Colonial keepsakes
So, George Bush keeps Saddam's gun under his pillow, more or less.
Time magazine, which first disclosed the gun's location, said military officials had it mounted after it was seized from Saddam near his hometown of Tikrit last year, and soldiers involved in the capture gave it to Bush.
The magazine quoted a visitor who had been shown the gun, which is kept in a small study off the Oval Office where Bush displays memorabilia. It is the same room where former President Bill Clinton (news - web sites) had some of his encounters with former intern Monica Lewinsky.
Bush shows Saddam's gun to select visitors, telling them it is unloaded, both now and when Saddam was captured, Time reported.
"He really liked showing it off," Time quoted a visitor as saying. "He was really proud of it."
The Rude Pundit has more (and follow the link to see if George is breaking DC firarms laws by posessing his little trophy):
Oh, sweet castration image, Bush brandishing Saddam's gun, his trophy, his medal that he'll never toss over a wall, the unloaded cock of the dictator. Oh, how Bush must caress that burnished metal, polishing it over and over and simmering in primal vengeful bloodlust. Goddamn, Bush must think, how he he'd love to shove that pistol up Saddam's ass, smiling at Hussein, making him wonder if he's gonna fire it. "Try to kill my Daddy, shithead? Is it loaded, motherfucker? Does this feel like a weapon of mass destruction?" Yeah, it's good to be the President so you can pretend you've got heads mounted on the wall, like the great white hunter.
Why does pResident Bush hate our troops?
More than 1,200 bulletproof vests donated for the 351st Military Police Company in Iraq remain at the unit's headquarters here as the Army decides whether to approve the shipment.
Marion County Sheriff Ed Dean helped collect the vests, which the Army Reserve unit said it will use to line the bottoms of Humvees for extra protection against roadside bombs.
......Sgt. Hugh Baugus, a local spokesman for the 351st, said the unit's 175 soldiers need the vests urgently.
"The longer the delay, the greater the chance one of my soldiers is going to get hurt," Baugus said.
Dean made a statewide appeal for the vests this month and 40 sheriff's offices and police departments contributed.
Our Commander in Thief, having never come close to serving in combat himself, obviously cares very little for the safety of the soldiers which he is totally responsible for having sent to die in Iraq. If he was concerned for their safety, he would make sure that generous gifts like this one were totally unnecessary. See, Bush could easily make sure that troops have needed body armor and armored Hummers. But he doesn’t care, so he just ignores the problem:
As for the thousands for armor kits the military says it needs, the proposed (2005) budget includes exactly zero dollars for them.
Tribune torn over titillating statue: rock hard penis poses problems
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This is what happens when you are home schooled. This is what happens when you are never ever exposed to other cultures, other ideas. This is what happens when you have such a low opinion of your own morality that you fear that even the smallest penis temptation might set you off on the road to hell and perdition.
Some readers also called to express their dismay over side-by- side photographs of Michelangelo's David that ran in the Nation/World section Tuesday. The statue, completed in 1504, is considered to be one of Michelangelo's greatest sculptures and a Renaissance masterpiece.
The story was about the eight- month restoration of the marble sculpture. Experts removed dirt and chalk deposits in the marble's pores, which had given the masterpiece a gray patina. We ran photographs of the sculpture before and after the restoration so readers could see the change.
The people who complained to The Tampa Tribune said they were offended we would run images of the naked David, who is shown poised before battle with Goliath. Some said they did not want their children exposed to the photographs.
......The response, however small, shows the sometimes difficult job of anticipating the varied responses people have to the newspaper's content.
And, apparently, if you are the Tampa Tribune, this is what you report as news, even if only one or two people actually complained, because to simply ignore these sick Ashcroftian moralists would be to let the pernicious amoral child-fucking priests pornographers win.
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No longer will US Attorney General John Ashcroft appear in public with a semi-nude statue towering above him.
The US Justice Department has spent $8,000 on curtains to hide the statue from the cameras.
The female, art-deco "Spirit of Justice" statue, with one breast exposed, is located on the podium in the department's ornate Great Hall where news conferences are often held.
Florida Secretary of State says computers are not computers, denies responsibility for upcoming fiasco
Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood was in Miami yesterday to calm fears of another problem-plagued election this November. With a controversial new 'felon' purge list having just been released and with more and more voters clamoring for a receipt from new computerized paperless voting machines, it would seem that Jeb! appointee Glenda would have her work cut out for her. Nah - she's not worried about a thing.
