Prohibition did not die an easy death in 1933. Liberal politicians had to create a Constitutional Convention populated by liberal candidates, since the hypocritical conservative state legislatures would never have repealed it. The corrupt conservatives would not have voted to pass the 21st Amendment allowing Americans to enjoy the benefits of alcohol beverages. Today, of course, conservatives predominate in state and national legislatures -- in both political parties -- giving American citizens the current Prohibition Wars.

Unfortunately, many states failed to adopt the national repeal of Prohibition. For example, Tennessee retained its Prohibition until the 1960s, as allowed under the Fourteenth Amendment on "state's rights".

In 1962, historian Andrew Sinclair, in his book Prohibition: The Era of Excess, wrote that Prohibition was an attempt by latter day Puritans "to extend their own repression to all society."

Richard Bonnie, a legal scholar at the University of Virginia, in 1978 commented: "Any regulatory approach whose ultimate aim is to orchestrate changes in mass behavior implies a significant sacrifice in human freedom. . . . Lifestyle modification may be a legitimate approach for improving the health of the citizenry and for reducing health care costs, but it may also be a prescription for oppression. Those who make policy should take care to recognize the difference. . . and the risk."

In 1981, historians Aaron and Musto concluded that "Prohibition will certainly never return. Above and beyond the mechanical problems of enforcement, it failed originally because it created no stabilizing vested interests. No reform movement can survive unless it is rooted in new institutions. But while extreme forms of controlling consumption of alcohol are utterly lacking in feasability, there is the chance that state police may once again assume a more interventionist role. The boundaries between personal and government responsibility constantly shift. Although a mass movement to curb drinking will never re-emerge, one can conceive that new, extensive regulation of the liquor industry might be integrated into a paradigm of environment safeguards and corporate responsibility. . . . The conditions are present for a revival of widespread interest in the problem of alcohol. No one can predict if such a resurgance of popular concern will in fact develop, but the record of the past suggests that movements once thought safely interred do not always remain in their graves."

Today's Ultra-Conservative
Pro-Prohibition Court

By 1991, eight out of the nine Supreme Court justices were appointed by Conservative Party presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Bush. The New York Times reported that same year: "[T]he Supreme Court is no longer in transition. It has become the court it will most likely be for the next generation." In 1992, the moderately conservative Justice Harry Blackmun warned: "I cannot remain on this court forever. When I do step down…the choice between the two worlds will be made."

Law professor Bernard Schwartz, in A History of the Supreme Court (Oxford University Press, 1993), wrote: "[U]nless the rights of the person are…expanded, the individual will be virtually shorn of constitutional protection…. in a society in which the individual stands dwarfed by power concentrations…. [T]he concentration of governmental power has continued unabated. The second half of this century has, if anything, seen an acceleration in the growth of such power. Indeed, the outstanding feature of the late twentieth century is the power concentrations that increasingly confront the individual. Even a more conservative Court may find it necessary to preserve a sphere for individuality in such a society."

In 1981, Richard Bonnie observed: "Recent regulatory and legislative initiatives strongly suggest that the government is likely to speak more often, and more forcefully, in the coming years. . . . I predict, then, a transition from information to persuasion, or, as the industry might say, to propaganda."

In 1984, the proverbial year of (military police officer) George Orwell's nightmare, Repulican Ronald Reagan published a report from The President's Commission on Drunk Driving. The report mapped out a war strategy to crack down on drunk, drugged and medicated driving. The prohibiton war effort shifted from manufacturing to consumption. This created "the stabilizing vested interests" required for a successful prohibition of alcohol. The president's report made encouraged and literally required massive growth of the prison-industrial complex, funded with profits from law-enforcement agencies tasked with becoming "self supporting." This drunk-driving commission was established approximately one year after Reagan's vice president George Bush was reportedly arrested following an apparent drunk-driving crash with one of his mistresses. The President's Commission report failed to mention the vice president's reported drunk-driving arrest.

Brandeis

As an historical footnote, Prohibition gave American citizens the first government telephone wiretap. This was despite the fact that any type of government wiretapping was specifically illegal in every state. The Fourth Amendment gives "the right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." The Fifth Amendment declares "no person . . . shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself." Democtatic-appointed Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis ranted most eloquently at the government's intrusion upon a defenseless public, to no avail -- he was outnumbered by his conservative Prohibition-loving brethren. In his dissenting opinion in Olmstead, et. al., vs. U.S. (277 U.S. 438, 1927), Justice Brandeis wrote:

"'We must never forget,' said Mr. Chief Justice Marshall . . . 'that it is a Constitution we are expounding.'

". . . When the Fourth and Fifth Amendments were adopted. . . . [f]orce and violence were then the only means known to man by which a government could directly effect self-incrimination. It could compell an individual to testify--a compulsion effected, if need be, by torture. . . . Discovery and invention have made it possible for the government, by means far more effective than stretching upon the rack, to obtain disclosure in court of what is whispered in the closet. . . . The progress of science in furnishing the government with means of espionage is not likely to stop with wiretapping. Ways may someday be developed by which the government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurances in the home. Advances in the psychic and related sciences may bring means of exploring unexpressed beliefs, thoughts and emotions. 'That places the liberty of every man in the hands of every petty officer' was said by James Otis of much lesser intrusions than these.

". . . The evil incident of invasion of privacy of the telephone line is far greater than that involved in tampering with the mails. . . . [T]he tapping of one man's telephone line involves the tapping of the telephone of every other person whom he may call, or who may call him. As a means of espionage, writs of assistance and general warrents are but puny instruments of tyranny and oppression when compared with wiretapping.

