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POPS800,000 Americans Busted Annually for Pot
They argue the drug war “is doing far more harm than marijuana itself ever will,” because * it diverts hundreds of thousands of police agents from serious crimes “to the pursuit of harmless tokers”; * it costs taxpayers at minimum $10 billion a year to catch, prosecute, and incarcerate marijuana users and sellers; * it enables government to snatch the cars, money, computers and other properties of people caught up in drug raids even if they have had no charges filed against them; and * it allows “police agents at all levels to trample our Bill of Rights in their eagerness to nab pot consumers.” The drug war has also unleashed a torrent of racism in the form of unjust sentencing, which confines crack-cocaine users who are mostly black to prison for longer terms than powder snorters, who are mostly white. Hightower and Frazer say authorities have perverted the infamous “Patriot Act” of 2001 for use in non-terrorism cases, allowing “sneak-and-peak” search warra
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POPSThe Opinuary Column: Freedom isn't Free (or Alive)
It fought its addiction to Crystal Meth (Cheaper Than Coke But Still Not Free) and Tobacco (the first carton for soldiers was Free, but after that, not so much) with grit and determination, which it had in buckets (buckets that were Free but had to be returned when it was done with them). In the weeks before its death, the Opinion was often observed meditating on a litany of uncomfortable realizations: it had discovered that its apartment wasn't Free, its bar tab wasn't Free, its groceries weren't Free and, having failed to appear in court on misdemeanor charges, it suffered the additonal ignominy of facing the fact that indeed, not even its DUI was Free ($250.00 just to post bail!). Its only words to the judge were these: "In the bastardized yet immortal phrasings of Kris Kristofferson: Freedom's just another word for something that isn't free..." Family of the deceased Opinion are asking that, in lieu of flowers (which aren't free) that each and every one of us do our part to d
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POPSJudge orders 3 to trial in Anna Nicole drug case A pharmacist said he refused to fill an order for drugs written by Eroshevich and submitted by Kapoor because taking them would be "pharmaceutical suicide." Possibly the most powerful witness against Stern was never seen at the hearing. A nanny who worked for Smith in the Bahamas was interviewed by an investigator who read her comments from the witness stand.
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POPSWhew! Good thing people are smarter than rats - grin. We don't need a canary to warn us about trouble in the fast food lane of life - we need a rat! Read on to see that rats react the same to heroin, as they do to bacon, cheesecake and HoHos. So why do you think they tested three of guy's favorite food groups?
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POPSTobacco Underground
At a time when nations are increasingly trying to crack down on smoking, smugglers put cheap cigarettes into the hands of those most vulnerable — young people and the poor. In addition, the trade is pushing the supply steadily into the black market, selling cut-rate cigarettes of often dubious quality. Of special concern is the advent of a massive counterfeiting industry. Once a minor problem, today underground factories in China, Paraguay, and Eastern Europe manufacture literally billions of fake cigarettes — Marlboros, Camels, 555s, Mild Sevens — an uncontrolled industry that law enforcement is only beginning to grapple with. Many of the smokes are made from the lowest quality tobacco, full of stem and sawdust, and spiked with unusually high levels of nicotine. Other packs contain far worse. Tests reveal that counterfeit cigarettes carry a bevy of products that could further shorten even a heavy smoker’s life: metals such as cadmium, pesticides, arsenic, rat poison, and human feces.
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POPSNate Phelps: My father is addicted to hate Nate Phelps is the son of Fred Phelps , leader of the hate-filled Westboro Baptist Church. More: violence was a fact of life in our home, and is interwoven from my earliest memories as a child… In terms of knowing how to administer punishment, my father was an adept. Seven or eight blows would be enough to cause the skin to swell and bruise. However, if he administered a few blows, and then waited five to ten minutes before the next round, this gave the damaged tissue time to swell and stretch the skin tight. The new round of blows would cause that skin to split and bleed.… When my mother tried to intervene in some of his more brutal beatings, he’d turn on her and punish her, also. Proverbs 13:24 was core to his actions: He that spareth his rod hateth his son. But there was a fundamental contradiction. He claimed that this punishment was done out of love for his children; yet as he beat us, he’d scream his hatred at us also.
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POPSIs America Hooked on War?
When it comes to war (and peace), we live in a world of American Newspeak in which alternatives to a state of war are not only ever more unacceptable, but ever harder to imagine. War is now our permanent situation. It lacks, for instance, "victory." But achieving victory no longer seems to matter. War American-style is now conceptually unending, as are preparations for it. In a sense, the ongoing war system can't absorb victory. Any such endpoint might indeed prove to be a kind of defeat. Similarly drained of its traditional meaning has been the word "security". If we ever decided we were either secure enough, or more willing to live without the unreachable idea of total security, the American way of war and the national security state would lose much of their meaning. In other words, in our world, security is insecurity. And peace itself? Simply put, there's no money in it. America's true religion and addiction, is force. Americans are --always--marching as to war.
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