U.S. to end war on medical marijuana in legal states

 

By James Vicini and Dan Whitcomb

WASHINGTON/LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - In a sharp policy shift, the Obama administration told federal attorneys not to prosecute patients who use marijuana for medical reasons or dispensaries in states where it has been legalized.

A Justice Department official said the formal guidelines were issued Monday to reflect President Barack Obama's views. The Bush administration had said it could enforce the federal law against marijuana and that it trumped state laws.

The decision was praised by activists in California, the first state to legalize medical marijuana in 1996. But concern remains among some medical and law enforcement authorities about hundreds of clinics said to be selling pot under the protection of state law and without regard to health.

A spokesman for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger issued a brief statement in which Schwarzenegger appeared to support the policy change:

"The governor believes it is appropriate for the federal government to focus their resources on criminal activity and securing the border," the statement said.

As a candidate during his presidential bid last year, Obama said he intended to halt raids of medical marijuana facilities operating legally under state laws.

After he took office in January, a Drug Enforcement Administration raid on a dispensary in Lake Tahoe, California, raised questions about whether he would follow that pledge.

A White House spokesman repeated Obama's view that "federal resources should not be used to circumvent state laws."

Stephen Gutwillig, California head of the Drug Policy Alliance, called the move a good first step.

"There is a fundamental need of patients to access marijuana as medicine right now," he said. "While it's great to see the Obama administration radically de-escalate the Bush and Clinton administrations' war on medical marijuana patients, more needs to be done to protect sick people and their caregivers."

(continued…)

U.S. to end war on medical marijuana in legal states | U.S. | Reuters

5 Crazy Right-Wing Freak-Outs in Just One Glorious Week

By Brad Reed, AlterNet. Posted October 5, 2009.

For reasons that I don’t understand -- perhaps it’s subconscious karmic payback for murdering children in a past life -- I feel compelled to read a lot of right-wing blogs.

The wonderful thing about them is the window they offer into the pulsing id of the conservative movement -- up close and personal and without the filters of focus groups or dog whistles. For instance, do you think that Glenn Beck is insane? Oh puh-lease. Beck has precisely nothing on your typical Red State diarist or NewsMax columnist, each of whom is likely to support abolishing women’s suffrage or launching a military coup against Obama at any given time.

To give you an idea of the level of madness we’re looking at here, I’ve decided to share with you the five stupidest, craziest and most inflammatory things that right-wingers said over the span of a single week. When you read these things, keep in mind that these are the sorts of people Republican officials have to interact with on a regular basis. Indeed, the following five crazed tirades are almost enough to make you feel a little sorry for those staffers. Most of them came to Washington to act as soulless money funnels for corporate interests. Instead, they end up spending much of their time taking angry calls from some screamer who wants to privatize his local police force.

Number 5: John Derbyshire takes a bold stand against women’s suffrage

Last week, John Derbyshire, the National Review’s resident British crank, outlined a bold strategy to help Republicans return to power: by denying women the right to vote. The Derb explained that the trouble with women is that “they want someone to nurture, they want someone to help raise their kids, and if men aren’t inclined to do it… then they’d like the state to do it for them.” In other words, uterus-afflicted individuals should be barred from voting because they’re more likely to vote for people who disagree with John Derbyshire. Democracy in action!

Derb tried to show that he wasn’t completely out to lunch, however, by acknowledging that it’s highly unlikely that women will ever give up their right to vote.  Of course, if women ever did find their right to vote repealed someday, Derb also said that he “wouldn’t lose a minute’s sleep” over it.

What is refreshing about Derbyshire is that he doesn’t try to hide his bigotry or to disguise it with code words – he just has it right out there. Derbyshire has been known to openly game-plan future race wars, to declare that blacks and Latinos are too stupid to educate and to write entire columns declaring his hatred for Chelsea Clinton back when she was just 20 years old. So in this respect, it’s not shocking that Derbyshire opposes women’s suffrage. What’s shocking is that it took him this long to say it.

Number 4: Erick Erickson threatens to dissolve his own town’s police department

Erick Erickson, the founder and managing editor of RedState.com, has a second gig as a city councilor in his hometown of Macon, Georgia. And apparently, the police force in that town is upset by low pay and long hours and they want to form a union. Erickson’s response? He threatens to simply abolish the entire department!

