Rush Limbaugh Free. Richard Paey Serving 25 years. For the same charge.

Both were accused of obtaining large quantities of OxyContin, a prescription painkiller, though there was no evidence that either man sold drugs illegally. Richard Paey suffers from back pain so severe he is confinced to a wheelchair, and is serving the third year of his 25-year sentence.

Limbaugh said his legal bills ran into millions of dollars.

It’s been said that a liberal is a conservative that’s been arrested. John Tierney [OpEd NYTimes today] said a 2-year investigation should be enough to turn a conservative into a LIBERTARIAN.

Reminds me of an article I read in the Dallas Morning News a while back…about a judge who gave both a murderer, and a robber parole.
The murderer was a 30~ish year old white man with ‘connections’, and the robber was a 20~ish year old black man.
The murderer killed a prostitute.
The robber, along with an accomplice, stole two dollars from a convenience store when he was 15. Guns weren’t involved.
Both were convicted, both placed on parole.
The robber was caught smoking marijuana once, and was immediately given a life sentence, no possibility of parole for 20 years.
The murderer has numerous parole violations under his belt, such as drugs, and not showing up for parole appointments. His punishment? He now no longer has to see his parole officer, and all he has to do is mail the state a postcard once a year with his current address.

American ‘justice’ at it’s finest

That’s the more accurate statement. Liberals are enforcing the same drug laws. Going Liberal isn’t going to change anything.

The drug laws in this country are all out of whack. They need some serious changes in philosophy. We’re criminalizing people for addiction. That’s like criminalizing mental illness.

Life is unfair and weird.

A Kennedy gets in trouble and allegedly receives preferential treatment, another Democrat cries double standard, and Limbaugh just wants to help a fellow addict.

What ever do you mean John? This is America, where we treat the symptoms, not the root problem. I could start a list;

drugs
guns
poverty
climate change
terrorism

Hmmm. I’m sure I’ve missed something.

Teen promiscuity
Education

I’m sure there are more

Do you listen to System of a Down?
if so, have you ever heard The Prison Song?
Hits the nail right on the head in my opinion

I haven’t heard that song. The lyrics make a point I agree with. I’ll have to look for the song and give it a listen.

One way to get the problem addressed would be to get all the Congressmen and Senators addicted to prescription drugs. Then get their kids and families addicted to prescription drugs, and recreational drugs. When the current system destroys their own families the elected critters might take a look at actually legalizing drugs and decriminalizing drugs.

personally, I don’t think that drugs should be legalized, but that drug users should be decriminalized…does that make any sense?
When society treats drug users with contempt, and pushes them into the jail system, instead of helping them get through their addiction, then you know there’s something seriously wrong with that society.
I just think that drugs should stay illegal, with the ‘punishment’ being mandatory help. Make sense?
Wishful thinking from the stereotypical 'the world can be perfect" teenage view?
Perhaps…it’s still what I’d like to see

About the song, it’s pretty out there, as far as ‘normal’ music goes…have fun with it

It tries to make sense, but I don’t agree that just decriminalizing drugs would actually address the related problems.

Here’s two posts by me that cover my position on the decriminalization vs. legalization issue:
Let those dopers be
legalizing drugs

Legalizing some of the hard drugs like meth gets hairy and wouldn’t be without problems. I’m not actually sure how far I’d really be willing to go with the legalization thing. Would I really be willing to legalize meth? I do know that I’d be willing to legalize the softer drugs and even drugs like heroin. Meth is a completely destructive drug and I don’t know if you can be a clean meth user like you can be a clean and productive heroin user.

Jon Sabastian, at Woodstock, sang: “Hey, hey, pa, my girlfriend’s only three. She’s got her own videophone and she’s takin’ LSD. And now that we’re best friends, she wants to give some to me.” The song ended with, “But what’s the matter, pa, why’re you turning green? Can it be that you can’t live up to your dream?”

Jon wasn’t denouncing our hypocrisy in renouncing our parents’ limits when we’d have to provide some ourselves someday, but rather challenging us as only a friend could to be thoughtful. He left the stage after that song, shouting that we could live up to our dream, that we doing just that right then.
http://www.calebrossiter.com/chapter2b.html

John, does it make me incredibly weak minded that I find myself agreeing with you just after reading those two posts?
:o

They say masturbation makes you weak-minded.

I can’t see how reading 2 of John’s posts could have the same effect…

That makes you open minded.

Be careful expressing those views if you have any plans to work in law enforcement, the FBI, and other similar jobs. It can be impossible to work in those fields if you express the wrong views.

Are you suggesting the US government practices employment discrimination based on how a person THINKS??

That sounds like a whole new thread.

-shifty eyes-

heh, good

For the FBI, yes. Probably for other federal law enforcement agencies too (DEA, etc.).

For the FBI they will do a polygraph test that will cover whether you’ve used illegal drugs or sold illegal drugs. After that they do a background investigation and part of that background investigation would cover political opinions and views. Advocating the legalization of drugs, or even the decriminalization of drugs, would not be a positive finding in the background investigation.

Surely you aren’t surprised about that? Background investigations for positions in the FBI or for getting jobs that require security clearance are well known.

For years the leaders in NORML did not use or sell marijuana. Though they ran an organization dedicated to its legalization, they broke no laws. So you’re saying hard-working law-abiding citizens who have expressed their disagreement with a law may be discriminated against??!

Personally, I think its WRONG to discriminate against such hard-working law-abiding citizens, just because they expressed an opinion about how the government runs. Am I in trouble? Can I still get a JOB?

Don’t give them any ideas John.

It’s not a new idea. We use to treat mental illness by putting the people in jails and other forms of detention centers. We’ve gotten better about that now that we understand mental illness better. So I see hope that we can advance beyond putting people affected by drug addition in jails as criminals. Some day society will look back at how we handle drug addicts in the same way we look back at how society treated mental illness a couple centuries ago.

isn’t drug addiction more of a 100% curable ‘self-imposed’ mental illness, and the people are being put in jail mostly due to the crimes they commit in order to maintain this ‘illness’?