Hood, grilled by league members with serious reservations about the county's voting equipment, repeatedly sought to distance her office from election operations.
''I have absolutely no authority over the running of elections in this state,'' said Hood, a former Orlando mayor who was appointed to the job by Gov. Jeb Bush. She said the department's responsibilities include certifying voting equipment, ensuring that supervisors follow state law and verifying election results.
Editor's note: From the Florida Department of State - Office of the Secretary
In addition, the Secretary of State is Florida's chief elections officer...
Now, back to our article:
The new machines have come under scrutiny for the lack of a paper trail, but Hood defended the touch-screen machines and likened some of the criticism -- that the machines could be tampered with -- to conspiracy theories.
''The touch-screen machines are not computers,'' she said. ``You'd have to go machine by machine, all over the state.''
Uh, Glenda, they actually are computers. What the Miami machines are not is networked computers, however that does not eliminate the very real possibility of tampering. From earlier in the same article:
But Hood acknowledged her office is investigating a voting machine glitch in Miami-Dade County, which she said was not properly reported to the state.
A spokesman for Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor Constance Kaplan noted it was the county that detected the problem and said that Kaplan had sought to balance the need to report potential problems against unnecessarily alarming the public.
The glitch involves the auditing system of the iVotronic touch-screen machines Miami-Dade and Broward installed after the mishaps that plagued the 2000 presidential election.
County officials have said the glitch does not affect voting -- only the audits performed days after the election itself. The problem, according to Kaplan, is in the flashcard that downloads the voting information.
When the votes are downloaded, some machines scramble the serial number of the machine, making it difficult to identify where the votes came from.
Hood said her office is investigating ''whether it's truly a problem or not.'' County officials said they could resolve the problem.
The issue arose after a citizens' group, the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition, filed a public records request and received county memos criticizing the computerized audit.
Hey Glenda, check this out: I'm a right wing partisan hack, and I want to tamper with the election. Having perused exactly one short Miami Herald article, I've figured out that I can simply switch flash cards or tamper with flash cards en-route to the counting places where the information is to be transferred. There is no kind of paper trail of actual votes whatsoever, so even if the vote totals look 'funny', there's no way to do a manual recount.
So, no, I wont be tampering with every computerized voting machine in the state. I don't have to. I just need a few hundred more votes for my man W. See, once we combine the felon purge list with a partisan Secretary of State and partisan County Elections Supervisors, maybe even sprinkle in some good old fashioned election day police intimidation, why we can't lose.
See you in November!
Jeb! spokesperson: Florida education standards are plenty low already
A national education advocacy group was in the Tampa Bay area Thursday to criticize state and federal accountability systems that give schools A grades before labeling them as failures.
Communities for Quality Education, backed by the National Education Association teachers union, criticized Gov. Jeb Bush's state accountability system and President George Bush's No Child Left Behind Act for giving polar-opposite assessments of public schools.
"It's just an inconsistency that calls out for leadership," said CQE spokesman Reggie Johnson.
Under the governor's plan last year, almost as many Florida schools received A grades as B's through F's combined. But under No Child, more than 80 percent of the schools failed to meet federal standards.
Jacob DiPietre, a spokesman for Gov. Bush, called the group's criticisms "rhetoric." He said the governor knew the two accountability standards would conflict, but felt they would challenge schools to improve education for minority students.
"Florida refused to lower our accountability standards, unlike a lot of other states," DiPietre said. "We're confident our schools will be up to the challenge."
So, taking DiPietre at his word, Florida refused to lower standards that resulted in failure, so I guess the Governor feels that education standards in the state are already plenty low, which seems like a fair enough assessment. After all, we don’t want our public schools slipping to this level:
Nearly a third of the private schools that take state money to teach students from failing public schools aren't accredited, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
But state education officials say they don't have to be as long as they meet certain standards. The officials also note that most public schools aren't accredited either.
The Palm Beach Post reported that the state paid 10 unaccredited private schools to teach students from failing public schools in the "opportunity scholarship" program this year, and said it may have violated the Florida school voucher law's intent. Thirty-four schools are receiving opportunity scholarship money.
