Guest Column: Pot Law Sleaze-Beneficiaries

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Brian Wright

Lobbyists getting rich over weed prohibition
by Lee Fang (RepublicReport.org)

Last year, over 850,000 people in America were arrested for marijuana-related crimes. Despite public opinion, the medical community, and human rights experts all moving in favor of relaxing marijuana prohibition laws, little has changed in terms of policy.

There have been many great books and articles detailing the history of the drug war. Part of America’s fixation with keeping the leafy green plant illegal is rooted in cultural and political clashes from the past. Continue reading →

Guest Column: Supremes Greenlight Strip-Search Junkies

Posted on April 17, 2012 by Brian Wright

Sexual humiliation a tool to control the masses
by Naomi Wolf

Excerpted by the Coffee Coaster 4/16/12
Full 4.6.12 column in The Guardian here

In a five-four ruling this week, the supreme court decided that anyone can be strip-searched upon arrest for any offense, however minor, at any time. This horror show ruling joins two recent horror show laws: the NDAA, which lets anyone be arrested forever at any time, and HR 347, the “trespass bill”, which gives you a 10-year sentence for protesting anywhere near someone with secret service protection. These criminalizations of being human follow, of course, the mini-uprising of the Occupy movement. Bagram airbase was used by the US to detain its ‘high-value’ targets during the ‘war on terror’ and is still Afghanistan’s main military prison. Photograph: Dar Yasin/AP Continue reading →

Guest Column: Lawless Roads

Posted on April 9, 2012 by Brian Wright

America’s everexpanding torture matrix
Chris Floyd

“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government today? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.”
— Henry David Thoreau

In two brief posts over the past week, Scott Horton at Harper’s gives us a harrowing sketch of the entrenchment and ever-spreading expansion of the Torture Matrix that now sits enthroned at the very heart of the American state. This entrenchment and expansion has been carried out — enthusiastically, energetically, relentlessly — by the current president of the United States: a progressive Democrat and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Continue reading →

Guest Column: Are You Libertarian Enough?

Posted on April 2, 2012 by Brian Wright

Time to man up for the Freedom Philosophy
Anthony Gregory

So-called political compromise is upheld as a high virtue. To be an ideologue is a great vice. The old mantra that the problem in American politics is everyone is an extremist and no one is willing to meet halfway persists, despite its transparent inapplicability in the real world. The distance between the two political parties is small enough to smother a gnat.

For many libertarians there is no worse a sin than to stick stubbornly to purity of principle, to make the perfect the enemy of the good. We never get anywhere because we refuse to budge. We want the whole loaf. This is an old theme. Continue reading →

Guest Column: Whackjobs for War vs. Iran

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Brian Wright

America Gone Stupid Over Iran [1] – An Analysis
by Lawrence Davidson

An excellent column sent my way via Gerhard Fuerst, occasional contributor to these pages. The alert liberals are usually on top of the threats to peace; I only wish more than a handful would come out and admit they were wrong about Obama. Not so much for voting for him in 2008, but for thinking he hasn’t brutally betrayed every shred of support he showed for peace, civil liberties, and even a semblance of economic sanity. Again, due to the urgency of the message, this column is an excerpt without asking for direct approval from the author. He of course retains all rights to the piece.

It is estimated that up to a million people died as a function of George Bush Jr.’s decision to invade Iraq. According to Bush, that decision was made on the basis of “faulty intelligence.” This is the ex-president’s way of passing the blame. The decision was made by Mr. Bush’s insistence that the accurate intelligence he was getting from traditional sources was false, and that the lies he was being told by other parties (for instance, Iraqi con-men such as Rafid al-Janabi) were true. Continue reading →

Guest Column: Don’t want to see their faces

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Brian Wright

Don’t want to hear their screams
by Christopher Cooper

Excerpted from Common Dreams column (the article is so good I could not resist the urge to copy and convey under the Coffee Coaster beachhead—though with reference to the full source, but admittedly more than fair use might dictate—a good share of it):

The whole thing is regrettable, really. Shocking, truth to tell. And so sad, I’m sure, for those people, those blanket-wearing, beard-growing, false-god-worshiping, probably-related-to-terrorists, citizens of Afghanistan whose wives and children and babies were gunned down in their beds, shot, murdered, slaughtered, and then burned by one of America’s finest Sunday morning. But hey, what are ya gonna do? These things happen. Continue reading →

Guest Column: Media Plays the Marching Tune

Posted on March 18, 2012 by Brian Wright

Republican primary just a circus for the non-Pauls
Ron Burcham

Ron Paul in the Media Big biz commentator Jack Welch and his wife, Suzy, produced a column recently to the effect that Ron Paul will inevitably be ‘fired’ from the Republican Party, and the Party had better do the dismissal properly: “… so it must be with the RNC and Ron Paul. There can be no brush-off. No ‘Phew, he’s gone. Now let’s get down to business.’ No booby prize. Ron Paul needs to be given a role that really means something to him—a role with influence and voice.” Else, Obama wins embarrassingly big. I sent this response to a friend when he sent me the Jack and Suzy link:
Continue reading →