H/T to Radley Balko

Depressing. In an interview with USA Today, Barack Obama essentially promises not only to use the presidency as a bully pulpit to further promote the Drug War, but vows to pour more money into enforcement as well.

As president, I would use the bully pulpit of my office to warn Americans about the dangers of performance enhancing drugs, and I would put greater resources into enforcement of existing drug laws. I would also convene a summit of the commissioners of the professional sports leagues, as well as university presidents, to explore options for decreasing the use of these drugs.

The USA Today article posed the questions of Title IX and performance enhancement drugs(PEDs) to all 3 candidates and all 3 gave essentially the same answer. This is not "Change we can believe in" but "Same old, same old." I don't care about the Title IX aspect of the article, but Obama's promise to vigorously expand the Drug War into PEDs only promises to unleash the DEA on 15 million Americans who currently use PEDs of some sort. Over at The Art of The Possible, the conceptual theme is a a liberal-libertarian alliance. However, at some point, the liberals have to start living up to their side of the bargain. I'm willing to compromise on economic issues, but not on civil liberty issues. Libertarian principles of the right to self-medicate are beside the point here; there is all the evidence in the world to construct an "a posteriori" argument that any reform on the civil liberties front absolutely requires reform of our Drug Laws. Obama's capitulation on this issue (wasn't "The Wire" supposed be his favorite TV Show?) makes him nothing more than an empty suit on the civil liberties front.