Cops Cry Foul Over Holder Marijuana Policy Move

by Phillip Smith

Organized law enforcement has some problems with Attorney General Holder's announcement last week that the Justice Department would not seek to block Colorado and Washington from implementing their marijuana legalization laws. In a joint letter last Friday, the leaders of seven major law enforcement groups expressed "extreme disappointment" with the move.

Those law enforcement groups are the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Major County Sheriff's Association, the National Sheriff's Association, the Major Cities Chief's Association, the Association of State Criminal Investigative Agencies, the National Narcotics Officers' Associations Coalition, and the Police Executive Review Foundation.

While law enforcement has long argued that its role is to enforce the law, not set policy, the police associations clearly felt they should have had input in the Justice Department's decision-making process.

"It is unacceptable that the Department of Justice did not consult our organizations -- whose members will be directly impacted -- for meaningful input ahead of this important decision," the cops wrote. "Our organizations were given notice just thirty minutes before the official announcement was made public and were not given the adequate forum ahead of time to express our concerns with the Department?s conclusion on this matter. Simply 'checking the box' by alerting law enforcement officials right before a decision is announced is not enough and certainly does not show an understanding of the value the Federal, state, local and tribal law enforcement partnerships bring to the Department of Justice and the public safety discussion."

Beyond their issues with process, the law enforcement groups made it clear that they did not agree with the policy decision. The sky would fall if people could buy and smoke pot legally, the cops warned.

"The decision by the Department ignores the connections between marijuana use and violent crime, the potential trafficking problems that could be created across state and local boundaries as a result of legalization, and the potential economic and social costs that could be incurred," they wrote. "Communities have been crippled by drug abuse and addiction, stifling economic productivity. Specifically, marijuana?s harmful effects can include episodes of depression, suicidal thoughts, attention deficit issues, and marijuana has also been documented as a gateway to other drugs of abuse."

As if that were not enough, the cops also warned of "grave unintended consequences, including a reversal of the declining crime rates" of the past decades. But they didn't explain how allowing for legal marijuana sales in Colorado and Washington would cause crime to increase.

For the cops, though, the bottom line was not enforcing the law, but setting policy.

"Marijuana is illegal under Federal law and should remain that way," they wrote. "While we certainly understand that discretion plays a role in decisions to prosecute individual cases, the failure of the Department of Justice to challenge state policies that clearly contradict Federal law is both unacceptable and unprecedented. The failure of the Federal government to act in this matter is an open invitation to other states to legalize marijuana in defiance of federal law."

Maybe law enforcement should just go back to enforcing the laws, not trying to write them.

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You fucking pigs need to quit being relevant, your shit does not wash with the masses and besides you fucking pukes do what we say not what you want to do and making policy , so when did that shit become your function in this society? Well you fucking facist goons, do tell. You fucktards do not get to write policy you just get to enforce laws We the People say you get to enforce, get it dimbulbs, now shut your pieholes and just do the fucking job your paid to do not the one you want to do. You worthless screwheads. Of Course they are upset. The drug war is a corner stone in the funding of their police budget. Nevermind how WRONG it is. And screw the people they make destitute and degrade. Like the colorfully worded fellow above said. The police do not dictate policy! Just do your same old, same old that you tell everyone while you violate them. "I'm just doin my job". Pigs. This article gives a clear insight into where the true collective allegiance of law enforcement in America actually stands, and that is not with the taxpayers, but with the criminals who make ridiculous laws and create ludicrous policies to profit from outright robbery through taxation which pays for most of the violation of actual justice. It should be blantantly obvious to the people of this country that we now live in a firmly entrenched police state and that law enforcement personnel are no longer employed by us, but by the rogue entities that have infiltrated the government and turned it against us.
We as a nation desperately need to take a step back for a better perspective and put some critical thought into who the actual bad guys really are nowadays.
Folks normally start questioning the source of a pervading stench when it becomes as foul and offensive as this one has become.
People have got to wake up and quell this uprising in a non-violent manner before the whole of it becomes an irreversible tragedy, because our days are numbered to preserve the freedom and liberty that we still possess.

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What Holder Really Said

by William Grigg, LRC Blog

It took a 13-hour filibuster from Senator Rand Paul to wring this terse statement from Attorney General Eric Holder:

"It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: `Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?' The answer to that question is no."

