In many cases, it’s these guys:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) last week highlighted what he called a “shocking” internal Pentagon report that concluded defense companies defrauded the military by $1.1 trillion.

“The ugly truth is that virtually all of the major defense contractors in this country for years have been engaged in systemic fraudulent behavior, while receiving hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayer money,” Sanders said in a statement. “With the country running a nearly $15 trillion national debt, my goal is to provide as much transparency as possible about what is happening with taxpayer money.”

More than $250 million “went to 54 contractors convicted of hard-core criminal fraud in the same period,” Sanders said, summarizing tables included with the DoD report. “Of that total, $33 million was paid to companies after they were convicted of crimes.”

Last week’s contest was won by Poster Child, who found the location along Highway 18 in Maple Valley.

This week’s location is related to something in the news from October, good luck!

At Slog, Dominic Holden fires back at the opposition from medical marijuana patients to New Approach Washington’s Initiative 502. He writes [emphasis his]:

But it’s dishonest to declare this this measure will subject people to more blood testing or result in a change of policing protocol. If voters pass I-502, officers would be held to the same standards as they are today: They would still require probable cause to stop a car, evidence of driver impairment, and any tests would have to be conducted by a medical professional (typically at a medical clinic or an ER). Those are the standards now, they wouldn’t change, and we hardly ever see those consequences for medical marijuana patients now because they aren’t impaired and cops don’t have probable cause to stop their vehicles. If cops didn’t have probable cause or evidence of impairment, but took action anyway, a defense attorney could move to have the whole thing tossed out—just like today.

It’s true that officers will continue to be held to the same set of rules as they are today, but it’s also true (and I’ve heard this echoed by several defense attorneys) that their motivation to push for a blood draw could certainly change. As of today, it’s very difficult to prove impairment in court. With no limit written into the law, any reputable defense attorney can have that charge thrown out. But with a 5ng/ml limit written into the law, that won’t be so easy. The concern is that this change will empower more police officers to push for blood draws in situations where they never did before. Will it be a significant difference? Maybe, maybe not. But the history of DUI enforcement for alcohol should make anyone wary of the possibilities.

Second, the point he’s trying to make in this paragraph isn’t true at all:

Some medical marijuana patients note that the cut-off is automatic—anyone who exceeds 5n/mg is automatically guilty of DUI. But I-502 actually does something very useful for marijuana users accused of DUI. It separates active metabolites, which indicate inebriation, from THC-COOH, the inactive metabolite that remains in the system for days or weeks. In other words, it tests to see whether people are currently stoned, not simply whether they’ve used marijuana in the past month.

No, it doesn’t test to see whether or not people are stoned. It tests to see whether or not people have more than 5ng/ml of active metabolites in their system. That certainly can indicate that a person is stoned, but sometimes it doesn’t. As I’ve pointed out before, people who use marijuana medicinally (and in particular, those who consume it within food) often have that much active THC in their system at all times. And because their body has that much, they no longer experience the “high” that brings about the impairment in the first place. This is a real concern for medical marijuana patients and I don’t find their concern here to be irrational in any way.

As for the overall initiative, I still find myself incredibly pained by this whole thing. And depending on how it all plays out in the legislature, it’s likely I’ll vote for it. But I’m still very unhappy that the ACLU and New Approach Washington decided to include the DUI provision. I don’t think it was necessary to pass something. It’s not based on sound science. And now it’s led to an organized effort to kill it from within the ranks of the drug law reform community. I worry that they may have misread the politics behind the failure of Prop 19 in California and will end up having people who normally should support legalization turn against it in large numbers – which doomed the Prop 19 campaign as much as any other factor. No one knows how this will play out, but I do find it ironic that the ACLU was willing to shit on the rights of an unpopular segment of the population in order to have a better chance of securing a popular vote.

This is shocking news. I knew White and had tremendous respect for him as a person and as my former state Senator. This is a huge loss.

