Things are starting to change. In Massachusetts, the voters overwellmingly approved a ballot initiative decriminalizing marijuana.
Defying the scare tactics of state and local officials, voters in Massachusetts and Michigan gave current marijuana policies a resounding vote of no confidence Tuesday. Massachusetts voters approved the first marijuana decriminalization initiative ever passed by voters, Michigan voters enacted the nation’s 13th medical marijuana law, and local reform measures appeared to be passing in several communities.
“Tonight’s results represent a sea change,” said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project, which sponsored the Massachusetts and Michigan campaigns. “Voters have spectacularly rejected eight years of the most intense government war on marijuana since the days of ‘Reefer Madness.’”
In Michigan, White House drug czar John Walters personally campaigned against Proposal 1, calling it an “abomination.” In Massachusetts, all 11 district attorneys warned of huge increases in teen marijuana use and other dire consequences should Question 2 pass, even though studies in the 11 states with similar laws, as well as Australia and Europe, have found no such increases due to decriminalization. Under Question 2, criminal penalties for possession of an ounce or less of marijuana will be replaced by a civil fine of $100, much like a traffic ticket.
This makes sense and I expect it to gain traction around the country. Marijuana cases are clogging the courts, so more jurisdictions will begin to consider these reforms.
Medical marijuana has made even more progress, and Barack Obama has pledge to stop the disgraceful practices of the Bush adminitration to use federal laws to prosecute users of medical marijuana.
We should expect significant changes in the Drug War as well. Obama will not apoint a drug czar who views medical marijuana as an “abomination” and he has been very critical of locking up non-violent drug offenders.
It’s encouraging, however, to see these changes coming from the bottom up.
Welcome to Sarah Palin’s world. Fortunately, Americans aren’t in the mood this year to buy her bullshit. The situation we face is just too serious, and she’s not a serious candidate.
Many conservative intellectuals are jumping ship, and Alaskans are getting sick of her as well. The Anchorage Daily News published an editorial today about her response to the troopergate report.
Sarah Palin’s reaction to the Legislature’s Troopergate report is an embarrassment to Alaskans and the nation.
She claims the report “vindicates” her. She said that the investigation found “no unlawful or unethical activity on my part.”
Her response is either astoundingly ignorant or downright Orwellian.
Page 8, Finding Number One of the report says: “I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.”
In plain English, she did something “unlawful.” She broke the state ethics law.
Perhaps Gov. Palin has been too busy to actually read the Troopergate report. Perhaps she is relying on briefings from McCain campaign spinmeisters.
Because if she had actually read it, she couldn’t claim “vindication” with a straight face.
Palin asserted that the report found “there was no abuse of authority at all in trying to get Officer Wooten fired.”
In fact, the report concluded that “impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda, to wit: to get Trooper Michael Wooten fired.”
Palin’s response is the kind of political “big lie” that George Orwell warned against. War is peace. Black is white. Up is down.
Do we really want someone this extreme in the White House? ABC reports how Sarah Palin asked the librarian at a city council meeting what she would do if Palin asked her to remove certain books from the library’s collection. The librarian made it clear she would not remove any books. Several months later Palin fired her, but then reinstated her after an uproar in the town.
Isn’t it time that the government stops telling us what we can do for entertainment? The GOP congress slipped in a law regulating online poker in 2006. Poker players and others who believe in basic freedoms and liberty are trying to overturn that law and ensure that this game of skill can be played without governmental interference (other than sensible oversight, taxes and regulation).
Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.
Also, officials may share copies of the laptop’s contents with other agencies and private entities for language translation, data decryption or other reasons, according to the policies, dated July 16 and issued by two DHS agencies, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“The policies . . . are truly alarming,” said Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.), who is probing the government’s border search practices. He said he intends to introduce legislation soon that would require reasonable suspicion for border searches, as well as prohibit profiling on race, religion or national origin.
DHS officials said that the newly disclosed policies — which apply to anyone entering the country, including U.S. citizens — are reasonable and necessary to prevent terrorism. Officials said such procedures have long been in place but were disclosed last month because of public interest in the matter.
