U.S. Rep. Paul Broun’s son was arrested and charged with drug possession early Saturday morning at a party in Athens.
Paul Collins Broun III, 18, of Knob Creek Drive in Oconee County, was at a party at an apartment on West Cloverhurst Street at 2:30 a.m. when Athens-Clarke police responded to a complaint.
Broun smelled of alcohol and marijuana and had a pill bottle in his pocket containing marijuana, according to a police report.
Police said they also found a small glass pipe containing ash and bits of marijuana in Broun’s SUV.
Broun is a senior at Athens Academy.
His father was elected to Congress in 2007.
via – Athens Banner-Herald “U.S. Rep. Broun’s son charged with drug possession“
[Bill Maher once joked that he was like the Mafia: "wives and kids are off-limits". When I post these stories about politicians' kids getting in trouble with pot, it's to show that marijuana users are in every station in life, and sometimes to highlight a hypocrisy of the parents who push for tougher laws against marijuana users, but always manage to get charges dropped and cushy rehabs for their kids caught with drugs.
But it gets stranger when you do some digging, as I did on Reason Online, to find out just who this Georgia Republican is:
...Broun ran the same campaign he always has, pledging to support bills only if they fit a quirky four-part test: They have to be moral (according to the Bible), constitutional (according to the version he keeps in his suit pocket), necessary (according to logic), and affordable (according to a balanced federal budget)....
There are two reasons why Broun’s career is worth examining closely. The first is Broun himself. He compares himself happily to Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), the anti-war libertarian presidential candidate: Both men are physicians who carry pocket Constitutions and often find themselves on the losing side of congressional votes. (Broun likes Paul, but he doesn’t share Paul’s views on Iraq and won’t make a presidential endorsement.) The day he was sworn in, Broun joined just 13 other Republicans (and 150 Democrats) in supporting a bill to call off raids by the Drug Enforcement Administration on medical marijuana distributors....
Broun hauls out his Constitution and flips it open to Article I, Section 8. “We don’t have authority to create things like that,” he says. “This lists the functions of the federal government, and it’s about a page and a half long. I’d say most of the things this Congress does, we don’t actually have the authority to do.”
All the more reason for me to hope this Congressman's kid gets a mere slap on the wrist. His dad's the kind of guy that would oppose the federal government's assertion that it has any right to prohibit hemp and incarcerate anyone's kid for having some! --"R"R]
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Broun is a right wing nut! I live in his district and get his pre-recorded phone calls and his nutty emails all the time.
Only to have him speak out against the Draconian laws would I have his son punished.
I have seen the Sheriffs here, persecution those that choose marijuana over alcohol and the helicopters spending tax dollars in this insanity.
Russ, I think there are two side to this:
1. His kid gets a slap on the wrist – A nice bit of Karma for his support of getting the government out of the drug war;
2. His kid gets nailed to the wall – Causes him to be more outspoken and fight harder to end prohibition.
For him and his kid’s sake I, like you, hope for the former, but for the rest of us I hope for the latter.