This is the stupidest thing I can imagine coming out of Congress by far. Because I work in the field of harm reduction, I've been getting a few 'Sign this Petition against a bill in congress that would outlaw raves!' emails. I thought the authors must be over reacting. What chance would such a loopy bill have in Congress? It turns out, quite a good one. The sponsor is none other than the Senator from Delaware, Joe Biden (D., natch). And he really does want to outlaw raves because he considers them to be venues that foment drug use. It's an expansion on the crack house law. (Gosh, and that bill was soooo effective in stopping people from using crack...)

On the one hand, I don't think it's a bad thing--within the bounds of the civil liberties set forth in the Constitution--to give police as many weapons in their arsenal to maintain law and order as possible. But, government--and the Federal government in particular--just has to realize that there are a lot of things that they just can't do anything about and if they try, they'll just make matters much, much worse. As Glenn Reynolds put it so well, "The thuggish idiocy, corruption, and pathetic lack of contact with reality that have marked the War on Drugs are the biggest arguments that our government isn't up to handling the War on Terrorism." Amen.