Coming
in October
From Common Courage Press
Today's
Stories
August 26, 2003
Saul Landau
Bush: a Modern Ahab or a Toy Action
Figure?
Recent
Stories
August 25, 2003
Kurt Nimmo
Israeli Outlaws in America
David Bacon
In Iraq, Labor Protest is a Crime
Thomas P. Healy
The Govs Come to Indy: Corps Welcome; Citizens Locked Out
Norman Madarasz
In an Elephant's Whirl: the US/Canada Relationship After the
Iraq Invasion
Salvador Peralta
The Politics of Focus Groups
Jack McCarthy
Who Killed Jancita Eagle Deer?
Uri Avnery
A Drug
for the Addict
August 23/24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
August 22, 2003
Carole Harper
Post-Sandinista
Nicaragua
John Chuckman
George Will: the Marquis of Mendacity
Richard Thieme
Operation Paperclip Revisited
Chris Floyd
Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law?
Issam Nashashibi
Palestinians
and the Right of Return: a Rigged Survey
Mary Walworth
Other People's Kids
Ron Jacobs
The
Darkening Tunnel
Website of the Day
Current Energy
August 21, 2003
Robert Fisk
The US
Needs to Blame Anyone But Locals for UN Bombing
Virginia Tilley
The Quisling Policies of the UN in Iraq: Toward a Permanent War?
Rep. Henry Waxman
Bush Owes the Public Some Serious Answers on Iraq
Ben Terrall
War Crimes and Punishment in Indonesia: Rapes, Murders and Slaps
on the Wrists
Elaine Cassel
Brother John Ashcroft's Traveling Patriot Salvation Show
Christopher Brauchli
Getting Gouged by Banks
Marjorie Cohn
Sergio Vieira de Mello: Victim of Terrorism or US Policy in Iraq?
Vicente Navarro
Media
Double Standards: The Case of Mr. Aznar, Friend of Bush
Website of the Day
The Intelligence Squad
August 20, 2003
Robert Fisk
Now No
One Is Safe in Iraq
Caoimhe Butterly
Life and Death on the Frontlines of Baghdad
Kurt Nimmo
UN Bombing: Act of Terrorism or Guerrilla War?
Michael Egan
Revisiting the Paranoid Style in the Dark
Ramzi Kysia
Peace
is not an Abstract Idea
Steven Higgs
NPR and the NAFTA Highway
John L. Hess
A Downside Day
Edward Said
The Imperial Bluster of Tom Delay
Jason Leopold
Gridlock at Path 15: the California Blackouts were the "Wake
Up Call"
Website of the Day
Ashcroft's Patriotic Hype
August 19, 2003
Jeffrey St. Clair
Blackouts Happen
Gary Leupp
"Our Patch": Australia v. the Evil Doers of the South
Pacific
Sean Donahue
Uribe's Cruel Model: Colombia Moves Toward Totalitarianism
Matt Martin
Bush's Credibility Problem on Missile Defense
Juliana Fredman
Recipe for the Destruction of a Hudna
John Ross
Fox Government's Attack on Mexican Basques
Sasan Fayazmanesh
What Kermit Roosevelt Didn't Say
Website of the Day
Tom Delay's Dual Loyalities
August 18, 2003
Uri Avnery
Hero in War and Peace
Stan Goff
The Volunteer Military and the Wicked Adventure
Cathy Breen
Baghdad on the Hudson
Michael Kimaid
Fight the Power (Companies)!
Jason Leopold
The California Rip-Off Revisited: Arnold, Milken and Ken Lay
Matt Siegfried
The Bush Administration in Context
Elaine Cassel
At Last, A Judge Who Acts Like a Judge
Alexander Cockburn
Judy Miller's War
Harvey Wasserman
The Legacy of Blackout Pete Wilson
Website of the Day
Fire Griles!
Congratulations
to CounterPuncher Gilad Atzmon! BBC Names EXILE Top Jazz CD
August 16 / 17, 2003
Flavia Alaya
Bastille
New Jersey
Jeffrey St. Clair
War Pimps
Saul Landau
The Legacy of Moncada: the Cuban Revolution at 50
Brian Cloughley
What Has Happened to the US Army in Iraq?
