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Re: "The war on drugs meets the war on terrorism, hit the dying Americans"

To the Editor of the Columbus Free Press:

Kudos to Valerie Howland for her outstanding column: "The war on drugs meets the war on terrorism, hits the dying Americans" (6-25-05).

I'd like to add that in 1904 Coca-Cola contained cocaine instead of caffeine and sold for 5 cents a bottle. In 1904 the term "drug-related crime" didn't exist. Neither did drug lords, drug cartels or even drug dealers as we know them today.

In 1904 pure pharmaceutical grade Bayer heroin sold for about the same price as Bayer aspirin. And deaths from recreational drugs were very rare. That's because the drugs were of known quality, known purity and known potency--just the opposite of today's black market drugs.

America and the world does not have a drug problem: we have a drug prohibition problem.

Best regards,
Kirk Muse
Mesa, AZ 85208

Judith Miller -- Drum Major for War

Judy, it’s been so many wars since we’ve talked.

Now people are hailing your dedication to the principle of journalistic independence. For many, you will always be the courageous reporter who went to jail. But I’ll always remember what happened when we met under hot lights and you showed your stuff.

Far from today’s headlines, what will endure is your approach to journalism in a time of war. (And in this era, what other time is there?) Long before your current stratospheric fame, you were upholding the media spirit that has made you emblematic of the nation’s press.

Of course there are some who still recall how you pushed stories about Saddam and WMDs onto the front page of the New York Times. And they remember that officials who helped to funnel disinformation into your articles grew fond of going on television to cite them as evidence that the Iraqi regime was a menace to the world.

But you were no overnight sensation. Your type of zeal about war was long apparent to those who cared to look.

Judy, we all know that memory can be foggy. But a transcript can help

Eaten alive by corruption

AUSTIN, Texas -- The stirring tale of Randy "Duke" Cunningham, congressman and bon vivant, becomes more entertaining by the day, and it is far more instructive than another case of a missing white female.

True, Duke Cunningham is merely an obscure Republican from San Diego (Crow Eaten Here: In a recent column, I said Cunningham was in charge of the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, whereas actually he is only a member thereof ... apologies. He is also on the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.) On the other hand, the whole tale is so ... so prototypical, so archetypal, so (even though I keep promising not to use the word) paradigmatic.

Cunningham was a decorated pilot in Vietnam who has oft campaigned on the claim that he is the original model for Top Gun. In 2003, he sold his house in Del Mar, a very upscale town north of San Diego. The buyer was Mitchell Wade, a defense contractor, who paid $1.675 million. Wade later resold the house at a $700,000 loss.

July-August 2005

Don't forget to check out the columns and
dispatches sections for other articles included in the print edition!

Stop CAFTA

CAFTA passes Senate, we need your help to defeat CAFTA in the House of Representatives!

A decade ago, the U.S. Congress traded away our economic future with back-room deals and passed the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Since then over 700,000 jobs have been lost in the U.S. and 8 million more people in Mexico are living in poverty. The proposed Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) will extend this nightmare to 6 more nations.

In the Senate, CAFTA passed in a very close 54-45 vote on June 30th. WE HAVE NOT LOST! This was the closest Senate vote on a trade pact since NAFTA. The bill still has to pass the House, where opposition to CAFTA is much stronger. We have always known that we will have to defeat CAFTA in the House, not the Senate. See: CAFTA information

The FOREFATHERS!

Columbus Dispatch article

To the editor:

According to the Columbus Dispatch (July 1, 2005), the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice has concluded that the Franklin County Board of Elections "did not discriminate when it allocated voting machines" last November. "Too few voting machines, bad data on how many voters were eligible, a sharp increase in voters from the 2000 election and a lengthy ballot in Columbus caused long lines at some polls."

While conceding that the Board of Elections "allocated fewer voting machines overall to 54 predominantly black precincts than it had in 2000," John Tanner concludes in his cover letter that "blacks did not suffer," and that "predominantly white districts averaged 172 voters per machine versus 159 voters per machine in the predominantly black districts." The reason for this is betrayed in his next sentence: "Turnout was nearly 9 percentage points lower in predominantly black districts." Indeed, voter turnout averaged 60% in Bush precincts and 50% in Kerry precincts.

My own studies (Stealing Votes in Columbus, Favoritism

Log Cabin Republicans in Ohio

In the 2004 general election, Ohio was one of several states in which a constitutional amendment prohibiting gay marriage appeared on the ballot. This is widely believed to have resulted in an unprecedented turnout among rural white evangelical Christians, which helped George W. Bush win the presidential election. In Ohio, the proposition was known as “Issue One.”

To investigate the matter, I prepared a table comparing the vote for president with the vote on Issue One, county by county. State wide, Issue One received 61.71% of the vote, whereas Bush, officially, is reputed to have received 50.81% of the vote, a differential of 10.90%. Bush ran 469,567 votes (14.10%) behind the “Yes” votes on Issue One, and Kerry ran 675,705 votes (32.71%) ahead of the “No” votes on Issue One.

Read the entire 15 page document as a PDF

Direct testimony: Presented to Election Assessment Hearing

Direct testimony: Presented to Election Assessment Hearing, Houston, Texas, July 29, 2005

I have investigated the Ohio election results, precinct by precinct, and have found three categories of problems: voter suppression, ballots cast but not counted, and alteration of the vote count.

In the City of Columbus, discriminatory allocation of voting machines led directly to lower turnout in Democratic precincts. Urban Democratic precincts had too few voting machines and long lines; suburban Republican precincts had enough voting machines and short lines; 122 voting machines were not provided to any polling station anywhere. As a result, voter turnout was 60% in Bush precincts, and 50% in Kerry precincts. This wrongly reduced Kerry’s margin of victory in Franklin County by about 17,000 votes.

July 4th Declaration of Impeachment

Veterans GROUP ISSUES "DECLARATION OF IMPEACHMENT" AND ANNOUNCES PETITION TO REMOVE PRESIDENT BUSH St. Louis - A national veterans' organization today issued a "Declaration of Impeachment" and announced it is beginning an online petition to remove President Bush from office for crimes committed during the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Using the same language as the original "Declaration of Independence," Veterans For Peace cited many of the same reasons to remove George Bush that Thomas Jefferson cited to separate from King George of England. And in a modern version of the signing of the Declaration, VFP announced the posting of its online impeachment petition.

"The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny," Jefferson wrote, and then added the famous litany of abuses charged against the king that VFP said is unchanged today:

a.. "He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. b.. He has.deprive(ed) us in many cases, of the

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