>I'm willing to take my lumps for citing Scalia (you've blown it with me
>Tony). But what is Nathan's position on those Dems who are all-out pro-War?
>Those who favor increased military "aid" to Colombia to "fight" drugs?
Those
>who support more police kicking down the doors of the poor and
>disenfranchised? Those who favor drug-testing as a condition for work? If
>what he says is true, that "roughly one-third to one-half of elected
>Democrats" are against this policy, then where are their voices? What are
>their names? I know the names Clinton, Gore and Lieberman aren't among them
>-- especially Clinton, a man who turned in his own brother to the cops!
>Something tells me that Nathan doesn't find Clinton's behavior fascistic,
or
>at the very least "distressing."
I said specifically that most Democrats were also lousy on these issues - including Clinton - but that the real defenders of civil liberties were the core of left Democrats fighting the insanity of the drug war. Even the left Dems like Jackson who are against decriminalization are also against treating drug addiction as just a prison issue - they fight racist sentencing laws and support treatment as a substitute for prison.
Congresswoman Maxine Waters is an obvious hero opposing both the criminalization of drug abuse - having publicly fought for the recently passed treatment-not-punishment treatment of drug use offenders in California - and in challenging the CIA and the US governments collaboration with the large drug cartels pumping crap into inner city communities. She along with Jesse Jackson spoke out agains the war on drugs at the "Shadow Conventions" this summer.
On aid to Columbia, on March 29 Democrats offered an amendment to suspend part of the $1.7 billion for the armed drug war in Columbia. 186 folks in the House voted for the amendment with most being progressive Dems.
I can go on down the list on opposition to increased sentences for crack versus cocaine and other resistance to the war on drugs, but the basic point remains that there have been significant Dem votes against the prison-industrial complex. Yes, enough moderate Dems have hooked up with GOPers to keep the incarcerations going forward.
But we are starting to see signs of a rollback, the California initiative on treatment and medical legalization being greats signs of progress.
-- Nathan