William S. Lind
Coffins for the Crews: How Not to Use Light Armored Vehicles
Col. Dan Smith
Time for Straight Talk
Wenonah Hauter
Which
Electric System Do We Want?
David Lindorff
Where's Arnold When We Need Him?
Harvey Wasserman
This Grid Should Not Exist
Don Moniak
"Unusual Events" at Nuclear Power Plants: a Timeline
for August 14, 2003
David Vest
Rolling Blackout Revue
Merlin Chowkwanyun
An Interview with Sherman Austin
Adam Engel
The Loneliest Number
Poets' Basement
Guthrie, Hamod & Albert
Book of the Weekend
Powerplay by Sharon Beder
August 14, 2003
Peter Phillips
Inside
Bohemian Grove: Where US Power Elites Party
Brian Cloughley
Charlie Wilson and Pakistan: the Strange Congressman Behind the
CIA's Most Expensive War
Linville and Ruder
Tyson
Strike Draws the Line
Jim Lobe
Bush Administration Divided Over Iran
Ramzy Baroud
Sharon Freezes the Road Map
Tom Turnipseed
Blowback in Iraq
Gary Leupp
Condi's
Speech: From Birgmingham to Baghdad, Imperialism's Freedom Ride
Website of the Day
Tony Benn's Greatest Hits
August 13, 2003
Joanne Mariner
A Wall of Separation Through the
Heart
Donald Worster
The Heavy Cost of Empire
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Elaine Cassel
Murderous Errors: Executing the Innocent
Ralph Nader
Make the Recall Count
Alexander Cockburn
Ted Honderich Hit with "Anti-Semitism" Slur
Website of the Day
Defending Yourself Against DirectTV Lawsuits: 9000 and Counting
August 12, 2003
Ron Jacobs
Revisionist History: the Bush Administration, Civil Rights and
Iraq
Josh Frank
Dean's Constitutional Hang-Up
Wayne Madsen
What's a Fifth Columnist? Well, Someone Like Hitchens
Ray McGovern
Relax,
It Was All a Pack of Lies
Wendy Brinker
Hubris in the White House
Website of the Day
Black
Mustache
Hot Stories
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
William Blum
Myth
and Denial in the War on Terrorism
Standard Schaefer
Experimental Casinos: DARPA and the War Economy
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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August
26, 2003
The Justice Department's
Bizarre Equation
Medical
Pot Smokers and Segregationists
By CHRISTOPHER BRAUCHLI
You cannot possibly have a broader basis
for any government than that which includes all the people with
all their rights in their hands, and with an equal power to maintain
their rights.
William Lloyd Garrison
It all makes perfect sense until you think about
it. That's how a lot of things are in the Bush world. The most
recent example came from Mark Quinlivan, a lawyer in the Ashcroft
Justice Department. He addressed the annual meeting of the American
Bar Association held in August in San Francisco. Individuals
invited to speak are supposed to say something interesting. U.S.
Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy demonstrated how that is
done.
Addressing the group on August 9, 2003,
he told the lawyers that too many people are imprisoned in the
United States. He pointed out that one American in 143 is incarcerated
compared with one in 1000 in many European countries. He called
for the repeal of mandatory-minimum sentences for federal crimes
saying: "Our resources are being misspent. Our punishments
are too severe. Our sentences are too long." He said mandatory
minimum sentences can produce "harsh and unjust" results.
His comments were thoughtful and thought provoking. They provided
a nice contrast to Mr. Quinlivan who propounded the preposterous
to the assembled lawyers. Mr. Quinlivan told them that people
in California who voted to legalize marijuana for medical use
were exactly like the people in the south in the middle of the
20th century who espoused segregation. Until Mr. Quinlivan spoke,
it is safe to say, that thought had occurred to no one outside
the Ashcroft Justice Department. It is that kind of creative
if somewhat antediluvian-anti- Republican thinking that has distinguished
that department under Attorney General Ashcroft. The concept
Mr. Quinlivan propounded was antediluvian because of its content
and anti-Republican because Republicans claim to dislike it when
the federal government tells states and individuals how to behave.
Republicans are willing to set aside that dislike when marijuana
is at issue since it is a fundamental belief of the Bush administration
that marijuana is bad.
