Free Republic

Sen. Rand Paul is blaming politicians for the unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, arguing that the criminal justice system fuels racial tension by disproportionately targeting African-Americans. The so-called war on drugs has created a culture of violence and put police in a nearly impossible situation," Paul said in an op-ed published for TIME. He acknowledged that the shooting death of Michael Brown by a Ferguson police officer wasn't related to drugs, but argued that outsized penalties for nonviolent drug crimes creates a "tension in some communities that too often results in tragedy." The comments are another attempt by Paul, a Kentucky...

MIAMI (CBSMiami) — On August 27th at approximately 8:30 pm, four plain clothes Miami Dade Police officers pulled onto a dead end street in South Dade and arrested three young black men. The scene was captured on video camera. According to the police report, the three men were arrested because officers claimed to see them passing what appeared to be a marijuana cigarette. When the officers approached, they said they found a marijuana cigarette on the ground near where the men were standing.

Oregon and Alaska approved recreational pot use – following Washington State and Colorado, which did the same in 2012 – and the District of Columbia approved legal marijuana possession but not sales, though the move could still be halted by the new US Congress. Though medical marijuana was rejected in Florida, the steps by Oregon, Alaska, and the District add momentum to a movement that is eyeing California next. Recommended: How much do you know about marijuana? Take the quiz ... Yet marijuana remains prohibited by the federal government, and the issue could come to a head in the District...

Phillip Smith at the Drug War Chronicle sums up the news reports detailing the latest casualty in the never-ending U.S. war on drugs. A Georgia SWAT team shot and killed an armed homeowner during a September 24 drug raid sparked by the word of a self-confessed meth addict and burglar who had robbed the property the previous day. No drugs were found. David Hooks, 59, becomes the 34th person to die in US domestic drug law enforcement operations so far this year. According to WMAZ TV 13, Laurens County sheriff’s deputies with the drug task force and special response team...

A Georgia man was killed by police executing a search warrant obtained after a car thief told police he stole methamphetamine from the dead man’s vehicle, media reports say. ...snip... The homeowner, David Hooks, a 59-year-old grandfather and businessman, reported the missing SUV....snip... An hour after getting the search warrant, Shook said David Hooks’ wife saw camouflaged men in her yard with guns and told her husband. David Hooks’ final act was to arm himself with a shotgun....snip... Police searched the home for 44 hours and found no drugs.

The Canadian government has had to warn its citizens not to carry cash to the USA because the USA does not presume innocence but guilt when it comes to money. Over $2.5 billion has been confiscated from Canadians traveling to the USA, funding the police who grab it. If you are bringing cash to the land of the free, you will find that that saying really means they are FREE to seize all your money under the pretense you are engaged in drugs with no evidence or other charges. It costs more money in legal fees to try to get...

Thirty years ago, the Department of Justice created a civil asset forfeiture program known as “Equitable Sharing.” Though originally created for the purpose of separating drug dealers from their ill-gotten assets and cash, since 2001 Equitable Sharing has been employed by the nation’s police to score $2.5 Billion in cash and assets from citizens “who were not charged with a crime and without a warrant being issued.” It is a high-dollar confiscation scam through which 298 police departments and 210 task forces have seized as much as 20 % of their operating budgets “…despite a federal ban [on the use...

Having grown up in Guatemala, IÂ’ve witnessed my countryÂ’s dramatic increase in crime due to the War on Drugs first hand. For most of my life, drug cartels used Guatemala as a natural pitstop for their smuggling routes. Unattended regions in the north provided the perfect space to refuel their vehicles and airplanes before transporting their products to major consumers in the north like the United States. This route had remained the same since the beginning of the Drug War, but recent developments over the past ten years has diverted even more narcotics and violence to my back yard, highlighting...

I am still not very confident about what really happened regarding the shooting of Mr. Brown on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. For all I know, the events went down somewhat along the lines as the police say. But Ferguson’s police department has been so incompetent about investigating, collating and releasing information that might make their public stance easier, one has to wonder about everything they say. How the police handled the protests and journalists — and looters — was even worse. Indeed, cracking down on peaceful protests, harassing and locking up journalists, while letting looters run wild, shows a...

Politicians like Rep. Lacy Clay (D-Mo.) who have supported the militarization of police but have found it politically unfeasible to do so now have been looking for a way to square their support with a little bit of politically-motivated outrage. Clay, whose district includes Ferguson, the town that helped catapult the issue of police militarization into the national news cycle, defended his vote, saying he only disapproved of the use of such police forces for crowd control in his district. But while their presence at protests may be the most prominent manifestation of militarized police, the problem is endemic. Perhaps...

