From testimony before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, June 20th, 2012 by DEA administrator Michele Leonhart:
If you didn’t watch the whole thing because you started flaying your skin off bath-salts-style out of rage, I understand. Once I finished watching I marched out into the living room and sucker punched my roommate in the back of the head just to take the edge off.
Uhh, I don’t get it. Is crack worse than doja?
Michele Leonhart, administrator of the DEA, (current salary: $165,300 per year): “I believe all illegal drugs are bad.”
Hmm, you make a compelling argument. Okay how about heroin. H. Horse. Smack. Heron. Better or worse than weed?
Michele Leonhart, (salary per hour–assuming a 60-hour work week which is probably vastly understated based on her nuanced and perspicacious answers to these questions–$82.65/hr): “All illegal drugs are bad.”
She goes on to explain that heroin causes an addiction.
Fucking Jesus on a Jetski! Folks, you could blow me down with a hand fan. Heroin is addictive? Are we recording this? Shouldn’t we have this lady under Secret Service protection? Somebody get her in a room with Stephen Hawking. We’ll have fusion reactors, a cure for cancer and a bullet train from LA to Vegas by Tuesday! She should have a hangover pill on the market by the 4th of July.
I know what’s going to be trending on Twitter tomorrow. You guessed it: #nameafollowerthatgaveyouherpes. But after that will be #heroinisaddictive.
The only explanation for Rep. Jared Polis [D-CO] not leaping from his chair and pancake blocking her Terry Tate-style is because he must have suffered a brain aneursym.
By the end of this video I was reduced to just making tortured little yelps after each sentence that came out Leonhart’s mouth. I must have sounded like a dog feeling out the edges of a brand new invisible fence.
But she wasn’t done blatantly lying to Congress for transparently political reasons.
Next up was Rep. Steve Cohen [D-TN] who attempted to get just a bit, just a micron, a fucking quark of candor out Ms. Leonhart:
And we are off to a bad start. Side note: Per rules of the Committee on the Judiciary, members receive five minutes to interrogate witnesses. So even though Ms. Leonhart appears to have the intelligence of a sentient toaster (and to have difficulty with counting zeros) this is choreographed. It’s the testimonial equivalent of a boxing clinch. She would love nothing more than to blow a minute or two looking up meaningless figures. You can see her make this move at 0:58 but Cohen stops her and moves on, because really, isn’t that all we can do in this crazy mixed up world?
Cohen asks her what is the agency’s number one priority?
I am disappoint. You’re going to lob softballs like that? Number one priority, pssshh. A marijuana crazed psychopath killer molester could answer that question.
Ms. Leonhart: “Well our priority right now is pharmaceutical drugs.”
BOOM! You like that Congress? How about you oversight my butt-hole, haterz! Boo-yah! I may not be able to tell the difference between a Cheetoh-fingered pot enthusiast and toothless meth hobbyist but I know what our number one priority is: Pharmaceutical drugs, baby! YOLO!
Cohen asks her if cartels are a priority:
Congressman Cohen: “So that’s your number one priority–is going after that [the Columbian] cartel?”
See what he’s trying to do here, Michele? But you’re on to him. He can’t pull a fast one on you. After all you’re the one who told us about addiction stuff or whatever. Let him have it Shelly:
Ms. Leonhart: “Going after–our number one priority is going after those that most impact the United States.”
Yeaa—wait. What? The fuck does that mean? Those that most impact the United States? I don’t even know what the hell that means.
It devolves from here as Rep. Cohen asks whether heroin causes more deaths than marijuana.
Ms. Leonhart: “All drug trafficking causes deaths. I don’t have breakdown of how many deaths…”
OMG I wanna treat your labia like a speed-bag, you doughy pile of skin. You fucking political hack bureaucrat. Just stop. Stop. Please? Stop. ZZZt! No! Stop! No more talking. Please stop. Will you stop? Will you stop? Will you stop? Promise me you won’t say one more stupid thing? Promise me? Promise?
Ms. Leonhart: “I don’t have a breakdown of how many deaths are caused by cocaine and how many deaths are caused by heroin…”
J;alkjdljfowiyurpeioaklejraoeijrea! [Himbo kills self]
[Arrives in heaven]
[Comes back to life]
No, of course you don’t have a breakdown of how many deaths each drug causes. Why in the fuck would you have worthless information like that? What POSSIBLE benefit would that do? Just a waste of paper. Illegal drugs are bad.
It’s like when a police officer pulls you over for speeding and you ask him how fast you were going. What do they always say?
“Well I don’t have a break-down of the amount of miles you would have traveled in your car had you maintained your pace for one hour; I just know you were speeding. Don’t get all hung up on velocity. The important thing is that speeding is bad.”
Yeah, you wouldn’t want numbers or statistics to guide the priorities of a two billion dollar agency. No of course not. It’s much more exciting to get in there and wing it during congressional testimony.
So the question is: Why would Michele Leonhart purposely go up and look like a fool in front of the Judiciary Committee? Why is she adamant that there is no difference between pot and crack? And why can’t she come up with a more intelligent argument than ‘All illegal drugs are bad’. Who’s writing policy at the DEA, Willoughby from Looney Tunes? Why would she give such disingenuous and false testimony?
I would posit four possible reasons:
- According to the federal law, marijuana is Schedule 1 illegal drug (FYI, cocaine is schedule 2 or slightly less restricted) and Shelly is toeing the company line albeit in the stupidest and most bureaucratic way.
- Funding: If Michele tells the truth (Pot is…well pot) then she risks giving a backdoor endorsement of legalization which ultimately shrinks her enforcement kingdom. Thus her lack of concrete numbers (which took me roughly 3 minutes of Googling before finding this CDC report) which would undermine her dip-shit responses.
- As a seasoned government muckety-muck she sees where the line of questioning leads (weed is nowhere near as dangerous as heroin, coke, etc.) and rather than mount an substantive argument she punishes the congressmen for angling at legalization by lapsing into obtuseness.
- She actually believes weed is no different from smack, crack, and meth.
Notice what’s not in there? Anything approaching a valid reason for not answering the questions. But then what do we expect from someone who sees a rise in Mexican civilian deaths as a signpost of success in the War on Drugs.
Have a poly-drug weekend.
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Crack must not be that bad if it’s just like the pot. Let’s get cracked out on crackballs, Himbo!
Are crackballs polydrugs? [crosses fingers]
Did you hear about the Miami zombie who was eating the face off a homeless man? No, not the guy who was high on bath salts, a real zombie. A local man in died from smoking the tweeds and became infected with the zombie gene. He came back to *life* and started eating homeless people (they’re free range, after all).
Send this post to Carolla. I’m sure he’d have a thing or two to say about Ms Leonhart. Grrrrr, she makes me so mad.
I don’t care if they legalize pot. But, marijuana culture in the US is destroying countries like Mexico and Central America. If we legalize it, will it reduce the effect of the cartels in Mexico?
My guess (which is based on reading stuff on the internets so get out the hugest grain of salt you can find) is that it would cut income from cartels and possibly make it more difficult for hard drugs to cross the border which would eat into cartels as well (agents would not have to waste time with weed, etc). The US would likely be able to grow enough to satisfy it’s own market which would dry up a slice of the cartels income. Money seems to be the only way to really sap the cartels as no level of violence (thus far) seems to deter them. Perhaps Mexico legalizing weed would help as well but who knows? They may not have the regulatory agencies in place and I suspect that violence would get much worse (possibly temporarily) if the cartels thought they were in danger of losing a market. Course I don’t know how much worse it gets than dozens of headless bodies left on the side of the road.