In the past 15 years, support/opposition for legalizing marijuana has skyrocketed from 25%/73% in 1996 to 50%/46% in 2011. Yet there’s still not a single elected official in the United States holding a statewide office (Senator or Governor) on record supporting it. Even some of the best on the issue, like Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin and Connecticut Governor Dan Malloy, have only gone as far as to advocate for decriminalization.

If anyone caught the wonderful Ken Burns documentary on alcohol prohibition earlier this month, they know the legacy of Wayne Wheeler, the main political leader behind the Anti-Saloon League (ASL). Wheeler made himself into one of the most powerful men in Washington by organizing prohibition supporters into large voting blocs capable of swinging elections. His incredible success at doing so led to a Congress in the 1910s where even members who privately enjoyed their liquor would publicly rail against it.

Wheeler didn’t need 50% of the people in his voting bloc. In fact, many times he didn’t. Yet he was able to turn elections his way time and time again. As Daniel Okrent explains in Last Call:

With the ASL’s decision to embark on the “next and final step”, Wheeler’s skill at manipulating majorities through the power of a minority became yet more crucial. The referendum and initiative movement, which drys had supported before they fully grasped how to control legislatures, turned out to be potentially ruinous to the ASL. When two candidates opposing each other in a popular election could be differentiated by isolating one issue out of many, Wheeler’s minority could carry the day; a candidate with, say, the support of 45 percent of the electorate could win with the added votes of the ASL bloc. But when voters were offered a simple yes-or-no, dry-or-wet choice on a ballot measure, a minority was only a minority. In a statewide popular vote on a dry law, wrote historian Jack S. Blocker Jr., the ASL “wielded no power greater than its actual numbers”; in legislative elections, the power of Wheeler’s minority could be measured in multiples.

In theory, the same should be true for marijuana today. Even if only 10% of those who support marijuana legalization (5% of the overall population) vote as a bloc against any candidate who fails to support it, it could function as the same wedge that Wheeler used to bring about alcohol prohibition. But that doesn’t seem likely to happen, and it didn’t play much of a role in the end of alcohol prohibition either.

Even in 1928, as the Democrats nominated prohibition opponent Al Smith in a country that had become mostly fed up with the failures of the Volstead Act, the nation voted for prohibition supporter Herbert Hoover. And Pauline Sabin, the prominent socialite whose support for ending alcohol prohibition was key to showing that women stood against it, was brushed aside by her fellow Republican Hoover, and left the party because of it. Neither Sabin, nor Smith, nor the powerful DuPonts (who thought that ending alcohol prohibition would lead to the reversal of the income tax) could exert the kind of singular political force wielded by Wayne Wheeler. Why?

The easy – and stupid – answer is that drunks and stoners don’t vote. And while there’s some truth to that in general, the 50% of Americans who support ending marijuana prohibition are comprised mostly of people who don’t use it – or use it moderately – but have a strong belief that the law is bad for any number of other reasons. The same was certainly true during alcohol prohibition. The potential voters are clearly out there today to do what Wheeler did.

What I think it comes down to though is that the drive to bring about prohibitions has such a fervent religious element to it that it allows for single-issue voting en masse in ways that hardly any other causes can duplicate. There may be large numbers of people who support the cause of ending prohibition, but few think it’s such a matter of divine importance that all other issues take a backseat. It’s seen as another institutional issue, alongside other serious institutional issues we face, like income inequality and the soaring costs of health care. The same wasn’t really true of those who made up Wayne Wheeler’s voting blocs. And it hasn’t been true of those in the past who’ve supported the drug war and reflexively voted for the candidates who they see as “tough on crime”. This imbalance is just a part of what keeps the drug war going, and it may be just as important as the prison lobby or the pharmaceutical industry or the anti-drug bureaucracies – the groups who often get the blame/credit for keeping politicians silent.

Last week’s contest was a tough one, but it was won by milwhcky. It was a home in North Pole, Alaska built for an episode of Extreme Home Makeover.

This week’s contest is a location somewhere in Washington state, good luck!

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was Aberdeen, Scotland.

This week’s picture is related to a TV show or a movie. It’s a tough one, so I may have to provide a clue. Or maybe not, you guys often surprise the hell out of me. Good luck!

