pinheads have proceeded to preemptively trample the constitutional rights of people like Limbaugh, before the foreseeable harm to “society” can occur.

Lysander Spooner, the great 19th-century theorist of liberty, held that government had no business treating vices as crimes. “Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property. Crimes are those acts by which a man harms the person or property of another.”

This classical liberal thinks that “incarcerating people for their consumption choices has the consistency of arresting a survivor of suicide for attempted murder. Moreover, if for harming himself a man forfeits his liberty, then it can’t be said that he has dominion over his body. It implies that someone else ‘government’ owns him.” (May 8, 2002)

Be mindful that law-enforced medical treatment must also be volubly opposed. The coercive, therapeutic state is a very poor substitute for the avenging state.

Having come up hard against the reality of it, you’d think Limbaugh would have at last leapt in to denounce the Federal government’s War on Drugs. Even National Review has done an about-face. But Limbaugh is too busy hobnobbing in Washington. (Read “Rush Goes to Washington clichés. You’ll want to barf if you’re my kind of person.)

The co-dependency Limbaugh has with the state is by far the more dangerous one.