Writing at the PeachPundit blog, Erickson said that he actually asked the city attorney about the possibility of dissolving the police department. The attorney replied that police unions in the state of Georgia cannot strike or collectively bargain, meaning that any union the police formed would be essentially worthless. This didn’t deter Erickson entirely, however, as he said he’d still rather “contract out to the sheriff’s office than see a union come in” because unions “breed inefficiency, corruption, and taint.”

Regardless of how this ultimately turns out, you have to seriously question the intelligence of a man who talks openly of canning his entire police department. It’s almost as if he’s begging to be pulled over and subjected to multiple anal cavity searches.

Click on the link below to read the entire story.

5 Crazy Right-Wing Freak-Outs in Just One Glorious Week | | AlterNet

Sign the Petition to Pass Healthcare Reform That Gives Americans a Choice

 

Now is the season for action. The majority of Americans want health insurance reform with the choice of a public option that keeps insurance companies honest, lowers costs, and increases service.
The choice of a public option provides every American a non-profit health insurance alternative that can't be canceled if you lose a job or move and its inclusion in any bill passed this year is non-negotiable.
Majority votes in Congress can pass a public option.

Click the link below to sign the petition!

AmericaCantWait.com

A younger Barack Obama on the War on Drugs and marijuana

Barack Obama says the War on Drugs has been an utter failure and advocates the decriminalization of marijuana.
This clip will be blogged about at http://2parse.com/?p=2648


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Barack Obama Makes It Official: We Are At War In Pakistan

Claiming that "the safety of people around the world is at stake", Barack Obama has laid out his strategy for Afghanistan that includes dramatically increased military operations inside of Pakistan.

On Friday, Obama called the mountainous Pakistani side of the Afghan border "the most dangerous place in the world" and reaffirmed the U.S. view that in order for the war in Afghanistan to be successful, the U.S. military would have to go after al-Qaeda forces in Pakistan.

Obama also added the following during his Friday speech: "Let me be clear: al-Qaeda and its allies -- the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks -- are in Pakistan and Afghanistan."

This comes on the heels of the announcement that 4,000 more U.S. troops will be sent to Afghanistan, in addition to the 17,000 increase that had already been announced.

Obama's plan also includes a goal of boosting the Afghan army from 80,000 to 134,000 troops by 2011.

The U.K. is also now offering its full backing for a comprehensive military campaign inside of Pakistan.

In fact, U.K. defense secretary John Hutton says that there must now be “an equal focus on both countries”. Current government plans call for the U.K. to send an additional 2,000 British troops to Afghanistan.



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Marijuana is illegal because, uh, uh...

By Pete Guither - One member of the press corps, however, brought up the fact that marijuana legalization is a serious subject to many people, particularly with Mexico right now, and when Gibbs didn't really respond, the reporter asked him to explain "Why?" "Why he feels that way about legalizing marijuana?"
Here was Gibbs' response:
"Uh, he, he does not think that, uh, uh, that that is uh, uh, [pause] he opposes it, he doesn't think that that's the, the right plan for America."
Apparently that is the new U.S. Government position on why marijuana should be illegal.
Wow.
It's fascinating that he couldn't come up with anything other than the equivalent of... "because."
If we can't have an Administration that can have an honest dialogue about marijuana legalization, I guess the next best thing is to have one that can't talk about it at all.



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Marijuana issue suddenly smoking hot - Jeremy D. Mayer

By JEREMY D. MAYER - Smoking pot doesn’t cause schizophrenia, but marijuana as an issue sure gives our political system the symptoms. We have just elected our third president in a row who at least tried marijuana in early adulthood, yet it remains illegal..

As we discovered again this week, President Obama, like his two predecessors, supports imprisoning people for making the same choices he made.

Beyond imprisonment, one of my policy students, who was honest on a security clearance about her one time use of pot, could lose her job for doing what Clinton, Bush and Obama did. On television, leading comedian Jon Stewart and America’s sweetheart, Sandra Bullock, swap pot smoking stories with lighthearted abandon, laughing along with their audience, who, like most Americans, end up voting for politicians who support draconian punishments for pot users and dealers. Year after year, major Hollywood films like Pineapple Express show potsmoking in a positive light, yet legalization remains unmentionable to both our political parties. And America’s most popular Olympian, Michael Phelps, like the majority of people his age, has tried pot, but loses millions in sponsorship when it is revealed that he has done what most of his fans have done.
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BILL MAHER DISCUSSION ON OBAMA'S MARIJUANA COMMMENT

vid on Obama's marijuana comment



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Obama Mocks Marijuana Question

In an unusual Town Hall format, Pres. Obama fielded the most popular questions sent to the White House website. Marijuana was No. 1 on the list.



