Drugs may be the major American story of our era, the thing that did more to alter behavior and law, that redistributed income to the poor far more dramatically than any tinkering with tax codes, that jailed more people and killed more people than any U.S. foreign policy initiative since the Vietnam War. But this vital force…is absent from our daily consciousness and surfaces when discussed as a problem.

—Charles Bowden, Down by the River

It was just past 2 a.m. on a Saturday and I was standing at a busy intersection in a dirty corner of Hollywood, just a few blocks away from Grauman’s Chinese Theater. People were spilling out of bars and heading home. The strip was emptying out quickly. But where I was standing, prime time was just beginning. Hookers were pouring out onto the sidewalk, circling the block slowly in packs of twos and threes and causing a traffic jam as cars slowed to a crawl to check out the selection. There weren’t too many females among them. This part of town specializes in tranny whores and gigolos. (more…)

Honorable Mention: Blessed are the wind-blown embers.

Statement of the Grand Inquisitor: Let us start with a fitting quote from yesterday’s LA Times article:

A wind-blown ember can be opportunistic, slipping through tiny breaches in the homes.

Opportunistic indeed! These little sparks of red hot justice were busy at work last weekend, crawling into vents, falling between cracks and carrying the mission from house to house, palm tree to palm tree. In a matter of days, 1,000 homes burned down in half a dozen different fires spread around Southern California. All weekend long, ash fell out of the sky and a cloud of smoke blocked out the sun, casting the whole of Southern California in the crimson red hues of Armageddon.

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