The Failed War On Pot Users

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | 10/20/2005 | Debra J. Saunders

[cryptical]

IN 2004, law enforcement officials arrested 771,605 people for marijuana violations, according to federal statistics. Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project was so alarmed he sent out a press release noting that there were more arrests for marijuana charges than all violent crimes combined. The number of arrests for possession alone was 684,319.

Said Mirken of the 771,605 statistic: "This is, in fact, an all-time record. This number of arrests is the equivalent of arresting every man, woman and child in San Francisco." Some 40 percent of Americans say they have used marijuana or hashish in their lifetime, and 34 percent of high-school seniors say they have used marijuana in the last year -- even though the last decade has seen a huge spike in marijuana arrests, according to federal research. When the number of marijuana arrests exceeds the population of some states, the country should be asking: Does it make sense to keep millions of otherwise-law-abiding citizens on the dark side of the law?

[faireturn]

The clear words of the constitution as amended by the 14th should have "settled" the matter, as they are still unrefutable: " --- No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States

The 7th Amendment never created any privileges or immunities for citizens of the United States relating to actions in state court.

The wording of the 7th says -- "in any Court of the United States"; it does not say "only". Comments about state courts are suppositions.

But then, what chance does a mountain of facts have in the face of deliberate and willful ignorance?

Indeed, could those who contend that those clear words of the 14th need some 'incorporation' to apply to our BOR's be termed deliberately and willfully ignorant?

Don't be willfully and deliberately ignorant.

Try reading the article below, as it seems you need to educate yourself about the 14th & 'incorporation'.

THE BILL OF RIGHTS AND THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Amar1.html

[LibertarianSchmoe]

free·dom ( P ) Pronunciation Key (frdm)
n.
1) The condition of being free of restraints.

"No, anarchy is the ability of a person to behave without the influence of outside forces."

No, anarchy, strictly defined, is absence of any government or cohesive principle. There IS freedom in anarchy, but as Jefferson said, DOES lead to despotism, BECAUSE of the lack of restraint.

Laws ARE restraints; they restrict freedom. Which is why we need to be careful in our application, or we may find ourselves no longer living in a Free Republic. Those of us who are not anarchists (myself included) "voluntarily support" laws which are just.

[LibertarianSchmoe]

"The libertarian movement is currently (and has historically) been made up of lunatics and liars."

Right. NO lunatics and liars in the temerance movement, I'm sure!

[Mojave]

1. Freedom is the ability of a person to behave without the influence of outside forces

2. The condition of being free of restraint

Changing your tune as your argument dissolves.

[Mojave]

The wording of the 7th says -- "in any Court of the United States

Any Court of the United States, not any state court.

More of your willful ignorance.

it does not say "only". Comments about state courts are suppositions.

Right. YOUR baseless suppositions.

So completely and conclusively have both of these principles been settled, so expressly have they been recognized without dissent or question almost from the beginning in the accepted interpretation of the Constitution, in the enactment of laws by Congress and proceedings in the Federal courts, and by state Constitutions and state enactments and proceedings in the state courts, that it is true to say that to concede that they are open to contention would be to grant that nothing whatever had been settled as to the power of state and Federal governments or the authority of state and Federal courts and their mode of procedure from the beginning.

And still more of your willful ignorance.

In all your years of posting on FR, under all of your banned accounts, you've never risen above mere assertion and fabrication.

[Mojave]

the temerance movement

Swallowing camels, straining at gnats. Another libertarian specialty.

[LibertarianSchmoe]

Correcting your definitions is not changing my tune. And how could my argument dissolve when you're not arguing any of the points of the issue? You're just (incorrectly) parsing words and name-calling. Oh, and the classic tactic of arbitrarily declaring the argument over. I think that means that YOU are out of logical ammo.

[Mojave]

Correcting your definitions is not changing my tune

You were changing your definition. Be honest.

At least try.

[LibertarianSchmoe]

I think it's pretty clear that the two definitions are synonymous.

I'M the one swatting at gnats? Do you need a definition of the word "is"? Where are your RELEVANT arguments? Ah, you HAVE none. Better switch on the self-righteous mode.

[Mojave]

I think it's pretty clear that the two definitions are synonymous.

Influence equals restraint?

Dance, dance, dance!

I'M the one swatting at gnats?

No, straining at. While swallowing camels.

[robertpaulsen]

"would have still been arrested in the decriminalization scenario."

Huh? What are you talking about -- the "decriminalization scenario"?

"Me: "The GOVERNMENT should tell people how to behave in the privacy of their own home."

The government is NOT telling people how to behave in their own homes. They're merely making marijuana illegal.

If people wish to smoke marijuana at home, they're free to do so. Nobody can stop them from doing so. Nobody is saying that they can't smoke marijuana at home.

And certainly nobody is telling them how to behave at home.

