Odds and Ends DrugWarRant / Pete Guither / 1,20,2012 Hope for the future Check out this outstanding OpEd by Brown University Junior Jared Moffat: U.S. drug policies are a crime against humanity Myanmar declares a war on opium Gee, I wonder why nobody thought of that before. A war on drugs? Yeah, that'll work. “Every year the international community spends millions of dollars (on anti-narcotics initiatives) in countries like Afghanistan and Colombia, and the outcome is not satisfactory,†Sit Aye, senior legal advisor to President Thein Sein, said in an interview. “Here, with international assistance, we guarantee to wipe out the opium problem by 2014.†Abraham Lincoln Was A Hempster Some enjoyable reading for Presidents' Day. Interesting reading over at Cato Unbound for those who like philosophical discussions about law and rights: What is Due Process? It's an entire series of articles and responses on the subject. I'm particularly impressed with much of what Tim Sandefur has to say in the discussion: My point here is to explain briefly how the Constitution's promise that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law†means not only that government must take certain procedural steps (hearings, trials, and so forth) when it imposes a deprivation, but also that some acts are off limits for government, “regardless of the fairness of the procedures used to implement them.†In a later response (Is Everything Congress Passes Really a Law?), Sandefur passes on this gem from Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 33: acts of the [federal government] which are not pursuant to its constitutional powers…will [not] become the supreme law of the land. These will be merely acts of usurpation, and will deserve to be treated as such. Hence we perceive that the clause which declares the supremacy of the laws of the Union…only declares a truth, which flows immediately and necessarily from the institution of a federal government. It will not, I presume, have escaped observation, that it expressly confines this supremacy to laws made pursuant to the Constitution Somewhat odd article in Christian Science Monitor: Why military hawks are leading drug legalization debate in Latin America CSM is starting to change it's tune since so many church leaders are speaking out against the racially applied drug laws,,they are starting to realize the damage is being done by prohibition and not the drugs. IMO