You have to be kidding me:
Now it appears the case has expanded beyond Phelps’ activities.
The party took place in November at a house on Blossom Street near Five Points.
It was at that house where someone snapped the photo of Phelps taking a hit on a marijuana pipe called a bong.
Lott says the picture indicated a law was being broken in his jurisdiction. He said he couldn’t ignore the violation just because Phelps is rich and famous.
We’ve now learned that since investigators began trying to build a case, they’ve made eight arrests: seven for drug possession and one for distribution. These are arrests that resulted as the sheriff’s department served search warrants.
We’ve also learned that the department has located and confiscated that bong.
Sources say the owner of the bong was trying to sell it on eBay for as much as $100,000.
The owner, who wasn’t even at the party, is one of the eight now charged.
When I read crap like this, I just want to give up. Apparently there is nothing else of importance for the local authorities to contend with, so there is an investigation into a bunch of jackasses smoking pot.
A country that does this and puts Tommy Chong in jail (nice work, Joe Biden) just isn’t a serious nation. Dissolve our federal, state, and local governments. Dissolve the courts. Screw the stimulus package. Let the banks fail. Let’s just say to hell with it all and let the country die a quick death and hope the Chinese do a better job governing us than we did.
And let me also make the point that yes, often times being rich and famous does give you access to more favorable situations in our screwed up system of justice, but some times, it goes the other way. Just like Paris Hilton got screwed with her jail time because she was a celebrity, Michael Phelps is about to get boned by some overzealous cop because he is famous. And if you want to argue otherwise, then what you are saying is that police agencies around the country have nothing better to do than to hunt average everyday folks down and bust them because they saw a picture of them doing a bong hit. If that is the case, then maybe Sen. Ensign was right the other day- the states need to do some budget cutting, and they should start with the police.
4tehlulz
Wouldn’t it be easier just to cede South Carolina back to Britain?
scarshapedstar
We all live in a yellow submarine.
Also: Watching Obama’s White House in action is like watching Michael Phelps swim with both arms and both legs tied together.
Austin
Unreal. At the end of the day, all they have is a photo of him holding a bong- they can’t prove what was in it, they can’t prove he smoked it (although he sorta f’d himself when he apologized. kids: never admit to anything!).
So let’s flood the Intertrons with photos of ourselves holding a bong to our mouths. it’s not illegal to possess a bong in most states- it’s just illegal to smoke the chron out of it. John- you first!
TenguPhule
I think the GOP is already trying to curry favor with our new Chinese Overlords.
Shit will always float to the top until flushed.
Dave in California
Anyone want to bet that the owner of the house loses it via asset forfeiture laws in the next few days?
scarshapedstar
And, yes, Phelps should have said that he was smoking tobacco out of the bong and if the sheriff can prove otherwise then he ought to spray some Lysol on that proof after pulling it out of his ass.
SGEW
Um . . . this might not be your finest idea. You can get the death penalty in China for cannabis possession, after all (wiki).
. . .
How ’bout the Netherlands, instead?
John Cole
@scarshapedstar: No, Phelps should have told people it was none of their damned business what he was doing or what he was smoking that weekend or any other day.
John Cole
@SGEW: The Chinese are the one who own our debt.
Michael D.
Yep – the Phelps thing is asinine!
So is this CNBC interview, by the way. (via Josh Marshall, who notes: “These two guys are talking about a deep structural crisis in the world economy. And these CNBC yahoos can’t stop asking for stock tips. Really surreal.”)
It really is one of the stupidest things I have ever watched. Why those two guys didn’t get up and walk out is beyond me.
EdTheRed
@Dave in California:
Hopefully the house is underwater with an ARM that’s about to reset. Why bother with jingle mail…just post a picture of a bong on your myspace page, and it’s goodbye toxic mortgage!
JL
@John Cole: The news media would have harped him continuously. Remember MSM and Clinton, it’s all about the lie. I don’t think that he admitted to smoking pot. He did say it was a picture of him and that he erred. Making a mistake to him might be holding the bong. South Carolina is almost bankrupt and they waste money on this.
kay
I read a long piece on Phelps once. I don’t follow sporting events of any kind, but it was interesting. I came away thinking he has had a narrow life, thus far. Wildly successful, but…specific.
He eats and swims, basically. Not much else since he was 8 years old.
I was so glad that he went to a party. I thought "oh, look, that swimmer has friends. That’s nice."
SGEW
@John Cole: I know, I know. I was just saying there are drawbacks to becoming a Chinese colony . . . you know, besides the obvious ones. My snark does not have nearly as much internal coherence as thine, I guess.