The Senate sponsor of the 1999 law creating the voucher program said private schools were intended to be accredited, but the administration of Gov. Jeb Bush - who championed vouchers and shepherded them into being - says they weren't.
It’s all about the standards. See, if we set those standards too high, then it would just encourage learning and perhaps the ability to think critically and make independent decisions. Scarey stuff, but don’t worry. Jeb! will make sure that “No Knowledge Will Be Left Behind!” in the empty little heads of our best and brightest standardized test takers.
We’re number ONE! USA! USA! USA!
All too often, I present a view that may be seen as overly critical of our country and the way it is run. Where others see American compassion and strength, I might see dehumanizing colonial policies or another meaningless photo op.
Well, today I’m going to take off my cynical blinders and present a story that shines a bright light on America and the kind of true greatness and world leadership that we, as a nation, can still achieve when we truly believe in something.
According to Justice Department figures released yesterday, America is the world leader in incarcerating our own citizens! That’s right - Russia, China, even the Axis of Evil - none of these countries are even close to our unmatched superiority in this highly competitive international race.
The nation's incarceration rate tops the world, according to The Sentencing Project, another group that promotes alternatives to prison. That compares with a rate of 169 per 100,000 residents in Mexico, 116 in Canada and 143 for England and Wales.
Russia's prison population, which once rivaled the United States', has dropped to 584 per 100,000 because of prisoner amnesties in recent years, the group said.
The U.S. inmate population in 2003 grew at its fastest pace in four years. The number of inmates increased 1.8 percent in state prisons, 7.1 percent in federal prisons and 3.9 percent in local jails.
And unlike a lot of Government programs that are criticized for shoddy management and inefficiencies, our prison system continues to grow at a such a healthy clip that soon, with any luck, every man, woman, and child in the US will have interfaced personally with a friendly jailor.
Here are some highlights from the excellent report on US Prison Population released yesterday by the Justice Department:
The nation's prisons and jails held 2,078,570 men and women on June 30, 2003, an increase of 57,600 more inmates than state, local and federal officials held on the same date a year earlier, the Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) announced today. The 50 states and the federal government together held 1,380,776 prisoners. Local municipal and county jails held 691,301 inmates.
From July 1, 2002, to June 30, 2003, the number of state and federal prisoners grew by more than 2.9 percent, the largest increase in four years. The federal system increased by 5.4 percent, and state prisoners increased by 2.6 percent. During the same period, the local jail population increased by 3.9 percent.
The BJS report, Prison and Jail Inmates at Midyear 2003, indicates that incarceration rates of state and federal prisoners continued to rise. At midyear 2003, the number of sentenced inmates was 480 per 100,000 U.S. residents, up from 476 per 100,000 on December 31, 2002. There were 238 jail inmates for every 100,000 U.S. residents on June 30, 2003. Overall, one out of every 140 U.S. residents was incarcerated in prison or jail.
During the year the number of female state and federal inmates grew by 5.0 percent, compared to a 2.7 percent male inmate growth. By June 30, 2003, the female inmate population reached 100,102.
On June 30, 2003, the federal system had 170,461 prisoners, more than any state prison system. Since 1995, the federal system has grown an average of 8 percent per year, compared to an average annual growth of 2.9 percent for state inmates and 4 percent for jail inmates during the same period.
An estimated 12 percent of all black males in their twenties were in jails or prisons last June 30, as were an estimated 3.7 percent of Hispanic males and 1.6 percent of white males in that age group. Sixty-eight percent of prison and jail inmates were members of racial or ethnic minority groups.
Jails — locally operated correctional facilities typically holding inmates sentenced to a year or less as well as people in various stages of the criminal justice system, such as awaiting trial- added more inmates than new beds in the 12 months preceding June 30, 2003. Still local jails were operating at a national average of 6 percent below their official rated capacities. State prisons were between 1 and 17 percent above rated capacity, and federal prisons operated at 33 percent over capacity at the end of 2002.
The 50 largest jail systems housed a third of all jail inmates. Nineteen of these operated at or above their rated capacities.
White non-Hispanics made up 43.6 percent of the local jail population, blacks 39.2 percent, Hispanics 15.4 percent, and other races (Asians, American Indians, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders) 1.8 percent.
So, good numbers, but still room for improvement: Local jails are operating below capacity, so lets fill them up. Also, I can’t help noticing that only 12 percent of young black males are in prison at any one time. Now, I realize that we can’t lock up all young black males, but isn’t 12 percent a rather low threshold? Let’s set the bar a little higher for next year!
