A bit of the fog is beginning to lift on the work and thinking of Elena Kagan, President Obama's nominee to the Supreme Court. An initial perusal of thousands of pages of documents from her years in the Clinton White House show her to be an adept centrist -- much like her old boss -- who tried to remain thoughtful while shielding President Bill Clinton from ideological extremes.

It is hard to find anything in the 90,000-odd pages of papers released so far that shows whether Ms. Kagan will be an effective restraint on the Roberts Court's aggressive march to the right. She was, after all, a mid-to senior-level bureaucrat in the 1990s, working for a White House that could twist itself into knots trying to find the midpoint on every issue. Her job often required her to become a contortionist, searching for principled positions that would not inflame a newly Republican Congress or a generally conservative Supreme Court.

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First published in print: Saturday, June 5, 2010 I sympathize with Rhonda Swan's sentiments lamenting the Obama administration's failure to extensively change the prevailing policies that drive the drug war ("Obama prolongs failed war," commentary, June 1). I, too, have been disappointed with the Obama administration's failure to match its promising rhetoric with reality.

Click here to find out more! However, is it realistic to expect that a 40-year-old war can be completely dismantled by a president 16 months into his term? The war on drugs supports bloated law enforcement agencies, the $68-billion-a-year prison industry, the arms industry and a thriving drug-testing industry -- not to mention drug lords worldwide.

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Gov. David Paterson of New York made a brave -- and startling -- move on Monday to create a board to consider pardons for immigrant New Yorkers who are on a fast-track to deportation because of old or minor criminal convictions. He said he wanted to inject fairness into an "embarrassingly and wrongly inflexible" system that expels immigrants without discretion, without considering the circumstances of a person's life or family, or even holding hearings to consider the possibility that deportation might be unwise or unjust.

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With Advocates Energized and the Tide of Public and Scientific Opinion Turning in Their Favor, New York State Considers Legislation to Legalize Medical Marijuana

It was snowing on the evening of March 9, 2001, as Dave Lawson was driving his band's GM Astro to a gig in Vermont. Carrying the instruments and one other band member, Lawson was going a cautious 40 miles in Troy when another vehicle pulled into the intersection directly in front of him. Unable to stop on the slick road, Lawson says that he hit the car on the passenger side. Everything that happened directly after that is fuzzy. Mostly what Lawson remembers are the years of rehabilitation and persistent pain that followed.

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High Arrest Rate, Tense Relations Mark Borough; 'Let the Guy Walk'

Bronx jurors in felony cases found defendants guilty only 43% of the time last year, the lowest conviction rate in New York City since the state began tracking such data 22 years ago.

The Bronx stands in stark contrast to the other boroughs, all of which had felony conviction rates of 70% or higher last year, according to the New York State Unified Court System, which tracks the data. For the first two months of 2010, the latest data available, the Bronx conviction rate was 48%. High arrest rates may have contributed to the low conviction rate.

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This is a strange time for U.S.-Mexico relations. The Mexican government just issued a travel advisory warning Mexicans about going to Arizona -- where they could get arrested by the police for no reason -- and the U.S. government just issued a travel advisory warning Americans about going to northern Mexico -- where they could get shot by drug dealers for no reason. Meanwhile, Wal-Mart de Mexico is expected to open 300 new stores in Mexico this year, thanks to growing Mexican demand for consumer goods. And Mexico's drug cartels will probably open just as many new smuggling routes into America thanks to our growing demand for marijuana, cocaine and crystal meth.

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Based on my 18 years of police experience, I think the drug smugglers are cheering Sen. Charles Schumer's continued support for drug prohibition ("Schumer: Funds needed to fight drug war," April 22). Without this modern prohibition, they would not be making billions.

After 40 years and $1.1 trillion tax dollars spent, one would hope that Senator Schumer would admit what we all know; Prohibition is a failure, again. Want to rid New York of all drug dealers and smuggling? Legalize/regulate and tax the drugs.

