Don't miss Ethan Nadelman's The Hospice Raid and the War on Drugs in Alternet. We almost did, but Hamster was on top of it.

Nadelman asks a good question:

"Is the Santa Cruz raid, and more generally the war on drugs, a preview of what lies ahead in the war on terrorism? Is the future one in which increasingly empowered and emboldened federal police agencies intimidate, arrest and even terrorize not just those who pose true threats to security but also those who challenge little more than the moralistic convictions and political prejudices of power holders in the nation's capital? "

By the way, Hamster and Cursor are the two sites we check every day to see what news we've missed. And we always find something.

We reported a while ago on the new Drug Enforcement Administration Museum exibit in D.C. Instapundit today leads us to a powerful, scathing opinion piece on the exhibit by Radley Balko on the Fox News Website called Drugs and Terrorism.

Radley says "the Drug Enforcement Administration has again engaged in a propaganda campaign aimed at likening drug-using Americans to the most notorious financiers of terrorism...It's ... hypocritical. Because it is the actions of the U.S. government in its tedious drug war -- not drug users -- that has supported international terrorists, rained domestic terror down on U.S. citizens and created the black market that proves to be so lucrative for shady international villains."

Go read the whole thing.

According to the New York Times, the Attorney General is not only interfering with the independence of agencies that collect crime statistics and do research on crime, for example, the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the National Institute of Justice, he has imposed a gag order on the bureau's employees. Employees received an e-mail not to speak with the press about the issue.

Former directors of the agencies say that "the agencies, created by Congress, have long been independent of the attorney general and had been allowed to release reports or make research grants without clearance by the attorney general's office."

Employees, former officials of the agencies and legal scholars have said " over the last year and with increasing speed recently, political appointees under Mr. Ashcroft have worked to undermine that independence."

"At stake, they say, is the integrity of statistics about whether crime is increasing or decreasing and the findings of scholars about what causes crime and how to reduce it. "

"One result of this change, the employees say, is that statistical reports and decisions about research grants are now being sent to Ms. Henke and Ms. Daniels and then to the attorney general for clearance before being publicly released. Another result, said the employees, who spoke on the condition of not being named, is that some reports and grants are being delayed for two to three months awaiting clearance. "

One of the Founders of the Bureau of Justice Statistics in 1968, Professor Blumstein, called Ashcroft's changes "the most intrusive effort by the political appointees in the Justice Department to control the shaping and dissemination of statistics since I've been involved."

We agree. We have served on a National Institute of Justice Panel (Technical Working Group for Eyewitness Evidence) and while defense lawyers were far outnumbered by prosecutors and police, the process over a two year period was fair and the input of the defense bar can be seen in the final publication, Eyewitness Evidence: A Guide for Law Enforcement , that is now being used by law enforcement around the country to establish more accurate procedures for interviewing eyewitness to crime.

If Ashcroft and Justice are allowed to censor or delay reports they don't like, no one other than prosecutors and law enforcement is likely to agree to serve on future projects. The researchers, scholars and defense bar will abandon them if they are not independent. There is no financial payment for the work, and it involves a serious time commitment over a year or two period. Why bother if the results can be sat on, or worse, altered?

It would be a shame to see these agencies' work compromised due to one controlling Attorney-General.

According to this puff-piece masquerading as a news profile in Sunday's L.A. Times, John Timoney would make a good police commissioner for the city. He is one of three finalists for the job. It's no secret that our vote goes to his former mentor, William Bratton, who has served as police commissioner of both New York and Boston.

But we'll just report here, you decide.

Titled Timoney Has Made a Career of Cleaning Up Police Messes, the LA Times article quotes Timoney, now in a $250,000 cushy job for the NY security firm headed by former NY cop Bo Dietl, as follows:

"Since he resigned his Philadelphia post a year ago to manage a private-sector New York security firm, "I miss the phone calls at 3 o'clock in the morning," he admitted in an interview last week. " 'Commissioner, we've got a problem--we shot the wrong guy.' I miss being part of the action."

