Brendan Kiley’s feature article in The Stranger on SPD’s long and expensive undercover sting within Seattle’s alternative community is an incredible piece of work. And it’ll be the first thing I point to the next time SPD complains that they need to hire more officers. I’ll believe it when they finally stop spending millions of taxpayer dollars on pointless fishing expeditions like that.

The world’s worst editorial board just barfed all over the internet again. Let’s see if we can tally up the inaccurate statements and complete nonsense in their latest embarrassment.

Washington’s carefully restricted policy on medical marijuana – enacted by voters in 1998 – got along fine for 10 years without attracting much notice from the U.S. Justice Department.

No, it didn’t. In fact, it got along so poorly that most patients struggled to find a reliable source of medicine, patients who tried to grow for themselves often got fucked, and those who tried to provide for others out of a sense of compassion were putting themselves at significant risk. The law was a gesture of compassion by voters that was never followed up with a workable system.

[Read more…]

As I’ve mentioned, I’m currently doing a lot of work with Sensible Washington and the I-1149 campaign. Here’s their latest press release, which I put together:

Last week, Governor Gregoire dealt a huge blow to tens of thousands of Washington’s most vulnerable citizens. By partially vetoing the proposed medical marijuana bill, the governor shut down a slowly emerging industry that was providing safe access to medicine for cancer and AIDS patients, multiple sclerosis sufferers, and those dealing with severe pain. As a result, criminal gangs are now poised to reclaim the market, bringing more violence to our streets, greater dangers to our children, and making it unnecessarily difficult for the sick and terminally ill to get the medicine that their doctors authorize. The governor’s stated reason for leaving us in this mess was that she feared the federal government’s response.

Fifty years ago, the Civil Rights Movement saw the federal government use its power to overturn injustices being carried out by the states. Today, the fight for sane and sensible marijuana laws has turned that dynamic on its head.

You can read the rest here. Sensible Washington is really the only reform effort happening this year, so if you want to see change soon, now’s the time to get involved.

Just a quick follow-up to yesterday’s post on the request for Rob McKenna to weigh in with his legal opinion on the recently vetoed medical marijuana bill. I just spoke with Rep. Roger Goodman who tells me that Congressman Jay Inslee will be sending a similar letter to Attorney General Eric Holder.

UPDATE: Dominic Holden has the most detailed explanation of why Gregoire’s partial veto is such a disaster. This doesn’t just leave us where we were before. This removes all of the gray area wiggle-room that allowed for progressive prosecutors like Dan Satterberg to allow for some dispensaries to quietly operate. Now, those dispensaries are clearly in violation of state law, meaning that thousands of medical marijuana patients who had access to medicine before this bill passed are likely fucked now.

I met up with Douglas Hiatt for a little bit yesterday afternoon, and he told a story of a woman who once had to rely on her teenage grandson to get marijuana for her at his high school. Governor Gregoire’s veto puts us back in that situation. And it’s not clear she has any interest in fixing it.

Fifteen State House Representatives, led by Roger Goodman, have sent Attorney General Rob McKenna a letter asking him to weigh in with his opinion on the recent furor over Governor Gregoire’s partial veto of the medical marijuana bill. The legislators would like to know McKenna’s official opinion on the following three things:

1) Where the federal Controlled Substances Act prohibits state activities that create a “positive conflict” between state and federal laws (see 21 U.S.C. Section 903), would the exercise of our state’s (and its instrumentalities’) regulatory, licensing and zoning powers related to cannabis cultivation, processing and dispensing, as set forth in SB 5073, create a “positive conflict” with federal law, even where no state employee would be required to engage in specific activities that are prohibited by the Controlled Substances Act?

2) What is the likelihood, in consideration of current federal policy respecting individuals whose actions are “in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws,” (see so-called “Holder Memorandum” of 10/29/09) that Washington state employees would be subject to federal criminal liability for activities to implement the cannabis cultivation, processing and dispensing system as set forth in SB 5073, where no such comparable federal criminal liability has ever been attached to any state employees in the past and where state employees’ activities in this case would fall far short of “aiding and abetting” the violation of federal law?

3) How enforceable is Washington’s medical cannabis law in general and what is the permissible extent of Washington’ police power to protect the health, welfare and safety of the people in the face of the absolute federal prohibition of cannabis?