Once again, the Tacoma News Tribune has achieved a level of stupidity that is both remarkable and depressing. And with Ken Burns’ fantastic series on alcohol prohibition airing this week on PBS, I should probably add inexcusable to that list as well.

The fun began over the weekend when TNT reporter Rob Carson filed a report about how he was able to get a medical marijuana authorization from a doctor he only saw over Skype. Anyone who’s familiar with the medical marijuana situation in the state knows that this kind of nonsense happens. At Seattle Hempfest, there were women with bikinis at the entrance encouraging people to “get legal” or to “get their green card”. Hell, we don’t even have “green cards” in this state.

Most people are smart enough to know that this will happen as long as there’s a way for people to make money from it. It’s no different from before medical marijuana was around, when there were thousands of people in this state willing to illegally sell pot to you for money. Now, along with those people, there are now people willing to provide you with a medical marijuana authorization for money. Not much of a difference other than the level of professional risk. These are merely the evolving ways that the futility of prohibiting a widely used recreation drug manifests itself.

As soon as I saw Carson’s report, I knew there was another Editorial Board disaster in the making. And they did not disappoint:

Restoring credibility to medical marijuana in Washington will require separating drug-seekers from the seriously ill people who may genuinely need it.

Anyone who cares about the latter should be anxious to prevent recreational users and abusers from discrediting the whole system – as is happening in Tacoma on a large scale.

The TNT seems awfully concerned about the credibility of medical marijuana, but they might need to be a little more worried about their own credibility. Hardly anyone disputes the fact that there are folks who derive genuine value from the medical use of marijuana. Even Dave Reichert has come to realize this after the reality of its effectiveness hit close to home. The fact that large numbers of recreational users come up with medical excuses doesn’t discredit that reality at all. But it does discredit the morons who can’t figure that out.

For the last two years, pot-lovers across the state have found it increasingly easy to get the so-called green cards that protect them from the law.

Wow, two big problems. There are no such thing as “green cards”. Anyone who’s told by a doctor that they are getting a “green card” is being scammed. This state does not have a registry system. What a doctor (or other licensed health professional) can give you is an authorization on special tamper-proof paper. And if a police officer finds your medical marijuana and he/she doesn’t think your authorization is valid? Well, he/she can still arrest your ass and see if the prosecutor will press charges. So not only are people not getting “green cards”, they don’t even have protection from the law. Of course, this fact makes the editorial even more completely pointless so it’s not surprising they’re not explaining it well.

Tacoma officials have accommodated them by tolerating a proliferation of illegal marijuana stores that now – according to licensing records – greatly outnumber the city’s pharmacies.

And according to a study by the RAND Corporation, it’s very possible that they lead to a reduction in crime in their immediate vicinity. So what’s the problem? Let’s get more of them!

That’s the visible end of the sham, but it’s not the headwater. Upstream, the industry is sustained by ever-growing numbers of common marijuana smokers who’ve discovered how easy it is get authorization papers on flimsy pretexts.

Who cares? Either those recreational smokers buy marijuana from someone who’s likely being supplied by organized crime, or they can buy it from a locally run dispensary who pays taxes and keeps the profits in the community. I know which option I prefer.

The News Tribune’s Rob Carson, for example, reported Sunday that, after walking into a Tacoma marijuana outlet, he was able to get medical authorization via the Internet from a nurse practitioner in another part of the state.

When the TNT finally goes tits up, I will pay top dollar for their fainting couch.

State law permits providers to authorize marijuana to treat debilitating or intractable pain that can’t be relieved by other treatments. Carson’s long-distance nurse quickly recommended marijuana for shoulder discomfort he normally handled with ibuprofen.

Sure, and if Carson got caught with marijuana and charged with possession, that authorization very likely wouldn’t hold up in court. Although if he were almost anywhere in King County, the prosecutor likely would have more important things to do than to charge him anyway. And if he were in Seattle, he wouldn’t even need the authorization.

