Zardoz X

Kinky is living, loving proof that feral kittens can and do make wonderful companion animals.  With a little patience, we watched her blossom physically and emotionally.  Now when she isn't chasing her favorite little blue ball, she is rarely out of our arms.
-Clare and Steve
Atlanta, GA

Click to Give @ The Animal Rescue Site

By LEONARD PITTS JR.

lpitts@miamiherald.com

Maybe we should legalize drugs.

…

In the meantime, I leave you one last statistic. Cole says that in 1914, when the first federal drug law was enacted, the government estimated 1.3 percent of us were addicted to illegal drugs. In 1970, when the War on Drugs began, the government estimated 1.3 percent of us were addicted to illegal drugs. Thirty-nine million arrests later, he says, the government says 1.3 percent of us are addicted to illegal drugs.

''That,'' says Cole, ``is the only statistic that's never changed at all.''

…

I come neither eagerly nor easily to that maybe. Rather, I come by way of spiraling drug violence in Mexico that recently forced Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to acknowledge the role America's insatiable appetite for narcotics plays in the carnage. I come by way of watching Olympian Michael Phelps do the usual public relations song and dance after being outed smoking weed, and knowing the whole thing was a ritualized farce. Most of all, I come by way of personal antipathy: I don't like and have never used illegal drugs.

But yeah, I'm thinking maybe we should legalize them.

Or at the very least, begin the discussion.

I find myself in august -- and unexpected -- company. Ronald Reagan's secretary of state, George Schultz, former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, the late Nobel Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman and the late conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. have all said much the same thing.

And then, there is Jack A. Cole, who spent 26 years with the New Jersey State Police, 12 of them as an undercover narcotics officer. In 2002, he founded LEAP, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (www.leap.cc), which now claims 12,000 members -- FBI, DEA, cops, prosecutors and judges united in the belief that the War On Drugs has failed and that the solution to the drug problem is legalization, regulation and taxation.

…

On legalizing drugs - Leonard Pitts Jr. - MiamiHerald.com

Sojourner’s  Voice and Verse, April 2, 2009:

The field of the poor may yield much food,
but it is swept away through injustice.

- Proverbs 13:23-23

And to sort of fill out the blanks for Rush, though I don’t pretend or desire to speak for him, left me say: as long as capitalism’s main objective is “maximum” profit, minimizing even essential costs, instead of “optimizing” profit, taking into account essential costs, we will need to reform laissez-faire (unregulated) capitalism to end it’s injustices.

I hope he’s for real. - RLB

Video: Rush Limbaugh to Speak at Sojourners’ Mobilization to End Poverty - Ryan Rodrick Beiler - God’s Politics Blog#rush_video

From This Is America, With Jon Elliott, Air America Radio.

From me, You are such an ass, Rush.  And your 25 million listeners are America's assholes.

Personally, I think the stock market is run by Republicans who are taking cues from Rush Limbaugh, and WANT the administration to fail.  True patriots, the stock brokers.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/video/index.jhtml?videoId=220253&title=the-dow-knows-all