Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was Bern, Switzerland.

This week’s is another random location in the world. Good luck!

Dr. Jack Kevorkian’s life was controversial, but never should have been. It takes an extraordinary amount of courage to risk your livelihood simply because you know you’re right and you feel compelled to stand up for the freedom of others. Kevorkian was a giant among men – and as many extraordinary men did before him, he ended up sacrificing his own freedom so that others may one day have more of it for themselves.

– This Thursday, June 2, multiple former world leaders, former U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, former Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, and others will be holding a press conference to release a report and call for a change in global drug policies. The group will be advocating that we move away from criminalization and begin exploring ways to regulate markets for currently illegal drugs.

– That message is one that’s needed quite badly here in the U.S. where the Obama Administration is still failing in its promises to put science over ideology when it comes to the medical uses of marijuana.

– Locally, State Representative Roger Goodman is planning a press conference and rally to demand that the Obama Administration back off and let Washington regulate medical marijuana. The press conference will be at Green Hope Patient Network at 15021 Aurora Ave. N in Shoreline.

– I’m continuing to do a lot of work with Sensible Washington, trying to get as much done before I start up at a new job in June. The group is still working hard to get I-1149 on the ballot. This week, I’m traveling to Sunnyside to speak with some farmers about hemp. And I’m also working with some other Sensible Washington folks to put together a video about the abuses of the WestNET drug task force, who’ve left a trail of destruction across Kitsap County. Much of the abuses out there have focused on longtime officer Roy Alloway, who has now been indicted for illegal gun sales.

Last week’s contest was won by Dan. It was the Bonnet Carré Spillway, just west of New Orleans.

Here’s this week’s contest, just a random location somewhere in the world. Good luck!

As you’ve probably seen by now, it’s officially over:

A yearlong attempt to clarify Washington’s medical marijuana laws collapsed Tuesday, leaving state dispensaries without legal recognition and more vulnerable to prosecution.

Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles, D-Seattle, had pursued a series of proposals to regulate the dispensaries, managing to usher one plan all the way to the governor’s desk. But Gov. Chris Gregoire struck down key parts of it with a veto last month, and a scramble to pass two other plans before the end of the legislative session failed to get enough support in committee.

“By far, this represents the greatest disappointment of my legislative career,” Kohl-Welles said.

I certainly have sympathy for Kohl-Welles. She worked tirelessly for this bill, tried hard to ensure that all stakeholders were involved, and persevered when things got rough – only to see the governor wreck her efforts through what appears to be either dishonesty, incompetence, or both. To underscore exactly how bad the governor’s actions were, both Delaware and Vermont are in the process of passing bills into law that have the kinds of provisions that the governor falsely claimed would put state workers at risk of arrest. And even worse, America’s Craziest Governor, Jan Brewer of Arizona, is now using Gregoire’s bogus talking points in her attempt to overturn Arizona’s voter-approved medical marijuana law.

In other news, State Rep. Roger Goodman is continuing to put pressure on Attorney General Rob McKenna to weigh in on this issue. As I’ve written before, McKenna’s animosity towards our state’s voter-approved medical marijuana law stands in stark contrast to his belief that the state needs to stand up to the federal government’s tyranny via the Affordable Care Act. Goodman’s latest letter to McKenna specifically references this bit of legendary hypocrisy, by pointing out that McKenna has expressed his opinion on health care reform, but remains awfully quiet about whether or not the state of Washington should be standing up for its citizens over medical marijuana.

Also staying silent on this issue is the DEA, which has been stalling for nearly ten years regarding a petition to reschedule marijuana out of its Schedule I classification (reserved for highly addictive drugs with no medical use). A coalition of advocacy groups filed another suit yesterday to get them to respond. The cause for the DEA’s silence is that if they come back and say that marijuana has no medical value (which I’m sure they’d love to say), then there’d be a follow-up lawsuit that allows a judge to review the evidence and provide a ruling. For reasons that should be obvious, the DEA would prefer not to go down that route. So instead, they’ve locked themselves in the closet with Rob McKenna, hoping that everyone will stop asking them why they continue to support one of the most inexcusable policy disasters of the past half-century.

Neal Peirce’s excellent Seattle Times editorial on the violence in Mexico is currently the top link at the Reddit World News aggregator. Sadly, despite the importance of what’s going on in Mexico right now, it still barely gets mentioned on traditional media outlets. And even when it does, the connection that Peirce makes between American drug policy and the violence in Mexico is never discussed in a way that helps the viewer understand what’s really going on.

Last week’s contest was won by 2cents. It was the TPC at Snoqualmie Ridge.

This week’s is related to something in the news from May. Good luck!

Who could have guessed that sending far-right Republican ideologues to Congress would backfire for the people who need government programs like Medicare:

Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler (R-WA) came face to face with this growing movement at a town hall in Vancouver, Washington last night. Dozens of protesters encamped outside the meeting, waving signs like “Save Medicare: Tax the Rich.” When she tried to defend her vote on the GOP budget that would effectively privatize Medicare, “a chorus of boos and catcalls and shouts of ‘liar’ erupted in the auditorium.” The congresswoman was repeatedly called out by what the local press called a “rough crowd.”

It amazes me that there are people out there who voted for Herrera Beutler, but are now surprised that she’s voting to take away Medicare. What the hell did you expect? What part of Republican governance for the past 30 years hasn’t been clear? Modern Republicans don’t think government should provide safety nets to you any more. That means no Medicare, no Social Security. It means if you didn’t make enough money over your life – or if you’re one of those unlucky souls who gets a long-term illness that costs lots of money to treat – you need to look in the mirror and ask yourself why you didn’t have a good enough stock portfolio.

