Brave and smart piece in National Review Online by Dave Kopel, urging President Bush to fire New Orleans U.S. Attorney, Eddie Jordan. Jordan has recently decided to try and shut down theaters that house “techno-raves” on the grounds that they are de facto equivalents of “crack-houses” that are already illegal as venues designed for drug -use. Jordan has even gone so far as to call plastic water bottles and glow-sticks the equivalents of drug paraphernalia, like bongs, and needles. Kopel is right that this is a tendentious invention of the law – the prosecutorial equivalent of judicial activism. But he’s surely wrong about one thing: the core of techno and rave music is drug-use. The cacophonous, monotonous music is all but unbearable without Ecstasy, Ketamine, Crystal, and other illegal drugs that fuel energy and temporarily lobotomize the brain. In fact, drug use is even more intrinsic to the genre than pot to jazz. The proper defense of these raves is that they are experiences that adults choose to enjoy with little harm to anyone except themselves. A free society would let these people be. A puritanical society would seek exactly the solution proffered by Jordan. No prizes for guessing in which direction we’re headed.
HOME NEWS: PoliticalProfessional.com has just named us their smart site of the week. “The tactics and techniques underlying Sullivan’s strategy of web communication — at once personal, inclusive, integrated, and on message — look, to us, like a glimpse into the future of political communications on the Internet,” the editors say. They also call us: “always smart, often witty, and full of lessons for political professionals.” They seem particularly impressed, as professional pols might be, with our fundraising. The Tipping Point, by the way, just cruised past the $11,000 barrier. Not a fortune – but we’ve plowed it right back into a redesign to be unveiled soon. Thanks again
The Dish 