ARMCHAIR VIEW

It's a beautiful sunny day and I'd be inclined to go out and clip a few greens and couple of pine cones to throw in a basket except that the wind is howling at 25 miles an hour. I can take the cold but a wind that strong hurts.

So I've been catching up on my reading and discovered googlism.com, a funny little search engine that crawls google and reports on what's quoted. Here's what it had to say about Last One Speaks.

last one speaks is always a great read
last one speaks is a blog providing "a voice of reason in the cacophony of drug war rhetoric"
last one speaks is keeping an eye on our defense secretary

I especially liked that last one. I found checking out a few friend's names an amusing way to waste a few moments of time.

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And if you need another reason to procrastinate, there's this fun cartoon site, toon tracker where you can find all your (really) old favorites from Terry Toons to one of my all time favorites, Clyde Crashcup. You may have to be old yourself to enjoy this one.

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CANADA OR BUST

This story reminds me of the character Wrongway Peachfuzz on the Bullwinkle show. I can see Rocky the Squirrel riding shotgun in this truck saying, "Hokey Smoke Captain, you're going in the wrong direction."

The link to the story is already dead so I'm printing it for you here.

Source: Associated Press
Pubdate: December 11, 2003

Police in Michigan uncover $1.2 million worth of marijuana headed for
Canada

WARREN, Mich. (AP) - A suspicious business owner and the police department's canine unit helped uncover almost 550 kilograms of marijuana destined for Canada.

Narcotics officers and federal agents found the marijuana, valued at $1.2 million US, packaged in bricks weighing nearly half a kilogram each and stuffed inside beams of a semi-tractor trailer. "It's part of a very sophisticated operation," Det.-Lt. Mark Mazzone of the Warren Police Department said in a newspaper interview Wednesday. The bust was one of the largest of its kind in the city.

Police said a woman phoned a trucking firm on Nov. 24, asking the company if it would haul the trailer to Canada. Police said the woman claimed the company she worked for had sold the trailer but needed it driven to the Toronto suburb of Scarborough. When the owner, whose identity wasn't released, saw the trailer on his lot he told her his company does not accept such jobs. He suspected it was stolen and called police.

Police were trying to find the woman.

Now that's a lot of marijuana but you have to wonder why they are bringing it into Canada. Our drug czar has declared the alleged hordes of Canadian cannabis growers a terrorist threat to our youth and the US threatens to shut down the border if their Parliment enacts decrim legislation because they will flood our country with their evil potent weed.

This "sophiscated operation" suggests that either the Canadians can't meet their own demand or as my friend Elmer said, "Was this woman trying to satisfy the market niche for crappy pot?"

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OVERKILL

There was a time in this country that nearly everyone grew at least some hemp for its bountiful uses. Hemp being a vigorous plant escaped the fields and grew freely on the roadsides. It still does to this day. In another criminal waste of taxpayer money, they sent in an army to destroy a large stand of nearly THC-free wildlings.

Drug task force members, sheriff's deputies, U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents and members of the National guard harvested between 75,000 and 80,000 marijuana plants along Pray road, in Lisbon, NY.

The plants tested out at 0.14 percent of THC. Anything under 3 percent is rope quality fiber folks, the national average being between 6 and 8 percent and the legendary Canadian 'killer weed' testing at just over 18 percent.

St. Lawrence County Sheriff Gary J. Jarvis said of the low potency, "Knowing what the THC level is, probably we wouldn't have gone over and pull it up." This will not stop the prohibition forces from playing this farce out to the end however. Jarvis goes on to say, "In the spring of the year we are going to spray it so we won't ever have that issue again."

I doubt if they will be using the same untested herbicide they're using on the coca fields in Latin America but it still seems an extreme response to a stand of harmless plants and the money (which one assumes will run into thousands of dollars) would be much better spent in providing town services.

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photo NickDenton.org
INSTA-EPIPHANY

Wrapping up my research on this subject on a more positive note, I take back all the bad stuff I said about Glenn Reynolds. Now that I've more fully explored the greater body of his prolific work I realize I'm only beginning to understand the depth of his thinking. I'm still a little disturbed by instapundit's stance on many issues but found a bridge over the chasm of our political differences in this random post.

I'VE GOT MORE ON THE GENEVA SUMMIT and the future of Internet free speech, over at GlennReynolds.com.

Following the initial link to the end puts us on solid common ground on the importance of protecting First Amendment rights on the internet and on the balance I have to say he is a reasonable voice not only in the greater cacophony of beltway rhetoric but also on the drug war.

By the time I hit the last link he had these insightful comments on Goose Creek posted as well. All I can say Glenn, is sorry for jumping to conclusions and thanks for exposing these under-reported stories.

In small atonement for my lapse in manners, last one to speak today is Glenn Harlan Reynolds in an eloquent call to protect our best tool for changing the system..

So what should we do? To begin with, we should use the power of the Internet to expose this sort of thing, and we should pressure Big Media to report on it, and pressure national governments, in democracies, to support free speech on the Internet. It's clear that they're afraid of us. Let's give them reason.

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