Yes, FOX NEWS $.02 on the RAVE ACT

[DETROIT]

Thursday, July 25, 2002

By Glenn Harlan Reynolds

We're at war. The people in charge of running the war say that we have to

trust them: trust their integrity, and trust their judgment.

But how can we trust our government to spot terrorists when it thinks that

glow sticks are items of "drug paraphernalia?"

This sounds like a joke, but it isn't. Last year, the Department of Justice

and the DEA tried to prosecute concert promoters in New Orleans under the

federal "crackhouse law." That law makes it a felony to maintain a building

or facility for the purpose of drug consumption. Traditionally, the law has

been applied to places that are, well, crack houses. But — calling glow

sticks and bottled water "drug paraphernalia" — then-U.S. Attorney Eddie

Jordan attempted to jail three New Orleans concert promoters by reasoning

that (1) people come to raves; (2) people who come to raves sometimes use

drugs; (3) concert promoters must know this (especially in light of the

presence of "drug paraphernalia"); and so, (4) a rave must be an event that

takes place "for the purpose of drug consumption" under the law.

The federal district court made short work of this claim, dismissing the

charges and calling them a violation of the First Amendment. But that hasn't

stopped our drug warriors.

Now Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., has introduced a bill (the "Reducing Americans'

Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act of 2002," cutely called "the RAVE Act"), also

sponsored by Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Patrick

Leahy, D-Vt., and Richard Durbin, D-Ill. The bill would essentially write

into the crackhouse statute the same approach already rejected by the

district court in New Orleans. According to The Washington Post:

When he introduced the bill in June, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., said "most

raves are havens for illicit drugs," and congressional findings submitted

with the bill label as drug paraphernalia such rave mainstays as bottled

water, "chill rooms" and glow sticks.

My three-year-old nephew is fond of bottled water and glow sticks, and

usually needs a "chill room." Presumably Biden regards him as a dangerous

criminal.

The RAVE Act should, all by itself, serve to explode Democratic claims that

it's only the Republicans who pose a danger to civil liberties: nothing in

the Bush administration's anti-terror plans would criminalize bottled water.

Unfortunately, the RAVE Act (what is it with these cutesy acronyms, anyway?)

also suggests that there's a lot of raving going on in Washington — raving

lunacy.

The real story is that federal law enforcement efforts against ecstasy have

proved impotent. Frustrated by this failure, they've targeted electronic

music concerts ("raves") not because they're especially important targets

(they're not) but because they're easy, and public, targets.

Unable to endure the continuing evidence of drug-war failure, the drug

warriors are lashing out, hoping that the ignorant will be convinced that

they're earning their pay. Congress is playing along because, basically,

Congress isn't up to the job of riding herd on the massive drug-war

bureaucracy.

The drug war has been a massive failure: a waste of money, of lives and of

time. It's also been accompanied by extensive inroads on traditional

American freedoms: property forfeitures, "no-knock" searches, expanded

wiretap authority, and the destruction of financial privacy, to name just a

few.

These are inroads that have served the agendas of bureaucrats but that

haven't done anything to solve the problem that was claimed as their

justification. And the drug war's combination of intrusiveness, corruption

and ineptitude calls into question the government's ability to carry out the

war on terrorism.

Will the drug war serve as a model for the war on terrorism? Some within the

federal bureaucracy seem to think it should, and it's easy to understand

why: The drug war may have been a disaster for America, but it has been a

three-decade gravy train for bureaucrats. And if Congress can't ride herd on

the drug war bureaucracy, it probably won't be able to oversee the

terror-war bureaucracy either.

Not being a bureaucrat, I think the drug war is a terrible model. In fact, I

think it's an argument against creating a Homeland Security bureaucracy at

all. If we can't trust the government to tell a glow stick from a hypodermic

needle, then I don't think we can trust it to tell the difference between an

American and a terrorist.

I'm willing to support an invasion of Iraq and of other enemy nations like

Saudi Arabia or Syria. I'm not willing to support an approach that will turn

the United States itself into an occupied country — something the drug war

crowd has come a long way toward doing on its own.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is a law professor at the University of Tennessee and

publishes InstaPundit.Com. He is co-author, with Peter W. Morgan, of The

Appearance of Impropriety: How the Ethics Wars Have Undermined American

Government, Business, and Society (The Free Press, 1997).

[hotcheme]

i feel like the media hears about this stuff months after we do...

[Xpander]

Well, better late than never, right?

[hotcheme]

yeah at least this article seems to be supporting us.

[hoke]

Originally posted by hotcheme

yeah at least this article seems to be supporting us.

Yeah, too bad it reads like a college editorial.

[gothzane]

All this cracks me up...

The governement supplies the nation with drugs.

The mayor's wives get all hissy when their kids talk back to them

"oh my he/she is on drugs!"

So they stop giving their husbands a reach around

and soon enough you have old farts bitching about moral order..

Man I love this country.

[dirtyepic18]

thank god atleast some media groups have some common sense

[hitokiri24]

ok ppl (gov t) wanna talk bout their RAVE ACT i gotta questionfor then what r their kids doin hmm...... i bet u they re like oh no not my child blah blah blah... well take a look at our first family bunch of drunks so i wonder what else the kids are into ? hmmm...... bunch of hypocrites i hate the gov t its too censored an too "protective" of its national security .... blah blah blah what a glowstick is the same as an atom bomb yeah boy i see the light:blank: