This from Reason’s Hit & Run:
This week the family of Jonathan Magbie, a 27-year-old quadriplegic who died of acute respiratory failure a year ago while serving time in the D.C. jail on a marijuana charge, sued the city and Greater Southeast Community Hospital for inadequately treating the breathing problems he experienced while in custody. Magbie, who was paralyzed from the neck down in a car accident at age 4, smoked marijuana to relieve the pain associated with his condition. Although he was convicted of possessing just one joint and was eligible for probation, D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith E. Retchin sentenced him to 10 days, partly because he said he planned to continue smoking marijuana.
This from an op-ed written by Rick Santorum and former British Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith in today’s Wall Street Journal:
We’re convinced that conservatism–properly understood–offers the surest road to social justice.. . .
The social justice agenda we endorse is grounded in social conservatism. That means helping the poor discover the dignity of work, rather than making them wards of the state. It means locking up violent criminals, but offering nonviolent offenders lots of help to become responsible citizens. It endorses a policy of “zero tolerance” toward drug use and sexual trafficking, yet insists that those struggling with all manner of addictions can start their lives afresh. (Emphasis added.)
And finally, this from the Grand Windsock himself, Andrew Sullivan
If D.C. residents (citizens is too elevated a word) had the democratic rights of, say, Basra, medical marijuana would be legal and [Jonathan Magbie] would never have been jailed. But jailing a quadriplegic in the first place? In a prison that didn’t have the respirator he needed? The man’s family is now suing the city. D.C. Superior Court Judge Judith E. Retchin, who sentenced Magbie, is an incompetent and a monster.
Let’s try and make sense of all this.
1. Magbie’s death is a direct consequence of the “zero tolerance” approach favored by Santorum and Smith. Their talk of rehabilitating addicts is a diversion. When you endorse “zero tolerance,” you’re authorizing the state to assert total control over an individual’s actions—and that includes murdering any dissenters. Santorum and Smith aren’t speaking as private citizens or religious leaders advocating repentance; they are acting as government officials who have pledged their lives to the use of violence. And how much do you want to bet that Santorum was among the senators that voted to overturn D.C.’s medical marijuana law? Which leads to me Sullivan’s point…
2. Democracy is part of the problem, not part of the solution. Sure the D.C. Council wanted to pass a medical marijuana law. But Congress—itself an elected body—voted to ban it. Which version of democracy should reign supreme? Suppose the positions were reversed, and a Republican city council voted to ban medical marijuana. Would Sullivan endorse such a policy merely to protect the facade of local “democracy”?
3. And staying within D.C., what is Sullivan’s view of the city council’s decision to impose price controls on prescription drugs? When individuals can’t buy the drugs they need because of government-created shortages, will Sullivan still consider democracy the moral arbiter of right and wrong?
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The atrocities that our government(s) commit every week are bigger than those over which many wars have been fought.
How dare Republicans call for the impeachment of Supreme Court justices because — horror of horrors — they cite foreign opinions, while at the same time endorsing judges whose capricious enforcements of inhumane laws directly lead to death.
As for Mr. Santorum … I think the underused word “populist” fits perfectly. As does “incompetent.”
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