The real reason T.I. is going back to jail

Whenever I hear about someone getting thrown in jail on some ol' bullshit, I think of the scene in the movie the Cable Guy when Jim Carrey suggested that Matthew Broderick talk to his lawyer about a writ of habeas corpus, in order to put the entire system on trial. I was gonna suggest this as a legal strategy for T.I., who just recently got sent back to the exact same prison he got out of six months ago (damn), but then I was reminded that I'm pretty sure George W Bush somehow got rid of habeas corpus a long time ago. I'm not sure what exactly that means (I was pre-med), but I think we can say for certain that there's no way T.I.'s gonna get out of doing another year in the pokey - even though his crime this time really does sound like some ol' bullshit, the kind of shit Johnny Cochran could have gotten tossed out over the phone, without even having to put on his hard bottom shoes.

I knew something wasn't quite right when I woke up, a few weeks ago, and read in the subject line of an email from one of these sites that sends me emails every day of the week with their headlines, that I've never once checked in my entire life, that T.I. had been arrested the night before out in LA for drug possession. The first thing that occurred to me, as I mentioned at the time on Twitter, was that I didn't even realize you could go to jail for having weed out in LA. I thought LA was one big weed free for all, with weed convenience stores on every corner, as if they were Chinese food restaurants. And not just in bad neighborhoods! But, as I was informed by a few different people who follow me on Twitter, T.I. didn't just have weed. He had all of that meth, and ecstacy, and sizzurp and what have you. The kind of shit you don't usually hear about black people, or people who can afford really good coke, fucking around with. I assumed it all belonged to Tiny, and maybe that's part of the reason she looks like Shmeagol from those Lord of the Rings movies, but who knows. I saw a post over on Sandra Rose today about how T.I. considered checking himself into rehab, with Lindsay Lohan. (Who can blame him?) Though it should be pointed out that this was after the arrest in LA. That may have been an alternative to the publicity stunt where he talked a guy down from a building. Which was obviously BS, because black people don't even commit suicide like that. We're too depressed to commit suicide.

Here's a fun fact: Of all of the shit they supposedly found in Tiny's purse, along with her precious, it says on TMZ (mad accurate) that no weed was ever booked into evidence. But the reason LAPD tossed the car in the first place was because they pulled T.i. over for making an illegal u-turn, and supposedly they smelled weed. Tha fuck? How in the fuck are you gonna search someone's car, because you smelled weed and hence you figured there'd be some weed, and you somehow managed to turn up everything but weed? Meth doesn't smell like weed, does it? (Having spent a significant amount of time in the sticks, I can tell you it doesn't.) The New Orleans Police Department would have at least had the decency to put some weed in your car for you. I saw on and episode of PBS' Frontline how 5-0 down there has a policy of carrying a round a "ham sandwich" - a gun they plant on you after they accidentally (or not so accidentally) shoot you. A few ham sandwiches got handed out after Hurricane Katrina - and not by FEMA.

The official story from the LAPD is that they decided not to press charges against T.I., because they figured he'd already violated the terms of his probation from the time he got busted trying to buy machine guns in the parking lot of the BET Awards. Because you know how the criminal justice system is always going easy on people who already have a lot of problems with the law, especially out in LA. Pshaw! LA is the home of throwing niggas (who probably need to be in jail anyway) in jail for life for stealing a strawberry soda, on a technicality. The reason the LAPD didn't bother pressing charges against T.I. is because they didn't have a right to search his car in the first place. They just did it anyway, figuring they'd find some weed, because what kind of credible doesn't have a little bit of weed in his car, especially now that album sales are down and you might have to carry it around yourself? It's too bad he couldn't explain this to the judge down in Atlanta and plead for leniency. I'd still give it a shot. 11 months is a long time to spend in jail, especially when you just got out.