Because you’re a nitwit. We established that. Now the question becomes why are you a nitwit.
I suspect it was because you were repeatedly dropped on your head as a baby.
It’s just one more step in the Holy War On Drugs. God forbid our children should be exposed to the demon weed marihuana! You know what that stuff does, don’t you? It makes you play the piano faster and faster until your boyfriend shoots you!
This from the guy who calls our President “shrub” and the attorney general, in this very thread, Asscroft.
I’m not a right winger. I’m not a left winger either. I’m not a moderate or a conservative or a Democrat or a Republican. I’d like to think I’m a reasonable guy who can be persuaded by a reasonable argument given by a reasonable person and, Reeder, in all the threads you’ve started, the only thing you’ve convinced me of is that you drank too much of the Kool-aid.
I just read your post DDG, (whom, incidentally, I’m thrilled to see back) and I’m thinking that in an earlier report I heard today they mentioned that there were four recent incidents, or maybe four individuals, that had recently caused situations in which the police had to be called, all I assume for drug involvement.
I’m in no way advocating what I too perceive to be excessive force here but can we in good conscience say that there wasn’t an understandable reason for extreme suspicion? That police would for no good reason bust in on kids that were, in your words, “minding their own business” I too would find in need of a suspiciously missing explanation.
Still, no matter what, unholstering was completely provocative and indefensable.
I warn you, person that I’m going to keep my eye upon, that saying something like that after 10:00 causes the spew not of the pepper doctor but of the California grape.
Shame! You owe me six dollars and… wipe… 27 cents.
**
Then those four individuals or incidents should be investigated properly, searched discreetly, brought in for questioning, whatever (assuming there was enough evidence to give the law cause to do so).
I certainly stand by your last statement:
And Reeder, really, wasn’t the event in and of itself enough material for a quality rant, without needing to extend it to the evil Bush Administration empire? Do you have a cite that supports that anything Ashcroft has done has actively contributed to this event or events like it?
You are really making the rest of us liberals look very bad.
SANFORD ANNOUNCES GRANTS TO ASSIST
CRIMINAL JUSTICE AGENCIES (May 27, 2003)
So the U.S. Justice Department just supplied Goose creek with a brand spanking new narcotics officer; no doubt to help out in the War on Drugs.
Who’s the head guy at Justice again ?
Perhaps Reeder’s a little over the top here, but he’s not totally out in left field with his assertion that Ashcroft bears some reponsibility for the incident.
And paranoid, delusional rants are yours. Ours, at least, have the virtue of being amusing.
Err, Squink, unless that grant stipulates that the recipients must stage a stormtrooper raid on their local high school, it doesn’t mean jack shit. I’m no fan of Ashcroft (who, in fact, I consider the most dangerously fascistic political figure in the country today), but smearing him with untrue insinuations just makes honest opposition look despicable by association. Smearing him because you see politics as some sort of abstracted sports contest in which the only aim is for “your team” to score vaguely defined points is beneath contempt - and that’s the entire depth of Reeder’s political opinions, as was true of december before him. You do yourself no favors by appearing to speak in the same vein.
Yet more evidence to support my proof that the goddamn War On Drugs is useless. Cops should stop chasing marijuana users and go after the real fuckin’ crooks.
Why the hell is marijuana illegal anyway? Nobody ever dies of it. And don’t come up with some cite about some poor sap getting high and getting in an accident - pot is no worse than booze.
Geez this story makes me fume.
I mean to support my hypothesis.
I swear I’ll get my head on straight someday.
He Who Doesn’t Preview.
I also fail to see why the police are so concerned. Kid has a bowl on the weekend. Kid sees pretty colors. Kid falls asleep.
Not only do I loathe the US’ “War On Drugs”, I loathe the black-and-white, “any and all illegal substances are the product of satan” propoganda. Sure, smoking weed isn’t going to do anything particularly healthy for you. But taking it is about on the danger level of taking alchohol. Arguably less.
Not anything to charge into schools with loaded weapons over.
That’s true. It’s not like these kids are hurting each other by taking drugs. And police go in there and point guns at them. I think I’m going to be sick.
You give the boys new toys, and they’re going to play with them. Do you deny that the incident was likely the result of Ashcroft’s intensified war on drugs simply because you think that Reeder’s an asshole ? I don’t pretend to know why he brought up Ashcroft in the OP, but denying a connection between extremist federal drug policies, and extremist tactics by federally funded anti-drug cops is absurd. You might as easily claim that the US bears no responsibility for the deaths of Iraqi citizens because GW didn’t personally order every death.
Responsibility always lies with the higher ups.
