White Rabbit

Radley Balko and a lot of other admirable cats have already gone to the mat with John Hawkins high-larious paean to the Forever War on Mari-hu-wana. The best bit is near the end:

[W]ay back when William Bennett was the drug czar, he responded like so to a caller on the Larry King show who told him that he should "behead the damn drug dealers."

"I mean what the caller suggests is morally plausible," he said. "Legally, it's difficult. But somebody selling drugs to a kid? Morally, I don't have any problem with that at all."

Bennett was right then, he's right now, and my guess is that most parents, upon finding out that someone was peddling drugs to their kid, would agree with him.

Now this reminded me of one of my favorite scenes in the collected works of the greatest almost-sheriff of Pitkin Co., CO. I couldn't find my copy of the book, but I did dig up the screenplay for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:

DA
(whacks his fist
on the bar)
Hell, I really hate to hear this.
Because everything that happens in
California seems to get down our
way, sooner or later. Mostly
Atlanta. But that was back when
the goddamn bastards were peaceful.
All we had to do was to keep 'em
under surveillance. They didn't
roam around much... But now Jesus,
it seems nobody's safe.

GONZO
(with a conspiratorial
nod)
You're going to need to take the
bull by the horns -- go to the mat
with this scum.

DA
What do you mean by that?

GONZO
You know what I mean. We've done
it before and we can damn well do
it again!

DUKE
Cut their goddamn heads off. Every
one of them. That's what we're
doing in California.

DA
(stupefied)
WHAT?

GONZO
Sure. It's all on the Q.T., but
everybody who matters is with us
all the way down the line.

DUKE
We keep it quiet. It's not the
kind of thing you'd want to talk
about upstairs. Not with the press
around.

DA
(recovering slightly)
Hell, no. We'd never hear the
goddamn end of it.

DUKE
Dobermans don't talk.

DA
What?

GONZO
Sometimes it's easier to just rip
out the backstraps.

DUKE
They'll fight like hell if you try
to take the head without the dogs.

DA
God almighty!
(muttering in a daze)
I don't think I should tell my wife
about this. She'd never understand.
You know how women are.