Free Republic

The federal war on drugs is coming under attack from multiple angles, most recently with the introduction of a bill in Congress by conservative Rep. Ron Paul and liberal Rep. Barney Frank that would end the national prohibition on marijuana and allow states to set their own policies.The “Ending Federal Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2011,” or HR 2306, would not “legalize” marijuana. If passed, the legislation would simply remove the plant from the federal list of “controlled substances.” States would then be free to regulate, tax, or prohibit it without U.S. government interference. One of the important issues the bill...

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) could barely conceal his anger. "The Patriot Act expires on December 31, but the terrorist threat does not," he told reporters at the Capitol yesterday. "Those on the Senate floor who are filibustering the Patriot Act are killing the Patriot Act." There was just one problem. Well, four problems, actually. Four of the 46 senators using the delaying tactic to thwart the USA Patriot Act renewal are members of Frist's party. It is a pesky, irritating fact for Republicans who are eager to portray the impasse as Democratic obstructionism, and a ready-made rejoinder for...

Will the civil libertarians please shut up now? If they had had their way, London’s public surveillance cameras would have been unplugged long ago, and the British police would not have quickly identified the 7/7 suicide bombers from their pictures in the King’s Cross and Luton train stations—a breakthrough crucial to tracking down other participants in the plot. The London attacks have exposed the privacy fanatics’ campaign against public cameras as folly; it is just a matter of time before reality crushes other civil libertarian excesses as well, including opposition to data mining and to immigration law enforcement. Few crime-fighting...

<p>Civil Liberties After 9/11 Alarmism puts Americans' safety at risk.</p> <p>BY ROBERT H. BORK Monday, August 25, 2003 12:01 a.m.</p> <p>When a nation faces deadly attacks on its citizens at home and abroad, it is only reasonable to expect that its leaders will take appropriate measures to increase security. And since security inevitably means restrictions, it is likewise only reasonable to expect a public debate over the question of how much individual liberty should be sacrificed for how much individual and national safety. That, however, is not the way our national debate has shaped up. From the public outcry over the Bush administration's measures to combat terrorism, one might suppose that America is well on the way to becoming a police state. A full-page newspaper ad by the American Civil Liberties Union, for instance, informs us that the Patriot Act, the administration's major security initiative, goes "far beyond fighting terrorism" and has "allowed government agents to violate our civil liberties--tapping deep into the private lives of innocent Americans."</p>