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"After twenty years on the bench, I have concluded that federal drug laws are a disaster. It is time to get the government out of drug enforcement." Judge Whitman Knapp
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9/26/95 Nashville, TN, The Tennessean. Joining more than 60 other Federal judges, U.S. District Judge Thomas Wiseman spoke up in opposition to this country's "war on drugs" in an interview with The Tennessean. Judge Wiseman said that "We've spent $100 billion on the war on drugs and we're losing it." Wiseman recommends that the U.S. should legalize drugs. That, he says, is the only real way to win the war. "If you take the profit out of it, nobody will be pushing it. Wiseman, a 17 year veteran of the federal bench, said that when President Bush escalated the war on drugs in 1989 [Omnibus Crime Bill, Asset Forfeiture, DARE educational programs, Partnership for a Drug Free (sic) America, Mandatory minimum prison sentences, etc....-ed.], the country not only lost the battle, but also, "We've just about lost a generation of young people," he told The Tennessean.
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Federal Judge Harold Greene, of Washington, ruled that important elements of the mandatory sentencing laws for drug offenders were unconstitutional.
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Federal Judge Richard Neville, of Chicago; March 1996 he told USA Today, "the markup on illegal drugs and their enormous profits to sellers create ten replacements for every offender thrown in prison. No matter how many we put in jail, that isn't going to change."
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U.S. Magistrate Peter Nimkoff of Miami resigned from the bench due to the relentless erosion of rights and the governmental abuses which he daily confronted. In a press conference in 1986 he said, "There are two constitutions - one for criminal cases generally and another for drug cases," which, "invites police officers to behave like criminals. And they do." The Miami Herald did not cover this resignation or the press conference.
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Judge James Paine of Florida
Federal Judge Richard Posner, told USA Today, "It is nonsense that we should be devoting so many law-enforcement resources to marijuana. I am skeptical of a society that is so tolerant of alcohol and cigarettes should come down so hard on marijuana use and send people to prison for life without parole... Prison terms in America have become appallingly long, especially for conduct that, arguable, should not be criminal at all . . . Only decriminalization is a sure route to a lower crime rate . . ."
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Federal Judge George Pratt of the 2nd Circuit said of police searches in the Buffalo, N.Y. airport, "It appears that they have sacrificed the Fourth Amendment by detaining 590 innocent people in order to arrest 10 who are not - all in the name of the 'war on drugs.' When, pray tell, will it end? Where are we going?" (To Reason Magazine, February 1994)
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Judge Robert W. Sweet, District Judge in New York City; served as an Assistant US Attorney and as Deputy Mayor of New York City under John Lindsay; a graduate of Yale and of Yale Law School. "Congress should end the criminalization of marijuana, which is now widely acknowledged to be without deleterious effect. That reform alone would take 450,000 arrests out of the system." [Editors Note: Actually, nearly 750,000 were arrested for Cannabis in 2001, but who's counting.]
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US District Judge Vaughn Walker, of San Francisco contends that decriminalization is the key to solving our nation's current drug problem.
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Federal Judge Jack Weinstein, of Brooklyn, has refused to take drug cases because he opposes mandatory minimum sentences. He said that he had a, "sense of depression about much of the cruelty I have been party to in connection with the war on drugs."
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US District Judge Thomas Wiseman, quoted in The Tennessean, "We've just about lost a generation of young people. We're building new prison beds at the rate of about 1000 a week and we're still overcrowded... We've spent $100 billion on the war on drugs and we're losing it." [Editors Note: The U.S. has spent well over a TRILLION dollars on the War on Drugs, but who's counting. Actually, at this point we're nearly spending $100 Billion EACH YEAR.]
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More Quotes
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."
- Margaret Mead
"The last struggles of a great superstition are very frequently the worst."
- Andrew Dickson White
"The only thing new in the world is the history you do not know"
- President Harry Truman
"Formerly we suffered from crimes; now we suffer from laws."
- Publius Cornelius Tacitus
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, (i.e., the "business cycle") the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."
- Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States 1801-1809
The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits.
- Albert Einstein
"No one is as hopelessly enslaved as the person who thinks he is free."
- Geothe
"Oh, my countrymen!
What will our children say,
when they read the history of these times?
Should they find we tamely gave away without one noble struggle,
the most invaluable of earthly blessings?
As they drag the galling chain, will they not execrate us?
If we have any respect for things sacred;
any regard to the dearest treasures on earth;
if we have one tender sentiment for posterity;
if we would not be despised by the whole world -
let us in the most open, solemn manner, and with determined fortitude, swear we will die, if we cannot live free men!"
- Josiah Quincy, Jr., 1788 Boston Gazette
"When the government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny."
- Thomas Jefferson
"In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is wrong thing, but the worst thing you can do is nothing at all."
- Anonymous
[Note: This was spoken in 1839]
"Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers; but if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert, but that I never deserted her. I know that the great volcano at Washington, aroused and directed by the evil spirit that reigns there, is belching forth the lava of political corruption in a current broad and deep, which is sweeping with frightful velocity over the whole length and breadth of the land, bidding fair to leave unscathed no green spot or living thing; while on its bosom are riding, like demons on the waves of hell, the imps of that evil spirit, and fiendishly taunting all those who dare resist its destroying course with the hopelessness of their effort; and, knowing this, I cannot deny that all may be swept away. Broken by it I, too, may be; bow to it I never will.