Last year during the I-1068 signature gathering effort (the legalization initiative that fell about 50,000 signatures short of the required amount to make the ballot), I encountered a number of people in the comment threads here and elsewhere who were at a loss as to how they could help. With that in mind, and with my extra free time over the past two months, I’ve helped Sensible Washington put together a new online resource for folks to help get I-1149 on the ballot this year. You can visit the page here or just click the screenshot below.

This page allows you find businesses that have I-1149 petitions on site. It allows you to locate the Sensible Washington coordinator closest to you in order to obtain petitions or turn yours in. And it has a compilation of festivals, sporting events, concerts, and other events between now and July 4th weekend where you can stand with a clipboard and help us get this initiative on the ballot in November. Get involved, and let’s get it done this year in Washington!

Last week’s contest was one of the toughest ever. It was won by Luigi Giovanni for his second in a row and by David D for getting the movie reference. It was the Burger King in Poughkeepsie, NY where they filmed the “Liter of Cola” scene in Super Troopers.

Here’s this week’s, it’s a location in Washington state. Good luck!

A very late notice here, but I’m scheduled to be speaking sometime between noon and 1pm today at the Cannabis Freedom March in Volunteer Park. After the march, I’m supposed to be on a panel in Westlake Park with Alison Holcomb and Douglas Hiatt speaking about cannabis laws. If I’m sitting in between them, I’ll be wearing a full suit of armor to protect myself.

– The latest from Libya.

– Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin is set to sign a bill that licenses and regulates medical marijuana dispensaries, once again illustrating that our own governor lied to us when she said she couldn’t do so because of federal policy.

– A police officer was involved in a two-vehicle accident on Rainier Avenue yesterday, but witnesses dispute the report that SPD released. SPD claims that his sirens were on, but multiple witnesses claim they weren’t on until after the accident occurred. Another witness claims the officer was talking on his cell phone at the time of the crash.

This is comical:

Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul said during a Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearing Wednesday that those who believe in a right to healthcare actually believe in slavery.

…

“Basically, once you imply a belief in a right to someone’s services — do you have a right to plumbing? Do you have a right to water? Do you have right to food? — you’re basically saying you believe in slavery.”

In this country, we have a right to be tried by a jury of our peers. We also have a right to a defense attorney. These are widely accepted rights that no one questions. Yet, to Senator Paul, serving on a jury is slavery, as well as being a public defender.

There’s been another flurry of activity with the medical marijuana mess. Here’s some of the latest news:

– A new bill, SB 5955, has been introduced. This bill crafts rules around “nonprofit patient cooperatives”, limiting them to 10 members. It also allows for local jurisdictions to ban them if they so choose.

– The bill requires that each cooperative register with the Secretary of State’s office. This once again illustrates the point that Gregoire’s fear-mongering over state employees being arrested was nonsense. Having state employees do this is no different than anything that was in the original bill. I can only guess at why the governor felt she had to lie in order to force this bill to be written exactly as the police and prosecutors wanted.

– The CDC is outright opposed to the bill, and it’s not likely that the Washington Cannabis Association will support it either. Both organizations are concerned that these patient cooperatives will end up banned in most of the state, and therefore all of these coops will be based in Seattle. There’s no accurate count of how many medical marijuana patients there are in Washington, but many believe that it’s more than 50,000. If that’s the case, at 10 people per coop, this bill would attempt to concentrate that entire distribution network throughout 5,000 private homes. That’s simply assinine.

– On the legal front, Attorney General Rob McKenna’s office replied to Rep. Roger Goodman and 14 other House Representatives hoping to get some clarity on the medical marijuana situation. The response was a dodge, as McKenna essentially refused to provide an opinion at all on the three questions. Goodman released a brief statement today saying:

I am disappointed by Attorney General Rob McKenna’s non response to the questions that I and other lawmakers posed.

Voters approved medical marijuana. People with cancer and other diseases rely on it.

And we deserve honest, candid answers from our state’s attorney general about new legislation and the legitimacy our state’s law with respect to the federal government.

But the answers we got back weren’t answers at all. McKenna delegated a staffer to give us back page after page that said nothing.

McKenna’s refusal to weigh in on this is not very surprising. His longstanding views on medical marijuana only serve to exacerbate his hypocrisy when it comes to the Affordable Care Act, and I wouldn’t expect him to throw any more logs on that fire.

– The ACLU sent a letter to Attorney General Holder asking him to clarify that nothing has changed with Obama Administration policy and that states who regulate medical marijuana will be left alone. As this relates to the legislation here in Washington, however, this seems irrelevant. As I mentioned above, Governor Gregoire clearly isn’t all that worried about state employees dealing with medical marijuana. The new bill still has state employees dealing with medical marijuana. And even long before this session, the state Department of Revenue launched a statewide effort to collect taxes from dispensaries. In fact, Ben Livingston mentioned that when this was brought up in a closed-door session among the stakeholders, the folks from the governor’s office were caught off-guard by that fact. They didn’t even seem to know that was happening.

This talking point about state employees being arrested first came up back in February out of the mouth of Christopher Hurst, whose mouth is permanently loaned out to the police and prosecutors of this state. This bullshit about state employees being at risk appears to have been the plan for police and prosecutors to scuttle this thing all along. And sadly, we have a governor who just so happens to be stupid enough to fall for it.

Last week’s contest was won by Luigi Giovanni. It was Edmonton, Alberta. Thanks to Dan for the link.

Here’s this week’s, the location is related to a movie or a TV show. Good luck and happy Mother’s Day!