Advocates for legal pot say time’s right in state Ventura County Star, January 9, 2010
Blog Dec 8, 2009
Children of war
I was simply going through my usual morning routine, scanning various media outlets on the Internet, when I checked Bob Herbert’s latest column in the New York Times . I suppose it was the title that prompted me to take a look: ” A Fearful Price .” Herbert started the column by reporting on a conversation he had with a bright young student at Columbia University who “argued that a full-blown counterinsurgency effort, which would likely take many years and cost many lives, was the only way…
Blog Dec 7, 2009
War on Drugs Update
It’s time for another one of my end of the year drug war updates. I haven’t done this in a while, so it is overdue. To start with, as of December 7, 2009, we have spent more than $47 billion ($18.7 billion at the federal level and about $28.7 billion at the state level). These figures come from an excellent web site called the War on Drugs Clock , which is published by a web site called Drug Sense . The War on Drugs Clock also reports that so far this year more than 1.7 million…
Blog Nov 12, 2009
Life for kids: a follow-up
My previous blog concerned the current Supreme Court case about juveniles serving life without the possibility of parole. I neglected to mention that there are two cases being considered: Sullivan v. Florida and Graham v. Florida. When I wrote this blog I was not aware of a two-part report in AlterNet by Liliana Segura. I also was not aware of a report by Human Rights Watch and how both of these reports highlighted both the racial disparities of these sentences and the details of some…
Blog Nov 11, 2009
Life sentences for kids?
The U.S. Supreme Court will once again take on the issue of excessive punishment for juvenile offenders. In 2005 they ruled that the death penalty for those under 18 was unconstitutional. This was the case of Roper v. Simmons where the court ruled that both the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments “forbid imposition of the death penalty on offenders who were under the age of 18 when their crimes were committed.” In the case before the court two juveniles — Joe Sullivan, who raped a…