Talking Points Memo: Trump captures dictator of Venezuela

 

[VIDEO] I will trust Bill O'Reilly's take on the recent Trump administration actions against the President Dictator of Venezuela Nicolas Maduro. He gives you a basic rundown of Operation Absolute Resolve and that the police and military of Venezuela allowed the Army Delta Force to apprehend Maduro. There are a lot of moving parts to this mission I see.

Regime change in Venezuela

 Well this weekend has been exciting. I wonder if this blog post title will age well.

As of now the President of Venezuela, a man named Nicolas Maduro and his wife are in US custody. US Special Forces - actually the US Army Delta Force - went onto a military base in the national capital of Caracas and captured the first couple of Venezuela.

Also let's also state the official line from the Trump administration that President Maduro isn't considered the legitimate leader of this South American republican. The reasoning for his capture and the fact that he did stand in Federal court in New York is based on charges of "narcoterrorism"

We have 60 Minutes thanks to their new and recent editorial direction under Bari Weiss take on this issue. I will admit I've yet to see this segment so if you watch we'll be watching together. [VIDEO]

I had watched some of the President and the comments of this in his administration - including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Secretary of State, and the Secretary of Defense War. The President even evoked the Monroe Doctrine the whole idea of America hegemony over this hemisphere and the area of North & South America and keeping out the influence of other powers.

What has been discussed are the influences of Russia, China or even Iran. And Iran is especially is on notice and there has been protests there in recent weeks.

It's easy for me to compare this to invading Iraq, however, this was a short operation which took a matter of hours. Removed the head of state & gov't from power, physically from his nation. And now I see the President is saying the United States of America will run Venezuela until a transitional gov't is put into place.

I mentioned Iran having protests. There are Venezuelans who are celebrating Maduro's removal. They're celebrating here in America and there in Venezuela.

As evidenced by the previous administration opening up the border and seeing those migrants taking up shop here in Chicago during that time, it seems times weren't great in Venezuela. Many of these migrants were Venezuelan and sadly some of them were criminal. Something the current administration is attempting to clean up now.

We shall see how this develops. I would generally shy away from meddling in the affairs of other nations. Time will tell if this was the right move or even the right justification which may well including questions of Maduro's legitimacy as the Venezuela President.

A state bank for medicinal marihuana cash deposits?

So because Illinois seems to want to avoid some of the issues in Colorado as highlighted on a recent edition of CBS' 60 Minutes one Illinois legislator has come up with one solution: a state bank. Perhaps something akin to the Bank of North Dakota. So is what state Rep. Mary Flowers seems to want to propose is a central bank for Illinois with the purpose of borrowing money instead of raising taxes.

Not that I don't have a full grasp of public finance, but no tax hikes is always good. However, is borrowing money a good thing? Even from a state run bank?

For the moment at least while Colorado comes to grips with their own attempts to legalize marihuana, Illinois is joining this experience. So far Illinois has approved medicinal marihuana and has yet to really issue licenses that allows for its sale and production.

There's even debates in Chicago over zoning for allowing marihuana farms. Especially one that I know of on the far south side of town with vacant industrial lands. I have no problem with that, but know full well there are many who simply don't approve of the production of marihuana.

Regardless, whether Flower's proposal succeeds in Illinois we still have an issue of where should the money from marihuana sales go. Most banks don't want to touch this money so therefore a future business dealing in this substance is forced to buy a huge safe to protect their cash profits. Yup if you want it medicinally no debit or credit accepted.

Almost like legitimate drug dealing, but supposedly legal. lol

"Kill the Messenger"

You know I've recently became aware of the new Hollywood release Kill the Messenger. The film is based on a true story of Gary Webb who was an investigative reporter from the San Jose Mercury News uncovering evidence of CIA involvement with drug traffickers. Of course we learn that it was blown out of proportion by others in the media and perhaps elements of the Black community who believed the CIA was trafficking drugs into Black communities.

Either way I have little idea what to believe with this story. I've heard this story for many years and unsure whether to believe it or not. And now I recognize that well a man was about to lose his reputation, livelihood, and even his marriage in pursuit of this story.

Now I truly empathize with Gary Webb especially since I've learned he's no longer with us having been found dead in 2004 with two bullets to the head (his death was ruled a suicide). In doing some basic research it's been claimed that his findings were ultimately vindicated posthumously.

I can only wonder if the "Messenger" film only has further sparked the debate over Webb's findings or even whether or not journalists are willing to risk everything for a story that must be told.

Capitol Fax: Maybe one day

You know I sympathize with libertarians on some issues. The philosophy of libertarianism is to let things be. This post by Rich Miller (probably a long way from libertarian) makes sense to me. He writes about those people who are vehemently opposed to video gaming then turns to talking about drugs.

