February 06, 2006
A co-blogger recently decided that he is basically pessimistic about the ability of political elites or the American populace to make basic empathetic and long-term decisions about war. I asked him whether he was any more optimistic about their abilities to make decisions about domestic policy-- e.g., immigration, or the prohibition of basically harmless drugs.
In that vein, Jim Leitzel offers four explanations for why the prohibition on the drug trade in America doesn't seem to be going any place. Two of his reasons-- the tyranny of the status quo and the impossibility of imagining what it would mean to not-totally-ban cocaine-- ring particularly strong bells with me. Interestingly, both would be fixed if we devolved basic drug policy to the states. We don't, of course.
Oh, if only the founders had had the sense to instantiate a basic rule of federalism into the constitution . . .
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I suppose it is obvious without my saying so that the pace of blogging here has suffered in the past few weeks. Several papers, two jobs, the law journal slating process, and a few other scholastic and non-scholastic distractions are communally to blame. Indeed, things have gotten sufficiently busy that I have watched only one Netflix DVD in nearly three weeks! (Which brings to my mind Richard Posner's lament that the one thing he would change about law school would be to watch fewer movies.)
Of course, the other factor is that I basically don't blog in class any more.
UPDATE: Oh, right, and now that I could be catching up on my Buffy viewing while cooking a sort of streamlined Jumabalaya, I am instead watching Attorney General Gonzales's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee.
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