I never said anything so broad. What I said, specifically, was that mere funding (which you posted about) is not cause and effect. Reeder brought Ashcroft into it not because he’s in any way directly responsible (he didn’t order the raid, and if “Responsibility always lies with the higher ups”, then surely it lies with the principal and whichever police official actual caused this to come into motion), but because Ashcroft is a Republican, and Reeder thinks that disparaging Republicans is the highest moral good, for which all other principles may be sacrificed.
Do I think that Ashcroft is a scary statist fucker? Do I think the “War on Drugs” is a farce? Do I think that there are plenty of police officers out there who regard it as their right to threaten violence against people? I think all these things, but to claim that Ashcroft caused the particular fuckup in question denies the responsibility actually borne by the people who actually caused it.
No, I’m pretty sure that Ashcroft is evil, that his position and attitude has had an effect on what the local good old boys think they can get away with, and that this was a bad thing. Ask me to represent someone and watch the men with guns face some serious questions about what the fuck they thought they were doing. There would even be extended periods of sarcasm during the examination.
Somehow, despite the fact that I agree with him on a lot of points, this doesn’t detract from my conviction that Reeder is an asshole.
I hate Ashcroft as much as the next guy, but it is a bit much to suggest he’s responsible for the actions of local police departments. If this was DEA agents, maybe you’d have a point.
So leaving Ashcroft out of it, let’s just say this incident was absolutely ridiculous. I’m glad people have gotten to see this example of outrageous police behaviour. The fact that this happened in the search for marijuana makes it all the more ridiculous. Have cops really bought into their own lies about the “dangers” of pot, to the extent they can even voice the rationalization that this was for the protection of the kids?
Seriously…what the hell is happening in our society?
Now, I’m fast approaching 32, but I’m not so old I don’t remember what high school was like, and some of the incredibly shady things that went on even in my upper-middle-class suburban HS outside Chicago, but if EVER I saw a bunch of cops storming the place with drawn guns and K9 units, yelling at people to hit the floor and cuffing people when they don’t get down fast enough…well…I’ll be damned if I can tell you how I’d have reacted, but I can promise you I’d have needed a new pair of jeans when it was over.
I don’t agree with the War on Drugs, I think marijuana should be legalized. I DO NOT think drugs belong in schools, and that schools should make every effort possible to eliminate drugs or drug sales at least on their premises.
Search their bags as they come in, if you must. I can remember a couple of the school assemblies like Spavined Gelding mentioned where we’d be in the gym while they swept with dogs. Fine, in the interest of drug-free schools, I can live with that once in a while. (Though personally I think it would be far more beneficial for the student-faculty relationships if the faculty weren’t forced to play fucking babysitters and/or police personnel and were allowed to gain students trust so they could, oh, I don’t know…teach and maybe make the kids WANT to learn instead of sell/do drugs? Sorry, another rant, I digress.)
But you’ve got to draw the line somewhere, don’t you? Isn’t raiding a high school like it was a friggin CRACKHOUSE a bit much?
It just makes me go 
At what point does either our society, our government or both realize just how incredibly out of control the War on Drugs is getting? At what point does someone with the ability to DO something about it realize how completely fucked up our schools are becoming?
Or I could just be incredibly out of touch, and this all seems perfectly normal to alot of people. I’m honestly not sure anymore. Is this seriously the direction our society is headed in?
I mean, I’ve become very cynical in the last 10 years or so, but that still made me get up and grab the hubby to make him read it too.
His reaction was that searches are fine, drugs in school are bad, but if the cops ever came into his kid’s Texas school with guns drawn on people’s kids like that, well…someone’s politcal head would be on a platter by morn.
I don’t know, the whole incident just seems so…1984ish. I can’t imagine trying to learn in an environment where that could happen at any time. It’d be like going to school in a police state.
Could you , for instance, imagine the companies you work for starting to allow this kind of thing where drugs are suspected in the workplace?
It makes me feel…really oogy. 
Doesn’t surprise me. This is the next logical step, after no-knock warrantless searches.
Lieu: Yeah, I too had the feeling, reading the CNN.com article, that there were pieces missing. My guess is that it was some kind of really major drug ring (even if it was just marijuana, which I think is taken more seriously by American public school authorities than the NORML folks would like to believe), centered around the high school, hence the guns and the haste. “Gonna make us a real big drug bust, gonna look like heroes, uh-huh…”
I also thought it was very…interesting…that apparently all the druggies whose bookbags the dogs picked were tipped off ahead of time. What are the odds that 12 teenage potheads would all be out of supplies on the very same morning that the cops staged a raid?