This is a true story…..

My brother was turned down for a job with the FBI. He was turned down for admitting that he smoked pot. Not for being a stoner or being an occasional midnight toker, but for admitting that he smoked just once in the past three years, at a party two years ago. And no, he's not lying about it or exaggerating. He is not a partier and definitely not a pot-smoker. I have friends in college who smoked more dope in a week than my brother has his entire life.

My brother has, however, gotten an undergraduate degree at Stanford, followed by a Doctorate at Yale. Not too shabby. He is also fluent in three or four languages, including Hebrew and a little Russian, and has lived overseas for huge parts of his life. In other words, a pretty bright guy. The kind of guy who would probably be a pretty good person for the FBI to have working for them, what with the whole war on terrorism and world falling apart thing.

But no. Can't hire him. Can't have any dopers working for the FBI.

What are they afraid of? That he'd be easily bribed for information by an Al Queda operative offering him an eighth of kind, Humbold Green? That he'd be at a party and in the middle of a stoner rap, give up some confidential information ("so dude, I was like at work today, and like I saw this like memo that said something like we were gonna invade Iraq in like a month or so. Whoa")? That in a national emergency, he'd have get flashbacks and be unable to move because he was too busy staring at the walls breathing?

The even sillier part is how the FBI found out. He knew they were going to ask the question and he also knew that not only were they gonna give him a drug test, but that they were gonna give him a lie-detector test. He was now faced with one of those ethical dilemna type thingies. To sum up, should he say a little white lie and take a chance with the lie detector test or tell the truth and hope they're cool with it? Considering he only smoked once over the past three years, he told the truth. And lost the job. Which means that if he would of lied to get a job with the FBI, he would have been hired. He was basically disqualified for telling the truth.

But why should he have to lie? We're talking once. Once. We're not talking about admitting to taking acid at Disneyland, or smoking crack with some bitches and ho's. And it's not like the FBI was just taken to the tool-shed for huge intelligence failures. Or that everyone acknowledges that National Security is of utmost importance. Or that it's not like the President of the United States hasn't been busted for driving under the influence or probably horked up eight-balls like Liza at Studio 54 in his younger days.

Pretty fucked. God only knows what would have happened if he admitted to watching some porn. Ashcroft would have arrested his ass before he could say "but it was only Skinemax....."