Also, I am (not really, honest!) ok with becoming a Dutch colony. Again. Speaking as a New Amsterdam resident.
ricky
What is our plan to bail out the Chinese?
Montysano (All Hail Marx & Lennon)
*** suuuuuck ***
*** whooosh ***
Uh…. what?
JL
@John Cole: Should we exchange our currency now? After listening to Geithner, I don’t feel reassured.
cosanostradamus
.
Hey, ‘member that crazy war in Afghanistan? Yeah, well, they do. Gettin’ sick of it, apparently.
.
ricky
I guess the local prosecutor has more respect for the rule of law and deterrence of crimes among future role models than the Obama administration does.
Or should I be for sensible discretion in the use of prosecutorial power as a general principle be it pot or Presidents?
ricky
sleestak
But maybe this is a good thing in the long-run (for all of us, not the 8 people who were arrested). Perhaps this incident will highlight how insane our drug policy is for a few more people. Nobody was surprised or cared when Tommy Chong or Paris Hilton got busted. But this is the golden boy. Given Phelps’ hero status and the ridiculousness of this case, this might actually get people talking.
Michael D.
How we can pay for the economic stimulus! Well, over a number of years anyway!
Mnemosyne
To be fair to the judge in Hilton’s case, she pissed him off by showing up late to court and generally not taking the whole thing seriously. If you treat the judge as though he’s wasting your time with all of this stupid "law" stuff, guess what? Judge is going to give you a little time to think things over in County.
She still got more time than a non-celebrity would have in the same situation, but there would have been sanctions by the judge against anyone who acted like that in court.
Chris Johnson
Well fuck.
I thought someone had photographed FRED Phelps with a bong.
I’m just all kinds of disappointed now…
Scott de B.
Have to disagree. In terms of overall negative impact on society, drug use is just below murder in terms of seriousness.
Fwiffo
I’m frequently left with the urge to hurl bricks at something.
scarshapedstar
@Chris Johnson:
If it’s any consolation, apparently Ted Haggard molded a dildo after his own penis so that he could fuck himself, and so could his wife, and that gay dude, and apparently some teenaged boys as well.
Michael D.
@Scott de B.:
Seriously? Taking a hit off a bong is more serious than beating the living crap out of your wife and kids.
To quote SNL’s Seth Meyers, “Really? REALLY?”
R. Stanton Scott
The main lesson learned here? Avoid creating physical evidence of your crimes, however innoccuous the crime or stupid the law.
If, during the course of breaking the law you do create physical evidence, don’t show it to other people–destroy it instead.
donovong
Let’s bear in mind that his took place in my birthplace of South Kakalakee, a backward state stuck in some sort of fucked up time warp circa 1960.
The governor would make John Kyl look progressive and the two senators are a winey-ass pansy who likes to keep McCain’s bearings greased and some douche who is the American version of Taliban. Also home to that school Omama mentioned the other day that is trying to teach kids
(black, I presume) in a shithole that was built before the Civil War.
We still have to thank our lucky stars that the local constabulary aren’t out lynching dark people.
Jon H
Remember, Lott’s the kind of po-leece jackass who thinks he needs a tank, er, armored assault vehicle.
Jon H
Republican policy now revolves around bongs and dongs.
Wile E. Quixote
@Chris Johnson
I’m even more disappointed, I thought that someone had photographed FRED Phelps sucking on a dong, which would explain a lot if you ask me, and not Michael Phelps sucking on a bong.
Persia
And totally legal alcohol abuse. And our broken health care system. Yeeeeeah.
Comrade Dread
It’s for the children, John.
We can’t have the kids thinking that one can use drugs recreationally and still be a world class athlete or the United States President. We certainly can’t have them understand that the government has basically been lying and waging war on its citizens for the last several decades.
Drug policy in this country is built of moralistic hypocrisy and greed of cops and bureaucrats sucking at the government teet.
Redshirt
@sleestak
Agreed. The only way we’re going to escape this madness is if enough people finally say "Enough". And it seems the tide is turning. It only take a couple of stories of local people getting their houses broken into (mistakenly) and their dogs killed by the cops looking for drugs for a community to change their opinion; this Phelps story takes that same story of nonsensical BS to a national/global stage.
Here’s also hoping these economic dire straights cause law enforcement to focus their limited resources on actual crimes, not made up, insane "crimes".
jvill
From the "What’s News" section of today’s WSJ:
More people in jail per capita than any other country.
Anyone else wondering when we’re going to release the pot smokers from prison and replace them with bankers?
ricky
Sounds like "Nixon on Crime" was not given proper attribution. I like Fred Phelps better. God hates bongs, fags!
Wile E. Quixote
@Scott de B.