Dear American Forces Radio: Remove Rush!
A letter about Rush:
Mr. Melvin Russell
Director
American Forces Radio and Television ServicesDear Mr. Russell,
I applaud your airing of Rush Limbaugh's show on Armed Forces Radio. He sends our soldiers a message they need to hear--that it's OK to have a little medieval fun with the prisoners they capture.
Where else will our young servicemen and women hear the truth about the so-called Abu Gharib "scandal?" If it wasn't for Rush, there would be no one to tell them that anally raping prisoners and forcing them to masturbate into each others' mouths is good clean soldier fun.
......Thank God we have people like you and Rush who aren't afraid to tell our troops that war crimes are no big deal. Keep up the good work.
Heterosexually yours,
Gen. JC Christian, Patriot
cc: Sen. Carl Levin
Sen. Mark Dayton
Oops... here’s the one I meant to post... a petition, actually. And you can sign it yourself if you like what it says.
To: Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
We request that Secretary Rumsfeld remove talk radio host Rush Limbaugh from the American Forces Radio and Television Service (formerly known as Armed Forces Radio). Mr. Limbaugh, whose program is broadcast for one hour per day to U.S. troops overseas, has spent the past four weeks condoning and trivializing the abuse, torture, rape and possible murder of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. guards at the Abu Ghraib prison—gross misconduct that you have described as “fundamentally un-American.”
In recent weeks, Rush Limbaugh has: Compared the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. guards at Abu Ghraib to a fraternity initiation; called the abuse “brilliant” and “effective”; said the guards were just “having a good time” and “blow[ing] some steam off”; likened the abuse to “a Britney Spears or Madonna concert … [or] the MTV music awards”; compared pictures of the abuse to “good old American pornography”; and said “the reaction to the stupid torture is an example of the feminization of this country.”
Limbaugh’s radio program is broadcast to American troops via the American Services Network, a taxpayer-funded radio and television broadcasting agency that reaches nearly 1 million US troops in more than 175 countries, including Iraq.
Both Secretary Rumsfeld and President Bush have rightly denounced the acts that took place at Abu Ghraib – but American service men and women abroad are getting the wrong message when the Department of Defense simultaneously broadcasts Limbaugh’s condoning of what Secretary Rumsfeld has called “fundamentally un-American” acts. Limbaugh’s comments directly contradict orders issued by the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq -- which, according to the Washington Post, bar “military interrogators from using the most coercive techniques available to them in the past” -- thus undermining the military’s chain of command. The comments may also inflame anti-American sentiment abroad, putting our service men and women at risk.
In addition, as Media Matters for America detailed in a May 2 report, Meet the New Rush, Same as the Old Rush, Mr. Limbaugh has recently made several racially-charged and sexist remarks on his broadcast. For example, Mr. Limbaugh said on April 26 that women who protest sexual harassment “actually wish” to be sexually harassed. And on March 26, Mr. Limbaugh said, “A Chavez is a Chavez. These people have always been a problem.” Given the extraordinary importance of troop morale and unity during this time of conflict, we ask Secretary Rumsfeld to review whether it is appropriate for the U.S. government to broadcast such messages, which may sow seeds of discord in the ranks.
We, the undersigned, ask Secretary Rumsfeld to order the American Services Network to cease broadcasting Rush Limbaugh’s radio program immediately, before he further undermines the military’s command structure and endangers our troops.
Felonious Junk: Lawsuits threatened over ‘secret’ list
The First Amendment Foundation, an open government advocacy group, is threatening legal action if the State of Florida does not release a controversial list of 'felons' to be scrubbed from the state voter rolls.
Calling it an issue of national importance, First Amendment advocates Monday formally demanded that Florida election officials release the names of nearly 50,000 possible felons who could be stripped from voter rolls. The group says it will likely file suit if the state refuses to provide a list.
"If they say no, chances are good," said First Amendment Foundation President Barbara Petersen, who sent a legal request Monday for the names. "This is critical not only to Florida but to the whole country. We don't want what happened in 2000 to happen again. This information is critical to public confidence."
What happened in 2000? I'm glad you asked. Florida, through the machinations of Katherine Harris and brother Jeb! contracted with a republican owned company to compile a database of suspected felons to be removed from Florida's voting rolls. In Florida, ex-felons can't legally vote, unless they get a special dispensation from the Governor.
