http://www.slate.com/id/2245188

It was Christmas Eve 1926, the streets aglitter with snow and lights, when the man afraid of Santa Claus stumbled into the emergency room at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital. He was flushed, gasping with fear: Santa Claus, he kept telling the nurses, was just behind him, wielding a baseball bat.

Before hospital staff realized how sick he was—the alcohol-induced hallucination was just a symptom—the man died. So did another holiday partygoer. And another. As dusk fell on Christmas, the hospital staff tallied up more than 60 people made desperately ill by alcohol and eight dead from it. Within the next two days, yet another 23 people died in the city from celebrating the season.

Doctors were accustomed to alcohol poisoning by then, the routine of life in the Prohibition era. The bootlegged whiskies and so-called gins often made people sick. The liquor produced in hidden stills frequently came tainted with metals and other impurities. But this outbreak was bizarrely different. The deaths, as investigators would shortly realize, came courtesy of the U.S. government.

Frustrated that people continued to consume so much alcohol even after it was banned, federal officials had decided to try a different kind of enforcement. They ordered the poisoning of industrial alcohols manufactured in the United States, products regularly stolen by bootleggers and resold as drinkable spirits. The idea was to scare people into giving up illicit drinking. Instead, by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, the federal poisoning program, by some estimates, had killed at least 10,000 people.

Today the US government continues to kill tens of thousands less directly through the so called war on drugs. From raids to bad black market heroin those in power systematically place those people in danger who they swore an oath to protect.

http://www2.tbo.com/…

With guns drawn and flashlights cutting through darkened rooms, Polk County undercover drug investigators stormed the home of convicted drug dealer Michael Difalco near Lakeland in March.

As investigators searched the home for drugs, some drug task force members found other ways to occupy their time. Within 20 minutes of entering Difalco’s house, some of the investigators found a Wii video bowling game and began bowling frame after frame.

While some detectives hauled out evidence such as flat screen televisions and shotguns, others threw strikes, gutter balls and worked on picking up spares.

A Polk County sheriff’s detective cataloging evidence repeatedly put down her work and picked up a Wii remote to bowl. When she hit two strikes in a row, she raised her arms above her head, jumping and kicking.

While a female detective lifted a nearby couch looking for evidence, another sheriff’s detective focused on pin action.

But detectives with the Polk County Sheriff’s Office, the Auburndale, Lakeland and Winter Haven police departments did not know that a wireless security camera connected to a computer inside Difalco’s home was recording their activity.

The recording obtained by News Channel 8 showed several members of the county’s High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) task force entering the house shortly after 8 a.m. According to the search warrant, their mission was to search for drugs, stolen property and the fruits of any illegal drug activity.

Now there are questions on how the impromptu bowling tournament might affect the case against Difalco.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd denies it will have any effect.

“That absolutely is not true; that doesn’t invalidate the search at all,” Judd said. “Now the defendant would like for it to invalidate the search, but unfortunately for him, it won’t.”

Judd, who watched the video during an interview last week, called the situation an embarrassment.

“I’m not pleased that they played that Wii bowling game,” Judd said. The sheriff’s office oversees the drug task force. Judd said he initiated an internal administrative investigation of the incident.

“That is not appropriate conduct at a search warrant,” he said. “But I am less pleased with the supervision that didn’t walk in and say, turn that off. That’s what supervision should have done.”

Task force members played the video game at various times during the day, for a total of a little over an hour of playing time. The competition proved to be quite competitive at times. A task force supervisor from the Lakeland Police Department, gun at his side, pumped his fist after picking up a strike on the first ball he threw. The video showed he continued bowling frame after frame, competing with another undercover detective.

The only reason this has gotten any coverage is because of the game playing. That corruption is only the symptom of the larger problem of the war on drugs and the police state it’s helped facilitate. Get rid of the drug war and you get rid of a large portion of the corrupt cops.

Putting to bed the lie that internal Border Patrol checkpoints are immigration checkpoints, this video clearly shows that the Department of Homeland Security routinely uses so-called immigration checkpoints as a pretext to look for contraband including drugs, guns and currency.

In this video, I’m initially greeted by the stopping Border Patrol agent by name. The agent never asks my immigration status. Additionally, other Border Patrol agents on the South side of the checkpoint yell out my name as well.

While I’m being detained at primary by an agent who knows who I am along with my immigration status, a Customs & Border Protection K9 team is going to work on the passenger side of my vehicle sniffing for illegal contraband. The K9 handler isn’t a Border Patrol agent. Rather, he’s a Customs and Border Protection agent normally assigned to Ports of Entry where dogs are trained to search for drugs, guns and currency either entering or leaving the country at the actual border.

Why was this Customs unit being used at a so-called immigration checkpoint over 40 miles North of the border?

To make the legal issues clear, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled Border Patrol checkpoints inside the country must be limited in scope to brief immigration queries with any further detention or searching requiring consent or probable cause. Since there was obviously no question regarding my immigration status in the video, the sole purpose for the detention was clearly contraband interdiction.

This removes any ambiguity regarding the primary purpose of the stop and detention.

