Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Dodd is looking better all the time

By Libby

As we've said before, Newshoggers will not be endorsing any candidates here but I have to say that I personally am taking a long hard look at Chris Dodd. I was afraid his strong stand on telecom immunity was going to turn out to be a flash in the pan moment of political opportunism but the common sense just keeps on comin'.

Via John Cole, here's what the candidate had to say about marijuana last night.

"We're locking up too many people in our system here today. We've got mandatory minimum sentences, they are filling our jails with people that don't belong there. My idea is to decriminalize this, reduce that problem here. We've gone from 800,000 to 2 million people in our penal institutions in this country. We've got to get a lot smarter about this issue than we are. And as president, I'd try and achieve that."

When I started blogging four and half years ago, I focused almost exclusively on drug policy reform. You couldn't even get the polibloggers to talk about it. We were laughed off at Kos as a bunch of loser hippies but we preservered and eventually more respectable voices than mine brought the issue into the greater political dialogue.

It's about time the politicians started catching up with the public sentiment. Ending the war on some drugs would surely put the civil back into civil society.

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