More Biden asshattery

This sounds like a joke, but it isn't. Last year, the Department of Justice and the DEA tried to prosecute concert promoters in New Orleans under the federal "crackhouse law." That law makes it a felony to maintain a building or facility for the purpose of drug consumption. Traditionally, the law has been applied to places that are, well, crack houses. But — calling glow sticks and bottled water "drug paraphernalia" — then-U.S. Attorney Eddie Jordan attempted to jail three New Orleans concert promoters by reasoning that (1) people come to raves; (2) people who come to raves sometimes use drugs; (3) concert promoters must know this (especially in light of the presence of "drug paraphernalia"); and so, (4) a rave must be an event that takes place "for the purpose of drug consumption" under the law. ...

Now Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., has introduced a bill (the "Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act of 2002," cutely called "the RAVE Act"), also sponsored by Sens. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Richard Durbin, D-Ill. The bill would essentially write into the crackhouse statute the same approach already rejected by the district court in New Orleans. According to The Washington Post:

When he introduced the bill in June, Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., said "most raves are havens for illicit drugs," and congressional findings submitted with the bill label as drug paraphernalia such rave mainstays as bottled water, "chill rooms" and glow sticks.

...
The RAVE Act should, all by itself, serve to explode Democratic claims that it's only the Republicans who pose a danger to civil liberties: nothing in the Bush administration's anti-terror plans would criminalize bottled water.

Biden's running for president in 2008. Remember this when he starts campaining.