Sunday, August 10, 2003

Judiciary Face-off As I mentioned earlier this week, Attorney General John Ashcroft issued a directive requiring prosecutors to snitch on judges who use their own discretion and provide lighter sentences than Ashcroft wants. Senator Edward Kennedy accused Ashcroft of engaging in an "ongoing attack on judicial independence." Now another Kennedy has entered the fray -- U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. While not directly responding to Ashcroft, Kennedy took the opportunity in an address to the annual meeting of the American Bar Association yesterday to blast mandatory minimum sentences. "I can accept neither the necessity nor the wisdom of federal mandatory minimum sentences," Kennedy said. "In all too many cases, mandatory minimum sentences are unjust." Although Kennedy himself has voted on the Court to uphold mandatory minimums and finds them constitutional he noted that our "resources are misspent, our punishments too severe, our sentences too long," and that it is "a grave mistake to retain a policy just because a court finds it constitutional." As Congress and the Administration continues to take pot-shots at the judiciary (not to mention Pat Robertson, who has organized prayer groups to convince God to "remove" several Supreme Court justices), it will be interesting to see whether or how the judiciary finds additional ways to assert itself. Here's an idea. When the next medical marijuana case makes it to the Supreme Court, the justices could send a strong message to the administration by affirming that the Federal Government does not have the right to interfere with state law that is designed to protect the health of its citizens. 3:23:32 PM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []

Can someone explain this? On the DEA website, there is a Drug Intelligence Brief titled: "Area Codes: Frequently Asked Questions (June 2003)". After giving a page of general information about how area codes work, and how they're assigned to different geographic regions, etc., the credits at the bottom note that "This report was prepared by the DEA Intelligence Division, Office of Strategic Intelligence, Domestic Strategic Intelligence Unit and the Dangerous Drugs Strategic Intelligence Unit." I'm having a hard time here. Is this really the DEA's idea of an intelligence briefing? Is the concept of an intelligence briefing given by the DEA an oxymoron? Do they believe that drug dealers are using area codes for some nefarious purpose? Is the DEA looking to take over long distance? Will Carrot-Top start urging us to dial 1-800-CALL-DEA? Or, perhaps, the DEA is just panicked that when we run out of area codes it will be harder to keep track of the citizens it wants to control. 12:30:28 AM |  drug policy | Links | permalink | comment []