Basic argument with both, if you legalize video gambling and illegal drugs you may well take away the danger illegal element. The organized crime won't be as interested in video gambling when it's legal because while it's illegal they'll want a cut of the money. The same goes for drugs organized crime will do what it takes to makes its money.

Alas when either of these "vices" were legalized you have those who will insist it's bad. If video gambling is legal organized crime will really have a field day. If illegal drugs are now legal to consume it will be a public health nightmare.

Well I don't know about video gambling. As for legalizing those drugs that are currently illegal I do support legalizing the sale and consumption of some drugs. For example I have little issue with legalizing marihuana. And Miller is right when he says that "it’s a pretty darned safe bet that Walgreen’s and CVS employees aren’t going to be shooting at each other if their employers are the ones selling pot".

Perhaps the sale of marihuana is safer in a store than on a street corner. At that it's also safer if grown by a reputable producer of marihuana. If an honest producer wants to become weathly - and legally - quality control would have to be the key, right?

One day the public will understand the lessons of the prohibition era of the 1920s.

Five Ways the Drug War Hurts Kids by Reason.tv

Ted Balacker of Reason.tv talks to Neill Franklin of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). A quote provided by Reason is a good one:

Commentators like Bill O'Reilly claim that ending the drug war would lead to more children being abused by drug-addicted parents. But 33-year law enforcement veteran Neill Franklin sees it differently.

"These drugs in an illegal environment are more accessible to our kids," says Franklin, who serves as Executive Director Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, "because we leave complete control, regulation, and standards up to the criminals."

To be sure, I'm really an agnostic on the issue of decriminalizing illegal narcotics. Alcohol in general is harmless although like narcotics it affects people in different ways.

Why do we accept the ending of prohition on alcohol close to 80 years ago while it's hotly debated with regards to illegal narcotics? What I can accept is at the very least a decriminalization of marihuana, but it's hard for me to consider the decriminalization of say crack cocaine or heroin.

Remember Cory Maye?

Over two years ago I posted a video from Reason about him. He was a convicted murdered who claimed that the police who performed a raid on his home didn't announce themselves as police officers. As a matter of fact the person he murdered was a police officer who was raiding his home.

When you get a chance you should watch the video as there was a gamut of issues discussed. It was an issue of Cory's race and the difference of opinion between white and black on this case was stark. In addition at issue in the drug war.

Well today I see that the Mississippi Supreme Court is going to take up Cory's appeal. Although according to this update by Reason, there isn't a lot of certainty to the outcome of this appeal. No one knows if he is going to be acquitted, remain in jail or even receive a new trial.

Via Instapundit!

Chicago pastor pushes to make selling 'blunt wraps' illegal

Not sure what to say about this!

Bishop Larry Trotter spoke about it during services Sunday morning at Sweet Holy Spirit Church. He held up blunt wraps that he said he purchased at a store near the church.

Trotter said young people can use the wraps to conceal illegal drugs, like marijuana.

"We need to stop people from bringing things and making them available to our children and making them drug addicts," Trotter said.
...
Bishop Trotter is circulating a petition, and he asked his congregation to contact lawmakers and urge them to support the ban.

He is launching a 50-church campaign to gather support for the ban and says he already has the backing of several mayors and law enforcement officials.

To be honest, sometimes I have a problem with the need to ban minor items such as this. Not too long ago it was little plastic baggies that could be used to transport narcotics. Today it's these blunt wraps.

Now I could turn this into a need to legalize drugs. The thing is I'm not totally in favor of that. Yeah we may reduce the crime problem and perhaps a Walgreen's or CVS could swell weed or anything like that. But is that really an answer to something that may well become a public health issue.

Well that what this blog is here for. You can discuss this story and/or whether or not we need to legalize or decriminalize narcotics.

Obama gets hazy on reefer economics

Well a surprising column by the Tribune's Clarence Page:

For all of the keen intellect that President Barack Obama showed in his online town hall meeting, he didn't seem to know much about reefer economics.

When asked whether legalizing marijuana might be a stimulus for the economy and job creation, he played the question for laughs.

"I don't know what this says about the online audience . . .," he quipped as his studio audience chuckled and groaned. "But . . . this was a fairly popular question. We want to make sure that it was answered," he said.

Sure. So you could knock it, I thought.

Obama's response: "The answer is, no, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy."

No stimulus? Hey, more than a few blinged-out, Escalade-driving pot dealers would dispute that notion. You want a "green" industry? Free the weed, dude.

I wouldn't mind a support on this issue of decriminalizing marihuana, but basically I'm not coming out of the gate in support of it. If nothing else we should stop trying to determine which drugs should or shouldn't be allowed. Is weed as big of a killer as either alcohol or crack?