The medical ethics of too many pot docs are a joke. Supposed professionals recommend marijuana to the vast majority of “patients” they see, and they offer their customers their money back if they don’t walk away with a license to use. It’s all about the cash.

Wow, how’d you unravel that mystery?! Boy, your investigative skills are top-notch.

Judge John Hickman of the Pierce County Superior Court has lost patience with the charade. He has refused to return confiscated “medical marijuana” to two Tacomans unless they demonstrate that their authorizations actually comply with state law.

Um, I believe they were providers, so even if their own authorizations don’t hold up, they only have to prove that they were providing for a valid patient.

These two aren’t the issue; they may well be in compliance. What’s important is that somebody – at last – is insisting that authorizations pass muster with someone other than a marijuana merchant.

That’s been the law, numbnuts. Look up State v. Fry.

Somebody – preferably, responsible medical professionals – should be scrutinizing the authorizers on a routine basis.

They already do, and few people get upset about it. In fact, a doctor who writes medical marijuana authorizations was one of the main people providing input for how the new law passed this year should prevent scammers.

Marijuana advocates talk about moving the drug from Schedule I to Schedule II, which would allow doctors to legally prescribe it.

That may not be a bad idea. But the prescribing of Schedule II drugs, such as Percocet and amphetamines, is monitored by professional oversight bodies and ultimately by pharmacists. Doctors get sanctioned if they get too prescription-happy.

Actually most marijuana advocates think it should be lower that Schedule II (which is where cocaine and methamphetamine are listed), but the general sentiment is true. If a doctor thinks that you could benefit from medical marijuana, you should be able to obtain it from a safe place where the safety of the drug is most assured. And every medical marijuana supporter I’ve ever known wants more research done to find out exactly what the plant does and how it’s most effective. Up until now, it’s mostly anecdotal and that’s far from ideal.

Sorry this is long, but for an editorial this clueless, it requires a full line-by-line takedown. Here’s the utterly obnoxious end:

Medical marijuana advocates who are out to help the genuinely sick – not furtively legalize the drug for all comers – wouldn’t object to tighter regulations of their own. Would they?

Sorry, but I’m here to both help the genuinely sick AND legalize the drug for all (adult) comers. I mentioned this week’s PBS documentary on alcohol prohibition for a reason, and it’s because the parallels are all too obvious.

During alcohol prohibition, there was a medical exemption for alcohol. If you could get a doctor to write you a prescription for whiskey, you were able to buy “medicinal” booze through legal channels. There was also a religious exemption. This led to a lot of priests and rabbis getting rich supplying people’s “spiritual activities”. All of this was cynical and all of it was driven by greed. But the answer to that problem wasn’t to crack down on the cynical ways people were able to exploit the law to get rich. The answer was to recognize that trying to stamp out a widely popular recreational drug is impossible, and that it was much smarter to make it legal and regulate its sale to all adults. The answer for marijuana is the same, and this should be obvious to anyone with both a brain and a minimal knowledge of history. But it appears that the folks at the Tacoma News-Tribune editorial board still have neither.

Last week’s contest was won by Right Stuff. He didn’t get the exact location, but he was within a few blocks and he guessed correctly that it was a Solyndra building in Fremont, CA.

This week’s contest is a random location somewhere in the world, good luck!

From earlier this year:

A botched gun-trafficking investigation that allowed suspected criminals to purchase roughly 2,000 firearms — many which later crossed the border into Mexico — came under renewed criticism on Tuesday as federal officials responsible for implementing and overseeing the operation testified before Congress.

The hearing came just hours after the release of a joint House and Senate report providing new details on the investigation, code-named “Operation Fast and Furious.” According to the report, at least 122 guns tied to the operation have been found by Mexican authorities at crime scenes or were recovered during police action against drug cartels.

The operation was “a perfect storm of idiocy,” Carlos Canino, a senior ATF agent in Mexico, said in the report. Other current and former ATF agents testified at the hearing that the operation violated basic agency protocols.