Some people confuse being libertarian with being libertine. I’m sometimes asked, for instance, if I’m a libertarian because I want to smoke pot or do other drugs. I respond that I’ve never done drugs and have no desire to use drugs. Then I’m asked if I’m a libertarian because I want to gamble. I respond by saying that I don’t gamble, even when I’m in Las Vegas or some other place where it’s legal. Sometimes I’m asked if I’m libertarian because I want to use prostitutes. I respond by explaining that I’d never patronize a prostitute because I want to...

EDITOR’S NOTE: This past Sunday, the editorial board of the New York Times endorsed the federal legalization of marijuana. In the February 12, 1996, issue of National Review, this publication’s editors endorsed the same concept in an introduction to a symposium on the question. The editorial and WFB’s contribution to the symposium follow: National Review has attempted during its tenure as, so to speak, keeper of the conservative tablets to analyze public problems and to recommend intelligent thought. The magazine has acknowledged a variety of positions by right-minded thinkers and analysts who sometimes reach conflicting conclusions about public policy. As...

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Sen. Rand Paul yesterday introduced S. 2644, the FAIR (Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration) Act, which would protect the rights of citizens and restore the Fifth Amendment's role in seizing property without due process of law. Under current law, law enforcement agencies may take property suspected of involvement in crime without ever charging, let alone convicting, the property owner. In addition, state agencies routinely use federal asset forfeiture laws; ignoring state regulations to confiscate and receive financial proceeds from forfeited property. The FAIR Act would change federal law and protect the rights of property owners by requiring that...

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Honduran President Juan Hernandez blamed U.S. drug policy for sparking violence in Central American countries and driving a surge of migration to the United States, according to an interview published on Monday. Hernandez, who took office in January after winning on a pledge to be tough on crime, said only a drop in violence would curb the wave of families and unaccompanied minors fleeing Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras who have overwhelmed temporary detention facilities on the U.S. border. "Honduras has been living in an emergency for a decade," Hernandez told Mexican daily newspaper Excelsior. "The...

Wage war on everything? Expect casualties everywhere. And refugees from all over the place. Continue the wars we admit to be un-winnable and never-ending? Then expect, also, to find new victims cropping up all the time, and in unpredictable corners. New enemies, too. The lesson is: choose your wars carefully. The result of not doing that? The current border crisis: Refugees from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador. Under-age refugees. Children. Unaccompanied minors from the most recent high impact area of America’s insane “War on Drugs.” Can this really be relevant? Yes. For most of us in America, the War on...

Drug charges against a prominent Leesburg businessman were dropped today prior to a preliminary hearing in Loudoun County General District Court due to a lack of evidence. Thomas C. Watson, 41, was arrested March 19 on charges of possession of a controlled substance and possession with intent to distribute after police said a package with oxycodone and MDMA was delivered to his Leesburg home. ... “He did not accept the packages - in fact he rejected them. He wrote on the packages 'Return to Sender' and 'Wrong Recipient.' They were placed in his car to take to the post office...

Here’s a question for the proud Americans demanding that the unaccompanied foreign children showing up at our borders be deported: Suppose that one of these “illegal” minors was your neighbor, living with his aunt and uncle, going to school during the day, kicking ball with friends in the evening, trying hard to put the traumatic journey from his native, violence-ridden country to America behind him. Would you, with a clear conscience, pick up the phone and turn him in? If the answer is “no,” then it is time for you to throw out your “Return to Sender” signs. Why? Because...

An officer believed they were acting in an aggressive manner," said Sgt. Paul Paulos, a St. Paul police spokesman. "He thought he'd be bit or the dogs would bite one of the team members." Perry and her fiance, Larry L. Arman, said the dogs had been sleeping by the front door and did nothing more than bark when police used a ram to break down the door of their home to execute a search warrant. The warrant wasn't publicly available in court as of Thursday. Perry and Arman said it indicated police were looking for marijuana, drug packaging, weighing equipment,...

Police in Maryland have charged three people in connection with manufacturing MDMA, commonly referred to as Molly or the drug ecstasy, including a doctor who has a long-standing history of drug problems. Baltimore County cops said a drug investigation led to a search warrant and the arrest of Dr. Priscilla Sheldon-Cost, 51, at a house in Towson. Detectives found chemicals that can be used to manufacture MDMA and ecstasy were being created in a lab in the basement. Some of the substances that were found had even been labelled with MDMA written on it. 'They found chemicals that, when mixed,...

After our house burned down in Wisconsin a few months ago, my husband and I packed our four young kids and all our belongings into a gold minivan and drove to my sister-in-law’s place, just outside of Atlanta. On the back windshield, we pasted six stick figures: a dad, a mom, three young girls, and one baby boy. That minivan was sitting in the front driveway of my sister-in-law’s place the night a SWAT team broke in, looking for a small amount of drugs they thought my husband’s nephew had. Some of my kids’ toys were in the front yard,...