Like all statements from people who presume to rule others, this brief message from Holder -- -- who is Nickolai Krylenko to Obama's Josef Stalin -- should be read in terms of the supposed authority claimed thereby. This means removing useless qualifiers in the interest of clarity.

What Holder is saying, in substantive terms, is that the President does have the supposed authority to use a drone to kill an American who is engaged in "combat," whether here or abroad. "Combat" can consist of expressing support for Muslims mounting armed resistance against U.S. military aggression, which was the supposed crime committed by Anwar al-Awlaki, or sharing the surname and DNA of a known enemy of the state, which was the offense committed by Awlaki's 16-year-old son, Abdel. Under the rules of engagement used by the Obama Regime in Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan, any "military-age" male found within a targeted "kill zone" is likewise designated a "combatant," albeit usually after the fact. This is a murderous application of the "Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy," and it will be used when -- not if -- Obama or a successor starts conducting domestic drone-killing operations.

Holder selected a carefully qualified question in order to justify a narrowly tailored answer that reserves an expansive claim of executive power to authorize summary executions by the president. That's how totalitarians operate.

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It should also be noted that a 'terr orist' is never someone who threatens the people. This abstract idea is used by the government as a label when a person or a group of people is threatening the control structure they have in place or there is political advantages to gain. In other words, in America's future, if you disrupt the control network of the government, you can expect a crater in the area where you stand. It is crazy times we are in.

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AG Holder Accused of Lying About Medical Marijuana Crackdown

by Phillip Smith

US Attorney General Eric Holder appeared before the House Judiciary Committee Thursday and defended his Justice Department's crackdown on medical marijuana cultivation and distribution. Holder told committee members the agency was only targeting only those medical marijuana businesses that were "acting out of conformity? with state law."

That had medical marijuana defenders up in arms at what they called his falsehoods. Advocates pointed to numerous dispensaries and other medical marijuana-related enterprises that were operating in compliance with state laws and with the support of local elected officials that have been raided by the DEA or subjected to other federal enforcement actions.

Holder's comments came in response to questioning from Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), who pointed out that during his 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama had promised that he wouldn't use "Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws on this issue."

Holder agreed that the Justice Department had broken with Bush administration policy and promised not to go after people operating in compliance with state laws. But large-scale growers and dispensaries have "come up with ways in which they are taking advantage of these state laws and going beyond that which the states have authorized," Holder added. "Those are the only cases we've being going after."

Nadler pointed out that since 2009, the DEA and federal prosecutors have raided almost 200 dispensaries and growers and indicted more than 60 medical marijuana providers on federal drug charges and again asked Holder to clarify.

Holder responded that the Justice Department is only going after "those individuals (and) organizations that are acting out of conformity... with state laws."

Holder added, however, that in some cases, mainly in Colorado, the department was also targeting dispensaries located "too close" to schools. Those enforcement actions were taken not because the dispensaries were violating state laws, but because they were inside the 1,000-foot range specified by an enhanced federal sentencing statute.

Holder "lied to the House Judiciary Committee" in saying the Justice Department was only going after dispensaries and growers that were not in compliance with state laws," California NORML (CANORML) retorted bluntly. "The Justice Department's bad faith seriously impugns the credibility and competence of Attorney General Holder and his administration."

Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access (ASA), was only slightly more politic.

"What he said to our congressional representatives should be alarming not only to medical cannabis patients, but also to policymakers and the general public, because, based on all of the available information we have, it surely must be a lie," she wrote on the Huffington Post.

The Marijuana Policy Project (MPP) was a bit more diplomatic.

"The problem with Holder's statements is that the federal government's determination of compliance with state law is still fairly ambiguous, even arbitrary," MPP spokesman Morgan Fox told the Chronicle. "This makes it difficult for medical marijuana providers to know if they are safe, creating a chilling effect on the entire industry and resulting in pain, suffering, and potential danger for patients forced to resort to the illicit market."

The states should decide whether a dispensary is violating state law, he added.

"At the end of the day, it should be state authorities who determine if operators are in compliance with state law, not federal prosecutors who view the entire industry through a filter of illegality," Fox said. "Beyond that, using any federal resources to interfere with medical marijuana in states where it is legal is an inexcusable waste when there are far more serious problems that need attention."

