Sunday, March 29, 2009

The Ashley Biden Cocaine Scandal

Is the Obama White House Dazed and Confused?

We've got a couple of stories in the news this morning that will further clarify the battle lines in the culture wars. On the one hand,
The Politico's story this morning reports that the marijuana issue is "suddenly smoking hot." The article, by Professor Jeremy Mayer, suggests that criminalization is archaic:

Smoking pot doesn’t cause schizophrenia, but marijuana as an issue sure gives our political system the symptoms. We have just elected our third president in a row who at least tried marijuana in early adulthood, yet it remains illegal.

Beyond imprisonment, one of my policy students, who was honest As we discovered again this week, President Obama, like his two predecessors, supports imprisoning people for making the same choices he made.

Beyond imprisonment, one of my policy students, who was honest on a security clearance about her one time use of pot, could lose her job for doing what Clinton, Bush and Obama did.

On television, leading comedian Jon Stewart and America’s sweetheart, Sandra Bullock, swap pot smoking stories with lighthearted abandon, laughing along with their audience, who, like most Americans, end up voting for politicians who support draconian punishments for pot users and dealers.

Year after year, major Hollywood films like Pineapple Express show potsmoking in a positive light, yet legalization remains unmentionable to both our political parties. And America’s most popular Olympian, Michael Phelps, like the majority of people his age, has tried pot, but loses millions in sponsorship when it is revealed that he has done what most of his fans have done.

Several states have legalized medical marijuana, and a few are contemplating decriminalization, and yet, other states are about to prevent those whose urine tests positive for marijuana from receiving desperately needed benefits to which they would otherwise be legally entitled.

At least eight states, including Kansas, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, are actively considering making drug tests mandatory for food stamps, welfare, or unemployment. In a classic demonstration of how America has always had one drug law for the rich and one for the poor, no one has suggested drug testing recipients of billions in bailout cash. We could probably save a lot of money by testing Wall Street financiers for pot (or cocaine, for that matter).

Perhaps these accumulated paradoxes have finally become large enough for the nation to begin reconsidering its position on pot. For an issue that has been in stasis for decades, marijuana is suddenly hot, one might even say, smoking.

The second story is the report that Ashley Biden, daughter of Vice President Joseph Biden, has allegedly been videotaped snorting cocaine at a party in Wilmington, Delaware. The New York Post offers a scandalous lede:

A "friend" of Vice President Joseph Biden's daughter, Ashley, is attempting to hawk a videotape that he claims shows her snorting cocaine at a house party this month in Delaware.
Radar Online has more:

The tape has been viewed by a RadarOnline.com freelance reporter who confirms the woman looks identical to Ashley Biden.

Tom Dunlap, an attorney for Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver in Washington D.C. is representing the seller of the tape in brokering a deal and several news organizations have seen the footage.

In addition to RadarOnline.com, representatives for the New York Post, a large British newspaper and the National Enquirer have all viewed the tape.

News clips show that Ashley Biden was once arrested for marijuana possession while she was a college student in New Orleans in 1999. The charges were later dismissed.

In 2002, The Los Angeles Times reported that Ashley, then 21, was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of obstructing a police officer outside a Chicago bar.
Ashley Biden is now a social worker for a public child-welfare agency in Delaware. In that position, she must see dysfunctional families whose lives are torn apart by poverty, joblessness, domestic violence, welfare dependency, and alcohol and drug abuse.

None of the
stories online have posted the video, and some are completely dismissing the rumors. But let's assume that the allegations are true, and that Ashley Biden is a pot-smoking cokehead. This is a woman who has been arrested for both marijuana possession and for some kind of scuffling with police officers at a Chicago bar. Ms. Biden's pattern of prior events alone suggests something of a freewheeling spirit, and in my opinion the allegations of her cocaine use are realistically plausible.

So first of all, where's all the outrage on the left?


Andrew Sullivan, after the Michael Phelps drug scandal came to light, asked "does anyone think that smoking pot would give him an unfair advantage in the pool? Please. When on earth are we going to grow up as a culture?" But recall that Sullivan led the attack on Sarah Palin's family as well, and he wrote recently that "I regret nothing about my blogging about Sarah Palin last year and would do it again ..." I'd bet most families would be nearly as upset with their child's marijuana and cocaine abuse as they would with unmarried pregnancies. Does Sullivan have anything to say about the vice-presidential drug scandal? If Bristol Palin cocaine tapes were being shopped around, the bareback blogger would be going ape-crazy over the story. Who needs to grow up?

