For a history refresher, listen to these outstanding podcasts:

http://www.corbettreport.com/episode-204-a-brief-history-of-cia-drug-running/

http://www.corbettreport.com/episode-019-the-cia-ships-in-the-drugs/

http://www.corbettreport.com/episode-102-know-your-history-iran-contra/

McCarthy’s witch hunt is yours. You are the one who’s hung up on it.

@18 – Right – when judges and prosecutors are elected, they have to be SEEN to be “tough on crime”.

Even if drugs are legalized, ending the war on drugs, law enforcement still has plenty of tools to knock at your door before sunrise. It isn’t just the war on drugs that needs to be stopped. Law enforcement has too much power. Prosecutors have too much power. Legislators still like to be “tough on crime.” Those facts will make it easy to keep our prisons full.

Heck, Linda. While the stuff you mention are sickening atrocities & miscarriages of justice; proof of our de facto Police State and all that, I’d say you’re actually missing the big picture. Consider just what’s happened to our financial freedom in the last 40 years or so. Wanna buy a car/gold/some other nice goodie and pay cash for it? You’d better make sure it’s not more than 10 Grand. Gotta fill out a *form* if it is. Wanna make a cash withdrawal of more than $3000 from your own account at your own bank? Rest assured, a report on that transaction will be generated. Anonymous wire transfers? Anonymous prepaid credit cards? Pay for a plane ticket with cash? Affairs of the loins…er, “heart” in a nice hotel room in the name of ‘Mr & Mrs. Smith’, paid by cash? Send your money overseas? Hide it in a Swiss bank account? LOL. Not anyMORE!

Drugs Schmugs. That’s just the camels’ nose. Your *money* is no longer your own, nor exclusively your business. Real-World Rule #2: No Money, No Freedom.

“The WoD was a stupid idea when Nixon first pushed it”. Nixon was a lousy President, but not for the reasons usually trotted out to condemn him. Watergate was a case of the Liberal Left punishing somebody they disliked for having the nerve to do the same things that people they liked had gotten away with, cold. If Nixon deserved to be impeached for Watergate, then JFK deserved to be impeached twice, for much the same behavior. And don’t get me started on LBJ.

Nixon was a Big Government Republican and it is a mark of how far the far left had gone that they seriously considered him a Conservative. He pushed the War on Drugs. He started the BATF (and a bigger collection of out of control cowboys and slimy empire-builders would be hard to name). He failed to do anything about the economic mess that JFK had started, and the wave crashed all over Carter (poor, silly prat). The biggest problem I have with the current crop of Rightwing Intellectuals is that they keep coming back to try to rehabilitate Nixon and McCarthy, both of whom were jerks.

Frankly, if McCarthy had’t existed, the Left would have had to invent him. They should burn candles in his memory, he’s been so useful for discrediting anybody who criticizes them.

We do need serious discussion, if only because that is the only way to spread the word beyond us true believers. We do need more research, if only to contrast with the slapdash bushwa that dominates the War On Drugs side of the argument. The public is, gradually, coming to agree with us, but that doesn’t mean that the heavy lifting is done. As with any government program, we are going to have to prove again and again that this one is a waste before we can overcome the terrific inertia that keeps it running.

I sympathize with your weariness. But I don’t just want to be Right, I want to be Done.

And of course, cops & bureaucrats & prisons do well because of it. But nobody ever seems to mention another possible culprit: the banks. Back in the late ’70′s & early ’80′s, you could read a lot about how South American & Central American debt was going to destroy the big US banks. Seems David Rockefeller had pushed all these ‘development’ loans, and bankers being the scummy lemmings they are, they all went hog wild. Great interest rates! Made the books just *sparkle*!!

As anyone who’d ever done business in Latin America could have told them, that was a mistake. Seems they just couldn’t pay back the loans, after awhile. Oh well. Lo Siento, eh? But writing off the loans would mean los bancos would have to eat some shit on the books! The quarterly numbers would suck! Worst of all, bonuses would be affected! So they made some MORE loans, just so the borrowers could *cover the interest* on the BIG loans, which were never ever gonna be repaid. A guy named Paul Erdman made a career of writing about this stuff: he invented the ‘financial thriller’ genre.

And then one day…you just stopped hearing about it. Why? Por Que?? Well, since it dropped off the screen right about the heyday of ‘Miami Vice’, let’s turn to them for the answer. Crockett & Tubbs have finally unraveled the dark threads of the Massive Sinister Plot, see, ruining several $2000 linen suits and $800 Beltrami slacks in the process. They’ve tracked it down to New York. Where a gray, humorless, clearly-well-connected old banker explains to them that ‘shutting down the flow of Mexican & South American coke and drogas would mean the nations in question would be unable to make their loan payments on time. Nothing personal, Detective. Just business.’

So we’re stuck wondering: would a banking system that routinely inflates ruinous bubbles; sells “shit” to their very best customers; admittedly manipulates the world’s key interest-rate fixing (LIBOR); and regularly gets busted for laundering drug money….would *those guys* do _that_? Also, is it likely that a handful of mostly retired cops trying to do something about it likely to change anything? In a world where Jon Corzine not only walks around a free man, but bundles donations for the president?

Or are you only on the side of truth and justice when it comes to the drug war, but not when it comes to cops beating people to death? Still love LEAP, but it’s kinda bugging me.

I’m willing to bet that some of the biggest contributors to politicians who want to keep the “war” going are some of the largest drug sellers. What would happen to the price if the “drug war” stopped overnight? Without the premium that being illegal puts on the price of drugs, the stuff isn’t worth what it takes to produce or transport it.

The WoD was a stupid idea when Nixon first pushed it and it has only gotten worse since then.

It is promoted by zealots who imagine they can “save people from themselves”, but it is assiduously supported by numerous groups – Law Enforcement Agencies, contractors, prison guard and police unions – that have a beneficial interest in seeing it continue.

Seeing the LEAP mobile photo made me think of a question. Does LEAP have a presence at law enforcement conventions and other activities frequented by LEO’s? Do you guys set up booths and hand out literature to active police? If so, I’m curious about the reception you get. Thanks.