The least one can say is that these last decades have failed to assure Americans’ health or safety. There’s irony, too, as even the regulation-favoring Richard Nixon would not have imagined nor supported the course the war on drugs has taken.
We’ve wasted money, enriching only agencies and vendors quick to slop at a trough filled with over a trillion we didn’t have.
The war has made us poorer, no healthier, and has led to a civilian militarization that’s killed thousands of innocent people, and threatened far more. I’ll write at greater length on these topics next week.
WASHINGTON — Forty years after President Richard Nixon first declared a war on drugs, the officers who fought in it are calling for a truce.
Former law enforcement officials gathered in the District of Columbia on Tuesday to announce their new report. It details the failures of the government’s long battle against illegal drugs and denounces the Obama administration’s current drug policies.
“Since President Nixon declared ‘war on drugs’ four decades ago, this failed policy has led to millions of arrests, a trillion dollars spent and countless lives lost, yet drugs today are more available than ever,” said Norm Stamper, former chief of police in Seattle and a speaker for legalization-advocacy group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.
It’s a high of seventy-two with a chance of rain ahead for Whitewater.
Today is an anniversary of a battle in the Black Hawk War — 1832’s Battle of the Pecatonica —
On this date the Battle of Pecatonica took place between a band of Kickapoo Indians and troops led by Henry Dodge. Dodge, along with two others were on their way to Fort Hamilton in Wiota, WI when they passed a white settler named Henry Appel. As the men reached the fort, rifle shots rang; the settler had been ambushed and killed by a group of Indians. Dodge and 29 men went in pursuit of the Kickapoo Indians who concealed themselves under the river bank of the Pecatonica. As Dodge and his men approached, the Indians opened fire, injuring four and killing three. Dodge ordered his men to attack. The Indians, unable to reload quickly enough, were fired at point-blank. Nine died immediately and two others were shot as they tried to escape. This battle was the military’s first victory in the Black Hawk War. [Source: The Black Hawk War by Frank E. Stevens and Along the Black Hawk Trail by William F. Stark]
Here are six answers, on environmentalism, IP and net neutrality, the war on drugs, working within a two-party system, examples of libertarian successes, and greedy professional sports teams
It’s a day of heavy thunderstorms ahead for Whitewater, with a high temperature of sixty-two degrees.
Whitewater’s Tech Park Board meets today at 10 a.m. The meeting agenda is available online.
Today, in 1832, brought new developments in the Black Hawk War:
On this date General Winfield Scott was ordered by President Andrew Jackson to take command at the frontier of the Black Hawk War.
Scott was to succeed General Henry Atkinson, thought to be unable to end the war quickly. General Scott moved rapidly to recruit troops and obtain equipment for his army. However, while in New York, the troops were exposed to an Asiatic cholera. Just outside of Buffalo, the first cases on the ships were reported and death often followed infection. By the time the ships reached Chicago, the number of soldiers had dropped dramatically from 800 to 150, due to disease and desertion. Rather than going on to the front, Scott remained with his troops in Chicago, giving Atkinson a brief reprieve. [Source: Along the Black Hawk Trail, by William F. Stark, p. 90-91]
The Mercatus Center of George Mason University released its annual report on liberty, ranking freedom in each of the states. Wisconsin comes in a disappointing 25th, no better than middling.
Wisconsin’s freedoms have been under siege in 2011 — our new administration and legislative majority regulate from the center in the name of local control, and are as burdensome as any majority in memory.
Less freedom of association and bargaining power for workers, more burdens on exercise of voting rights, proposals to expand eminent domain against property owners, and an excessive bill to expand state immigration restrictions are all steps toward a more centralized, restrictive society.
There’s very little that’s libertarian about this GOP majority – it’s more Nixon than Goldwater or Reagan. Where Wisconsin would rank nationally next year is yet unknown, but in daily life we’re already less free than a year ago.
Whitewater, even more than other places, frets over people more than ideas. So when a vacancy opens in a public office, some ask: Who’ll get that job? So much better, all around, to ask: What do you want to do?
We have our share of problems, but it’s from the response to a vacancy as a game of musical chairs that one sees why we have the problems that we do.
It’s a partly cloudy day with a high temperature of seventy-two in store for Whitewater.
It’s a memorable day in Wisconsin history — on this day in 1855,
…. Robert M. La Follette was born in Primrose, Dane County. A renowned lawyer, politician, governor, and U.S. Senator, La Follette was the son of a prosperous, politically active Republican farmer who died eight months after Robert was born. Robert grew up on his family’s farm and entered the UW in 1874. While a student at UW, he edited the campus newspaper and was strongly influenced by the teachings of John Bascom. After receiving a B.A. in 1879, he studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1880. The same year, he was nominated and elected district attorney over the opposition of local political boss Elisha W. Keyes. On December 31, 1881 he married his college sweetheart, Belle Case.
In 1884 he was elected to Congress, again defeating Keyes. Known as “Fighting Bob,” he actively advocated conservation, preservation of public lands, and conservative public spending. Defeated in the 1890 election, he returned to his Madison law practice but remained active in state politics. He served as governor from 1900 to 1906, where he pushed a broad reform agenda which became known as “the Wisconsin Idea.”
As governor, he enacted a program that included direct primaries, more equitable taxation, a more effective railroad commission, civil service reform, conservation, control of lobbyists, a legislative reference library, and bank reform. In 1905 the Wisconsin legislature elected La Follette to the U.S. Senate. He was a controversial senator almost from the beginning. After William Howard Taft became president, La Follette forged the progressive Republican opposition to the Payne-Aldrich Tariff and became a persistent critic of the administration. In 1909, he founded La Follette’s Weekly Magazine (later known as The Progressive) to promote his ideology. In 1911 he was chosen as the progressive Republican candidate to displace Taft, but he was superseded by Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.
La Follette supported most of the policies of Democratic President Woodrow Wilson until the question of U.S. entry into World War I arose. Vigorously opposed to entry, he was the victim of an unsuccessful attempt to expel him from the Senate for an antiwar speech. In the postwar period La Follette resisted the anti-Communist scare and fought for the interests of workers and farmers against the business-oriented Republican administrations. He initiated the investigation into the Teapot Dome scandal in 1922.
In 1924, he ran for president on the Progressive Party ticket but lost to Calvin Coolidge. He died on June 18, 1925, still a fervent believer in democracy. Both of La Follette’s sons, Robert Jr. and Philip, carried on his political ideals after his death. La Follette was one of the most eloquent orators of his time, consistently speaking out in favor of popular democracy and in opposition to government by special interests. He is regarded as one of the most important Progressives in American history. [Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin Biography, SHSW 1960, pg. 217]
La Follette, regardless of one’s view of his politics (and anyone who ran against the excellent Calvin Coolidge made at least one serious mistake in his life), is likely the most important politician in Wisconsin history.
In this clip, civil libertarian Hentoff describes a meeting he once had with Che Guevara.
Hentoff notes that even in a simple interview, Guevara, a tyrant and mass murderer masquerading as a liberator, was dissembling, initially choosing to hide behind an interpreter.
The Cato Institute filmed noted civil libertarian Nat Hentoff discussing topics of liberty in honor of his eighty-sixth birthday. Age has scarcely slowed Hentoff down, and he writes and speaks frequently on topics in law (and jazz, for which he is equally well-regarded).
In this clip, Hentoff discusses the traditional American right to anonymous speech.
