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In reply to the discussion: White House: America's prisons more costly than helpful [View all]Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)"smoking", and I found that particular guy in 5 seconds. He's not "the poster boy" for anything except, again, he hasn't done anything more serious than be in possession of pot since the 1st Dubya term.
To you, that sounds like someone who has "been given a lot of breaks". To me, it sounds like someone who has straightened out their life but still enjoys- like tens of millions of other Americans- the recreational use of cannabis, and for this he's back in the prison system for an egregiously long time. Hell, maybe like George Clinton, cannabis is part of his addiction recovery process from crack.
You didn't seem to want to comment on the sick lady who was growing her own medical marijuana, who had cops follow her home from the hydroponics store. The wheelchair bound guy in Florida sentenced to 25 years for managing his own spinal pain. The baby that got the flash grenade thrown in his crib. The people shot by the SWAT teams that went to the wrong house. The kid stuck in the DEA holding cell for 5 days with no food or water.
I'm sure you're aware- unless you're being deliberately obtuse- that there is a VERY long list of other egregious authoritarian excesses associated with the drug war. Go to stopthedrugwar.org or norml.org or the ACLU, if you're genuinely interested.
I was trying to remember who all this reminded me of, you know, the ol' "we must be able to get the people for the bogus crimes because that's how we get them for the real crimes" argument--- and then it hit me; Virginia! You're not related to that Cuccinelli fella, are ya? Remember him?
Sure ya do.
He was the guy who made the spurious argument that the Commonwealth of Virginia NEEDED to be able to outlaw consensual adult oral sex- you know, like blowjobs- but he wasn't actually interested in outlawing all the blowjobs, (honest!) so he claimed; but he wanted the blowjob law on the books because supposedly it made it easier for him to get the bad criminal baddies for the much more serious, criminal baddie crimes.
Well, the voters called bullshit on that noise, didn't they- because the voters figured out that if you want to get the criminals for the serious criminal baddie crimes, increase the fucking penalties for the actual crimes in question, and go from there. You don't get the bad crimes by turning something that shouldn't be a fucking crime in the first place- like, a consensual adult blowjob- into a crime.