<div>Roger et. al.</div>
<div> </div>
<div>Well, of course in many cases our justice system does respect the rights of the accused, but sometimes not sufficiently. Certainly a better system of legal representation for the accused when they cannot afford the high costs of attorneys is critical. It is one reason the prison population is slanted toward the poor, among many. The well off get the best representation. The poor are lucky to receive a good defense in court. Even in some death penalty cases in the USA there has been a weak legal defense from court appointed attorneys, offered as a reason for appeals.
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<div>Even if we discover the confession in the Jon Benet case is false, there is no doubt that the media sometimes approaches a suspect as though they are guilty, with coverage that can ruin an innocent person's life, such as what happened to Richard Jewel, the man falsely fingered for the Atlanta Olympic bombing in 1996. The media has for years implicated Jon Benet's parents in her death, when the case is still open. The only reason this case is in the media so prominently is because the image of Jon Benet sells advertising with the coverage.
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<div>Of course it is well known that a high percentage of the prison population is related to controlled substance crime and the so called "War On Drugs," which many believe is a tremendous waste of the public tax dollar given the limited success, high costs of incarceration, the burden on the courts and law enforcement, the erosion of civil rights to pursue the " war," while targeting the poor, often minorities, disproportionately. Conservative thinkers such as William F. Buckley Jr. and Milton Friedman have opposed the "War On Drugs."
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<div>I heard Nobel laureate Milton Friedman being interviewed recently, and he made the obvious point that any of the arguments in favor of the criminal approach to stopping drug use apply with even greater force when examining the damage from tobacco and alcohol use, which are connected to many times the number deaths from medical causes and many times the amount of violent crime than all illegal drug use combined.
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<div>It's quite amazing to observe the blatant contradictions between the tolerance for tobacco and alcohol compared to the criminalization of other drugs. The NBA will run commercials claiming the "NBA Says No To Drugs," and the next ad is selling alcohol to a youth market, with NBA basketball watched by a high percentage of underage minors. What is the leading drug related cause of death among minors? Alcohol. Why do we allow use of this dangerous drug to be aggressively promoted among a youth market with multi-million dollar advertising campaigns while our government ostensibly is waging a so called "War On Drugs?"
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<div><a href="http://www.maineparents.net/pdfs/medicalimpact.pdf"><font color="blue" size="2">http://www.maineparents.net/pdfs/medicalimpact.pdf</font></a><font size="2">.</font></div>
<div><font size="2">--------</font></div>
<div><font size="2"></font> </div>
<div><font size="2">Milton Friedman quote below from web link directly under:</font></div>
<div> </div>
<div>2. Filling the prisons. In 1970, 200,000 people were in prison. Today, 1.6 million people are. Eight times as many in absolute number, six times as many relative to the increased population. In addition, 2.3 million are on probation and parole. The attempt to prohibit drugs is by far the major source of the horrendous growth in the prison population.
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<p>There is no light at the end of that tunnel. How many of our citizens do we want to turn into criminals before we yell <q>enough</q>? </p>
<p>3. Disproportionate imprisonment of blacks. Sher Hosonko, at the time Connecticut's director of addiction services, stressed this effect of drug prohibition in a talk given in June 1995: </p>
<p><q>Today in this country, we incarcerate 3,109 black men for every 100,000 of them in the population. Just to give you an idea of the drama in this number, our closest competitor for incarcerating black men is South Africa. South Africa—and this is pre-Nelson Mandela and under an overt public policy of apartheid—incarcerated 729 black men for every 100,000. Figure this out: In the land of the Bill of Rights, we jail over four times as many black men as the only country in the world that advertised a political policy of apartheid.