The “Fast and Furious” operation first ignited controversy in March after whistleblowers within the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms revealed to the media and members of Congress that a gun tied to the program had been found last December among a cache of weapons at the murder scene of a Border Patrol agent.

From yesterday:

Firearms dealers in states that allow medical marijuana can’t sell guns or ammunition to registered users of the drug, a policy that marijuana and gun-rights groups say denies Second Amendment rights to individuals who are following state law.

Federal law already makes it illegal for someone to possess a gun if he or she is “an unlawful user of, or addicted to” marijuana or other controlled substances. A Sept. 21 letter from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, issued in response to numerous inquiries from gun dealers, clarifies that medical marijuana patients are included in that definition.

So let me get this straight. Gun sales to people who are widely expected to use those guns to kill people are ok (as long as the ATF thinks that there’s a chance that it could help them bring down Mexico’s drug trafficking organizations), but gun sales to people who have permission from their doctor to use a medicinal plant that makes you more passive are not.

Every time I think members of our government have managed to do the dumbest thing possible, they always top it.

Nina Shapiro’s profile of former U.S. Attorney John McKay is long, but a very interesting read. As I’ve written about a few times here, McKay has undergone a big transformation from Republican U.S. Attorney to an outspoken advocate of marijuana legalization and other issues important to civil libertarians. It’s very reminiscent of former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr’s transformation earlier in the decade.

Despite my reservations about the New Approach Washington initiative, I’m glad to see McKay lending his voice to the effort to end marijuana prohibition. It’s rare that people make these kinds of radical political changes after a long career, and Shapiro goes back through the last decade to recount the history of how McKay made that journey. Much of it is a tale we’re very familiar with, as the Bush Administration’s DOJ became politicized and expected Bush-appointed U.S. Attorneys to be political actors.

Looking forward to this Ken Burns special next week:

Last week’s contest was won by Siberian Dog. It was Kent, WA.

Here’s this week’s contest, related to a news event from September. Good luck!

– The group Patients Against New Approach Washington sent the New Approach Washington campaign a letter outlining their concerns over the DUI provisions in Initiative 502. Earlier this week, I discussed why these limits aren’t just unscientific, but could lead to unnecessarily overburdening a system that’s already not very good at keeping dangerous drivers off the roads.

– The RAND Corporation released a study from Los Angeles that showed that when medical marijuana dispensaries are closed, the amount of crime in the immediate area increases. The study looked at the 10 day windows before and after Los Angeles shut down over 70% of its dispensaries. They found that crime around the closed dispensaries was 60% greater than around the dispensaries that continued to operate. This is just another reminder that anyone who calls medical marijuana dispensaries “magnets for crime” is either unaware of how magnets work, or is completely full of shit.

– The White House is once again using the internet to find out what issues “We the People” want the government to deal with. And once again, a petition to end marijuana prohibition is winning by a lot. Even Mexican President Felipe Calderon is starting to come around on this, but it’s still pretty clear no one in the White House is willing to listen. Same for Canada.

– This past Wednesday, I went to an event sponsored by MAPS. They continue to do a lot of great work on finding PTSD treatments, but continue to run into roadblocks from the drug war. Despite that, the evidence continues to pile up that they’re on to something.

– New York is finally cracking down on the very cynical way that they trick people (read: minorities) into more serious drug offenses by having them show their drugs to them.

– It’s good to be reminded that police officers don’t always tell the truth.

– Some Texas cops had a fun night.

The Washington State Democrats have officially endorsed I-502, the initiative from New Approach Washington (NAW) that aims to legalize possession of up to an ounce of marijuana and establish regulated markets for its production and sale. A number of internet commenters are treating this as a new milestone, but it’s not the first time the state’s Democrats have endorsed a legalization initiative. The Washington State Democrats also endorsed Sensible Washington’s I-1068 in 2010.

But one thing is missing from both Just Say Now’s post and this editorial in the Spokesman-Review, and it remains the most divisive aspect of the initiative: the proposal of a 5ng/ml per se marijuana threshold for all drivers.