Well weak question. You'll hear those who think it should be decriminalized says that one could die from alcohol, however, one can't die from marihuana. Perhaps marihuana isn't much different from alcohol in that it can cause bad judgement in people. Of course that's not really a reason to ban it, a good reason is for the public health aspects of the use of substances.

This was discussed a little in my class today. My professor said that we shouldn't decriminalize marihuana because when it becomes legal them there will be an increase in use and we'll have more accidents or more DUIs. Hmm, with alcohol there are DUIs, but we keep that legal. I suppose that standpoint is right if we have to consider decriminalization.

What do you think about this issue?

Drug Task Force falsely arrests 2 separate people

I don't want to stay on this trip. I just want to say that stories like these should bother people. Yeah drugs are bad, depending on it's effects on individuals. I know that there might be moments where I might post articles that suggest this drug war is a bad thing, however, all I could ask for is a re-examination of what it's supposed to accomplish. If its goals are to put innocent people in jail then I think that's bad. Here's the story:

Twice in the past 18 months, agents from the 4th Judicial District Drug Task Force have moved to prosecute an innocent man or woman.

In both cases, agents mistakenly identified the accused as having sold drugs. In addition to what the wrongly accused have endured, the mistakes - along with the recent guilty plea of a task force agent who developed a drug habit and stole cash from suspects - have forced prosecutors to drop numerous charges against drug defendants in the district, which includes Sevier, Jefferson, Cocke and Grainger counties.

Attempts to interview the drug task force's director, Mack Smith, have been unsuccessful.

Both of the accused citizens, Patty Diane Yates, 38, of Morristown and James Russell Kitts, 44, of Seymour, are mulling legal action against the Drug Task Force, although the law generally doesn't provide much of a chance for citizens to collect damages when they are the victims of false arrests.

Kitts has received an apology. He had friends in law enforcement who came to his defense, and the charges against him were quickly dropped, allowing him to resume his career.

Kitts, a UPS worker and youth athletics coach, was arrested June 25 on multiple charges of trafficking in prescription painkillers. Smith later issued a public apology to Kitts and said a Drug Task Force agent had identified him as a drug dealer based on information that included 911 records and Tennessee motor vehicle registration records. The agent, who wasn't publicly identified, was booted from the task force.

Yates wasn't so fortunate. It took authorities nine months to drop the charges against her, during which she was suspended without pay from her $10.86-an-hour factory job. She and her husband ended up losing their house and have been forced into bankruptcy, she said.

"We lost everything," Yates said. "We're having to start all over. ... I lost so much money it's unreal. It should not have taken them that long to figure out they had the wrong person."

Yates, who says she has no criminal record to speak of other than traffic tickets, has received no apology or explanation of why she was handcuffed and taken to jail twice on bogus drug charges.

Here's a recurring theme in some of the other stories you've seen on this blog on this topic...

Seals adamantly maintained that Yates was the woman who'd sold drugs, but Smith determined there might have been a different woman at the White Pine house named "Patty" who had children with the last name of "Yates," Murphy said.

"The only person who could have resolved the issue was the confidential informant, and that person disappeared and we couldn't locate that person," Murphy said. "It's amazing. ... I've been here for 10 years and no one has reported (a misidentification) happening in Jefferson County before this."

A criminal informant that is basically accountable to no one. They get whatever rewards they would receive by informing even with false information. Via Instapundit!

Previous Post
Guilty Before Proven Innocent

Seattle Police Chief Norm Stamper on Ending the Drug War

A former big city police chief talks about his opposition to the drug war in addition to knowing that there is some support amongst police officers or politicians to take a legalization approach to illegal drugs.

reason.tv: Mississippi drug war blues

Another drug war related post and it should remind you of this earlier post. Throw in the dynamics of race into this with the police officer being white and the man charged with his murder being black. Of course there were apparently no drugs found on his property but he's been in custody since 2001. Still not only is race a dynamic in this story but the police tactics which was described in the write up for this video as "military tactics". It should disturb fair people if there is a reason to suspect that a person might have been railroaded.

Look up more here.

EDIT: I forgot to add a link to my earlier post!

The NYPD's Secret Crusade Against Marijuana Furthers a Racist Agenda

This Village Voice article was found via Newsalert:

I have been intermittently reporting on the NYPD for half a century—sometimes admiringly, as when I spent several weeks with a homicide squad on the Lower East Side, learning how (in contrast to the CIA's current methods) confessions that will hold up in court can be obtained by detectives without laying a hand on the suspect. And I've also written critically about the police, as well as various commissioners. But I have never seen such systematic dishonesty and contempt for the law as those documented in the 102-page report, "Marijuana Arrest Crusade: Racial Bias and Police Policy in New York City 1997-2007," by Professor Harry Levine of Queens College and Deborah Peterson Small, executive director of Break the Chains.

