LibertyVoter.Org

By Eugene Jarecki, AlterNet

Whatever else Tuesday may bring, it looks poised to be a banner day for those of us who have long sought to end America's failed war on drugs. And if the stars and voter participation align, it may indeed prove a tipping point in the long fight toward a possible landslide for Drug War Reform.

Citizens across the country will vote Tuesday on more initiatives to reform drug control policy than at any other time in American history. This is a coup in itself, of course, reflecting how much the movement to end the Drug War has gained ground in recent years. But to seal the deal and truly begin to close this harrowingly destructive chapter in American history, voters need to understand how the war has failed for over forty years to curb rates of drug addiction or abuse while instead simply shattering families, tearing communities apart, and wasting taxpayer dollars, all the while sowing popular distrust in law enforcement and filling the nation's jails with predominantly poor, minority, and nonviolent inmates. Above all, the public needs to understand how damaging the war has been not only to other families and communities but to their own.

The good news is, increasingly, they do. After crying in the wilderness for decades, long-time advocates for Drug War reform are finally seeing the tide of public opinion turn: a Pew report from earlier this year found that 67% of the country thought the government should focus on providing treatment to users of hard drugs, while only 26% thought the focus should be on criminal prosecution. That's a sea change from just a few years ago, when “lock 'em up and throw away the key” was how most people thought the country should approach its drug problem. Tuesday, we face an opportunity to begin codifying that shift of public opinion into law, with more than seven states and seventeen municipalities deciding on crucial legislation related to marijuana legalization and criminal justice reform.

If even a handful of initiatives in …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Luke Brinker, Salon

Last weekend witnessed yet another fierce debate over Islam on HBO’s “Real Time With Bill Maher,” just four weeks after the comedian tussled with actor Ben Affleck on the issue. This time, Maher’s interlocutor was the Italian-Palestinian journalist Rula Jebreal, who took Maher to task for what she called his “offensive” criticism of the religion.

The impetus for the latest debate was the controversy surrounding Maher’s upcoming commencement address at the University of California-Berkeley, where a group of students circulated a petition protesting the choice of Maher, whom the petition described as a “blatant bigot and racist.” The university ultimately stood by its decision to bring Maher to campus, and during his Friday show, he assailed the attempt to cancel his address as an illiberal effort to shut down free speech. Similarly, Maher has couched his criticism of Islam in liberal terms, arguing that true liberals have a duty to oppose Islamic “illiberalism.”

Jebreal would have none of it, objecting to Maher’s framing of the Berkeley controversy as a free speech issue and castigating his criticism of Islam as grossly simplistic. Now, in an interview with Salon, Jebreal sounds off on her “Real Time” appearance, the debate over liberalism and Islam, and whether she’ll ever be back on Maher’s show.

Your “Real Time” appearance came just a few weeks after Maher sparked a firestorm of controversy following his heated debate with Ben Affleck. Did you expect Islam to come up during your appearance on the show?

I was told, actually, that he wanted to discuss the Berkeley thing, and I was told that he wanted to discuss the connection between torture applied by the CIA in prisons like Camp Bucca and the rise of extremism, and also the fact that ISIS is utilizing the same techniques. So I knew that he wanted to discuss that.

I thought that Berkeley would open up the conversation about that issue. So I thought that he wanted to talk about Berkeley, and make it about free speech – and that was …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By David Edwards, Raw Story

The police chief in Racine, Wisconsin has promised an internal review after a bizarre neighborhood dispute ended with a SWAT team killing a family pet.

Resident Kim Polk told WITI that it all began when a neighborhood man’s dog had crapped in her yard on Saturday afternoon.

“His dog proceeded to soil my grass and I asked him you are going to pick that up because I don’t want that sitting on my grass,” Polk recalled.

She said that the man responded by kicking the dog poop into a pile of leaves she was raking, and then threatening her family’s dog with a bow and arrow.

When Polk’s husband went to talk to the man about the confrontation, she said that he came to the door armed.

“He closed the door and came back to the door with a machete in his hand, a very long machete so at that time my husband backed up off the property and I had my daughter call the police,” Polk explained.

Disturbing cell phone video posted to YouTube shows tactical officers taking cover behind an armored vehicle, when a small dog runs out of the suspect’s home. The dog appears to turn and head back to the home after spotting the armored vehicle, but officers quickly fire at least two shots and the dog falls to the ground.

“Oh my God!” a person watching from a nearby home can be heard screaming. “They shot the dog. You f*cking a**holes!”

In a statement to the Racine County Eye, Racine Police Chief Art Howell expressed his regret for the dog’s death.

“On a personal level, I am saddened over the loss of a domestic pet that more than likely, had no malice against anyone,” he said. “During this standoff, the dog owner threatened to use a body armor piercing crossbow to kill officers, and this subject threatened to use his dog as a weapon against officers as well. After several hours of dialogue with crisis negotiators, the barricaded subject ultimately made good on his threat to introduce the dog …read more

Source: ALTERNET

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet

The months leading up to the 2014 midterm election could not be more different than the same period four years ago—when the Tea Party peaked as a wave of older, whiter and wealthier voters turned out while the coalition that elected Barack Obama stayed home.

Whether or not Democrats hold onto their U.S. Senate majority (and the final votes for that might not be tallied until early January if there are senatorial runoffs as many experts expect), what’s clear about this election is that Democrats and progressives have tried to break the old script that says a president’s party always loses badly in a midterm year.

They have done that not just by bombarding the airwaves in battleground states, but also by clogging the online platforms used by anybody political marketing experts think are likely voters. Every successive national election cycle breaks the previous spending record and 2014 is no exception. But what’s different this year is where the messaging has occurred, especially a shift to online media. And the messages themselves are a bit different, in that many are not designed to poll well, but to provoke people to vote.

“They do have more information now,” said Travis N. Ridout, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, which analyzes campaign ad trends. “Part of it is the political parties and outside groups are devoting more to mobilization than they did in the past. They figured out in 2012 that just airing more and more ads in Ohio doesn’t cut it. We know from scientific experiments that you’ve got to work the mobilization side too.” 

In 2010, the Democratic Party largely sat on its hands and expected the coalition that first elected President Barack Obama to show up. It didn’t. Young voters, people from communities of color, and women largely stayed home, disappointed that the federal government didn’t do more to end an economic downturn. Meanwhile, whiter and wealthier Tea Partiers came out and helped the GOP win a U.S. House majority.

Today, there have been deliberate efforts …read more

Source: ALTERNET