Howard Wooldridge

Adamstown, Md.

howardwoolridge @gmail.com

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To the Editor:

"With Cars as Meth Labs, Evidence Litters Roads" (news article, April 15) did an excellent job of illustrating the difficult job law enforcement officials face in combating illegal methamphetamine use and production. While you correctly point out that meth production is growing throughout most of the country, I would like to point out that Oregon is seeing dramatic results in its war on the illegal substance.

Oregon's law enforcement officials credit their success to a 2006 law that requires a prescription to buy pseudoephedrine, the key ingredient needed to manufacture meth. Before the law was established, more than 500 meth labs a year were found in Oregon. Last year, there were only 10.

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SARATOGA SPRINGS - What began as four high school students meeting after practice in 1971 to look for a rumored plot of marijuana plants grew into a celebration now ubiquitous among cannabis consumers across the nation as "4-20."

At 4:20 p.m. on April 20, college students across the country light up the illicit substance, whether rolled into cigarettes, packed into pipes, or in at least one case, contained within a large, pink, paper-mache octopus.

The latter was seen near Skidmore College's Haupt Pond last year as some students smoked in plain sight of faculty and campus safety officials. Outrage over reports of their behavior prompted the school to take action and hold a series of meetings with officials from the Saratoga Springs Police Department, the Saratoga Springs City School District, the Saratoga County Alcohol and Substance Abuse Prevention Council and Saratoga County District Attorney James A. Murphy III.

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The voters of trendsetting California may well decide this November to legalize marijuana -- there's a ballot referendum, and 56 percent of Californians are in favor -- and no doubt this would be great news for the munchie industry, the bootleggers of Grateful Dead music, and the millions of stoners who have long yearned for an era of reefer gladness.

Seriously, this is a story about how desperate times require desperate measures. Legalization advocates, including many ex-cops and ex-prosecutors, have long contended that it's nuts to keep criminalizing otherwise law-abiding citizens while wasting $8 billion a year in law enforcement costs. That argument has never worked. But the new argument, cleverly synced to the recession mind-set, may well herald a new chapter in the history of pot prohibition.

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First of a Two-Part News Series: Arresting a Street Dealer Removes a Big Fish, but Overall Problem Persists

The sun was just coming up on May 4, 2006, when the cops put the hammer down on Frank "Fat Frank" Battaglia, the drug kingpin in the Lovejoy section of Buffalo.

About 20 heavily armed Buffalo police officers and federal agents stormed into his apartment on Willett Street. They arrested the corpulent dealer in his bedroom - festooned with posters of Tony Montana, the homicidal drug kingpin from the movie "Scarface."

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Failures of Prohibition Put Focus on New Steps

Every 18 seconds, on average, someone in the United States is arrested for a drug crime. The nation's jails and prisons are teeming with drug offenders.

Despite a drug war that costs taxpayers billions of dollars every year, drug abuse continues to be a serious problem.

That is why some people -- including some former cops -- believe that the nation needs to take a serious look at legalizing certain drugs.

"Prohibition of drugs isn't working," said Peter J. Christ, a retired Town of Tonawanda police captain who is one of the founders of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, an organization of ex-cops who advocate legalizing drugs.

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(April 1, 2010) No, this is not an April Fool's column.

It is as serious as I usually am when I talk about New York State government.

I've been watching the jokers in Albany for so long that perhaps I'm beginning to think like them.

It's like this: the Dems in control -- my party -- have started focusing on a series of "revenuers" to fix what's broken in the budget.

Now we all know what's broken. The folks in Albany spend lots more than they take in -- it's that simple. All they have to do is stop spending what they don't have and bingo: a balanced budget.

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Pain can saturate one's entire being. This hit home recently when my mother endured bouts of chemotherapy for stomach cancer. Drugs to relieve her relentless nausea offered little benefit. As with countless other patients, her medicine made matters worse.

For patients in intractable pain, time is not on their side. Therefore, for supporters, New York's pending legalization of the medical provision and use of marijuana is timely. Meanwhile, the debate continues.

