Police authorities in the US city of Philadelphia are investigating a video showing officers kicking and beating three suspects pulled from a car during a traffic stop. [...] The city's police commissioner on Tuesday said the video "certainly does not look good", but stressed the force did not want to "rush to judgement".

Police have an awful strange habit of calling for cool heads and lucid contemplation immediately after a dozen of those officers did neither.

Critics of today's major DEA drug bust at a San Diego college campus called the sting operation a "ridiculous, nonsensical waste of DEA resources." Ninety-six people, including 75 San Diego State University students, were arrested for charges stemming from possession and sales of cocaine, marijuana, ecstasy and other drugs. "It would be different if they picked one or two of the worst offenders, or if there was violence involved, but what is the point of this? Don't they have anything better to do than go after college kids?" asked Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, which promotes alternatives to the war on drugs.

I'm certainly no fan of the war on drugs but isn't justice blind? Nobody is entitled to special dispensation. What's good for minorities on the streets of Los Angeles is certainly good enough for upper class white kids with a degree hanging in the balance.

I can just imagine one of these parents sitting at a kitchen table and thinking to themselves, "You mean my child's future is destroyed because of twenty-eight grams of a plant that's less toxic than salt? My god, this War on Drugs thing is ridiculous!"

Yep. In 2006 alone it put 829,625 cannabis smokers behind bars.

So welcome to the club. Ready to call your Congressman yet?