Congress

A judge in Cali has found a Colombian army colonel and 14 of his troops guilty of murder for killing 10 elite Colombian anti-drug police and their informant at the request of drug traffickers.

Even as law enforcement and its allies fight a rear-guard effort to restore lost 2008 funding for the grant program that funds state and local drug task forces, the Bush administration is proposing to cut it again in the 2009 budget.

When Congress passed the omnibus appropriations bill a few weeks ago, it slashed funding for the federal grant program that funds local anti-drug task forces. Now the task forces are howling, and they and their allies are plotting a bid to get that money back.

Less than two weeks after Congress finally removed a decade-old ban on the District of Columbia using its own money to fund needle exchanges, District officials announced they would spend $650,000 to expand existing program and start new ones.

As part of its massive omnibus appropriations bill passed this week, Congress has, for the most part, funded treatment and prevention programs at or slightly above previous levels.

Author Ethan Brown examines the rhyme and reason of the controversial "stop snitching" movement, and the abuses in drug law and enforcement that caused it to come to be.

The 2008 federal budget is a done deal now. The drug czar's youth anti-drug media campaign takes a well-deserved hit and DC wins the right to spend its own money on needle exchanges. But the drug war juggernaut just keeps rolling on along as law enforcement wins big bucks.

Both the US Sentencing Commission and the US Supreme Court acted this week to reduce the harsh sentences for federal crack cocaine offenders. But because of congressionally imposed mandatory minimum sentences, Congress must act to further reduce the injustice.

One year after he took office, Mexican President Felipe Calderon says the war on drugs remains his highest priority. Some 24,000 troops are in the field, but the traffic and the violence appear to continue unabated.

The movement to repeal the Higher Education Act's drug provision hit a major roadblock last week when House Democrats reneged on pushing an amendment to undo it. But the provision's author, Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN), keeps scaling it back in self-defense.