". . . The makers of the Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man's spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against their government, the right to be let alone -- the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. To protect that right, every unjustifiable intrusion by the government upon the privacy of the individual, whatever the means employed, must be deemed a violation of the Fourth Amendment. And the use, as evidence in a criminal proceeding, of facts assertained by such an intrusion must be deemed a violation of the Fifth.

". . . Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are natually alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insideous encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.

". . . By the laws of Washington, wiretapping is a crime. . . . To prove its case, the government was obliged to lay bare the crimes committed by its officers on its behalf. A federal court should not permit such a prosecution to continue.

". . . The terms of appointment of federal prohibition agents do not purport to confer upon them authority to violate any criminal law.

". . . When these unlawful acts were committed they were crimes only of the officers individually. The government was innocent, in legal contemplation: for no federal official is authorized to commit a crime on its behalf. When the government, having full knowledge sought, through the Department of Justice, to avail itself of the fruits of these acts in order to accomplish its own ends, it assumed moral responsibilty for the officers' crimes. . . . [I]f this court should permit the government, by means of its officers' crimes, to effect its purpose of punishing the defendants, there would seem to be present all the elements of a ratification. If so, the government itself would become a lawbreaker.

". . . Decency, security, and liberty alike demand that government officials shall be subjected to the same rules of conduct that are commands to the citizen. In a government of laws, existence of the government will be imperiled if it fails to observe the law scrupulously. Our government is the potent, the omnipresent teacher. For good or for ill, it teaches the whole people by its example. Crime is contagious. If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself; it invites anarchy. To declare that in the administration of the criminal law the ends justifies the means -- to declare that the government may commit crimes in order to secure the conviction of a private criminal--would bring terrible retribution. Against that pernicious doctrine this court should resolutely set its face."

This landmark case had involved a prohibited import-export business operating between Washington state and Vancouver, Canada, providing American citizens with high-quality, properly refined, safe beverage alcohol.

Appointed by the Democratic Party President Woodrow Wilson, Brandais was the first Jewish American to serve on the Supreme Court. Ultraconservative anti-Semitism was felt by a fellow Supreme Court justice, the "liberal" Wilson appointee James McReynolds, who refused to attend public occasions with "a Hebrew abroad." Even Taft considered Justice McReynolds was "fuller of prejudice than any man I have ever known" (and Taft probably appreciated every bit of the former prosecutor's fury against minorities). As a "civilian," Brandais often had supported his liberal social views by working free for public causes. Ex-president Taft considered "Mr. Louis D. Brandais…is not a fit person to be a member of the Supreme Court," leading to conflict when the conservative Taft was promoted to Brandais' boss.

Brandais, however, went on to revolutionize the way the Supreme Court conducted business, writing decisions with a heavy emphasis on facts rather than conservative politics. As punishment for his liberal efforts, Brandais was never promoted to Chief Justice despite serving on the Supreme Court for 23 years. Today, his style of reasoning is still the Supreme Court standard for Constitutional decisions, even if his legal opinions fared little better than spitting into the wind. His contemporaries are now relegated to oblivion, though their corrupted politics are eternal.

NSA

Note that since Justice Brandeis' warning in 1927, it has become scientifically possible for the government to intercept documents via fax and computer e-mail transmissions, "without removing papers from secret drawers," and the government has invested millions of tax dollars in psychic espionage experiments and programs. The government's National Security Agency can now intercept 450,000 telephone conversations at any given moment,s using massively expensive supercomputers to sift through the citizens' conversations automatically, searching for words of interest -- including use of the Internet. Estimates for the global Project Echelon, of which the NSA and American Internet Providers (IPs) participate in, is 3-BILLION per day.

State and local police also have a massive combined capability for phone tapping. As with any wiretap, not only are telephone conversations overheard, but also every conversation or sound emanating from inside the dwelling. The Supreme Court has allowed police agencies to use pen registers, trap and trace devices, and clone pagers without a search warrant. Pen registers records all the phone numbers dialed from a particular residence. Trap and trace devices record the numbers of incoming calls. Clone pagers are duplicates of a citizen's personal pager number, which allows police to be paged every time the citizen is paged.

In 1998, technicians discovered that most of the cellular telephones in use in America had a secret backdoor access code programmed into every one of them, possibly allowing the government to tune in to digital communications. In 1999, Microsoft was in the news for writing its computer programs to allow government eavesdropping on Microsoft's Windows customers using the MS software file named "NSAKEY." (Microsoft -- part owner of NBC News (MSNBC) -- was convicted that same year for stealing hundreds of billions of dollars from computer customers and business competitors with its illegal monopoly and criminal corporate cheating. Its three top executives -- who are each richer than 50 nations thanks to their criminal conspiracy -- were not sent to jail. The case is now under appeal, a process sure to last many years as they continue to rake in massive profits from around the world. Class action civil lawsuits to recover the stolen billions are now in the courts, for computer owners who seek justice. Note that it is against the law for convicted felons to own major newmedia.)

Even if the government eavesdroppers do not use the information to prosecute for a crime, such sensitive knowledge can be easily used for political or financial leverage, i.e., blackmail. Big Brother may be stalking you, inside your own home, thanks to its Prohibition Wars against sex, drugs, alcohol, politics, free speech, democracy (i.e. "anarchy") etc.

DEEP THOUGHTS

Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.
Therefore the law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.
--Habukkuk 1:3-4 (Recovery Devotional Bible)

JOKE OF THE DAY

A Congressman was once asked about his attitude toward whiskey. "If you mean the demon drink that poisons the mind, pollutes the body, desecrates family life, and inflames sinners, then I'm against it. But if you mean the elixir of Christmas cheer, the shield against winter chill, the taxable potion that puts needed funds into public coffers to comfort little crippled children, then I'm for it. This is my position, and I will not compromise."