In 1996, California passed proposition
215, a proposition legalizing marijuana for medical use. Thinking
that a good idea, a number of other states followed suit. The
administration realized it had to do something and following
in the less than laudable footsteps of the Clinton administration
that was also upset by the introduction of those laws (although
it never equated them with segregation) , began efforts to undo
the wills of the people in the states that passed those laws.
In Oregon, where voters approved a referendum
permitting physicians to prescribe marijuana for their patients,
the Bush administration went to court and was told by the 9th
Circuit Court of Appeals that doctors cannot be punished for
prescribing marijuana. Distressed, the administration appeals
and is asking the United States Supreme Court to permit it to
strip a doctor of the license to prescribe drugs if the doctor
prescribes marijuana. The fact that the voters in Oregon, California
and several other states think medical marijuana is OK does not
concern the administration. What the few in the administration
believe is right is right irrespective of what the many who live
in the land may think.
As Mr. Quinlivan explained to the audience:
"You cannot cherry-pick your federalism". He went on
to say that if a California initiative takes precedence over
a federal ban on marijuana then anything goes. The marijuana
supporters are, Mr. Quinlivan said, similar to the recently deceased
George Maddox, the former governor of Georgia who with his axe
handle demonstrated his determination to keep African Americans
out of his restaurant, Orville Faubus and George Wallace who
didn't want them in their schools. Mr. Quinlivan said those men
were asserting their independence from the national government
on issues that were of national concern that could not be tolerated
by the federal government.
It was an ingenious argument, more so
since until he spoke few would have thought that depriving an
entire group of people of the right to attend the schools of
their choice or to enter public facilities was the same as lighting
a marijuana cigarette that, when used for medical purposes, was
intended to relieve the suffering of the terminally ill. With
Mr. Quinlivan's enlightenment, the parallel was obvious to all
but a few.
Gerald Uelmen, a Santa Clara University
law professor, is one of the few. He is representing some of
those who are supporting the medical marijuana laws. He observed
that civil rights laws that were invoked in the 1950s to outlaw
segregation were based on the constitutional guarantee of equal
protection and on interstate commerce provisions. As he observed,
the use of medical marijuana in California does not implicate
interstate commerce nor does it have anything to do with equal
protection.
Taylor Carey, a special assistant state
attorney general who wrote the brief supporting California's
law is also among the few. He said: "When the government
acted to protect the civil liberties of the children of Alabama,
they acted with the highest degree of moral force. When they
act to prevent critically ill people from obtaining medication
they are not acting with the same degree of moral propriety."
Someone might want to tell Mr. Quinlivan
that he is fighting a losing battle. Prisons are overcrowded
because the war on drugs is never ending and victory is not in
sight. The only result of putting people in prison for drug crimes
is overcrowded prisons. Prisons did not produce victory in the
drug war. Neither will depriving sick people of marijuana.
Christopher Brauchli is a Boulder, Colorado lawyer. He can be reached
at: brauchli.56@post.harvard.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for August 23 / 24, 2003
Forrest Hylton
Rumsfeld
Does Bogota
Robert Fisk
The Cemetery at Basra
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity
Insults to Intelligence
Andrew C. Long
Exile on Bliss Street: The Terrorist Threat and the English Professor
Jeremy Bigwood
The Toxic War on Drugs: Monsanto Weedkiller Linked to Powerful
Fungus
Jeffrey St. Clair
Forest
or Against Us: the Bush Doctor Calls on Oregon
Cynthia McKinney
Bring the Troops Home, Now!
David Krieger
So Many Deaths, So Few Answers: Approaching the Second Anniversary
of 9/11
Julie Hilden
A Constitutional Right to be a Human Shield
Dave Lindorff
Marketplace
Medicine
Standard Schaefer
Unholy Trinity: Falwell's Anti-Abortion Attack on Health and
Free Speech
Catherine Dong
Kucinich and FirstEnergy
José Tirado
History Hurts: Why Let the Dems Repeat It?
Ron Jacobs
Springsteen's America
Gavin Keeney
The Infernal Machine
Adam Engel
A Fan's Notations
William Mandel
Five Great Indie Films
Walt Brasch
An American Frog Fable
Poets' Basement
Reiss, Kearney, Guthrie, Albert and Alam
Website of the Weekend
The Hutton Inquiry
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