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Arguments regarding the difference of crack cocaine and powder cocaine (to be able to decided on differences in sentencing,) have revealed that the Supreme Court may just be smoking something and it isn't necessarily helping them. See excerpt from Washington Post below:...   >>>

Arguments regarding the difference of crack cocaine and powder cocaine (to be able to decided on differences in sentencing,) have revealed that the Supreme Court may just be smoking something and it isn't necessarily helping them. See excerpt from Washington Post below:



The robed ones have deliberated over cocaine at least half a dozen times in recent years, taking up the drug in some form in each of the past four years. On Monday, the justices took another hit - and this one was particularly mind-blowing.



For one thing, the law they were interpreting - the sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine - was changed by Congress last year, making the argument largely inconsequential.



For another, the argument hinged on chemical properties of cocaine derivatives - a technical discussion for which law school did not quite prepare the justices. ould you grind it up so that it's not rock-like anymore, so it's like a powder, and smoke it after it's in that form?" inquired Justice Samuel Alito.



"Can you get cocaine into a rock form without using a base?" Justice Sonia Sotomayor wanted to know.



Justice Anthony Kennedy had a question about the age and sun exposure of the coca leaf. Justice Elena Kagan invoked Richard Pryor's freebasing accident. Alito, who showed off by reciting the chemical formula for cocaine - C17H21NO4 - sought information on how many Americans smoke coca paste.



Justice Stephen Breyer had even less refined cocaine knowledge. "People sniff it often, I guess, if it's a salt, and that's bad," he said. "And then there's a kind that's worse. That's freebase or crack."



From the looks of them, the lawyers - Andrew Pincus, son of The Washington Post's Walter Pincus, and Justice Department lawyer Nicole Saharsky - had as little firsthand experience with the substance as their questioners. But they shared what they could about rock and snow.



**The simultaneously amusing and worrying excerpt above is taken from the Washington Post article, "High Court Tries to Crack Cocaine Case," written by Dana Milbank and is linked below. Do click through to read more about what's happening in the highest court in the land.**