2009-11-24 — According to various initial analyses, it's possible the news item reported below is a suicide, not a murder. See this for update: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2009-11-24-census-worker-suicide_N.htm

However, the crux of what I wrote still stands. So therefore, I will leave the essay below unmodified:

There is a serious amount of unfounded hate being spread these days.

Not only is the War on Drugs continuing to be a source of unnecessary terror, but there are people who claim to worship God, but who are spreading vile hatred instead.

I don't know whether it was the latter, or fear of a clandestine drug situation being uncovered, but this man was treated shamefully, very shamefully.

But in either case, this story deserves to be filed in this part of the book.

'Fed' scrawled on body of hanged census worker

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/09/25/census.worker.death/index.html

End drug prohibition so backwoods labs don't make meth. Legalize marijuana so insanely inflated prohibition prices don't cause greedy people to even think of such things, and legalize and regulate every other illicit drug that causes the black market to thrive.

This episode sounds like something out of the era of alcohol prohibition! Except I'm still not sure it was caused by that, perhaps some of the "ministers" down there, with their Anti-Obama/Anti-Government/Census-is-of-the-Anti-Christ rhetoric are the cause. But in either case: End Prohibition!