The libertarian congressman articulately defends the idea of legalizing heroin and gets applause in South Carolina.

The Warmist lefties are in serious danger of alienating their base. Who knows? They could even lose California. Humboldt County will certainly have no choice but to switch sides. Jeff Dunetz has the story:

Uh-oh now they’ve gone and done it! After claiming that just about everything causes Global Warming (unless Al Gore does it), now the Church of Global Warming Moonbats are saying the indoor production of wacky weed causes global warming. ...

The study, Energy Up In Smoke—The Carbon Footprint Of Indoor Cannabis Production written by Dr. Evan Mills says it’s not the Maui Wowie itself that causes the giant carbon footprint, is all of the electric accessories used to grow the stuff. ...

Pot growers inhale 1% of U.S. electricity, exhale GHGs of 3M cars — study (04/11/2011) ...

Indoor marijuana cultivation consumes enough electricity to power 2 million average-sized U.S. homes, which corresponds to about 1 percent of national power consumption, according to a study by a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Researcher Evan Mills’ study notes that cannabis production has largely shifted indoors, especially in California, where medical marijuana growers use high-intensity lights usually reserved for operating rooms that are 500 times more powerful that a standard reading lamp.

The resulting price tag is about $5 billion in annual electricity costs, said Mills, who conducted and published the research independently from the Berkeley lab. The resulting contribution to greenhouse gas emissions equals about 3 million cars on the road, he said.

When asked if he took drugs, Salvador Dali said: “I am a drug. Take me.”

From Michael Zak via Lynn Chu.

“[N]othing is more destructive of respect for the government and the law of the land than passing laws which cannot be enforced. It is an open secret that the dangerous increase of crime in this country is closely connected with this.”
—Albert Einstein on Alcohol Prohibition, 1921.

To understand that the War on Drugs is bad policy and is not working.

3:57 video

Bad reporting using sensationalistic headlines incorporating gross exaggeration and downright misinformation is how.

Look at how various news sources headline a basically trivial injury to a law enforcement officer received in the course of a minor skirmish with drug smugglers near the border.

What actually happened:

Pinal County Deputy Louis Puroll patrolling alone in a wilderness area about 50 miles south of Phoenix exchanged fire with five armed smugglers carrying bales of marijuana. A shot fired from one of the narcotrafficantes’ AK-47s apparently grazed Deputy
Puroll’s back. He called for assistance and was airlifted by helicopter to a regional medical center where his injury was treated, deemed to be non-serious, and the deputy immediately released.

So the Associated Press shrieks:

Deputy shot; illegal immigrants suspected

Matt Drudge echoes AP:

AZ deputy shot in stomach by suspected illegal…

ABC15:

Deputy shot by suspected immigrant released from hospital

There isn’t really much to report here. A deputy was slightly grazed by a bullet, sustaining insignificant injury, in a minor confrontation with bad guys engaged in smuggling marijuana.

The incident really has nothing to do with illegal immigration. The marijuana smugglers were not, in reality, on their way to pick fruit, wash dishes, mow lawns, or hang sheetrock at all. They were delivering a shipment of pot and once they delivered it, doubtless they were going to illegally emigrate the same way they had illegally immigrated. Undocumented aliens are not in fact arming themselves with AK-47s and shooting it out with police in order to get their hands on American leaf blowers.

It’s unfortunate, of course, that Deputy Puroll was shot at and slightly injured. This incident causes me to marvel at the futility of it all. You’ve smoked pot. I’ve smoked pot. Pretty much everybody in America has smoked some pot. Certainly every single one of the last three presidents has smoked pot.

Why do we insist of making things illegal which most of us still do anyway? And why do we tolerate a state of affairs that rewards crime bounteously while jeopardizing the lives of law enforcement officers to no useful purpose?

And finally, why do we insist on confusing the innocent people coming here to do hard work at low pay with the armed criminals crossing the same border?

Studies show that illegal immigrants commit violent crimes at a rate between four to eight times less than native born Americans.

Rajeev Syal, blogging as “The Observer” at the Guardian, quotes a senior UN official who reveals that illegal drug money provided the only liquid capital during the crisis in the Fall of 2008, and may possibly have played the decisive role in averting a complete financial meltdown.

Drugs and crime chief says $352bn in criminal proceeds was effectively laundered by financial institutions

Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations’ drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.

Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.

This will raise questions about crime’s influence on the economic system at times of crisis. It will also prompt further examination of the banking sector as world leaders, including Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, call for new International Monetary Fund regulations. Speaking from his office in Vienna, Costa said evidence that illegal money was being absorbed into the financial system was first drawn to his attention by intelligence agencies and prosecutors around 18 months ago. “In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor,” he said.

Some of the evidence put before his office indicated that gang money was used to save some banks from collapse when lending seized up, he said.

“Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities… There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.” Costa declined to identify countries or banks that may have received any drugs money, saying that would be inappropriate because his office is supposed to address the problem, not apportion blame. But he said the money is now a part of the official system and had been effectively laundered.

On the one hand, we libertarians can rejoice at the irony of the system being propped up by funds accumulated via victimless crime. On the other hand, of course, if drugs were legal, the massive profits that produced the vitally-needed needed liquid capital certainly could not have come from drugs.

Obama brand Ecstacy tabs

According to Wikipedia, descriptions of the effect of the illegal drug MDMA (3,4-Methylenedioxymethamphetamine) better known as Ecstasy include:

A general and subjective alteration in consciousness
A strong sense of inner peace and self-acceptance
Diminished aggression, hostility, and jealousy
Diminished fear, anxiety, and insecurity
Extreme mood lift with accompanying euphoria
Feelings of empathy, compassion, and forgiveness towards others
Feelings of intimacy and even love for others

Ecstacy has been referred to as the “Love Drug” and as the “Hug Drug.” People who do too much Ecstacy and become overly mellow are pejoratively known as “E-tards.”

It should be no surprise, then, that police in Palmview, Texas recently found Ecstacy being marketed under the Obama brand.

Channel10 (Tampa)

Very bad teenage boys.