Search Results for: legalization

John P Walters – Drug Warrior to the Bitter End

Seth Anderson0 comment

John Walters, a two-term Bush-ite, bases his argument against marijuana legalization by ignoring marijuana, and pointing fingers at methamphetamine addicts, and the crack so-called epidemic of the 1980s.

…Walters continues his spiel: The violence essential to drug trafficking is meant to be shocking — from the marijuana traffickers who brutally murdered DEA special agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena in Mexico in 1985 to the viciousness of rolling heads across a dance floor — calculated to frighten decent citizens and government authorities into silence. and so on Legalizing drugs is the worst thing we could do for President Felipe Calderón and our Mexican allies.

Yes We Cannabis

Seth Anderson0 comment

( Published as part of a Time Magazine photo essay after the 2008 election) Well the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws has appropriated the photo, without permission of the photographer, and made an amusing poster . … For their annual conference poster, they took an old photo of cool-dude college freshman Obama puffing away — on a regular cigarette, mind you — and tweaked it just ever so slightly to fit their message: “Yes We Cannabis.”

Legalize our Sins

Seth Anderson2 Comments

And according to a 2006 study by the former president of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, Jon Gettman, marijuana is already the top cash crop in a dozen states and among the top five crops in 39 states, with a total annual value of $36 billion. A 2005 cost-benefit analysis of marijuana prohibition by Jeffrey Miron, a Harvard economist, calculated that ending marijuana prohibition would save $7.7 billion in direct state and federal law enforcement costs while generating more than $6 billion a year if it were taxed at the same rate as alcohol and tobacco.

Reading Around on March 4th

swanksalot0 comment

Some additional reading March 4th from 16:15 to 19:51: Hullabaloo Da McCain Code – “Maybe some federal money to combat cricket swarms and reduce the prospect of total deforestation would be, I don’t know, an economic and societal good.

…Thomas Friedman’s Five Worst Predictions: Barrett Brown | Vanity Fair – Thomas Friedman’s “prediction should be taken very seriously—in some alternate universe where the news media is a meritocracy and Thomas Friedman is a competent observer of the world and its workings.

Has Obama Made a Good Choice for Drug Czar

Seth Anderson0 comment

Under [Police Chief Gil] Kerlikowske, Seattle has been a model for sensible marijuana policy, including the famous Seattle Hempfest at which the Seattle Police Department performs a public safety role while declining to make marijuana arrests.

… Read more about Gil Kerlikowske including: Last year, he sat on a panel of researchers who found that mining private citizens’ bank, telephone and other electronic records in counterterrorism investigations produced few results while posing serious risks to civil liberties.

Guam in 1974

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Although Guam is the Navy’s largest home port and will grow even larger next year when six new destroyers are transferred to the island, the military now has a rival for economic predominance on the island. … At the same time that it is returning small parcels of land, the Navy is moving to buy Guam’s last undeveloped shoreland for a $250 million ammunition wharf. and no wonder why Jack Abramoff wanted to do business on Guam with his buddies in the Bush Adminstration , creating clothing sweatshops . Update: Our far-flung correspondent adds some much-needed corrections to the story. Check it out.

ACLU Sues over FISA

Seth Anderson0 comment

The new law permits the government to conduct intrusive surveillance without ever telling a court who it intends to spy on, what phone lines and email addresses it intends to monitor, where its surveillance targets are located, why it’s conducting the surveillance or whether it suspects any party to the communication of wrongdoing. Plaintiffs in today’s case are: The Nation and its contributing journalists Naomi Klein and Chris Hedges Amnesty International USA, Global Rights, Global Fund for Women, Human Rights Watch, PEN American Center, Service Employees International Union, Washington Office on Latin America, and the International Criminal Defence Attorneys Association Defense attorneys Dan Arshack, David Nevin, Scott McKay and Sylvia Royce

Selected Essays of Gore Vidal

Seth Anderson0 comment

Vidal’s well-documented reputation as a go-to provocateur has made it all too easy to overlook his astonishing work ethic: 24 novels, five plays, two memoirs, screenplays, television dramas, short stories, pamphlets and more than 200 essays. … In any case, rather like priests who have forgotten the meaning of the prayers they chant, we shall go on for quite a long time talking of books and writing books, pretending all the while not to notice that the church is empty and the parishioners have gone elsewhere to attend other gods, perhaps in silence or with new words.”