“I have to say that there was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high, and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and job creation... I don't know what that says about the online audience," he joked.

“We want to make sure that it was answered. The answer is, no, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy.”

One of the first activist reponses comes from Jack Cole, executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP). He tells CelebStoner: "Despite the president's flippant comments today, the grievous harms of marijuana prohibition are no laughing matter. Certainly, the 800,000 people arrested last year on marijuana charges find nothing funny about it, nor do the millions of Americans struggling in this sluggish economy. It would be an enormous economic stimulus if we stopped wasting so much money arresting and locking people up for non-violent drug offenses and instead brought in new tax revenue from legal sales, just as we did when we ended alcohol prohibition 75 years ago during the Great Depression."

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Obama To Overturn Major Bush-Era Marijuana Ruling

By Katie Sanders - The White House wants to review Bush's order to shut down a UMass scientist's pot-growing operation. The research, which a DEA judge ruled to allow more than two years ago, would build the medical case for marijuana.

Days before President Bush left office in January, his administration fired a parting shot at Professor Lyle Craker's eight-year quest to cultivate marijuana for medical research by abruptly denying him a federal license despite a nearly two-year old Drug Enforcement Administration law judge's recommendation that he receive one.

But the new administration led by President Obama, who has publicly backed the use of marijuana for medical purposes to stave off pain, might reverse the decision and keep Craker's license application from going up in smoke.

A source familiar with the case said the White House will likely demand that the decision be reviewed.

"Basically they want to do an autopsy of what occurred and have it go through a proper review," the source said.

Craker, who is based at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, is cautiously optimistic Obama will do to the denial of the marijuana license what he has done to other Bush administration decisions on such hot-button cultural issues as embryonic stem-cell research and the abortion "gag rule" affecting overseas family planning groups.

"Obama has indicated that he's for science over politics," Craker said in an interview. "And I certainly feel the situation we have currently is politics over science."

Just last week, Obama called for the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to "develop a strategy for restoring scientific integrity to government decision making."

"The public must be able to trust the science and scientific process informing public policy decisions," Obama wrote. "Public officials should not suppress or alter scientific or technological findings and conclusions."

On the issue of medicinal marijuana, Obama said at a November 2007 campaign stop in Iowa that he was open to allowing its use if it is what science and physicians suggest would be the best way to ease suffering.

"There's no difference between that and morphine when it comes to just giving people relief to pain," Obama said then.

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America's #1 Request of Obama... Legalize Pot

Most Americans say marijuana should be legal. Are we coming closer to nation wide legalization of marijuana. According to this video America wants it.



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If President Obama Twittered

funny

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Want To Debate Obama? Then Announce Rush Limbaugh 2012!

Rush, if you believe your ideas are so much better, that your message is so correct and convincing that if you stood on an equal platform with the President of the United States, you would really clean his clock, then there is a way you could debate him... run for president!

Democrats have painted the Republican Party into a corner... Well, more like pinning them under the weight of polarizing gabber Rush Limbaugh. The GOP is flummoxed -- most of all their leader. Despite describing himself as "The Last Man Standing," he insists those in the White House made him the nation's top Republican, just to tear him down.

Sorry, but as powerful and persuasive as President Obama is, he doesn't decide who runs the Republican Party; the Republicans do. And they're voting with their feet as each and every one of them who offends 'El Rushbo' has to go and beg for his forgiveness. (And yet they talk about Democrats worshiping Obama...)

Nevertheless, Rush went on a self-pitying spiel about being on an "enemies list," trying to conjure up images of Obama as a modern day paranoid Nixon. Nice try, but no cigar.

But he did come up with a pretty brilliant rejoinder: challenging the President to a debate.

Of course, it would have to take place on his show, which wouldn't hurt in expanding the ratings past the party faithful, if only for a day. He even offered to lend him his private jet to fly down to his "Excellency In Broadcasting" studio in sunny Palm Beach.

