It appears that the Wisest, Most Important Person on the this or any other Internet, Andrew Sullivan, has a Bad Habit -- A BAD HABIT FOR DRUGS.
While marijuana possession may have been decriminalized, Sullivan, who owns a home in Provincetown, made the mistake of being caught by a park ranger with a controlled substance on National Park Service lands, a federal misdemeanor.
The ranger issued Sullivan a citation, which required him either to appear in U.S. District Court or, in essence, pay a $125 fine.
This blog takes the view that if the federal government is going to maintain and preserve certain areas of the country because they are pristine and beautiful, the federal government should allow people to smoke weed in them. Otherwise it's como que dice, entrapment.
But then what can we say, Sullivan is One of Ours, a Communist, because he opposes torture, and because Barack Obama said "if you don't let Sully get stoned, I'll waterboard your ass":
But the U.S. Attorney’s Office sought to dismiss the case. Both the federal prosecutor and Sullivan’s attorney said it would have resulted in an “adverse effect” on an unspecified “immigration status” that Sullivan, a British citizen, is applying for.
At the hearing, Collings observed that Sullivan would still have to state on his application that he had been charged with a crime, and he asked both the prosecutor and Sullivan’s attorney, Robert Delahunt Jr. (cousin of U. S. Rep. William D. Delahunt), for more information about why paying the $125 would have “any additional adverse effect"....
In his opinion, Collings wrote that the U.S. Attorney is “is not being faithful to a cardinal principle of our legal system, i.e., that all persons stand equal before the law and are to be treated equally in a court of justice once judicial processes are invoked. It is quite apparent that Mr. Sullivan is being treated differently from others who have been charged with the same crime in similar circumstances.”
Ultimately, Collings acknowledged that he had no choice other than to allow the case to be dismissed, but “that the Court must so act does not require the Court to believe that the end result is a just one.”
I have tried to care about this case twice now, but find myself failing, and just falling asleep. So allow me to just note that the reason none of us on the left care about this now, even though we noted this then, is because we Hate America, and Dick Cheney.