Party of the police state?

Okay, that's probably as much hyperbole as I think I can post on my blog on a Sunday, but Dale Amon at Samizdata.net does have a point about Sensenbrenner's magnificently stupid proposed drug wars law HR 1528, otherwise known as Defending America's Most Vulnerable: Safe Access to Drug Treatment and Child Protection Act of 2005.

It's wrapped up in the same cloak of "protect our country's babies" that the far left uses when it wants to add another layer of clothing to the nanny state -- such as anti-smoking bills or dietary restrictions at schools, but it's equally idiotic, in that it would be effectively unenforceable in a free country, and wholly unconstitutional.

Yeah, it claims it protects kids from drug traffickers, and it's really another one of those pointless gambits in the eternal war on drugs, where one side presents itself as the righteous moral beacon and the other side presents itself as the same damned moral beacon, but, in truth, they're all anal apertures getting sanctimonious on our tax dollars.

Dealing drugs, doing drugs in front of impressionable kiddies is morally reprehensible. Personally, I'd like to see it all stop, especially after having read the New Scientist article I linked in an earlier post. Nevertheless, if Sensenbrenner and his pals really think that it will stop by throwing everybody in jail who ever knew there was a pot party next door, Sensie's been smoking some of that, too.

How does he imagine the courts and the cops will prove that every case of somebody hearing or seeing something party-like was a serious case for which to call cops? If I say "I gotta get me & my kids some of that weed," does anybody outside that crazy old lady with no sense of humor who comes to the auctioins think I'm (a) going to rush out & have children, and (b) screw up my lungs worse than they already are by introducing some tarry crap to the alveoli? And, how do I know my neighbors aren't equally inclined to joke? If, by some freak occurrence, one of my neighbors or friends' teens is a closet user, and I hear a joke about it from him, does that place me in jail if I don't report it? Doubtful.

Look, I'm no fan of drug use. I'm nuts enough without chemical intervention. But then, it looks as though so is Sensenbrenner -- maybe even more nuts, if he thinks this is how to keep kids safe.