Good ethics requires good facts, as in accurate, relevant and evidence-based. Clearly, cannabis' history of illegal use and association with lethal drugs has overshadowed its supposed therapeutic value in alleviating chemotherapy-induced nausea, reducing glaucoma's intraocular pressure, mitigating AIDS symptoms and relieving chronic pain. Furthermore, its psychoactive component spawns fears of dependency and abuse, although authorized stimulants, antidepressants and analgesics also produce highs and lows.

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Another reason to stop caging sick humans for using the relatively safe, God-given plant cannabis (marijuana) that doesn't get mentioned ("The Case For Legal, Medical Marijuana," letter, March 20) is because it is biblically correct since Christ God our Father, the Ecologician, indicates He created all the seed-bearing plants, saying they are all good, on literally the very first page (Genesis 1:11-12 and 29-30).

The only biblical restriction placed on cannabis is that it is to be accepted with thankfulness (see 1 Timothy 4:1-5). And, "But whoever has the world's goods, and sees his brother in need and closes his heart against him, how does the love of God abide in him?" (see 1 John 3:17).

Jesus Christ risked jail to heal the sick.

Stan White

Dillon, Colo.

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New York's highest court ruled on Thursday that police departments cannot use general warrants that apply to a specific location to search every person they find there unless there is probable cause to believe that a particular person is involved in criminal activity.

While the decision, which was unanimous, arose from a case in Syracuse, the ruling could have broad implications because "all-persons-present" warrants are so often used by the police.

Asked about the decision, Paul J. Browne, the New York Police Department's chief spokesman, said, "We're waiting for the department lawyers to review it, to see what the implications may be for the Police Department."

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When noncitizens are convicted of aggravated felonies, federal law makes it relatively easy to remove them from the country - and it should. But the law is not a weapon for overzealous immigration officials who want to deny immigrants fair deportation hearings.

The Supreme Court hears arguments on Wednesday about the removal of one such immigrant, who committed a couple of minor drug offenses but was treated as if he had committed an aggravated drug felony. The court should use the case of Carachuri-Rosendo v. Holder to put an end to this unfair practice.

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NOGALES, Mexico - RESEARCH on a book brought me to this border city about 60 miles south of Tucson the other day, and by my rough count, there were about a dozen of us Americans on the sunny downtown streets. A few years ago, there would have been thousands.

History shows that it takes a lot to sink the indomitable Mexican spirit, but a year's worth of drug-war mayhem (and the resulting publicity) in the towns on the border with the United States has certainly has done a good job of it. The downtown restaurants that weren't already boarded up were mostly empty. Shopkeepers seemed dazed.

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Regarding Samuel Blackstone's March 23rd column, if health outcomes determined drug laws instead of cultural norms, marijuana would be legal. Unlike alcohol, marijuana has never been shown to cause an overdose death, nor does it share the addictive properties of tobacco. Marijuana can be harmful if abused, but jail cells are inappropriate as health interventions and ineffective as deterrents.

The first marijuana laws were enacted in response to Mexican immigration during the early 1900s, despite opposition from the American Medical Association. Dire warnings that marijuana inspires homicidal rages have been counterproductive at best. White Americans did not even begin to smoke pot until a soon-to-be entrenched federal bureaucracy began funding reefer madness propaganda.

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I recently read about Joseph Casias being terminated from Wal-mart in Michigan. In 2008 he was "associate of the year," and shortly thereafter was diagnosed with sinus cancer and a brain tumor. His doctors prescribed medical marijuana -- legal in Michigan -- as part of his treatment for the pain.

When he tested positive for marijuana during a drug test, Wal-mart terminated him under their drug policy. Such intolerance toward medical marijuana patients is reprehensible. More than 80 percent of Americans now support medical use of pot to treat pain. In fact, Rep. Maurice Hinchey, said "it was unconscionable that the federal government had previously sought to not only deny but arrest and prosecute medical marijuana patients who are using the drug in accordance with state law to relieve pain and nausea."

Thank you, Congressman Hinchey, for your efforts in Congress to mandate such a policy regarding medical marijuana.

Gloria Whitmore

Owego

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