Drugs are absolutely pwning the war on drugs. Recently, Mexico had a 20 year old woman become police chief of a border town because nobody else wanted the job, and now we have this:

The entire police force in a small Mexican town abruptly resigned Tuesday after its new headquarters was viciously attacked by suspected drug cartel gunmen.

All 14 police officers in Los Ramones, a rural town in northern Mexico, fled the force in terror after gunmen fired more than 1,000 bullets and flung six grenades at their headquarters on Monday night.

No one was injured in the attack. Mayor Santos Salinas Garza told local media that the officers resigned because of the incident.

The gunmen’s 20-minute shooting spree destroyed six police vehicles and left the white and orange police station pocked with bullet holes, the Financial Times reported.

The station had been inaugurated just three days earlier.

The attack was the second in less than a week against police forces in Nuevo Leon. Last week, thugs threw two grenades at police in Sabinas Hidalgo, according to newspaper Noroeste.

Los Ramones is in the Mexican state of Nuevo Leon, which has been a war zone of turf violence between two of the country’s fiercest drug gangs, the Zetas and the Gulf cartel.

Police have blamed members of both cartels for attacks on several police stations throughout the area. Several mayors in the region have been assassinated.

Mexico’s municipal police forces often quit out of fear after being attacked by cartels.

About 90% of forces have less than 100 officers, and 61% of cops earn less than $322 a month, according to the Finanical Times.

Mexico’s intelligence chief said this summer that nearly 30,000 people have died in drug related crimes since 2006.

From Fringeelements:

George Carlin on voting:

A judge that speaks the truth. I'm amazed.

The Inspector General of Columbia, a devout Catholic and lover of all things statist, has accidentally admitted a bit too much about the current power and belief structures prevalent in today's society:

"For 200 years the Colombian people have endured repression, hunger, injustice and violence, only because of their solid faith that once in heaven everything will be alright. Without this loyalty to God and His one and only representative on earth, the Church, Colombians may not be able to put up with what they are made to endure (and demand change)," Ordoñez wrote to Foreign Minister Maria Angela Holguin.

The sad part is that he considers this to be a bad thing.

Religion, state, or both? Yes, I think both.

I'm all in favor of organized labor in theory, but the unions that exist today are the opposite of organized labor. It's great to see The Daily Show investigate them.

And so America has become the very monster it fought two hundred years ago:

The affable British scholar tried to keep it light. He used a stage whisper to tell the Aspen Institute audience, “I know you’re not comfortable with the word ‘empire,’ especially just after the Fourth of July, but you are the Redcoats now.”

"As we are all aware, it's simply not possible for gay marriage and heterosexual marriage to co-exist," Massachusetts Chief Justice Margaret H. Marshall said. "Our ruling in November was just the first step toward creating an all-gay Massachusetts."

Jon Stewart gives Barack Obama a well-deserved skewering. And I just love the Lord of the Rings reference.

The Hopeless, changeless Obama administration got some poor torture victim's court case dismissed. Color me unsurprised:

Which I guess means we’ve officially become a country that finds protecting those who commit torture more important than justice for those who were tortured.

Someone recently filed a motion to change the Seal of the State of Washington into an image of a tapeworm in a three-piece suit surrounded by the words, "Committed to sucking the life blood out of each and every taxpayer."

I, for one, welcome our new tapeworm overlords.

I have heard many times that voting is not really a right, but a privilege bestowed upon us by our good benefactors. They warn that you may lose the privilege to vote if you commit a crime, or are not a citizen, or any number of other reasons. They warn that if you are eligible to vote, you should do so, or else some day that privilege may be gone.

Well now some gauleiter at the Brookings Institute named William Galston wants to force this privilege down our throats. Vote, he says, or pay a fine! Well at least that's the way he wants it to be. He seems to think that the US should model it's voting system after Australia's, where eligible voters who don't exercise their voting "privilege" get fined. Incidentally, Australia has one of the highest "Mickey Mouse" vote rates in the world (A Mickey Mouse vote is where you make a nonsensical vote, like writing in the name Mickey Mouse).

I think that if the US were to enact compulsory voting, then it is only reasonable (both morally and logically) to also enact a rule that says that if less than 100% of eligible voters cast a ballot, then the results of that vote are null and void. The door should swing both ways.

Of course, that would not be an ideal solution. An ideal solution would be to eliminate all democratic mechanisms altogether and banish voting to the realm of tyrants and pitchfork mobs.

Let's take a look at how retarded and backwards the Brookings Institute's thinking is on the matter:

The Brookings Institution scholar is among those who are dismayed at the turnout in this country. Those in the wide middle of the spectrum are the ones who abstain from voting, and Galston thinks that's not good. Get more people in the process by making it easier to vote through things like liberalized absentee voting.

Dismayed at the turnout? Dismayed that not everyone agrees with your notions of mob rule? Dismayed that not everyone's beliefs match your own, especially if that belief is apathy? Shouldn't one's difference of opinion be respected, rather than overridden through forced participation?

What Galston is doing is "counting the hits and ignoring the misses." He is too blind to see that a non-vote is a rejection of the system. It is, in a way, a vote of no confidence, or of apathy, or of disengagement. The non-vote is, in reality, the most powerful "vote" in a democracy. But of course, the Brookings Institute is blinded by their democratic fanboyism. They cannot conceive that non-participation in democratic mechanisms could ever be legitimate, or ever have a meaningful message behind it, or even be the moral thing to do. Nothing could so effectively take away the power of one's voice than by forcing that person to cast a vote in a democracy. It is forcing one's consent to the system. More important than the candidate(s) to be voted on is whether or not one consents to the system at all. To paraphrase Spooner, you are no less a slave just because you get to vote for a new master every couple of years.

And if you want some really delicious irony, read this part where Galston, who is advocating forced democracy, argues against a specific instance of popular opposition to his idea:

But, as Robert pointed out, an ABC News poll indicated that 72 percent of Americans are opposed to compulsory voting. Isn't this a non-starter?

Galston conceded that it could be tough but added that perceptions change. Just look at the public's turnaround on "don't ask, don't tell," he said.

And if you didn't notice, Galston also implicitly conceded the mercurial and ever-shifting beliefs of the majority. Hey I'm for social maturation and evolution of ideas as much as the next guy, but given that the only constant of popular opinion is that it always changes, why should we be trying to force popular opinions into policy and law? What is moral today is immoral tomorrow, and vice-versa, all through popular dictate? No thanks.

By forcing everyone to vote, everyone will be forced to play the game; to consent to the overall system. Mandatory voting is a sure-fire way to maintain the status quo, preserve the current power structure, and eliminate any real chance of change whatsoever.

A white knight counter-trolling a den of trolls:

Drug addicts are beating the government's ass in the War on Drugs.