The Baltimore Sun reports on Cheye Calvo's attempt to bring transparency to the use of paramilitary drug raids in Maryland. Unsurprisingly, the law-enforcement community is not interested in having their activities monitored:

However, the executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association says reporting requirements for SWAT teams should emanate from the law enforcement community, not legislators.

"Our data shows that when SWAT teams are deployed, the violence goes down," said John Gnagey, who was a SWAT team member for 26 years in the Champaign, Ill., police department.

I'd love to know what data he's referring to, because that just strikes me as false on its face. SWAT raids are inherently violent. The violence at Cheye Calvo's house wasn't reduced when the SWAT team showed up and started shooting his dogs repeatedly.

Of course, the SWAT director thinks the legislature should just butt out and let police decide which reporting requirements are appropriate. Did you hear that Maryland legislators? The SWAT team doesn’t want you nosing around in their business.

Police are fond of pointing out that if you aren’t doing anything wrong, you don’t have anything to worry about. Perhaps it's about time someone spat that line right back at them.

You don't have to look very hard to find drug war zealots insisting vociferously that Dutch drug policy is a raging trainwreck. But the truth is that rates of marijuana use in the Netherlands are far lower than ours, despite the fact that they sell awesome pot over the counter seven days a week to anyone over 18.

That's why Dr. Fredrick Polak, a Dutch psychiatrist and drug policy reformer, has spent years trying to get U.N. Drug Czar Antonio Maria Costa to acknowledge and address the success of Dutch marijuana policy. He's asked Costa about this on 4 separate occasions so far and each time the U.N. drug czar changed the subject. Here's an awesome video of Dr. Polak causing Costa to go a little nuts (seriously watch it, it rocks).

Anyway, Dr. Polak has teamed up with the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union on a campaign to continue confronting Costa until he actually gives an intelligent response (or admits he doesn’t have one). They're asking for our help and they've made a cool new site where everyone can participate. Check it out.