Panel: “Whiteclay is becoming the Flint, Michigan, of Nebraska”

It would be interesting to know how much beer distributors pay tribal authorities to keep reservations dry.

The state should hire a full-time law enforcement officer in Whiteclay, Nebraska, and open an alcohol detox center to clean up the notorious border town, an ad hoc committee formed by Gov. Pete Ricketts has recommended. “Whiteclay is becoming the Flint, Michigan, of Nebraska,” said Lincoln businessman Alan Jacobsen, a former candidate for governor. He was among a group of Lincoln advocates calling for action from the Nebraska Liquor Control Commission. [Omaha World-Herald]

Cannabis has shown to be an effective treatment for alcoholism.

Senators in the single-chamber Nebraska Legislature voted 30-19 to override the veto of GOP Governor Pete Ricketts who supports the death penalty. Ricketts has retaliated by vowing to execute people on death row anyway after ordering drugs illegally from outside the United States.

South Dakota enjoys killing and has built an economy around death but Nebraska's move has stirred hopes in South Dakota that its legislature could follow suit. Republican former Representative Steve Hickey says 46% of the state opposes the death penalty.

Conservatives who voted for the repeal cited their own personal principles, such bureaucratic overreach and fiscal recklessness involved in the process. So, in some ways, this has become a philosophical alignment, in which both conservative and liberal philosophies have melded together. ["]Do we want a government so big, so powerful, they can decide life and death?” stated District 18 Sen. Bernie Hunhoff (D) of Yankton in an Associated Press report. [editorial, Yankton Press & Dakotan]

The litigation costs of trying a capital crime persuaded Nebraska to abandon state-sponsored killing: how is the price of putting people to death either conservative or sustainable?

Screw Nebraska. Flood the state with cannabis grown in the Oglala Lakota Nation.

Let’s ensure that cannabis cultivation and distribution stay out of the hands of Big Dope. It’s time to enter compacts with the tribes, let them distribute on the rez, on off-reservation properties and in Deadwood.