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Senator George Allen of Virginia declared "We're all conservatives" as he addressed the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). But Allen was badly misinformed. One group attending and sponsoring CPAC this year was the Marijuana Policy Project, which is actually run by a convicted drug dealer. Other groups attending and co-sponsoring CPAC were the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the George Soros-funded Drug Policy Alliance (DPA).

This bizarre turn of events demonstrates that some conservatives have lost their nerve in the war on drugs -- and also in the war on terrorism. It is a story worth telling, especially because so many true conservatives told me how disgusted they were by the strange nature of this year's "largest gathering of conservatives nationwide," as CPAC advertises itself.

This year the DPA and Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) were actually put in charge of a CPAC panel on drug policy, which they were going to dominate 2-1 against Calvina Fay of the Drug Free America Foundation. Fay pulled out in disgust, even complaining that members of the pro-drug groups were harassing her associates.

Informed about this development, Rep. Mark E. Souder put a statement in the Congressional Record (web site) asking, "What on earth were the CPAC organizers thinking? Why would the American Conservative Union (ACU) allow extremist liberals like George Soros and Peter Lewis (who is responsible for most of MPP's funding) to access a meeting of conservatives? And, in exactly whose estimation would there be balance in a debate moderated by the MPP?"

In another case of strange bedfellows, the DPA has joined the ACU and other conservative and liberal groups as a member of the Liberty Coalition, which sponsored the Martin Luther King Day speech by Al Gore attacking the Bush Administration's NSA surveillance program. Left-wing members of the Liberty Coalition include the ACLU, People for the American Way, MoveOn.org, Common Cause, Democrats.com, and others.

Bob Barr, a former conservative congressman who helped impeach President Clinton, is in the middle of this. Barr, who has become an ACLU consultant and member of the Liberty Coalition, debated Viet Dinh, a former Bush Justice Department official, at CPAC on the issue of privacy rights and the war on terrorism. One member of the audience, during the question-and-answer period, put Barr on the spot, demanding to know why he was associating with Al Gore and far-left groups like MoveOn.org, another Liberty Coalition member.

While he was in fact scheduled to introduce Gore at that Liberty Coalition event from a remote location, technical difficulties prevented him from doing so. Barr defended his association with Al Gore and the Liberty Coalition but said that he had nothing to do with MoveOn.org, a group created to save President Clinton from the impeachment drive that Barr helped organize. Nevertheless, they are members of the same "coalition."

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