Following a rant on the topics he'd like to discuss (the "I Hope He Fails" greatest hits collection), Rush laid it out like this:

If you can win at this, then come here and beat me at my own game, and get rid of me once and for all, and show all the people of America that I am wrong.

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Updated*** Iraq plan: Most troops out by August 2010

By DAVID S. CLOUD - President Barack Obama campaigned on a pledge to end U.S. involvement in Iraq, but he always threw in the caveat that he wanted to consult with military commanders before making a final decision.

As he prepares to outline his withdrawal plan Friday in a speech to Marines at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina, he has slightly modified his campaign plan for removing U.S. forces to allay concerns among commanders that fragile security gains in Iraq could be jeopardized unless the drawdown plans are handled carefully.

But the plan Obama will outline does not back away in major ways from his pledge to withdraw U.S. combat forces. Instead of a 16-month withdrawal period, as he originally called for, most of the troops now in Iraq would be withdrawn over the next 19 months, leaving by August 2010, senior officials said.

Even under this slightly delayed timetable, the Pentagon would bring at least 92,000 troops home over the next year and a half, a massive exodus that is likely to satisfy most Americans that he is fulfilling his promise to bring the war to a close, even if some top Democrats say it's not enough.

The remaining U.S. forces— totaling between 35,000 and 50,000 —would have a scaled-down mission focused on advising Iraqi forces, protecting civilian reconstruction projects and carrying out counter-terrorism operations.

Senior administration officials emphasized that Obama is determined to remove all U.S. troops by the end of the 2011, as called for under an agreement signed by Iraqi and Bush administration officials. At least for now, Obama does not plan on asking Iraqi officials to allow any to remain in the country after that deadline.

If that is carried out, it would end the U.S. military presence in Iraq on a timetable that is far shorter than almost anyone anticipated.

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Update****
It's official...

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Did We Really Do It?

I like this post by Mark Morford! I feel the same way as he does when I see the issues that have long been "swept under the carpet" actually addressed! It's still hard to trust after 8 years of hell! I expect it maybe that way for awhile.
You gotta admit, it's so exciting to be able to have our President listen to us...that we got it right this time!
Peace,
soul
Obama vs. The Fear / Mark Morford - At any given moment you can pause in whatever it is you're suffering from and hear that voice and see his visage or perhaps merely hear some pundit say the words "President Obama" out loud, and you can still enjoy that delicious chill, that little jolt that says, "Oh my God, did we really do it?

So then, the wistful Obama swoon? Still right there. Still accessible. Still agreeably valid. This is the good news.

But oh, the dark side loometh. By Obama's own insistence that he be held accountable for it all, no one knows for sure if all of these spectacular, historic moves -- the bailouts, the massive recovery program, the jobs, housing, overhauls in health care and education and etcetera -- if any of it, will actually work.

It is, by every estimation, the biggest political and fiscal gamble in a generation, maybe five. It is dicey and dangerous and wildly progressive in scope and ambition, and you know this is true because many bitter, unloved Republicans are seething and whining and tearing into every Obama idea they can find, simply because said plans don't do enough to fellate the wealthy and worship oil companies and ignore children.

Maybe longtime pundit David Gergen said it best when he noted that Obama's agenda is more than merely a stack of dramatic, expensive proposals. It's actually more akin to FDR's New Deal rolled into Lyndon Johnson's Great Society; the grand sum of what Obama is attempting to do just so happens to be "the greatest political drama in our lifetime."

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Will Obama Convince Allies to Help Out in Afghanistan?

As the debate plays out about whether President Obama's decision to send an additional 17,000 troops to Afghanistan will help ease the increase in Taliban insurgency, the president is reaching out to allies for help.The public opinion support for military involvement in Afghanistan in both Europe & Canada is low.