In 2007 alone, there were 39,700 misdemeanor arrests for the possession of small amounts of marijuana. But such possession hasn't been a crime in New York State since the Marijuana Reform Act of 1977. Under that law, which is still in effect, an offender can usually expect to get only a ticket, punishable by a fine of not more than $100.

But most of the 353,000 New Yorkers arrested for having these small amounts from 1997 to 2006 got much more than a ticket: They were handcuffed, photographed, and fingerprinted, held overnight, arraigned in criminal court, plagued with permanent criminal records, and charged with the crime of having marijuana "burning or open to public view."

Since most of these people arrested had the pot hidden in a pocket, backpack, or purse, how did these stop-and-frisks turn into an arrest for "burning" marijuana" or having it "open to public view"?

As "Marijuana Arrest Crusade" demonstrates, this is done "by tricking and intimidating" suspects to take out the concealed marijuana, so that police officers can then claim they saw it "open to public view." In fact, a longtime Legal Aid supervisor quoted in the study says that this process happens "all the time." And such routine deception by the police to set someone up for arrest on a criminal-misdemeanor charge is perfectly legal.

There is much more detailed information in the report on the impact of these arrests, which—as described in last week's column— greatly and disproportionately affect black and Latino youths. Part 7, "Head Start for Unemployment and Prison," notes that these arrests "can limit the opportunity for young people to obtain employment and access to some schools, and for student aid."

Please don't take this article as an endorsement of marijuana. I've made posts at certain points during the course of the year with consideration of decriminalizing drugs. Of course this piece should remind you of another post I made where a family finds itself entangled in the criminal justice system because of incarcerated informants looking for a way out of prison sooner. There's should be no doubt even if this country accepts the need to continue the criminalization of drugs that there should be some changes made in the system.

BTW, I suggest you go read the whole thing.

Guilty Before Proven Innocent

I started this post just over a month ago and this give me the excuse to post this article from Reason. A family was charged with a drug crime they didn't commit. What makes this story much worse is that there is an industry where convicts are willing to do anything to get out. Somehow, they're able to engage in finding some intelligence that allows them to become informants against witnesses who have nothing to do with any drug deals.

I may agree that drugs are a problem. At the same time I have a problem with overzealous prosecution. In this case a willingness to use shady testimony from those witnesses who aren't credible. Prosecutors really want that drug conviction. It almost makes me ask if this drug war is wrong.

It's almost unfortunate that the prosecutors in this case failed to realize their errors since they still believed that the family in question were drugs dealers. What I thought was odd, that their future son-in-law attempted to take responsibility for the drugs and they somehow determined that they weren't his. So they really wanted this family to go down in flames for whatever reason.

This story is intriguing only because there are several components. Ruthless convicts who want out of prison so they resort to having to lie about what they know. The general racism of this small Louisiana town. Finally the prosecutors who were willing to do whatever it takes to get a conviction.

I wanted to mention that over a month ago I saw a documentary that aired on Showtime and I didn't get to see it because I don't get Showtime. Instead I saw it on Google Video, however, it's no longer online and when I resurrected this post after I started this a month ago I would have featured front and center this vid. Visit the official website here. The doc title is American Drug War.

Tangent: The film mentions how common household substances. They showed examples of over the counter medication such as Sudafed were used to create crystal meth. Reminds me of what happened when I was home.

I went to my neighborhood Walgreen's to buy some cold medicine and I ran into some legal thing. As I was about to make my purchase all the sudden the cashier asked for ID. I had the misfortune of bringing only cash with me. She realized that the register didn't ask for my birthday and I was all set. Thank goodness because I really didn't want to take a long walk back to my home to procure my ID.

She told me that there was a law that was designed to prevent the use of cold medicine to discourage their usage in the manufacture of crystal meth. I've heard about the law and I didn't think about it until I inquired about why she needed an ID and she told me the reasoning. Hmm, I didn't want to get high, I just wanted some cold medicine.

Anyway, there is some unfairness in the system. One could wonder if the idea of prohibition of illegal substances is a policy that should be continued. Many years ago it was tried with alcohol and that didn't solve the problem, people still wanted to drink. So they found a way to get drunk even if they had to go thru criminals.

Looking at this story from Reason, I would wonder if there needs to be reform in the prosecution of drug crimes. If not absolute abolition of these laws or decriminalization of drug use in this country. In fact the aforementioned doc wonders if America has been better off not making more natural drugs such as marijuana illegal and it would cause drug addicts to turn to making crystal meth or heroine that certainly prove to be more harmful.

Agree or disagree there are some important issues to discuss here.

Semi-related go back to my post about overzealous prosecution of DUIs.