If something so clearly isn't working, isn't it time to change course?
Prohibition has failed to stamp out markets and quality, or increase street prices for cocaine, heroin, methamphetamine and marijuana. The drug war kicked off by President Nixon in the 1970s costs $40 billion or more a year. It is a massive, embarrassing, destructive failure.
1. You are innocent until proven guilty.
2. Oops, that was before the war on drugs.
3. So don't carry large sums of money; that means you must be guilty, so the state gets your money.
Thanks to the Internet, we're not seeing perverts just from the dregs of society but from all walks of life:
MUNCIE, Ind. - The growing availability of the Internet helps explains the child pornography arrests of a police officer, a community leader and a high school teacher in the Muncie area this year, an expert said.
During the recent years of "declining crime rates," a lot of theories were expressed, most of them junk. Now that the rate seems to be going the other way, the experts are trotted out again, with equally lame theories. The one that rings truest for me is this one:
Justice Kennedy is probably right about the United States not making the case it needs to on Western-style democracy and the rule of law. But I think he's overly pessimistic; the yearning for liberty is a timeless and universal one, and the world is a little bit more free every year.
He also leaves out a few parts of the rule of law:
It's nice that our courts are going 21st century hi-tech:
Now, a $250,000 project to outfit each of the four “Grand Courtrooms” on the courthouse's third floor with plasma video screens, digital sound, digital recording, telestrators and other gadgets designed to make trials and proceedings run faster and smoother is on the cusp of being complete.
The backlash against the Supreme Court's horrendous Kelo decision continues, and this has to count as a major victory:
The Ohio Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Wednesday that economic development isn't a sufficient reason under the state constitution to justify taking homes, putting a halt to a $125 million project of offices, shops, and restaurants in a Cincinnati suburb that officials said would create jobs and add tax revenue.
OK, OK, extortion is wrong, and a criminal is a criminal. But a certain part of me admires the enterprise of this couple, and certainly nobody is going to feel sorry for their victims:
Barnett and Catini have been contacting sexual predators over the Internet since early this year.
After several Internet conversations, the couple would contact the predators over the telephone and make arrangements for them to have sex with Catini, who was posing as a 15-year-old girl.
Well, this is just a little bit scary:
WASHINGTON -- The last 25 years have seen a 1,300 percent increase in the number of paramilitary raids on American homes. The vast majority of these are to serve routine drug warrants, including for offenses as trivial as marijuana possession, according to a just-released study by the Cato Institute.
Every time the ACLU does something halfway sensible than makes me inclined to applaud it, it turns around and goes off the deep end. It's now helping two state prison inmates file a class-action suit on behalf of the other 20,000 Indiana state prisoners to overturn -- get this -- a new policy that bars magazines and other printed materials that depict nudity or sexual conduct.
