perfidy

If we are going to have laws against drugs, fine, I can cope with that. I haven't done anything except alcohol in years and years. My problem, like Johno's, is with other laws being used in the drug wars. If someone is carrying, bust them for possession - its already illegal. If someone is selling, bust them for that. Prohibition, for all its faults, stuck mostly to stopping people from drinking. There was not the vast expansion of police powers that we have seen in thirty years of the war on drugs. 

The RAVE act infringes on our right to assemble peaceably. The RICO statutes have been used (quite often) to infringe on our fourth amendment rights. Civil forfeiture is based on the ridiculous premise that property used in the commission of a crime, or even suspected of such, is somehow "guilty". Never mind that only people can be guilty, and that the constitution says that we cannot be deprived of our property without due process of law. 

I have not yet read enough to know for certain that the Patriot II act is bad or not - I've heard people come down on both sides. But there is no question that RAVE act and RICO statute provisions are regularly abused, most noticeably by federal law enforcement agencies. And these abuses are regularly given the high sign by our courts. 

Why are federal agencies busting raves attended by a couple hundred (at most) teenagers and college students? And bong manufacturers? And doctors? And people like Zippy? Because they're easy, and any bureaucracy wants to expand its power. These are matters for state and local police, not federal agents equipped and trained like military units. The FBI is the Federal Bureau of Investigation, not the FB of Let's pick on some teenagers or shoot some people and then burn the building down to conceal the evidence of our fuckup.