So where does it come in compared to say, grievous bodily harm? I’m just curious. What would you find more upsetting, someone breaking both of your legs with a baseball bat, or someone sitting around their house getting baked, eating Doritos and goofing on cable fishing shows?
I’d ask if you were on drugs when you wrote that but you obviously don’t have that excuse, you’re merely stupid.
Caladan
Amen Brother,
The biggest waste of money in the federal budget, is the WAR on DRUGs. How about we cut the DEA’s budget.
Pots laws are one of the few Jim Crow era laws we enforce in this country.
Andrew
South Carolina exists for a very important reason: To make North Carolina look better in every possible way.
Dave
@Scott de B.:
You’re out of your god-damned mind. Unless you are including alcohol and tobacco in that statement.
Andrew
Folks, Scotty is either a fucking idiot or a troll. Or he’s really bad at saying what he means to say, like such as that war on drugs is just below murder in terms of seriousness. Nah, he’s probably a fucking idiot.
Wile E. Quixote
@4tehlulz
No, I don’t think that the British would take it. Rather I think that we should build a time machine, travel back to 1861 and give the Union Army thermonuclear weapons. It would be like Harry Turtledove’s Guns of the South except we could call it The Nukes of the North.
djork
I was born in SC. I remember Sheriff Lott well. Before he was sheriff, he was the DARE officer who went to schools to lie to the children about drugs. He came to my elementary school back in the mid 1980s. Miami Vice was just becoming a big deal in American culture. I distinctly remember this jackass telling us that if we were to ever taste a little bit of cocaine on our finger, like Crockett and Tubbs did on TV, we would die. So, I’m not surprised that he’s grandstanding.
Glad I got the heck out of that POS state. I hate going back to visit family.
John PM
@Wile E. Quixote: #44
Presumably you have read his novels regarding WWII between the North and the South, where in fact the North detonates a nuclear bomb in South Carolina, and a couple other Southern cities. Not to mention an alternative Sherman’s March, but with tanks.
Calouste
@SGEW:
The Dutch ruled America before and decided to trade it to the British for a piece of jungle in South America and an island with three nutmeg trees in present day Indonesia.
Caladan
An interesting side note, I wonder if Phelps could have an equal protection argument here. Is the county Sheriff going to look at all the Myspace and Facebook profiles of people living in South Carolina and prosecute everyone with a picture of them smoking pot or Drinking underage?
If the burden of proof has been lowered to such a level that a picture of someone smoking a bong is now a crime, we are all in trouble. You have to make an assumption that the substance in question is pot. Assumptions are not Facts
So what about Hookas?? They’re traditionally used for tobacco, but many people put MJ in them.
SGEW
@Calouste: I iz aware. Read moar thread, plz.
agorabum
Know your dope fiend! You will not be able to see his eyes because of tea shades, but his knuckles will be white from inner tension and his pants will be crusted with semen from constantly jacking off when he can’t find a rape victim.
Or he’ll be a world champion athelete… or both?
srv
Here are the good Sheriff’s unsolved murder cases:
http://www.rcsd.net/wanted/unsolved.htm
Not that that matters.
syl
Well the burden of proof here is just an arrest, not a conviction. I’m not familiar with SC state law, but I’ll bet the burden required for an arrest is something like "probable cause." Sure it’s possible that he’s smoking tobacco or seeing how many bubbles he can blow, but a very large majority of bong use is marijuana.
Now policy-wise, even assuming that marijuana prohibition is a worthwhile goal, spending police resources hunting down people photographed holding joints or 19-year-olds holding beers is, at best, a collossal waste of time and tax-dollars. But I don’t think there’s a legal issue with the arrest.
barkleyg
On the other hand, would he have given a shit if Phelps WASN’T famous?
Mr Furious
Lawyers should be lining up to take Phelps’ case right now. What kind of fucking case is Sheriff Lott going to present?…"I saw this photo on Facebook, your Honor."
Caladan
@syl
My primary point is that Sheriff has better thing to do then go after a picture of a bong. Also this feels like selective prosecution.
The arrests implies that the Sheriff is going to press charges. The county DA will have a say in this as well. But the 8 people arrested are screwed because Michael Phelps is famous.
geg6
Dood. Can you get me some of what you’ve been smoking? Cuz that must be some good stuff to come up with that.
John Cole
From a numbers perspective, the toll of the drug war far outweighs the toll from drug abuse which far outweighs from murder, so he is probably correct. Think about it- and if you expand the category to include other “drugs,” like cigarettes and alcohol, then it isn’t even debatable.
That being said, equating kids smoking pots with murder is pretty damned stupid.