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Canada has about 2,800 troops in Afghanistan, but Parliament has voted to pull them out by 2011. Obama suggested he will take up the issue with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper when the two meet Thursday in Ottawa.
That may be why Obama is reaching out to Canada to help ease the burden on U.S. troops in Afghanistan, who may remain there as long as five years, according to Gen. David McKiernan, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.
"This is not a temporary force uplift," McKiernan told reporters. "It will need to be sustained for some period of time, for the next three to four to five years."
Extra forces could stay in Afghanistan 5 years
Obama: Troops alone cannot win in Afghanistan
Afghanistan to help review U.S. war on terror
CNN security analyst Peter Bergen said the United States shouldn't necessarily count on NATO countries to lend a hand.
"I think it's probably not very realistic. ... We've constantly asked our NATO allies ... for more soldiers on the ground. Very few NATO countries are going to be willing to send their soldiers into harm's way," he said

Operation Uptick: Obama Launches Afghan Surge | Chris Floyd

Chris Floyd delivers the ugly truth once more...

And so it begins: the great Obama "surge" in Afghanistan. Before withdrawing a single soldier from Iraq, Barack Obama is throwing 17,500 more troops into the boiling Afghan cauldron. The deployment is the first installment of what Obama aides affirm could be a much larger escalation down the road: as soon as the vaunted "strategic review" of Afghan policy – led by hawks like Joe Biden, Richard Holbrook and General David "Pre-President" Petraeus – is completed.

Most of the new troops are apparently going to be sent on a fool's errand to eradicate the only means of support of poor Afghans: the opium crop. Previous such efforts by American forces and their allies have produced nothing but more poverty, anger, extremism and support for the insurgency. And whatever the mission, increased troop levels and military action have led invariably to steep rises in civilian casualties – which, in turn, produce more poverty, anger, extremism and support for the insurgency.

In fact, on the very day that Obama was announcing his own personal Terror War surge, the UN released a report that confirmed the already obvious fact that the American-led occupiers of Afghanistan have been lying about the number of civilians they have been killing. The UN report documents the killing of 2,118 Afghan civilians in 2008 – 828 of them killed by the American-led forces. As Jason Ditz notes at Antiwar.com:

While getting exact numbers of deaths in Afghanistan is virtually impossible given the chaotic situation on the ground, particularly in the restive south, the report once again points to the absurdity of last month’s NATO report, which claimed only 973 civilians overall killed and only 97 by international forces.

The NATO number is absurd indeed, especially when one recalls that some 90 civilians, including at least 75 women and children, were killed in a single attack by an American gunship in the village of Azizabad last summer. [For more, see Atrocity in Azizabad: More Child Sacrifices on the Terror War Altar.]

There will of course be much more of this as the troop levels rise, especially more "close air support" for the increased number of ground forces undertaking more and more attacks. Even the witless, plagarizing, credit-card bagman that Obama put one heartbeat away from the presidency, Joe Biden, admits there will be what he calls – in the hideous argot of our bipartisan Beltway bloodletters – an "uptick" in the number of deaths. Naturally, he was referring only to an increase in American casualties; the Afghans who will also die in increasing numbers in the surge don't count, and aren't counted: 97, 150, 300, 828 – who gives a damn?

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Marijuana charges against Obama's half-brother dropped

All charges against George Obama, half-brother to U.S. President Barack Obama, have been dropped after his arrest in a drug raid, according to police in Kenya.

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Obama Talks Troop Withdrawal

Asked whether a substantial number of troops would be home in time for next year's Super Bowl, Obama replied: "Yes"
Posted by Marcus Baram, Huffington Post
In a wide-ranging interview with NBC's Matt Lauer, President Barack Obama said that a substantial number of the 140,000 U.S. troops in Iraq would be home within a year, saying Iraqis were now ready to take more responsibility for their own security.
Asked whether a substantial number of troops would be home in time for next year's Super Bowl, Obama replied: "Yes. We are going to roll out in a very formal fashion what our intentions are in Iraq, as well as Afghanistan."
Obama also seemed to indicate that he intends to be proactive at engaging terrorist groups and insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan: "We have to make sure we don't let up because there are people out there who want to do us harm."

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

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Obama's half brother charged for marijuana possession

It sucks when your little brother gets arrested for marijuana possession and you're the President of the United States...not, it should be a non-issue! Unless of course, Obama gets little CARE packages from Kenyan...

George Obama, the half brother of U.S. President Barack Obama, has been arrested by Kenyan police on a charge of possession of marijuana, police said Saturday. Inspector Augustine Mutembei, the officer in charge, said Obama was arrested on charges of possession of cannabis, known in Kenya as Bhang, and resisting arrest.

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