There’s no reason to have such a broad policy when it comes to U.S. citizens. It’s also unconstitutional. The “probable cause” test seems very appropriate for citizens, and a lower threshhold of reasonable concern would be appropriate for non-citizens.
This is an example where we need “activist” judges. The whole point of our constitution was the separation of powers. The sad fact is that our government, and all governments, sometimes get overzealous. They want to “protect” us, and in doing so they destroy our freedoms. That’s why we need a bunch of unelected judges to reign in our elected officials. Elected officials are too often swayed the the fears of the moment and the mood swings of the electorate.
Conservatives don’t get this. They love to demonize judges, until they need them to protect us from a government that goes too far.
Historians will have a field day trying to rank the failures of the Bush administration. Iraq will likely top the list, but the disgraceful politicization of the Department of Justice has to be in the top 5.
Our justice system isn’t perfect, but it’s still the envy of the world. Keeping politics out of the decision to prosecute is critical to the health of our republic.
Last year, we saw how Alberto Gonzales and the other political hacks appointed by President Bush fired nine United States attorneys for not towing the line. Now more information is coming to light about how hiring practices for the Honors Program and other staff positions were influenced by politcal considerations, which is unlawful.
Justice Department officials over the last six years illegally used “political or ideological” factors to hire new lawyers into an elite recruitment program, tapping law school graduates with conservative credentials over those with liberal-sounding resumes, a new report found Tuesday.
The blistering report, prepared by the Justice Department’s inspector general, is the first in what will be a series of investigations growing out of last year’s scandal over the firings of nine United States attorneys. It appeared to confirm for the first time in an official examination many of the allegations from critics who charged that the Justice Department had become overly politicized during the Bush administration.
“Many qualified candidates” were rejected for the department’s honors program because of what was perceived as a liberal bias, the report found. Those practices, the report concluded, “constituted misconduct and also violated the department’s policies and civil service law that prohibit discrimination in hiring based on political or ideological affiliations.”
The shift began in 2002, when advisers to then-Attorney General John Ashcroft restructured the honors program in response to what some officials saw as a liberal tilt in recruiting young lawyers from elite law schools like Harvard and Yale. While the recruitment was once controlled largely by career officials in each section who would review applications, political officials in the department began to assume more control, rejecting candidates with liberal or Democratic affiliations “at a significantly higher rate” than those with Republican or conservative credentials, the report said.
The shift appeared to accelerate in 2006, under then-Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, with two aides on the screening committee — Michael Elston and Esther Slater McDonald — singled out for particular criticism. The blocking of applicants with liberal credentials appeared to be a particular problem in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, which has seen an exodus of career employees in recent years as the department has pursued a more conservative agenda in deciding what types of cases to bring.
It will be interesting to see if Gonzales is directly implicated in this scandal.
What John McCain really stands for came up most recently in light of his position on abortion. Planned Parenthood commissioned a survey showing that more than half of those women polled don’t know much about McCain’s stance, and a quarter of those who are in favor of keeping abortion legal mistakenly think the senator agrees.
These misperceptions will be corrected by November. Writers like Anna Quindlen are talking about it, and it will certainly come up in the campaign. McCain has been a favorite of many independents, but that was when he was running against Bush. Now that he faces a general election in a tough year for Republicans, his abortion stances are likely to hurt him with independents and some moderate Republicans.
More states are poised to ban racial preferences. These initiatives might pose an interesting dilemna for Barack Obama should he secure the Democratic nomination. Obama has acknowledged the problem of affirmative action programs based entirely on race, but he has not advocated banning the use of race entirley in favor of economic status.
The one that is the most problematic is (John) Edwards, who voted for the Patriot Act, campaigns against it. Voted for No Child Left Behind, campaigns against it. Voted for the China trade deal, campaigns against it. Voted for the Iraq war … He uses my voting record exactly as his platform, even though he had the opposite voting record.
When you had the opportunity to vote a certain way in the Senate and you didn’t, and obviously there are times when you make a mistake, the notion that you sort of vote one way when you’re playing the game in Washington and another way when you’re running for president, there’s some of that going on.