And how about the mainstream media? Obama's marijuana smoking is a big story at The Politico, and
decriminalization is the rage, so where's the coverage of Ashley Biden and the Biden family's apparenet social problems? Can you say double standard?

I grew up in the hothouse high school days of the
Dazed and Confused 1970s. I am a parent of young children and I oppose the decriminalization of marijuana because I think the drug is a life-waster. I take seriously the clinical the medical science that finds marijuana use to be a gateway to the abuse of illicit hard drugs and alcohol dependence, and even if some research shows a reduced likelihood of progression from marijuana to hard drugs in recent decades, there is simply no reasonable circumstance that society should see the collapse of the NORMATIVE and legal prohibitions on the use of these substances.

That is to say, we should expect to see just as much media attention and concomitant public concern had Ashley Biden been videotaped allegedly smoking a big fat reefer rather than doing lines. Both marijuana smoking and cocaine use are embedded in the deeper social pathology of self-destructiness and the collapse of moral values. Let's see the big liberal blogs and the mainstream press stand up for some values here, if not journalistic consistency.

**********

UPDATE: The Times of London is going with the story, "
US Vice-President Joe Biden's daughter Ashley filmed snorting lines of cocaine."

8 comments:

  1. Donald..I've just read your post, and several other articles about Ashley Biden's cocaine use, and I think it is terrible, and shows what a double standard there is when it comes to elected officials and their families...except where Sarah Palin is concerned, of course.

    I am assuming that the story is true, because she has quite a history of misbehavior, anyway..it's just always overlooked, and not publicized.

    If the story is true, then I think that she should immediately be relieved of her job...what hypocrisy!

    It is sickening.

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  2. I think the story is true, but I'm reading around online and others are dismissing it.

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  3. Every politician, pundit, blogger, and dorm-room bull-session attendee in favor of decriminialization must begin by signing a statement, for publication, calling for their immediate execution if they ever ask for increased government funding to treat or ameliorate addiction or dependency.

    Then I will begin to take them seriously.

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  4. Like father like daughter....Idiots!

    But if his daughter did the coke, it should have no effect on how Joe acts or what he says, or how we view him. We all know he's a damn fool, born with foot in mouth.

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  5. I hope that if this is true that the VP's daughter gets the help she needs.

    And I have seen too many people destroy their lives with pot to want to see it decriminalized. That said, I have NO problem with hemp or hemp products, just the stuff that gets you high.

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  6. Let's use this against the Left the same way:

    The Democrats never gave president Bush the benefit of the doubt;

    The Democrats went after the Bush daughters;

    Andrew Sullivan attacks unmolested by the Democrats, attacking Palin, her daughters, and her extended family;

    The Democrats went after VP Cheney's family;

    The Left should reap what they sowed. The only way to convince me is to show how, between 2003 - 2008, the Democrats took the High Road on all these individuals.

    If not, the Flood begins.

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  7. I think the point Jan makes is that anything Sarah P is alleged to have had knowledge of is instantly given cred by the JList all-stars, including excitable Andy while a lefty gets all sorts of John Edwards type slack.

    BTW, I notice that on weekends, your excellent thoughtful blog is not linked often to Memeo---.com and that very few Repub, Conserv, Libertar, etc. seem to make the cut. I wonder if it is the same crew of Bolshie BSers who don't have lives anyway & keep the night & weekend shifts? Any thoughts or am I hallucinating?

    I do agree with PRH that Joe is a compleat idiot---his Hezbollah remark on Lebanon shows those hairplugs have eaten into his frontal lobes....

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  8. Sorry, JSF, you said it better than I did. I love it when a sad sack of squat like Moyers is outed as a homophobe and DUI and nobody at PBS even questions this creepy phony as a journalist.

    I did the security clearance test for TSecret at the State Dept and was told by a knowing functionary to ease up on any revelations that could skew my credentials for certain jobs---a wink and a nod of sorts to lie under oath. I'm not going to tell you what I did, but I was in Ann Arbor's SDS posse, not a member, for months and you can guess. They could guess too, but at that particular time, things were okay. I did have Mark Rudd as a houseguest and met Ayers and his pretty soon-to-explode girlfriend Diana Oughton, of whom they identified after the townhouse blew by one finger on her hand.

    These people are romanced for their moral squalor and Ayers is a Professor, what a crock of BS. The stuff the left lives and breathes and has for its moral sustenance to entice the kiddies into their web.

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