“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one’s time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.” — HL Mencken

The last 100 years of utter miserable drug war failure – *any* high-school kid in America with a decent ‘non-narc’ rep and the cash can score *any* illegal drug in 72 hours or less, just like we could when I was in HS a million years ago: everybody knows a guy who can fix it – that failure has taught us that the entrenched system is very _very_ good at beating back head-on attempts to change it.

I think you & your organization just might constitute a fabulous, unanticipated flanking move they’re not ready for. Now why didn’t *I* think of that?

Fair enough. I don’t disagree with you, I was just showing some appreciation for progress that has been made. I think evolution has a better track record than revolution.

SWAT works pretty much the same way. If they’re allowed to have it at all, they *will* abuse it – it’s in their nature.

There are some things the State simply should not be allowed to have.

Congratulations for that and welcome to The Agitator, Eapen. Progress is progress. If we could at least get to the point where SWAT is deployed for the reasons it was originally supposed to be deployed (hostage/barricade, terrorist attacks, etc) then that would be better society. As an anarchist, I do not see reform as an end. But, I am always happy to see changes made that might reduce suffering and death. Thanks for working to make life freer and safer for people in your community.

Don’t get between a cop and his rack^H^H^H^Hsource of employment.

Most folks have no idea this is going on. It’s truly dangerous. We have no business using pabulum such as “land of the free and home of the brave”. We are neither.

Sadly for child porn users, they get stuck with years and years in prison for looking at pictures. Pictures and videos that never should have been made, pictures and videos that no one should want to look at. Using CP is indeed a moral wrong; I will not argue otherwise.

I WILL argue that putting men in prison for looking at pictures freely available on the internet is insane.

The feds (ICE, in our case) can point to all the CP convictions and say that they are protecting children. But the vast majority of those convictions are NOT of the people who produced the images or abused the children. In the meantime, CP flourishes. The supply of those images has not diminished one whit.

There is something like a 97% conviction rate for CP offenses. The reason? Mandatory minimum sentences give prosecutors a powerful hammer to force defendants to take the plea. Same injustice for drug charges, but ending the drug wars is a “cleaner” cause than CP.

Sadly for child porn users, most people hate to get caught empathizing with someone so darned icky as a sex offender.

I’m all for fairer, saner, more reason-based sex offender laws.

That said, “Sadly for child porn users . . . ” isn’t the best way to begin an argument.

;P

Legalizing marijuana (and other drugs, or all) would be a huge win that would nearly eliminate asset forfeiture, prison overcrowding, among other issues. I say “nearly” because law enforcement will not let go of that power too easily. I can easily see them moving asset forfeiture efforts to the emerging war on child porn.

Sadly for child porn users, society is deep in the midst of hysteria about sex offenders. The Second Age of Reason can’t begin too soon.

I think the signature drive in Missouri failed because it did not have enough funding, plain and simple. It is hard attracting funders to the issue, particularly those who can credibly commit to funding an event on the scale of a ballot initiative.

Mike, many people oppose both drug prohibition and the horrible tactics it uses. It’s no surprise that Eapen is one of us. What exactly do you want from him, as a person with personal political views? I sense that you want to complain that the Americans for Forfeiture Reform organization shouldn’t have argued against prohibition, but I’ve seen no indication that it ever made that argument. Just the same, rampant forfeiture abuse is but one of the many “unsolvable” problems that will simply disappear when we end drug prohibition.

It is an honest conversation to have, and I prefer to show leadership on the issue by discussing the reality.