One possible explanation as to why a CBP K9 team was being utilized at an internal immigration checkpoint well inside the country along a road that never intersects the border, instead of a port of entry, is an expansion of the program discussed in this blog entry: https://www.checkpointusa.org/blog/in…

For more information regarding suspicionless checkpoints in America, see: https://www.checkpointusa.org

http://www.northjersey.com/…

A traffic stop of a vehicle with tinted windows led to the alleged discovery of cocaine and firearms and the arrest of a Bronx man.

On Aug. 12, at approximately 10:26 p.m., Daniel Santana, 25, from the Bronx, was stopped at the intersection of Martha Washington Way and Bruce Reynolds Boulevard.

Fort Lee Police Officer Timothy Cullen pulled over the white 2006 Chevy Impala because the car had blacked out tinted windows, said Capt. Joseph Zevits from the Fort Lee Police Department.

Upon further investigation, Cullen noticed a Philly Blunt, commonly used for inhaling marijuana, on the front seat area of the vehicle. Santana denied smoking marijuana and told Officer Cullen to check the car if he wanted.

Officer Cullen “called his bluff” and found a hidden compartment in the front dashboard of the vehicle with a kilo of cocaine, which could be worth up to $200,000 on the street.

“He may have been going to New York City, but we couldn’t say for sure,” said Zevits. “There was no intention to sell in Fort Lee that we were aware of.”

Also found was a semi-automatic Glock Model 17 handgun, fully loaded, with a high capacity magazine containing more than 15 rounds of 9mm ammunition. The serial numbers on the gun were scratched off.

The alleged perpetrator was also driving with a suspended driver’s license. He did not resist arrest.

Santana was charged with distribution of one kilo of cocaine, possession of a weapon, possession of a weapon while in possession of cocaine, defaced firearm, possession of a large capacity magazine, possession of drug paraphernalia, obstructed window view and driving with a suspended drivers license.

Bail was set by Judge Matthew Fierro at $250,000 without a 10 percent option.

Not that this is an uncommon story but it occurred not far from where I live.

So this Daniel Santana isn’t very bright. Tinted windows where it’s illegal. A Philly blunt on the seat. And then allowing the cops to search the car. The Officer Cullen probably could have justified searching the car on the Philly blunt alone but regardless you *never* give cops permission to search your belongings. It can only turn out worse for you.

Note the scare tactics used in the article regarding the gun. “Semi-automatic.” Well of course it’s a semi-automatic. It’s a Glock Model 17. That’s sortof the point of a pistol over a revolver. Through FUD the media has made a term which describes the most common handguns known to people through TV and movies something scary. Most people don’t even know the difference between automatic and semi nor do they know the laws regarding them. And then the article goes on to say it had a fully loaded, high capacity mag containing more than 15 rounds of 9mm ammunition. That’s completely arbitrary. You can get a 17 round clip for the Glock 17 which fits flush in the gun. Just like the 19 and it’s 15 round clip. Fifteen is just some arbitrary number the State of New Jersey came up with. In NY “high capacity” is 10. We aren’t talking about the 33 round mag here that sticks out of the gun by several inches.

Fact of the matter is this guy, while you may disagree with his apparent choice of employment, was not harming or threatening anyone. His need to conceal the identity of the weapon and to have the weapon in the first place is due to the prohibition on drugs. Theory and history shows that the side effects of prohibition is worse then the problems which stem naturally from the thing prohibited. This young man will likely end up in prison somewhere and as a result of the awful prison industrial complex and judicial system he will come out of prison a far bigger threat to society then even the FUD makes him out to be now. I find it rather unlikely the there weren’t any real crimes with real victims that Cullen could have been dealing with or investigating.

Daniel Santana should be allowed to trade cocaine to whomever wishes to do so, possess any size magazine for his weapon of choice, scratch out any damn serial number on anything he owns and smoke as much marijuana that he can handle so long as he doesn’t aggress against other person. To do otherwise is an aggressive and illegitimate act in what is supposedly free society. The truth is there isn’t liberty here… you are owned by the State.

Oh Barney.  I try so hard to hate you, but every once and again you do something like this:

Today, Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) introduced a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to eliminate all federal penalties for marijuana possession. This came only one week after he also introduced a bill to protect medical marijuana patients.

Would you please take one minute to ask your U.S. representative to support these two bills? MPP’s easy online action center makes it simple — just enter your name and contact info, and we’ll do the rest.

The Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2009 would eliminate the threat of federal arrest and prison for the possession of up to 3.5 ounces of marijuana and the not-for-profit transfer of an ounce of marijuana — nationwide.

What’s more, last week Congressman Frank introduced the Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act, which would allow states to protect medical marijuana patients from arrest and jail without federal interference, as well as allow pharmacies to dispense marijuana to patients with a doctor’s recommendation. You can take action on this bill here.

MPP has worked closely with Congressman Frank’s staff in past months, helping to craft both pieces of legislation and build political support for the proposals on Capitol Hill.

Now members of Congress need to hear from their constituents who want to see it passed — that means you! It takes only a minute or two to use MPP’s online action system to send a quick note to your member of the House, so would you please send your letter right now?

Eliminate threat of federal arrest and prison for marijuana possession

Protect medical marijuana patients nationwide

News blurb courtesy of the MPP.  Help us out, take action now!