Now, if they're caught doing something illegal, then I would fully expect them to take personal responsibility for their actions. Wouldn't you? And if everyone were smoking marijuana in the privacy of their home, I highly doubt that 771,605 people would be arrested each year.

"Freedom is the ability of a person to behave without the influence of outside forces"

No, that's the definition of maturity. That has nothing to do with freedom.

[robertpaulsen]

"The libertarian movement is currently (and has historically) been made up of lunatics and liars."

Lunatics and bluenatics.

[robertpaulsen]

"George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor and Franklin Pierce were pot smokers."

They owned slaves, too. What's your point?

[faireturn]

" -- The 7th Amendment never created any privileges or immunities for citizens of the United States relating to actions in state court. --"




What could be more common today than to speak of the "privilege" against compelled self-incrimination, or the "immunity" from double prosecution?

Nor is modern usage here any different from that of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. As Michael Kent Curtis observes in his illuminating and powerfully researched book on incorporation, the "words rights, liberties, privileges, and immunities, seem to have been used interchangeably."

To pick only one eighteenth-century example with obvious implications for the incorporation debate, the entitlements to civil and criminal juries, labeled in the Sixth and Seventh Amendments as "rights ," were described by the 1775 Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms as the "inestimable privilege of trial by jury."


THE BILL OF RIGHTS AND THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT

Address:http://www.saf.org/LawReviews/Amar1.html


Educate yourself on:


The Barron Contrarians

Having worked hard to understand Barron, we now must work equally hard to understand the contrary view, especially if we are to make full sense of the language and logic of the Fourteenth Amendment.

In the fifteen years before Barron, a considerable number of weighty lawyers implied in passing or stated explicitly that various provisions in the Bill did limit states.

Writing for the Court in 1819, Justice William Johnson obliquely suggested that the Seventh Amendment's guarantee of civil juries applied to states; and the following year he stated even more explicitly in a separate concurrence that the double jeopardy clause "operates equally upon both state and federal governments," although even here, his statement was not free from ambiguity.
He may simply have meant that the clause applied whenever either of two prosecutions for the same underlying conduct was federal, even if the other was by state officials in state court for a state law crime.

That same year, however, the New York Supreme Court stated in dictum that the double jeopardy clause "operates upon state courts" even where both prosecutions were for state law crimes.
In 1824, this view of the double jeopardy clause was pressed in the Massachusetts Supreme Court, yet neither the government's attorney nor the judges appeared to challenge it - perhaps because even without the clause, the Commonwealth recognized a common law double jeopardy right at least as broad.

The following year, William Rawle published a widely read treatise on the Constitution in which he argued at length that virtually all the general provisions of the Bill of Rights bound states.
And as late as 1833, the year Barron came down, we find Justice Baldwin on circuit implying that the Second and Fourth Amendments applied against states ----

[faireturn]

Mojave; -- Correcting your definitions is not changing my tune. And how could my argument dissolve when you're not arguing any of the points of the issue? You're just (incorrectly) parsing words and name-calling.

Oh, and the classic tactic of arbitrarily declaring the argument over. I think that means that YOU are out of logical ammo.
267 LibertarianSchmoe

---

In all of the years of posting on FR, under all of the banned accounts, some have never risen above mere assertion and fabrication.

[Mojave]

"words rights, liberties, privileges, and immunities, seem to have been used interchangeably."

So you think the right to keep and bear and arms is a privilege. Figures.

William Rawle published a widely read treatise on the Constitution in which he argued at length that virtually all the general provisions of the Bill of Rights bound states.

Quote him. Rise above mere assertion and fabrication.

[Mojave]

In all of the years of posting on FR, under all of the banned accounts, some have never risen above mere assertion and fabrication.

Is that a confession, tpaine?

[Mojave]

What's your point?

His source is most likely an article that appeared in a half-size Wiccan underground "zine" called the Green Egg back in 1975. The supposed book he claimed was a great read appears to be an invention of that same article.

There was no such person as “Dr. Burke.” The Smithsonian Institution knew nothing of the so-called American Historical Reference Society. And the hoax was eventually traced to an underground New Left newspaper, the Chicago Seed, which had copied the fabrication from another underground paper, which had apparently made it up.

[Know your rights]

Teaching a worse lesson is teaching your kids to ignore the laws they don't agree with.

I'm proud to teach my kids that if the law says to hand over Jews for gassing they should disobey that law. Do you teach your kids otherwise?

The UK undermined parenting efforts by relaxing their drug laws. It had nothing to do with drinking or smoking,

Alcohol and tobacco are drugs.

and absolutely nothing to do with making some legal product illegal.

It had everything to do with legal status.

Your analogies are juvenile, laughable, and predictable.

My analogies are relevant and damaging to your whiny case.

[Mojave]

if the law says to hand over Jews for gassing they should disobey that law

Laws restricting illicit drugs equal the holocaust?

Hoary hokey hyperbole.