But we were born free... weren't we?

"...nationwide, the police are telling merchants to be suspicious of sales of charcoal, coffee filters, aluminum foil and Kitty Litter." Note to self: make sure no two of those items are in my grocery basket in any one trip. The feebs might think I'm cooking meth... [see Update, below] No kidding. Jerry Pournelle comments: "Having a good universal crime like possession of kitty litter, coffee filters, and camp stove fluid is good for the anarcho-tyranny state which thrives on being able to threaten anyone with jail who doesn't "cooperate" by finking on someone else; but it's not so hot for a self governing republic." All I have to say to the feebs is, Get outa my grocery cart! Go sniff some IRS agent's pants. My view is idiosyncratic, to say the least. I'd support making all of the drugs now proscribed available for FREE to anyone who wanted them on the premise that it'd probably end up doing several things, most of them useful: Save one heckuva lotta tax $$ Clean the gene pool of people too stupid to understand (or care) what those drugs did to them. Ditto the families of young users who don't care enough to enforce some tough love* Kill the big "drug war" federal industry, putting a lot of really bad people on the dole... Put the drug gangs outa business (at least outa the drug business... they'll go into other unsavory areas, of course) *Note: yeh, I acknowledge some tweaking would be necessary. For example: holding parents legally and financially responsible for damage their children might do while stoned outa their gourds. ("But I can't control lil Johnnie!" Tough. grow up and be a parent.) Of course, adults who did (do) damage to others while stoned should be held accountable as well. Fully accountable, not some sort of weenie "diminished capacity" pseudo-accountability. Someone chooses to use mind-altering drugs (including alchohol) and while in the "diminished capacity" they chose to inflict on themselves, harms someone else, throw the book at them. (After encasing the book in concrete and using a ballista or some such to throw it... Unlimited free throws allowed until a solid hit is accomplished.) Ahhh, I'm safe on the coffee filters, now. Bought a semi-permanent "gold" basket filter... I hope the feebs don't think that means I'm gold-plating some meth. Doofs. Learned nothing from the failure of Volstead Act implementing enforcement of the 18th Amendment. h.t. Jerry Pournelle. Update: How about we encourage the spread of a new real-world meme? Once a month, make grovery-cartsful purchases of charcoal, coffee filters, aluminum foil and Kitty Litter. Use the LARGE quantities of these products for outdoor barbeque/cookout meterials. For example, CHEAP clay-only kitty litter for lining firepits. Charcoal and aluminum foil: obvious cookout uses. Coffee filters: loads of uses. Get the cheap kinds in bulk for uses other than making coffee. Please submit suggestions for how to use large quantities of these products in legal ways in comments. Coffee filters, for example, make GREAT, very inexpensive dryer sheets if soaked in a liquid clothes softening product and allowed to dry. Gimme loads more ideas, please. If enough people make "large" purchases of these innocuous products and then sue the living daylights out of LEOs that harass them for doing so, maybe we could effect a swing toward common sense in law enforcement. As it is, we're ALL assumed to be criminals, it seems. UPDATE #2: In comments, Diane suggests, "Coffee filters do pretty well as eyeglass cleaners. Kitty litter can be used on concrete to soak up oil and other liquids. Aluminum foil has a variety of uses, such as covering your windows so the government peeps can't peek through and you can also fashion it into a hat to keep aliens from reading your thoughts!" I'm pretty sure Diane made that last suggestion tongue-in-cheek. Everyone knows most aliens can't read one's thoughts. If they could, would Mass Media Podpeople be losing so much of their audience?