Willie Nelson is a liberal dopehead and no doubt guilty of felony pot possession, but Governor Perry should still just pardon him and send him on the road again, long as he ain’t drivin’. Willie will not be rehabilitated no matter what they do to him. The Border Patrol should be patrolling the border and catching illegal aliens and drug smugglers, not arresting the redneck dopehead country singers cruising in the hippy dippy bus down the interstate to the next gig. What did the Border Patrol expect to find when they searched Willie Nelson’s bus on I-10? Of course he has dope in there. And his music is good. Certainly Willie is more deserving of a pardon than the thief Marc Rich pardoned by Clinton, not to mention half-brother Roger Clinton, pardoned of cocaine charges.
A lot of folks might think that what you're saying there is crazy, but Willie Nelson is a cultural icon with a huge national following.
If Governor Perry allows his state machinery to send Willie Nelson to his state prison for smoking dope, there are many, many people who will know and remember nothing else about Governor Perry than that he persecuted Willie. For whatever reason, millions of people really love Willie Nelson and feel a powerful, personal connection to him.
They do not and will not see him as a danger to society.
Societies of every age have their talented eccentrics that have been allowed certain latitudes concerning societal mores. Willie Nelson falls under this category. I hope they give the old boy his dope back and send him along the road.
Willie is a pretty good pilot, albiet one certainly without a medical these days.
Back when he was really hot, he had a Gulfstream 1. He could come up on Ft. Worth Center frequencies late at night, enroute home.
The controllers at FWC knew whose airplane it was, and it was obviously Willie at the controls, so they would just communicate with him with the radio call “Air Willie.”