There were a couple of problems with the2000 list. First, the list included out of state felons who had moved to Florida having had their voting rights restored in their home states. Jeb! had been told again and again that these ex-felons from out of state who now resided in Florida could not be denied the right to vote in Florida.
It has been well reported that Florida denies its nearly half a million former convicts the right to vote. However, the media have completely missed the fact that Florida's own courts have repeatedly told the Governor he may not take away the civil rights of Florida citizens who committed crimes in other states, served their time and had their rights restored by those states.
People from other states who have arrived in Florida with a felony conviction in their past number "clearly over 50,000 and likely over 100,000," says criminal demographics expert Jeffrey Manza of Northwestern University. Manza estimates that 80 percent arrive with voting rights intact, which they do not forfeit by relocating to Florida.
Nevertheless, agencies controlled by Harris and Bush ordered county officials to reject attempts by these eligible voters to register, while, publicly, the governor's office states that it adheres to court rulings not to obstruct these ex-offenders in the exercise of their civil rights. Further, with the aid of a Republican-tied database firm, Harris's office used sophisticated computer programs to hunt those felons eligible to vote and ordered them thrown off the voter registries.
Yes, this is an allusion to the 2000 list of felons. As well as illegally including known eligible voters from out of state, the list was designed to produce many false positives, thus creating an often insurmountable barrier to voting for many people who have never been accused of any wrong doing, much less convicted.
Willie Steen is one of them. Recently, I caught up with Steen outside his office at a Tampa hospital. Steen's case was easy. You can't work in a hospital if you have a criminal record. (My copy of Harris's hit list includes an ex-con named O'Steen, close enough to cost Willie Steen his vote.) The NAACP held up Steen's case to the court as a prime example of the voter purge evil.
The state admitted Steen's innocence. But a year after the NAACP won his case, Steen still couldn't register. Why was he still under suspicion? What do we know about this "potential felon," as Jeb called him? Steen, unlike our President, honorably served four years in the US military. There is, admittedly, a suspect mark on his record: Steen remains an African-American.
Coincidentally, most of the people wrongly disenfranchised due to the faulty 2000 list were minorities. Go figure.
A lawsuit brought by the NAACP and other groups resulted in the state promising to tighten up 'felon' lists in the future. The state also vowed to return the voters who were wrongly purged in 2000 to the rolls, but there is no deadline for the state to comply, and as of now, only half of Florida counties have followed up on a state request to inspect their rolls for possible problems.
Those counties that have responded told the state that they have restored 679 voters to the rolls so far -- more than enough to have tipped the balance of the 2000 election had they voted for Al Gore. President Bush won Florida and the presidency by 537 votes.
The fact that many counties have yet to add voters back to the rolls comes at the same time that election supervisors across Florida are being asked to look at purging more than 47,000 voters that the state has identified as possible felons who are ineligible to vote under state law.
NO DEADLINE
But state election officials say there is no deadline for when counties must reinstate voters who may have been wrongly removed four years ago. That upsets some of the groups that sued the state over its 1999 and 2000 purge lists.
''It's scandalous that the state has not simply undone the error that was done in 2000,'' said Howard Simon, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida. ``It calls into question this and so many other issues and makes you wonder, how much has really changed four years after the 2000 election?''
Well, not much has changed. As noted above, the 2004 list contains over 47,000 names, and the state is already pressuring county supervisors of elections to purge purge purge.
Which brings us up to date, more or less. The 2004 list is being hyped by the state as new and improved, but the state is refusing to allow inspections of the list, so no one really knows if it's any better than the 2000 failure. Florida's has fairly liberal open records laws, and the state constitution state constitution requires any law limiting public records to be passed as a separate bill, with a specific statement of why it's necessary.
The First Amendment Foundation maintains that the state is unlawfully extending an exemption for actual voter registration records to the list of possible felons.
The First Amendment Foundation is challenging a decision by the state's chief elections officer that the list not be made available to the general public.
"I'm sorry, but that list is suspect," foundation President Barbara Petersen said Wednesday. "I just can't understand, considering all of the trouble we went through four years ago, why they wouldn't want anyone else to help them verify it."
