We’ve just barely passed the halfway point of Obama’s first hundred days, and his presidency still has that new administration smell. One side effect of this is the fact that a host of old issues have become newsworthy again. Last week, a trial balloon went up in the discussion of integrating gays fully into the military; on Monday, the administration revisited the Bush administration’s de facto ban on stem cell research; and with the naming of Seattle police Chief Gil Kerlikowske as his new Drug Czar (as well as demoting the post from cabinet level, where it’d been during the Bush years), the President has signaled his willingness to bring some fresh thinking to drug policy.
The New York Times notes, and many who are advocating for sensible drug policy hope, that this may mean a shift in emphasis from arrests and prosecution to treating the drug issue, and all the baggage appended to it, as a public health crisis. While some concern has been voiced about the choice of Kerlikowske–those in favor of legalization, or at least of liberalization, are a bit wary of a cop in the post–a closer examination of his record could be cause for relief rather than alarm. Kerlikowske gave a wide berth to his officers in Seattle, leaving treatment and education programs as options for drug offenders rather than just prison time. In a further wrinkle (one that, I expect, the GOP will make no small use of), the soon-to-be-Czar’s experience with drugs is close to home; the fact that his stepson has a history with substance abuse might well lead to a more nuanced and thoughtful approach to this issue than we’ve seen up to this point.
Even the mainstream media have chimed in, raising the specter of legalization. They’ve argued that legalization may be the only way to end a “war” that is costly, pointless, and nearly as damaging to the fabric of our society as the scourge it aims to combat. Consider this recent example from an article calling for legalization as a means to stop the War on Drugs:
[A drug-free world] is the kind of promise politicians love to make. It assuages the sense of moral panic that has been the handmaiden of prohibition for a century. It is intended to reassure the parents of teenangers across the world. Yet it is a hugely irresponsible promise, because it cannot be fulfilled.
Whence came this bit of heresy? High Times? The Nation? Try again. The not-exactly-liberal Economist ran this in the leader of a special section on the current state of the War on Drugs. And this is where things get interesting. Continue reading
Emails have circulated over the past couple of years 
Reading Simon Winchester is a bit like listening to a well-traveled friend at a cocktail party who’s always just come back from somewhere, brimming with interesting stories about people you would otherwise never have heard of. His previous books, among them the bestsellers The Professor and the Madman, Krakatoa, A Crack at the Edge of the World, and The Meaning of Everything, have shown the author’s unerring knack of unearthing subjects you would never have thought to explore and making page-turners of them. Before I discovered Winchester (courtesy of Professor some years back), I would never have given much thought to the Oxford English Dictionary, and Krakatoa would only have been a footnote in life that brought no small amount of amusement to my fifth-grade teachers.
Paging Mr. Tolkien: I have to admit that before the total collapse of Iceland’s banking industry–and with it, very nearly, the collapse of the country itself–I thought that their principle export was Björk. How wrong I turned out to be.
It’s National Grammar Day! Okay, there went the last vestige of my excitement. Not that there’s anything wrong with grammar, in and of itself. We need a few rules so that the words we set down on the screen, the page, or pretty much anywhere else will make sense to someone besides ourselves. Or are grammar rules too much to put up with? Let’s try to somehow get to the bottom of this.
At any time, coming out of anyone’s mouth, it’d be outrageous, even unthinkable. Why, then, has the GOP’s desire for Barack Obama to fail–not at the ballot box, mind you, but as President and Commander in Chief–become not just more hot air from commentator Rush Limbaugh, but a talking point and Conservative shibboleth?
I shouldn’t be surprised that Neil Gaiman’s latest offering, The Graveyard Book, is as good as it is. Many moons ago, when he and Terry Pratchett wrote Good Omens (which I’d also suggest you read), they captured the kids to a “T.” These weren’t a bunch of adults trapped in little bodies, nor were they a bunch of one-dimensional hellions. Nearly twenty years later, Gaiman delivers a book that’s properly “for” kids, though it’d be short-sighted to dismiss it as “just” kiddie lit. Adam Young, meet Nobody (“Bod”) Owens.
Ages ago, one of my college professors told a creative writing class, “Nothing ruins writing like going to college.” And while it’s true that the endless grind of essays and term papers can lead to a stilted, overly academic, view of the writing craft, I think there’s another thing that’s equally destructive: making writing a mysterious, mystifying thing. I bring this up because I’ve seen the topic of finding one’s voice as a writer referred to in sometimes mystical, new-agey terms. Well, enough of that.