Richard Cortes at Vanity Fair has an illustrated history of U.S. Drug Czars in the War on Drugs. It begins:

The United States spends nearly $50 billion each year on the war on drugs, to little avail: illegal drugs remain prevalent, and drug-funded groups continue to spread violence from Mexico to Afghanistan. The new White House drug czar, Gil Kerlikowske, says he wants to end the drug war, but other men in his position have tried and failed to do just that. In this illustrated history, Ricardo Cortes shows how science, politics, ego, and scandal transformed a public-health initiative into a century-long military campaign.

He begins in 1914 with the Harrison Act, but the first sketch is of Henry Anslinger, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 to 1962, who led a public campaign against marijauana. [More...]

Last week, a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee passed H.R. 3245, Rep. Bobby Scott's bill to equalize crack and powder cocaine penalties and eliminate the 5 year mandatory minimum sentence for simple possession of crack.

Today, the full House Judiciary Committee passed the bill, by a vote of 16 to 9. This is the good bill -- other versions would equalize the penalties but also add new crimes and throw more money into the War on Drugs.

The bill will now go to the full House for a vote. Let's hope it passes without Amendments (unless it's one that would make it retroactive.)

Khaled Al-Mutairi, a Kuwaiti detainee held at Guantanamo for the past 8 years, was ordered released today by U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly. Al-Mutairi was seized in Pakistan in 2001.

Judge Kollar-Kotelly ruled the Government has insufficient evidence to continue his detention and ordered him released. It's a final order, which means the Government can appeal. A declassified opinion should be issued within days.

Three more Kuwaitis remain in Guantanamo. All have been represented by David Cynamon of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. Fawzi Al-Odah and Fouad Al Rabiah will receive habeas hearings in August, and Fayiz al-Kandari’s hearing is scheduled for September 2009.

Originally, there were 12. The U.S. released 8 back to Kuwait in 2005-2006. According to an email from the Kuwaiti Family Committee, upon their return to Kuwait, they were charged, tried and acquitted.

Homeland Security Chief Janet Napolitano gave a major address today. Shorter version: It's time to ramp up the war on terror, give more money to cops and tweak but not eliminate some Bush policies, and encourage citizens to report suspicious activity. From the Wall St. Journal this morning:

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is expected to outline Wednesday the Obama administration's domestic approach to preventing terrorist attacks -- a strategy that will rely in large measure on refining and expanding initiatives launched under President George W. Bush.

We can't afford a health care plan, but we can afford more cops for New York City.

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says the city will get $35 million in transit security stimulus money that the city can use to hire more police officers. She says the money will put more than 100 additional cops on city subways and busses.

[More...]

How many ways can Congress find to scr*w the elderly? As a result of a compromise today, the Dems conceded more ground to conservatives on the health care bill.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee, which expects to approve the new version of the legislation by Friday, unveiled the newest version of the proposal at a legislative markup Wednesday. It would cut the cost of health-care reform by $100 billion and provide payment guarantees to rural hospitals.

...Across Capitol Hill, Senate Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) announced that a draft of the reform package would provide coverage to 95 percent of Americans, be fully offset by tax increases and Medicare savings...

... The draft bill would provide more cost savings through Medicare than did previous versions, reducing the need for new revenue from about $500 billion in earlier drafts to "somewhat over $300 billion," according to Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who is working with Baucus on the bill. The draft also would scale back Medicare payments to physicians, a long-promised but costly provision.

If you scale back Medicare pay to doctors, it seems to me you scale back the number of doctors willing to treat the elderly. If I'm wrong, then it's just another sign our elected officials are doing a lousy job of explaining the bill in terms the public can understand. [More...]

I'm busy writing motions and haven't been able to catch much news today. Here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

The House agreed today to put off a vote on health care reform until September.

Under the deal, the last of three House committees will be able to finish work on the legislation this week. But lawmakers will have time to review the 1,000-page bill before a floor vote in September.

I think that's wise. Act in haste, repent at leisure. That's what happened with the Patriot Act. I want to be sure every elected official knows exactly what's in this 1,000 page bill and what's been removed. And I wish journalists would take the time between now and September to explain it in lay terms to the public.

Just saw this.

The Al Franken Decade off to a great start.

Speaking for me only

I have never proclaimed to know much about health care and I think I have backed up that position by not writing much about it. That said, I have come to see the public option/individual mandates/taxing the wealthy to pay for it ideas as not a bad start to build on. But all of this seems in jeopardy now and there is a growing debate as to whether what is on the table now is actually counterproductive to achieving lasting and meaningful health care reform. Kevin Drum writes:

Scott Lemieux isn't happy with the compromise healthcare bill being put together in the Senate [--] "The normal justification for passing a compromise bill is that once a new system is entrenched it can be tweaked later. But I don't think it applies in this case. The public option is the core of the reform; a Blue Dog bill isn't so much half a loaf as a few meaningless crumbs. . . ."

. . . Ezra Klein disagrees [--] "What has kept health-care reform at the forefront of liberal politics for decades is moral outrage that 47 million of our friends and neighbors are uninsured. That medical costs are one of the leading causes of bankruptcy in the United States. . . ."

Kevin himself stresses community rating. Lambert thinks the entire thing is a sham and that only single payer makes sense. So what do I think now? I'll tell you on the flip.

What's going on today?

This is an Open Thread.

BTW, can you believe the Post pays Richard Cohen to write?

As TalkLeft noted earlier this year, Robert Lee Stinson's Wisconsin homicide conviction was vacated, and Stinson was awarded a new trial, after new DNA testing cast considerable doubt upon his guilt. Stinson's 1985 conviction was based largely on the (now discredited) pseudo-science of bite mark identification.

Yesterday, prosecutors conceded that they could not prove Stinson's guilt and dismissed the charges. Despite spending nearly two dozen of his years behind bars, Stinson said he's learned to put the bitterness of his wrongful conviction behind him.

Stinson is the twelfth Wisconsin inmate set free by the remarkably effective Wisconsin Innocence Project.

Three Democratic candidates are campaigning to replace Robert Morgenthau, who is retiring as Manhattan's district attorney upon completion of his current term.

Leslie Crocker Snyder, Richard Aborn and Cyrus Vance Jr. All are campaigning on preventing crime and providing alternatives to incarceration for non-violent offenders. But at a Crain’s breakfast forum in midtown, Messrs. Aborn and Vance contrasted their unwavering opposition to capital punishment to the change in Ms. Snyder’s view since she lost to Mr. Morgenthau in 2005.

Snyder ("a retired judge who once offered to personally administer a lethal injection to a convict") cites her investigation of the reasons for Jeffrey Deskovic's wrongful conviction as the cause of her change of heart about the death penalty. The more cynically minded might think that political calculation accounts for Snyder's conversion. Interestingly, Deskovic is among those who questions Snyder's explanation. [more ...]