Sequoia National Pot Farm

The Feds have completed Operation LOCCUST and eradicated a billion (with a b, yes) bucks worth of weed grown in the Sequoia National Forest. Mexican cartels have been using the forest as their own pot ranch.

Illegal immigrants connected to Mexico's drug cartels are growing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of marijuana in the heart of one of America's national treasures, authorities say. It's a booming business that, federal officials say, feeds Mexico's most violent drug traffickers.

"These aren't Cheech and Chong plants," said John Walters, director of the National Drug Control Policy. "People who farm now are not doing this for laughs, despite the fact Hollywood still thinks that. They're doing it to make a lot of money."

Walters spoke from a "marijuana garden" tucked deep into the Sequoia National Forest, about a two- to four-hour hike from the nearest road, far removed from the giant sequoias the region is best known for.

Three observations:

1) Maybe if the Bushies were more concerned about preserving, protecting, and funding our national parks instead of trying to sell the land to the highest bidder, we wouldn't be in this problem. Of course, this will be shown as proof that national parks need to be disbanded and the land sold off to where it can be monitored by private interests, preventing this from happening again. Who was asleep at the wheel to let a billion bucks of weed grow out in the open like that?

2) The War on Drugs is still stupid and has been for decades. Legalize the stuff already to reduce the street value of it, so that criminal organizations don't build billion dollar empires based on raising weed and kill people. Then, we go around and incarcerate people for using instead of going after the guys getting rich off of it. Hell, make a publicly traded company that manufactures the stuff. Capitalism. Whee.

3) Illegal Immigration + Drugs + Violence + violating a "US National Treasure" = right wing meltdown. I can already see Malkinvania and her buds going into high apoplexy over this, and will be telling anyone they can that THIS is the major issue of Election 2008, and not the fact that you're flat-ass broke, and that the GOP should start rounding up brown people. Doing so will help them at the polls, because brown people don't vote!