Bill Quigley, a Hurricane Katrina survivor, is the associate director of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. At Common Dreams, he writes how
reefer madness is continuing as 27-year-old Corey Ladd gets a 20-year sentence for possessing a half-ounce of marijuana:
| While Colorado and Washington have de-criminalized recreational use of marijuana and twenty states allow use for medical purposes, a Louisiana man was sentenced to twenty years in prison in New Orleans criminal court for possessing 15 grams, .529 of an ounce, of marijuana.
Corey Ladd, 27, had prior drug convictions and was sentenced September 4, 2013 as a “multiple offender to 20 years hard labor at the Department of Corrections.”
Bill Quigley
Nationwide, the latest numbers from the FBI report that over 762,000 arrests per year are for marijuana, almost exactly half of all drug arrests.
Even though blacks and whites use marijuana at similar rates, black people are 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for possession of marijuana than white people.
For example, Louisiana arrests about 13,000 people per year for marijuana, 60% of them African Americans. Over 84 percent were for possession only. While Louisiana’s population is 32 percent black, 60 percent of arrests for marijuana are African American making it the 9th most discriminatory state nationwide. In Tangipahoa Parish, blacks are 11.8 times more likely to be arrested for marijuana than whites and in St. Landry Parish the rate of black arrests for marijuana is 10.7 times as likely as whites, landing both parishes in the worst 15 in the country.
In Louisiana, a person can get up to six months in jail for first marijuana conviction, up to five years in prison for the second conviction and up to twenty years in prison for the third. In fact, the Louisiana Supreme Court recently overturned a sentence of five years as too lenient for a fourth possession of marijuana and ordered the person sentenced to at least 13 years. [...]
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Blast from the Past. At Daily Kos on this date in 2003—Bush begs at "irrelevant" UN:
How irrelevant is an organization if you go before it and grovel?
Bush spoke at the United Nations today. Of course he didn't apologize for the mess he created. Of course he didn't apologize for the middle finger he gave the world body. Of course he didn't apologize for lying to get his war on.
| "The regime of Saddam Hussein cultivated ties to terror while it built weapons of mass destruction. It used those weapons in acts of mass murder, and refused to account for them when confronted by the world," Bush said. |
What's funny is he trots out these same tired old lines, knowing darn well everyone knows they are lies and exaggerations.
Ties to terror? Weapons of mass destruction? This has all been disproven time and time again, and the diplomats at the UN aren't idiots. They know what the real evidence shows. They know that Blair is under intense pressure in the UK for his lies. They know the US public is abandoning Bush in droves.
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Tweet of the Day:
This dog playing in a pile of leaves will make you realize you've never actually experienced real joy
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— @Gawker
On
today's Kagro in the Morning show,
Greg Dworkin rounded up Samantha Powers at the UN, Syria, Germany's lessons for US conservatives, and Kenya, plus shutdown strategery, GOP governors and Medicaid expansion,
WaPo's Fred Hiatt counseling patience (and a public health approach) on guns, and Sarah Binder on the hurdles facing Ted's Cruz-sade. We looked at Binder's road map, explained where events may deviate, and where others took wrong turns reading it. Jonathan Capehart demonstrates GOP lunacy in four examples.
We Won points me to
Ole Texan's "The Rise and Fall of ALEC Nation," giving us a chance to catch up on their chicanery.
High Impact Posts. Top Comments.