The probability that we may fall in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just; it shall not deter me. If ever I feel the soul within me elevate and expand to those dimensions not wholly unworthy of its almighty Architect, it is when I contemplate the cause of my country deserted by all the world beside, and I standing up boldly and alone, and hurling defiance at her victorious oppressors. Here, without contemplating consequences, before high heaven and in the face of the world, I swear eternal fidelity to the just cause, as I deem it, of the land of my life, my liberty, and my love.
And who that thinks with me will not fearlessly adopt the oath that I take? Let none falter who thinks he is right, and we may succeed. But if, after all, we shall fail, be it so. We still shall have the proud consolation of saying to our consciences, and to the departed shade of our country's freedom, that the cause approved of our judgment, and adored of our hearts, in disaster, in chains, in torture, in death, we never faltered in defending."
- President Abraham Lincoln,
Speech, Springfield, Illinois, Dec 20, 1839. I, 137, in Archer H. Shaw, The Lincoln Encyclopedia (New York: Macmillan, 1950), p. 64. Full quote from Project Gutenberg
Quotes Of the Founding Fathers :
For what avail the plough or sail,
Or land or life, if freedom fail?
~Ralph Waldo Emerson~
We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.
A free race cannot be born of slave mothers.
~Margaret Sanger~
Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!
~Patrick Henry~
Understanding unity helps to solve humanity's biggest challenges. There is no such thing as an isolated problem. By injuring any part of the world's system, you injure yourself. There is no such thing as a win/lose situation. Think of life on this planet in terms of systems and not detached elements. Broaden your field... of vision and assimilate the knowledge you have. See that the environment does not belong to any single country to exploit and then disregard.
Za Rinpoche
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen."
- Samuel Adams
"If ever time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin."
- Samuel Adams
"Every step we take towards making the State our Caretaker of our lives, by that much we move toward making the State our Master."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
"They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."
- Benjamin Franklin
"I have lived, Sir, a long time, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth--that God Governs the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?"
- Benjamin Franklin
"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!"
- Benjamin Franklin
"Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature."
- Benjamin Franklin
"Man will ultimately be governed by God or by tyrants."
- Benjamin Franklin
"Now more than ever before, the people are responsible for the character of their Congress. If that body be ignorant, reckless and corrupt, it is because the people tolerate ignorance, recklessness and corruption. If it be intelligent, brave and pure, it is because the people demand these high qualities to represent them in the national legislature.... If the next centennial does not find us a great nation ... it will be because those who represent the enterprise, the culture, and the morality of the nation do not aid in controlling the political forces."
- James Garfield,
the twentieth president of the United States, 1877
"The liberties of a people never were, nor ever will be, secure, when the transactions of their rulers may be concealed from them."
- Patrick Henry, American colonial revolutionary
"The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government -- lest it come to dominate our lives and interests."
- Patrick Henry
"It is when people forget God that tyrants forge their chains."
- Patrick Henry
"Bad men cannot make good citizens. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience are incompatible with freedom."
- Patrick Henry
"History, in general, only informs us what bad government is."
- Thomas Jefferson (1807)
"The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers."
- Thomas Jefferson
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves, (A)nd if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power."
- Thomas Jefferson
"I never ... believed there was one code of morality for a public and another for a private man."
- Thomas Jefferson,
In a letter to Don Valentine de Feronda, 1809
"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever."
- Thomas Jefferson
"We have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us, and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us."
- Abraham Lincoln's 1863 Thanksgiving Proclamation
"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."
- Abraham Lincoln
"I have always thought that all men should be free; but if any should be slaves, it should first be those who desire it for themselves, and secondly those who desire it for others. Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on them personally."
- Abraham Lincoln
"We may congratulate ourselves that this cruel war [civil war] is nearing its end. It has cost a vast amount of treasure and blood ... It has indeed been a trying hour for the Republic; but I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As a result of war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless."
- President Abraham Lincoln
The passage appears in a letter from Lincoln to Col. William F. Elkins, Nov. 21, 1864, Hertz II, 954, in Archer H. Shaw, The Lincoln Encyclopedia (New York: Macmillan, 1950), p. 40
(Note: There is a web site that claims this is not a valid quote, so I looked it up myself - it is valid)
"The money powers prey upon the nation in times of peace and conspire against it in times of adversity. The banking powers are more despotic than a monarchy, more insolent than autocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy. They denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw light upon their crimes. I have two great enemies, the Southern Army in front of me and the bankers in the rear. Of the two, the one at my rear is my greatest foe."
- Abraham Lincoln
"We the People are the rightful masters of both Congress and the Courts--not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution."
- Abraham Lincoln
"Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power."
- Abraham Lincoln
"It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from its government."
- Thomas Paine
"The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Where, some say, is the king of America? I'll tell you, friend, He reigns above."
- Thomas Paine
"Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants."
- William Penn
"I used to say that Politics is the second oldest profession [prostitution being the oldest], but I have come to realize that it bears a gross similarity to the first."
- Ronald Reagan
"Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does NOT mean to stand by the President or any other public official save exactly to the degree in which he himself stands by the country. It is patriotic to support him insofar as he efficiently serves the country. It is unpatriotic not to oppose him to the exact extent that by inefficiency or otherwise he fails in his duty to stand by the country."
- Theodore Roosevelt
"If a republican government fails to secure public prosperity and happiness, it must be because the citizens neglect the divine commands, and elect bad men to make and administer the laws."
- Noah Webster
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