Christopher Krohn, the Mayor of Santa Cruz, CA explains Why I'm Fighting Federal Drug Laws From City Hall in today's New York Times.

"How did I, a mayor of a small town in California, wind up in a tug of war with the Drug Enforcement Agency? This week, I stood in front of Santa Cruz's city hall as a local group that provides medical marijuana went about its weekly task of distributing the drug to the sick and dying."

"My story begins on the morning of Sept. 5 when approximately 30 men, dressed in military fatigues and carrying automatic weapons, descended on a small cooperative farm run by the Wo/Men's Alliance for Medical Marijuana in northern Santa Cruz County, about 65 miles south of San Francisco. They were pulling up organically grown marijuana plants."

Mayor Krohn astutely observes:

"The government is fighting a losing battle. In the states where medical marijuana has been on the ballot, it has received overwhelming approval from voters. Canada and Great Britain recently approved the medical use of marijuana and plan to have the government grow and distribute it. "

"As medical costs skyrocket, medical marijuana is a cost-effective way to treat people with chronic pain. Most of all, making medical marijuana available is an act of common sense and compassion. "

The LA Police Commission has named the three finalists for the position of Top Cop in LA.

We are very pleased that our choice, William Bratton, former Police Commissioner of New York and Boston, is one of the finalists.

"The Police Commission on Thursday named former New York police commissioner William Bratton, Oxnard Police Chief Art Lopez and former Philadelphia police commissioner John Timoney to its short list of choices to be the city's next police chief."

The mayor is expected to choose from the list of three.

As we've been saying for the past month, Bill Bratton is the only one who can reform that corrupt, scandal-ridden department.

Update: More on the three finalists and reaction to their selection is in today's LA Times, free registration required, here and here. For reactions to no "insider" from the LAPD being chosen, go here.

Marcos Daniel Jiménez is the new United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida. He gave his first interview to the Miami Business Review, published here.

The budget for the district is $45 million.

"There are about 225 Assistant U.S. Attorneys and 205 support personnel in a district that sprawls from Key West north to Sebastian and west to Sebring. Another 40 "special" AUSAs employed by a variety of federal agencies, including the SEC and the IRS, report to Jiménez."

"It is one of the three or four biggest federal prosecutor's offices in the nation, and the district is among the busiest. Last year, more federal trials were held in South Florida than anywhere else."

Jimenez discussed how he intends to direct his office's $45 million in annual resources.

"In his view, the unequivocal top priority in South Florida since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is anti-terrorism enforcement....'Fifteen of the 19 hijackers lived here, you don't have to say much more than that,' Jiménez says."

One big increase expected is in the number of money laundering prosecutions. Miami already leads the country in the number of such cases, largely due to drug crimes, but now it will go after terror cases the same way. Jimenez plans to use the new provisions in the Patriot Act to step up the effort.

Jimenez says his office will also continue to be aggressive in prosecuting drug crimes, health care and medicare fraud, guns and violent crimes.

Sounds like defense lawyers will be in big demand in Florida, if anyone's looking for work. Just make sure you don't take your fees in cash, or you'll likely end up being a defendant too.

The San Francisco Chronicle has an editorial today on the recent giveaway of medical marijuana by officials in Santa Cruz. It strongly supports medical marijuana and says the DEA is fighting the wrong war and should give it up.

The Santa Cruz City Council, in a deliberate message of protest to the DEA, will pass out medical marijuana at City Hall.

"City leaders plan to join medical marijuana users at a pot giveaway at City Hall next week. Their goal is to send a message to federal authorities that, in this town, medical marijuana is welcome. "

"The invitation comes one week after agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency arrested the high-profile owners of a pot farm and confiscated 130 plants that had been grown to be used as medicine."

Crime is traditionally a local matter. While the feds and the states both have jurisdiction over drug crimes, it's just plain wrong for the feds to try to trump the will of the state legislature and the citizens of California on the issue of medical marijuana.

The DEA should turn a blind eye or get out of Dodge.