CANORML was quick to point to a long list of California medical marijuana facilities that had been raided, threatened, or driven out of business by federal enforcers despite having sterling reputations, local official support, and complying with state laws and local regulations. Among them are many well-known and -respected operations including the Berkeley Patients Group, the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, Richard Lee's Oaksterdam University and Blue Sky Coffee Shop, Mendocino County's Northstone Organics, and at least five San Francisco dispensaries, including the Vapor Room, Hope Net, Divinity Tree, Shambhala, and Medithrive.

CANORML noted that in all of those cases, local officials denounced the Justice Department enforcement actions, "but US Attorneys have insolently disregarded community sentiment."

And that's just in Northern California. US Attorneys in other parts of the state have been equally -- if not more -- active in going after medical marijuana providers. Just one day before Holder addressed the committee, federal prosecutors in Southern California announced a crackdown on Los Angeles County dispensaries, with the DEA raiding two dispensaries and federal prosecutors sending threat letters to 34 more.

The statewide crackdown has been ongoing since last October, when the state's four US Attorneys jointly announced their campaign to rein in the industry. According to ASA, the federal actions have forced more than 300 medical marijuana operations to shut down.

"It's simply not believable that all of these taxpaying businesses were operating in violation of state law," Sherer noted, before asking a series of pointed questions. "If they were, why didn't the state take part in the raids? Why didn't the state or local authorities issue arrest warrants? Why would state and local politicians stand up for businesses breaking state and local laws?"

And stand up they have. Local elected officials, state representatives, state officials, even California Attorney General Kamala Harris have all urged the feds to butt out. Harris wrote to all four US Attorneys in December, telling them the federal government was "ill-equipped" to interpret and enforce state medical marijuana laws.

The fight continues. On Wednesday, the same day the feds announced a new phase of their offensive in Southern California and the same day President Obama visited the Bay Area on a fundraising trip, three San Francisco supervisors wrote an op-ed asking him to "keep the commitment he made to stop the federal government's attacks on medical cannabis."

For medical marijuana advocates, listening to Attorney General Holder saying he is only targeting operations in violation of state laws is bringing back memories of that old country and western music song: "Who are You Gonna Believe? Me or Your Lying Eyes?"

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Obama and Eric Holder Are Still Lying About the Medical Marijuana Raids

by Scott Morgan

On Thursday, Eric Holder lied to Congress about DOJ's escalating attacks against medical marijuana:

Mr. Holder said federal officials are not going after those who are staying within the confines of their states' medical marijuana laws, but said some have "come up with ways in which they are taking advantage of these state laws."

"We limit our enforcement efforts to those individuals, organizations that are acting out of conformity with state law," Mr. Holder told a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing. [Washington Times]

That statement is simply false, and flagrantly so. It's been widely reported in the press that federal prosecutors have threatened to arrest state officials merely for administering their own medical marijuana laws. One cannot claim that regulators performing their official duties are "acting out of conformity with state law". They are the state. You can't threaten them with arrest and then subsequently claim that enforcement is only directed at those who violate local laws.

Moreover, the feds have raided hundreds of dispensaries without making any effort at all to determine whether state laws are being violated. Most of the time, they're just confiscating money and medicine without even charging anyone. They keep saying the people they raid were breaking local laws, but they aren't proving that to be the case. When have they ever demonstrated that any of these businesses were violating state laws?

This whole just-enforcing-state-laws excuse is the same nonsense we were hearing from the President a month ago, and the Obama Administration's ability to comfortably repeat this crap owes much to the media's total failure to follow up on it.

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Even if the feds really were enforcing State Law, do they even have jurisdiction to do that? If the State law was violated, wouldn't the State's police be the ones to enforce that law?
10th Amendment?
The County Sheriff is the highest law enforcement authority. I believe the Sheriff could tell the DEA (ATF, TSA, all of them) to stay out of his/her county. Not that the Federal agencies would listen.

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"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened..." - Winston Churchill

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Will Holder Fold?

by Karen Kwiatkowski

The DOJ card players have a credibility problem. 17 well-publicized "terrorist" plots since 2001 have been federal setups that never approached the professionalism of an early talent screening for American Idol. The federally micromanaged Fast and Furious gun running operation purposely ran guns to Mexico, and then blamed it on the 2nd Amendment. After it became known that over 200 people were killed as a result, a normally passive Congress questioned Eric Holder, who apparently lied under oath about it.

Last week?s "terrorist plot" ? an odd Iranian "caught" by the bold federales in part because they "overheard" him explain in detail his complicated plan to his Mexican gangster "cohorts" has been immediately blown out of the water by state media from the left, right and center ? taking their lead from independent media that is, thankfully, growing ever more influential.