Petersen said she mailed and faxed a formal public-records request for the list on Monday, but a spokeswoman for Secretary of State Glenda Hood said Wednesday that the office had not received it.
In a May 12 memo to the 67 county supervisors of elections, however, Division of Elections Director Ed Kast mentioned a similar request by the civil rights group People for the American Way and cited two recent statutes that he said allow the public to view only voter registration records, without making copies or taking notes.
He noted, though, that the law does allow political parties, candidates and committees, and elected officials to obtain copies.
Petersen said one of the laws Kast cites is unconstitutional because it was not passed by the legislature as a separate exemption to the state constitution. Petersen also argues that the law applies to a voter registry, not the list of possible felons the state wants to remove from the registry.
Petersen said there is a good chance her group will file a lawsuit, but for now she has to wait.
"I really can't do anything until they respond to my request," she said. "Isn't it interesting that they can't find it?"
Florida elections officials sent the list to county elections supervisors early this month. The law requires supervisors to send certified letters to each person on the list and ask for verification. Recipients are entitled to an informal hearing. If officials get no response, they are required to follow up with an advertisement in a local newspaper. If there is still no response in 30 days, the name is purged from the rolls.
......Many changes have been made since the historic recount in 2000 that spawned scores of lawsuits and a U.S. Supreme Court decision anointing George W. Bush the winner with a 537-vote margin over Al Gore in Florida. Punch-card voting machines have been banned and the state has launched an unprecedented voter education drive.
But Florida remains one of a handful of states that deny felons the right to vote even after they have completed their sentences, forcing them to go before a clemency board to restore their civil rights.
State officials have pledged to put the list together more carefully as part of an agreement with the NAACP to settle a 2002 lawsuit challenging the flawed process from the 2000 election.
"Part of our settlement agreement with the NAACP in 2002 was that we develop a more stringent matching procedure, and they signed off on it," said Hood's spokeswoman, Jenny Nash. "There are a lot more checks and balances."
The checks and balances aren't enough to satisfy Elliot Mincberg, legal director for People for the American Way, which also is considering a lawsuit.
"We're asking the supervisors to do an independent verification," he said. "If all they do is send out the letters and adopt the state list, we would definitely consider going to court. That would just repeat the same tragedy."
To clarify, state law requires county elections supervisors to send a letter and print an ad at a minimum. Election supervisors are free to make a much stronger effort to avoid mistakes, and some will, but many, including Jeb! appointee Buddy Johnson, plan to just follow the minimum guidelines. This puts the onus on the voter who is misidentified to have himself put back on the roles. Obviously, this is a huge impediment, especially to the working class minorities who are most likely to be affected.
So, right now, in Florida, there are 47,000 people who may soon be disenfranchised, and the state wont share those names with the public. Even as the state rushes to purge from this new list, thousands of people who were wrongly disenfranchised in 2000 remain in voting limbo due to the fact that Jeb! is in no hurry and under no legal obligation to put them back on the rolls in time for the November selection.
More information:
Headline writer on drugs
Aspirin and ibuprofen, mostly, but they're drugs, right?
When a headline in a mainstream newspaper screams "Drugs found in more than 6,700 Florida autopsies in 2003," the vast majority of readers are going to assume that most of those deaths were caused or abetted by the consumption of illegal drugs, because , as we all know from our “Just Say No!” brainwashing, drugs are bad! Most people will glance at the headline, give a little “tsk tsk,” and assume that illegal drugs are causing tons of early deaths.
But read the press release that is reprinted under the headline, and lo and behold:
Alcohol was the drug most commonly found, showing up in more than 3,400 bodies, according to an annual report compiled by medical examiners. After alcohol came tranquilizers or sleeping pills...
So, the most common drugs found in people whose deaths were suspicious enough that they led to an autopsy were legal drugs available over the counter or through prescription. But these were just substances found in the body. It turns out that if you just count deaths caused by the ingestion of drugs, the numbers are in the hundreds, not the thousands.
Oh, and in the history of the world, marijuana has never killed anyone. Ever.
Here’s an idea: instead of buying into the false hype of the drug war, why don’t we, as a society, spend money on education and rehabilitation. Real education, not “All drugs are bad, and oh, yeah, so is sex, so don’t do drugs and don’t have sex or you’ll end up miserable and diseased if not dead...”
The Vaults of Erowid - reliable information on drugs.
Drug WarRant - information on prohibition.