Douche Baggins
Back in the day (mid 1980’s) at MIT we had a simple rule: "No bongs on film." There were people huffing on the ole water pipe who, even at that tender age, had plans to be a senator, congresscritter, or other public official. Of course, back then you didn’t have a cellphone camera in every pocket, even if it was the nerd capital of the world.
syl
@ Caladan
No argument from me there. Policy-wise, this is a stupid road to head down. Who knows what the DA does, but you’re right that Phelps’ fame isn’t doing anyone any favors here. Is marijuana use decriminalized in SC? I kind of doubt it.
jrg
This whole story is so absurd, I don’t even know where to begin. The funniest part is the fact that "busting" Phelps (the most decorated Olympian of all time) is the most significant thing this loser cop will ever do. Yeah, and weed smokers are the losers.
Do you have any evidence at all to back that up, or are you pulling that out of your ass? My first response, as someone who’s lost money to corporate crooks, and lost family members to complications from smoking tobacco is "go fuck yourself".
cleek
@Douche Baggins: wins the Best Handle contest.
Chasm
This calls for civil disobedience. I don’t live anywhere near SC, but if I did I’d send the sheriff a picture of myself smoking a doobie. Standing in front of the Sheriff Dept if I could.
I absolutely love this one of a SC Drug Warrior standing above a frickin weed growing in the cracks of someone’s front porch, presumably right before they busted in and arrested the folks and seized their car. This is from the web page of Richland Co. fabulous past drug busts. I imagine they cant wait to add the photo of the Phelps bong to the gallery.
Jay Severin Has A Small Pens
If Phelps really wanted to be a bastard.
He could just say he was smoking dope to relieve the pain from the salmonella poisoning from eating all that Kellogg’s tainted foods.
Dave
@Fwiffo: Bricks? Your brothers and sisters ran away from Teddy Bears on Spathiwa, I can’t imagine you wanting to throw Bricks at ANYTHING, although I agree with you 110%. I want the change I believed in, dammit.
Chris Johnson
It just makes me sad also because I’m a recovering addict. Pot was pretty much my favorite though I did all sorts of stuff. I can’t handle any of it and the fault is with me being an addict, not with the drugs being drugs. I’m still an addict even when dry and jonesing- or for that matter sixteen years clean and sober.
I take out my addicty-ness on coffee and work ;) and I’m not as crazy with the coffee as I used to be: I drink freshly ground posh coffeebeans out of a French Press rather than going for purely high octane syrupy heart-stopper.
I WON’T smoke pot again and I still think it needs to be legalized and turned into a crop and taxed. I’ll laugh my ass off, and then still not smoke it or let it in my house- alcohol’s legal and I don’t drink that either.
Go ahead and give stiffer sentences to CRIMES done while under the influence, but there’s a lot of stuff that needs to be legalized to get it out in the open and deal with it sensibly. I do think it would suck to have big business (or Big Pharma) hyping these drugs to the moon though. Hell, alcohol advertising is lame enough- though I’d honestly rather get rid of the alcohol advertising and replace it with pot advertising if it was up to me. I don’t care, I’m not gonna use either, stoned people are safer to be around and both are comparably unhealthy.
barkleyg
I would be stunned if the local DA didn’t tell the sheriff where to take his case, and it aint court.
Off the top of my head, Phelps DNA Will be on the bong in all probability. along with 50(?)-100(?) other DNAs. There will be pot residue on the bong for sure. But, and this is a big but, how can you prove that there was pot in the bong when Phelps used it. It becomes a he said, he said argument about what was happening at the moment Phelps had the pipe. What jury is going to go 100% for conviction with just the evidence that I mentioned.
Finally, in this case like most all other legal disputes: He who has the best lawyer wins
Paulie Chestnuts
I don’t blame the cops for prosecuting this lame stuff. The alternative is to go after gangs which are considerably more dangerous thanks to the 2nd Amendment.
I mean, if you gotta do your duty, it makes sense from a self-preservation standpoint to go for the nonviolent offenders.
Phoebe
Since the drug war is so insanely bad for society, there needs to be a whole ton of people who do like a lunch counter sit-in, and just smoke pot, mail a picture to the cops – and the paper – go to jail, and do it again right afterwards. Our prisons would be stuffed to capacity super fast, and the protesters would not to stop until pot was legalized.
They couldn’t stop arresting people because then it would be admitting that this really does not matter. At all. In fact if they don’t arrest Michael Phelps, then they’re doing it already. But we need to make them do it on a public, mass scale.
jenniebee
If that’s the way that Sheriff reacts to a photo, what do you think he’d do if you sent him an "Earl’s in the trunk" bumper sticker?