The Bush Administration is proposing moving the Bureau of Alchohol Tobacco and Firearms, now part of the Treasury Department to the Justice Department.

"The proposal to shift ATF to Justice follows President Bush's decision to send two other large Treasury agencies -- the U.S. Customs Service and the Secret Service -- to the proposed Department of Homeland Security."

This would put the ATF, which has jurisdiction over bombing, arson, alcohol, firearms and tobacco offenses, in the same department as other law enforcement agencies like the FBI and DEA.

Last month we reported on a New Jersey case in which the parents of a young man who died of a heroin overdose were indicted for manslaughter--the "runaway grand jury" as we called it acted on its own. The prosecutors had not sought to charge the parents. Here's an update on the case.

Hamster takes us today to Bill Berkowitz's column in Working for Change about the DEA Museum (yes there really is such a thing).

A new exhibit opens today called "Target America: Traffickers, Terrorists & You".

"Beginning September 10 - in time for the one year anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon - the DEA's Arlington, Va.-based Museum & Visitor's Center will present a new exhibit called "Target America: Traffickers, Terrorists & You." The new show will reflect the Bush Administration's recent anti-drug mantra that the "war on terrorism" is inextricably linked to the "war on drugs." "

'The "use drugs/support terrorism" campaign organized by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP, the office of the "Drug Czar"), was unveiled with a $3.5 million ad buy during this past February's Super Bowl."

The DEA's descriibes the new exhibit as tracing "...the historic and contemporary connections between global drug trafficking and terrorism. Starting with the horrific events of September 11, 2001 and moving back in time to the ancient Silk Road, this exhibit…will present the visitor with a global and historical overview of this deadly connection. The visitor will have many opportunities to explore the often-symbiotic relationships that exist between terrorist groups and drug trafficking cartels and the personal impact those connections have on the visitor."

"A recent press release from the California chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws noted that 'Since September 11, when the federal government promised to focus their resources on fighting terrorism, federal agents have raided medical cannabis buyers cooperatives in Los Angeles, Santa Rosa and San Francisco.' "

Berkowitz says "Steph Sherer, the executive director of Americans for Safe Access, which she describes as 'a network of patients, advocates and caregivers who defend patients' access to medical marijuana,' told me that 'There have been more arrests for medical marijuana cultivation and distribution since September 11, than there have been for any acts of terrorism in California.' "

Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project tells Berkowitz, "The new exhibit appears to be a grotesque desecration of the memories of the people who were killed on September 11."

In response to the DEA exhibit, The Marijuana Policy Project has created a Web-only counter-exhibit called "Target America: The DEA and You."

The MPP exhibit "examines the deadly connection between the 'War on Drugs' and terrorism, the often-symbiotic relationship between drug warriors and terrorist drug cartels and the personal impact those relationships have on the average American."

"MPP focuses on the victims of the DEA - AIDS patients deprived of medicine, medical marijuana dispensaries raided and shut down, and stories about innocent people killed by the DEA and other 'Drug War' agencies. Each of the sections contains photos, graphics and extensive documentation. "

Final Merkin comment to Berkowitz: "The public is waking up to the futility and destructiveness of the so-called war on drugs....This exhibit's dishonest, hypocritical attempt to hitch the DEA's wagon to the popular effort against terrorism is a sign of how desperate they've become."

We agree. In light of the absurd raids on California medical marijuana farms, we think the DEA Project should be renamed "DEA Targets Sick and Dying Americans."

For more information about the DEA Museum & Visitor's Center: Phone: (202) 307-3463; Fax: (202) 307-8956; E-Mail: museumstaff@deamuseum.org; Web site: www.deamuseum.org.

For more on America's drug wars, see:

Marijuana Policy Project - www.mpp.org
Drug Policy Alliance - www.drugpolicy.org
Cannabis.com - www.cannabis.com
National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (California) - www.canorml.org
Americans for Safe Access - www.safeaccessnow.org
Californians for Compassionate Use - www.marijuana.org
DrugWar.com - www.drugwar.com