Federalism would be well-served indeed if SCOTUS later stuck to Congress’s enumerated powers re illicit drugs; Congres has no legit authority to criminalize what the people of the several states inhale, ingest or inject. (Regulating purity is another matter; I do not object to the Pure Food and Drug Act.) Many states would legalize, especially for medical use. No doubt some would experiment with permitting doctors to keep heroin addicts supplied w/ clean product and needles.

But the federal government occupies the drug-control field, thanks to SCOTUS and its ignoring federalism.

Liberty can be an international issue, but only through the rule of law, not military force.

http://www.leap.cc/publications/endprohnow.htm

The individual states and localities are about as sovereign as the individual soviets were in the USSR. The states are simply managerial units for the feds and the localities are precincts for the states.

On the race issue, I don’t doubt that some blacks, Hispanics and others are sometimes made targets because of their race. Racial profiling of alleged drug couriers is one of these. There are no doubt individual cops, prosecutors, jurors, judges, prison guards, etc. who may not give a black person a fair shake because of their race, although it does work both ways. In my city, the sheriff and the police chief are black, and there are persistent complaints of racist discrimination against white employees in their departments.

The drug war has the effect of creating a police state environment in many black communities, though I would regard this as more a class issue than a racial one. Many of the perpetrators of the police state are also black, Hispanic, Asian, et.al. Poor whites and whites who belong to dissident or non-conforming subcultures get the same treatment (like pot-smoking hippies or weird religious sects). I don’t know that Cory Maye would have done any better if he had been white. It’s easy to think it’s a racial issue given Mississippi’s history, but I’m not so sure. If belief that the system is simply a racist conspiracy is what will motivate some blacks to resist, then so be it. I don’t agree with Sharpton’s dismissal of the Sean Bell shooting as a racially motivated crime (two of the cops were black, the other an Arab), but I’m on his side so far as the protests go. I’m also skeptical of the far right’s views on black helicopters being sent in by the UN and Jewish bankers to disarm good Christian Americans, but if that’s what motivates to shoot federal agents, God love ‘em.

I think quasibill really nails it when he says the cops view civilians either as subjects or enemies. The standard term for this is “occupation force”. Personally, I have long regarded the US as being in a state of low intensity civil war, the police/law/judiciary as an enemy occupation force, and the government as the regime of an enemy nation/empire. That is the mindset I have always tried to promote (well, for the last ten or so years anyway).

I conceive of revolutionary struggle in the US as one pitting occupied/captive nations, tribes or classes against the imperial center. The analogy I would use would be to compare Washington to Rome and the state and local governments to Rome’s imperial outposts (like King Herod’s Judea). Another analogy might be to compare D.C. to Berlin and the states to Vichy, Hans Frank’s Poland or Arthur Seys-Inquart’s Holland.

Sure, there is latent, and sometimes overt racism in the South (but if you think it is only in the South, I’d like to give you a tour of Massachussetts or Pennsylvania sometime). And this racism manifests itself in juries (though I agree with Keith that the actual incident involving Maye was almost certainly not a racially motivated incident). But if you think the Feds are doing anything about that, you are absolutely barking up the wrong tree. The states were actually getting somewhat pro-active in trying to make sure juries were actually representative of their communities - but then the Feds said that current efforts were more than what was needed, and that further efforts would just be too expensive. Almost every state used that as a legal cover to just scrap their jury diversity programs.

And if you want to see the really ugly side of this rear its head - there’s a famous Philadelphia DA incident from 20 years ago involving a videotape training new DAs in how to exclude blacks from juries. The tapes have been banned/destroyed/whatever, but if you don’t think that the knowledge and tactics survived, well, you’re in the same ostrich hole that the Federal government is in - ’cause they don’t think there’s any problem now that it can’t be conclusively proven.

But all that is a different issue from what happened to Cory Maye or Ryan Frederick (who will still most likely be convicted/plead out to something - just watch). The problem is a police culture that is progressively viewing the general public as, at best, “civilians” to be lorded over, or at worst, “the enemy,” to be treated as hostile at all times. And that is an issue the Feds, through many programs and grants, are directly responsible for.

I’d like to point out that federal policy, especially those handed down by the supreme court, have been ahead on many civil liberty issues in the past. The counter from proponents for federalism, of course, is that such ‘top down’ changes are resented compared to changes made at the local level.

http://reason.wikia.com/wiki/Ryan_Frederick

This Ryan Frederick fellow is white and the deceased police thug is white. Ryan is in the same trouble as Cory.

While I’m clearly in the decentralist camp politically, as a practical matter I would have no problem with a supreme court decision, a constitutional amendment or even use of federal bribe money to end the drug war nationwide. I’d even support ending the drug war through presidential decree or a military coup. I think ending this domestic civil war is important enough that any method is justifiable politically. That said, the federal government will never end the drug war. Here’s why:

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b1106274d1b.htm

The drug war is simply a primary cornerstone of a much larger police state, prison industry, legal/judicial racket, crony capitalism,etc. that is so intertwined with the system that the only way to end it is to uproot the system itself. I will concede that many of my politics are far more radical that what many who visit this site are prepared to embrace at this point. However, ending this police state will require nothing less than a full-blown revolution.

I’d advocate a two-layer approach. The first would be to build an alliance of local and regional secession movements involving every group, tendency or movement that wants out of the federal system for whatever reason.

http://attackthesystem.com

As the system is breaking down at the federal level a la the Soviet Union at the end of the Cold War, the second layer would be to form anti-police state militias at the local level. In the inner-cities, these might be modeled after the Black Panthers. In the rural areas, they might be modeled after the Michigan Militia types. In the suburbs, they might be comprised of rebellious youth and declasse elements (like the Red Guards). Other models are Colombia’s FARC, Peru’s Shining Path and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, while not necessarily copying the ideologies of these groups.

These militias would need to depose the police state on a locality by locality basis. Most cops are cowards who will turn and run when genuinely threatened (remember LA and New Orleans). Then depose the state’s legal/judicial system. The militia movement in some corners established its own parallel common law legal system. Then start releasing prisoners. Shining Path’s attack on the Ayacucho prison in 1982 might be a model here.

The overwhelmingly majority of drug war prisoners originate from the large metro areas and inner cities. Simply end drug enforcement there and you’ve de fact ended the drug war. Prohibition may remain in some conservative towns like present day “dry counties” but that’s about it.