Simsbury High School in Hartford, CT is joining a troubling growing trend: Employing cops with drug dogs to routinely patrol the halls, conducting random searches for drugs. What other schools have recently added random drug dog searches? To name just a few: [More...]

Here is President Obama's 2013 proposed budget for the Department of Punishment Justice. The total comes to $36.5 billion. Among the lowlights.

• Prison budget: $8.5 billion, a 4 percent increase over 2012. (It notes that there 2.3 million people in U.S. prisons and 1 in 32 American adults are under some kind of correctional supervision.) [More..]

Guatemala's new President, Otto Perez Molina, said today he will propose that Central America legalize drugs at an upcoming meeting of leaders in the region.

"I want to bring this discussion to the table," he said. "It wouldn't be a crime to transport, to move drugs. It would all have to be regulated."

Does he mean it? Or is he only attempting to start a dialogue? A former military general who ran on a law and order platform promising an "iron fist" policy against organized crime, he authorized the army to join the fight against the drug cartels just one day after his inauguration..

I wrote yesterday that as I tuned in to the end of the Fast and Furious hearing yesterday, Attorney General Eric Holder was castigating some Republican who had just questioned him, calling the Republican disrespectful.

Here's the text of Holder's comments in response to some of the questions. Holder isn't the only one who should be disgusted by these Republicans. Everyone should be. Good for Holder for showing some backbone and ripping into them: [More...]

Attorney General Eric Holder testified today before the Korematsu McCarthy Star Chamber Renewal Committee (aka the House Oversight Committee, led by Darryl Issa.) When I tuned in, Holder was castigating one of the House members who had just finished questioning him for his lack of civility and disrespect for the Justice Department as an institution. It must have been quite an attack because the next questioner, a Republican, agreed with Holder that his colleague's approach was unfortunate and should not have occurred.

The last Republican who spoke said no one on the Committee is accusing Holder of having actual knowledge about Fast and Furious. Just goes to show these Republicans are not out for the truth, but for Holder's head.

As Republicans prepare to grill Attorney General Eric Holder again over Operation Fast and Furious, the Democrats on the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform have released a report. The executive summary is here. The full report is here.

Shorter version: There is no evidence higher-ups at DOJ were aware of the gunwalking operations, which were initiated during the Bush Administraton. [More...]

Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI), current Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism, and Homeland Security, has always struck me as a public menace. He's now advocating more mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Other Republicans are joining him.

If you don't remember Sensenbrenner from 2004- 2005, when he was Chair of the House Judiciary Committee, here are some of his dooziest proposals:[More...]

The Office of National Drug Control Policy today released its first National Northern Border Counternarcotics Strategy . The full 80-page report is here. The report is required to be submitted to Congress under the Northern Border Counternarcotics Strategy Act of 2010 (Act).

What's to come: More intelligence-gathering and sharing. [More...]

The Weed Wars continue. Here's the U.S. Attorney's press release on yesterday's California medical marijuana dispensary raids. DOJ's "justification" for the raids is in this earlier press release.

The California Supreme Court has agreed to hear two medical marijuana cases.

The California Supreme Court has jumped into the fray again over the legality of medical marijuana laws, deciding on Wednesday to review two lower court rulings that impact how and whether local governments can regulate pot dispensaries across the state.

In their weekly closed-door session, the justices voted unanimously to review cases out of Long Beach and Riverside that dealt with the ongoing conflict between California's voter-approved law allowing the use of medical marijuana and federal laws barring the use or sale of the drug. The state Supreme Court's rulings in the cases are likely to have a widespread impact in the Bay Area, where cities from San Jose to Oakland have regulations dealing with medical marijuana providers.

[More...]

The Colorado Department of Revenue joined the short list of two other states asking the DEA to reclassify marijuana as a Schedule II controlled substance. Marijuana is currently a Schedule I controlled substance, a classification reserved for substances deemed to have no medicinal value or a high potential for abuse. From the DEA website:

Substances in this schedule have a high potential for abuse, have no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and there is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision. Some examples of substances listed in schedule I are: heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis), peyote, methaqualone, and 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (“ecstasy”).

State law required the Director to write the letter. House Bill 1284, the 2010 law with regulations for medical marijuana, specifies the duties of the state licensing authority. It includes this provision:

"The state licensing authority shall....

....In recognition of the potential medicinal value of medical marijuana, make a request by January 1, 2012, to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration to consider rescheduling, for pharmaceutical purposes, medical marijuana from a schedule I controlled substance to a schedule II controlled substance.

[More....]

Nicholas Pert is about to graduate from the Borough of Manhattan Community College. He's also been stopped, frisked and searched more than five time. He relates his account in a New York Times Op-Ed today. He's also going to be a witness for the Center of Constitutional Rights in its lawsuit seeking to prevent the NYPD from making racially motivated stops.

For young people in my neighborhood, getting stopped and frisked is a rite of passage. We expect the police to jump us at any moment. We know the rules: don’t run and don’t try to explain, because speaking up for yourself might get you arrested or worse. And we all feel the same way — degraded, harassed, violated and criminalized because we’re black or Latino. Have I been stopped more than the average young black person? I don’t know, but I look like a zillion other people on the street. And we’re all just trying to live our lives.

As to why he decided to testify: [More...]

The height of Republican hypocrisy is the phony outrage of Congressman Darryl Issa at the DEA's money laundering stings, particularly in Mexico. These stings are as old as the hills and well-publicized. (Issa's absurd letter to AG Eric Holder is here.) Even Fox News says he's missed the beat on this one.

The Justice Department and the State Department acknowledged the laundering this week. The DEA issued this statement earlier this week confirming it.

Why wouldn't they? DEA, the IRS and Customs (now ICE) have been engaging in undercover laundering of proceeds for drug traffickers at least since Ronald Reagan was President. Republicans crowed about the stings then. [More...]

The DEA, our global holy warriors, have announced the opening of a new office is Sofia, Bulgaria. The Bulgarian Embassy notice is here.

The DEA has been training Bulgarian law enforcement officials from the General Directorate for Combating Organized Crime (GDBOP) since 2008. DEA Regional Director of DEA, Mark Destito is in Bulgaria today for meetings. [More...]

Radley Balko has a new feature article at Huffington Post on law enforcment's misplaced priorities in the War on Drugs.

"The availability of huge federal anti-drug grants incentivizes departments to pay for SWAT team armor and weapons, and leads our police officers to abandon real crime victims in our communities in favor of ratcheting up their drug arrest stats," said former Los Angeles Deputy Chief of Police Stephen Downing. Downing is now a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an advocacy group of cops and prosecutors who are calling for an end to the drug war.

"When our cops are focused on executing large-scale, constitutionally questionable raids at the slightest hint that a small-time pot dealer is at work, real police work preventing and investigating crimes like robberies and rapes falls by the wayside," Downing said.

[More...]

There were at least 14 DEA raids on medical marijuana dispensaries in Washington state today. More than a dozen people were arrested.

Tonight, DEA Special Agent in Charge Matthew Barnes issued this statement:

"The DEA will exercise its investigative authority to pursue criminal actions for any violation of federal law, when warranted. This includes investigating organizations or individuals that grow, manufacture or distribute any illegal drug to include marijuana, and those who rent or maintain a property to facilitate drug trafficking."