Even Hollywood is in on the joke. The very idea of federal "law enforcement" is almost silly in this second decade of the 21st century. If the government of the United States can publically, through the president with justification by DOJ, assassinate Americans around the world and make war without Congressional consultation or approval, it has forfeited any right it ever had to "enforce the law."

One hundred years ago, in the decade before 1920, this country once before experienced government-created prosperity bubbles and widespread public hysteria demanding government solutions to moral and economic security concerns. Ken Burns? three-part series, "Prohibition," provides a valuable reminder. Burns explains in an interview with Stephen Colbert how many disparate sectors of society all sought improved security and morality through state mandates and government action. When these disparate groups ? sharing a belief that it was good and just for government to force other parts of society to bend to their desires on a single issue ? focused on a single and unlawful federal activity, we got the 18th Amendment.

This amendment, in effect for a dozen years, "cost" the federal government $11 billion in lost tax revenue. In today?s devalued money and oversized federal government, that?s a loss of $120 billion, less than a fifth of one year of the Pentagon?s budget. But in the years leading up to Prohibition, alcohol excise taxes were a major portion of state and federal revenue.

How did the federal and state governments (prior to Prohibition, 75% of the New York state budget came from excise taxes on liquor) make up this lost revenue, and pay for drastic new "enforcement" costs?

This was long before the massive cycloptic Pentagon, long before FDR?s transformation of the United States into a Keynsesian disaster writ large, and long before the metasticization of the global corporate state oriented around the petrodollar. You guessed it. Prohibition against devil rum led to drastic increases in the income tax, itself a relatively new concept for the United States, brought into being only a few years earlier in a legislatively questionable way.

Which brings us to the present.

We have another "devil" today. A single powerful obsession unites American moralizers, including both the Christian Zionist movement and religious progressives who wish to see a Democratic President maintained for another term. Their obsession coincides nicely with the global reshaping desires of the neoconservatives, the institutional desires of the corporate state, the profiteering desires of the military-industrial complex, the blame-shifting desires of the U.S. Congress, the territorial security desires of Israel and its important American lobby, and finally, the centralized control objectives of the modern executive state.

For over a decade now, all of these concerns ? religious and progressive movements willingly aligning with state power, neoconservatives, the corporate petrodollar-based state, the military industrial complex, the Congress, the executive bureaucracy and the most powerful foreign policy lobby in the world ? have been harping, wailing, and whining about a new devil ? the state of Iran.

It doesn?t matter that Iran really and truly doesn?t matter to us. They say you are entitled to your own opinions but not your own facts. Americans who want something "done" in the Middle East ? with their single-issue banner of "Bomb Iran" for Jesus, for democracy, to get Obama re-elected, for oil, for petrodollars, to make money, to justify a bloated military budget, for Israel, to consolidate and strengthen the state and political security apparatus in the U.S. ? all freely make up their own facts about why Iran must be prohibited, and destroyed.

Which brings me back to the Justice Department, the nexus for prohibition then and now. The recent "Iranian plot" may help divert attention from DOJ perjury, from federal gun-running, from past fake terrorism plots, and from what may more frightening to the federal state apparatus, the exposure of the inconclusive and sloppy FBI investigation into the Amerithrax case. These plots and stories certainly feed the vision and fuel the fire in the bellies of those religious, political, corporate and state entities bent on attacking Iran in an ecstatic, glorious and emotion-filled massacre.

The American and Israeli collective movement to prohibit Iran from existing will probably not be able to sustain itself, even with the current effort to frighten and coerce the House of Saud into joining it. Holder is no Hoover, and Hoover would never had lasted nor been as politically powerful had average Americans of his era had broad public access to his activities, agendas and abuses as we do with Holder today. The contemporary U.S. dollar is an accident waiting to happen, and our military has been transformed into a hollow shell of hundreds of thousands of unhappy soldiers without an honest mission, and a few arrogant politicians in suits directing drone attacks. Holder will fold, to a derisive hiss of frustration from the bomb-Iran collective.
__
LRC columnist Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, blogs occasionally at Liberty and Power and The Beacon. To receive automatic announcements of new articles, click here or join her Facebook page. She is currently running for Congress in Virginia's 6th district.

Copyright ? 2011 Karen Kwiatkowski

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