To most people, the idea of creating a system for marijuana similar to how alcohol is dealt with is a no-brainer. And the backers of New Approach Washington make no bones about the fact that finding an initiative that can pass a statewide vote is their priority. But the science behind this limit is simply not there, and it could have serious repercussions not only for medical marijuana users, but for anyone who uses the roads in Washington.

As I wrote last time I discussed this initiative, a ng/ml measurement of the active marijuana THC compound is not an indicator of impairment the way that a blood-alcohol measurement is. Medical marijuana patients often have very high ng/ml measurements at all times, even if they haven’t used it in over a day. And in some cases, those individuals no longer experience the psychoactive effects from the drug that creates the impairment in the first place.

Recently in Colorado, attempts to enact a limit similar to the one NAW proposes have stalled several times. Last week, a workgroup that was put together to establish a 5ng/ml limit ultimately decided not to move forward, citing these problems. Compounding the issue is the fact that – despite what many people seem to take for granted about driving while stoned – there’s very little evidence showing any correlation between testing positive for THC and road fatalities. In fact, the link above points out that the numbers of road fatalities have plummeted by 20 percent in Colorado since medical marijuana became legal. And another study has shown that there’s no increased incidence of accidents for even up to double the proposed limit (10ng/ml). (see update below)

The reasons for that are likely a combination of the inaccuracy of the ng/ml metric as a valid measurement of impairment, as well as the somewhat counter-intuitive nature of driving while stoned. While driving under the influence of marijuana is certainly not a smart idea, it tends to have some of the opposite effects that alcohol does. The common generality is that a drunk driver will drive through a red light while a stoned driver will stop at a green light. Alcohol impairment tends to go alongside reckless and aggressive driving while marijuana impairment tends to go alongside overly-cautious and passive driving. Despite that, the main reason not to drive stoned is that you won’t be able to act quickly in an emergency situation. Driving requires your full attention, and if there were a way to accurately measure impairment, I’d be perfectly fine with sanctions for those who aren’t capable of operating their car safely. But there just isn’t right now.

Up until now, charges for driving under the influence of marijuana are relatively rare. Without a per se limit, most defense attorneys know how to defeat them, and it’s often not worth an officer’s time to take a driver to get a blood draw that won’t hold up in court. In order to obtain a conviction, prosecutors have to prove impairment in other ways, which is difficult to do. However, if this limit is approved by the voters, that burden of proof is gone. What would happen then isn’t entirely clear, but it’s not hard to imagine that officers will be more likely to demand a blood draw for any situation in which they can conjure up probable cause (which is not very hard). In fact, one attorney I spoke with last month stated that under this new limit, if a medical marijuana patient is doing nothing wrong, but is struck by a reckless driver (who then dies), he or she could be given a blood draw and then charged with negligent homicide.

The folks behind NAW think that none of this will matter in the election, and they very well could be right. Medical marijuana patients make up only about 1-2% of the overall population. The vast majority of people will see this provision as a plus (as the state Democrats did), and perhaps for a small percentage of folks, it will be the difference between a yes and a no vote. But what worries me the most isn’t even the additional risk for medical marijuana patients. It’s the fact that we already have a very difficult time keeping drunk drivers off the road. The prospect of expanding the scope of that enforcement to include a subset of the population that is statistically far less likely than drunk drivers to kill someone is bad prioritization and will inevitably lead to even more repetitive drunk drivers falling through the cracks of the system.

I’ve had some good discussions with supporters of the NAW initiative, and the difference really comes down to how one sees this whole process playing out. While it would be nice to finally see a statewide legalization initiative finally pass, it’s also possible that if we pass it, the federal courts could strike down some parts of the law, but still leave us with the DUI limit and only a one-ounce decriminalization (which a number of states already have). There are some concessions I’m very willing to make in the greater effort of ending marijuana prohibition, but this attempt to appease the anti-science beast is still a bridge too far.

UPDATE: The study linked above (which I’ve struck) was using a different metric for measuring ng/ml than what the I-502 initiative proposes. The study only claims that there’s no difference up to the 5ng/ml limit. The complete study can be read here.