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May 30, 2009
Worst Fears Confirmed: Obama doesn’t get the drug war either.
After months of mixed signals that began when the DEA raided a South Lake Tahoe dispensary in January, the Obama Administration finally admitted it is continuing the disgraceful federal war on medical marijuana in California; apparently using the tortuous logic that it's simply upholding California law banning sales (of alcohol?) to minors. At least that’s the most logical interpretation one can glean from recent events and the Obama Administration's response to a request for clarification from an openly distraught Judge Wu in the Lynch case.To understand the well-documented injustice so openly exposed by the Lynch case, one has only to browse any of several videos. Sadly, the latest federal statement is entirely consistent with several pusillanimous non-decisions the Obama administration has made on other contentious issues: gays in the military, Guantanamo detainees, and support for the failed Bush war on terror, to name but three.
That there can’t be an abrupt break with a failed policy of the past, especially one as thoroughly institutionalized as the drug war, is obvious; however that doesn’t excuse the performance of this administration to date; nor does it auger well for its approach to governance, one that seems based more on political maneuvering than on any clear sense of integrity, reality, or history.
There’s more to leadership than besting one’s political opponents, particularly a crew as inept as today’s GOP; one should also have a firm grasp of the major issues of the day.
Any notion the drug war is a failure we can still afford should have long since been discarded.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at May 30, 2009 06:00 PM