</q> </p></div>
<div><a href="http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45/337.html">http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45/337.html</a></div>
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<div> </div>
<div>From the National Review on the War On Drugs:</div>
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<div><a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/12feb96/drug.html">http://www.nationalreview.com/12feb96/drug.html</a></div>
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<div> </div>
<div>Ted Moffett</div>
<div><br><br> </div>
<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 8/17/06, <b class="gmail_sendername">lfalen</b> <<a href="mailto:lfalen@turbonet.com">lfalen@turbonet.com</a>> wrote:</span>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"><br><br>Corected version<br>> Ted<br>> I agree that there are a way too many people in prision. There are ways to reduce this level. A stronger effort should be made in the aera's of drug education and rehabilitation, both in schools and in prision. Job training should also be increased to get people out of prision and into productive jobs. There are other ways of dealing with people that are not a threat to society beside locking them up. Keeping someone in prision is extremely expensive. For those who have committed white collar crime, confiscating all their worldly possessions would be a better punishment. Sex offenders and others that pose a physical threat should never be
released.I also abhor the aptitude of guilty until proven innocent.<br>><br>> Roger<br>> -----Original message-----<br>> From: "Ted Moffett" <a href="mailto:starbliss@gmail.com">starbliss@gmail.com</a>
<br>> Date: Wed, 16 Aug 2006 23:00:52 -0700<br>> To: "Saundra Lund" <a href="mailto:sslund@adelphia.net">sslund@adelphia.net</a><br>> Subject: Re: [Vision2020] Suspect arrested in JonBenet Ramsey case<br>
><br>> > Hey Saundra-<br>> ><br>> > Warning.. angry rant to follow, with ruthless logic!<br>> ><br>> > I just read about this development. It might be that again we have an<br>> > example where the media heaped unjustified implications of guilt upon the
<br>> > innocent (Jon Benet's parents) to exploit a tragedy for the sake of the<br>> > profiteering media ratings game.<br>> ><br>> > Oh, but I forget, in the new climate of civil rights in the USA, you are
<br>> > guilty until proven innocent, and anyone who says otherwise is a sympathizer<br>> > with the pity party for the rights of criminals that is a liberal plot to<br>> > undermine the righteous justice that must be carried out.
<br>> ><br>> > And the fact the USA has the highest incarceration rate per capita of any<br>> > democracy on Earth, just means that unlike those other more liberal and<br>> > social democracies, we mean business when it comes to removing evil from our
<br>> > streets, while the USA continues to have high rates of domestic violence,<br>> > gun violence, and murder, higher than most other democracies.<br>> ><br>> > These facts have nothing to do with any failures of our culture to address
<br>> > the glaring inequalities between the rich and poor... To claim this is to be<br>> > marginalized as a left wing extremist. As if a system that demands the need<br>> > to incarcerate such a high percentage of its own people does not have some
<br>> > sort of fundamental flaw in how it is structured? Some lack of humanity and<br>> > compassion, a lack of willingness to address the despair of the desperate?<br>> ><br>> > No, the blame clearly falls upon those poor marginalized people who embody
<br>> > evil, due to their imperfect moral character... Let them rot in jail!<br>> ><br>> > I got my happy fat life, and to hell with them!<br>> ><br>> > Ted Moffett<br>> ><br>> >
<br>> > On 8/16/06, Saundra Lund <<a href="mailto:sslund@adelphia.net">sslund@adelphia.net</a>> wrote:<br>> > ><br>> > > <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/08/16/ramsey.arrest/index.html">http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/08/16/ramsey.arrest/index.html
</a><br>> > ><br>> > > Saundra Lund<br>> > > Moscow, ID<br>> > ><br>> > > The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good people to do<br>> > > nothing.<br>
> > > - Edmund Burke<br>> > ><br>> > ><br>> > > =======================================================<br>> > > List services made available by First Step Internet,<br>> > > serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
<br>> > > <a href="http://www.fsr.net">http://www.fsr.net</a><br>> > > mailto:<a href="mailto:Vision2020@moscow.com">Vision2020@moscow.com</a><br>> > > =======================================================
<br>> > ><br>> ><br>> ><br></blockquote></div><br>