The first two parts of this letter focus on the main excuse Governor Gregoire has used to justify her partial veto. She continues to claim – despite UW law professor Hugh Spitzer’s dismissals – that state employees are at risk of arrest for regulating the industry.

It’s been brought up several times that other states regulate marijuana production distribution without any problem. This is far from secret. In fact, in a recent episode of CNBC’s “Marijuana Inc” series, you can see one of those state employees at work. Go to the 10:30 mark of the following video to see a Colorado state employee – a former narcotics officer, no less – doing exactly what Christine Gregoire says her state employees will get arrested if they do.

In response to the growing awareness that Gregoire’s stated reasons for the partial veto are fiction, she’s now claiming that the policy under Obama has changed recently. But as Dominic Holden points out, Western Washington’s U.S. Attorney Jenny Durkan disputes that. The Obama Administration won’t go after folks who are in compliance with state law. Goodman’s letter to McKenna is an attempt to have the Attorney General weigh in to provide some clarity in this mess.

UPDATE: Dominic Holden has more analysis at Slog.

Juan Cole has a tremendous post on the life and death of Osama Bin Laden, and how we can use his death as way to continue to make progress against Middle East extremism:

The Arab Spring has demonstrated that the Arab masses yearn for liberty, not thuggish repression, for life, not death and destruction, for parliamentary democracy, not theocratic dictatorship. Bin Laden was already a dinosaur, a relic of the Cold War and the age of dictators in which a dissident such as he had no place in society and was shunted off to distant, frontier killing fields. The new generation of young Arabs in Egypt and Tunisia has a shot at a decent life. Obama has put the US on the right side of history in Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Libya (where I see crowds for the first time in my life waving American flags). People might want a little help from a distance, but they don’t want to see Western troops deployed in fighting units on their soil.

If Obama can get us out of Iraq, and if he can use his good offices to keep the pressure on the Egyptian military to lighten up, and if he can support the likely UN declaration of a Palestinian state in September, the US will be in the most favorable position in the Arab world it has had since 1956. And he would go down in history as one of the great presidents. If he tries to stay in Iraq and he takes a stand against Palestine, he risks provoking further anti-American violence. He can be not just the president who killed Bin Laden, but the president who killed the pretexts for radical violence against the US. He can promote the waving of the American flag in major Arab cities. And that would be a defeat and humiliation for Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda more profound than any they could have dreamed.

UPDATE: And on a less serious note, this Washington man finally shaved his beard.

UPDATE 2 [Darryl]: The White House releases some photos of the day’s events from within the White House.

Last week’s contest was won by David Aquarius (and thanks to Change in Time for the link). It was the TEPCO building in Tokyo.

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

Well, it’s official. Governor Gregoire has vetoed much of the medical marijuana bill, leaving patients and providers across the state at greater risk of arrest and with less access to the medicine that their doctors have authorized them to have. To call this a failure of leadership is an understatement. To knowingly lie in order to promote bad policy is a failure far greater than that of mere leadership. It’s a failure of character and integrity.

I used to be somewhat regretful over my vote for Dino Rossi in 2004. But as clownish and smarmy as Dino Rossi is, having him serve a term as governor would have been a good wake-up call for the progressives in this state. What we’ve just seen from Governor Gregoire is what happens when you blindly support the candidate from your party no matter how incompetent they are. I’m rather convinced at this point that we’d be in a lot better shape on a variety of issues in this state – from education to health care to transportation to tax policy – if Rossi had won that razor-thin election in 2004 and Democrats had a chance to do some soul-searching and run someone who had potential to be a good governor in 2008 (when it was a much easier go for Democrats everywhere).

I’ve gotten several email alerts about a raid against a dispensary in Spokane. The CDC was doing their “how to prepare for a raid” training today in Spokane, so a number of people left to witness what was going on. I’ll update this post as I learn more.

UPDATE: Here’s a news report. Listening to some live audio from someone traveling to the scene of one raid with Steph Sherer from Americans for Safe Access. He’s reporting that there’s already a crowd gathered and some local news present. There are reports of some other raids, but no confirmation on which dispensaries are targeted.

UPDATE 2: Three dispensaries have been raided so far. Follow the #spokaneraid hashtag on Twitter for the latest updates.

As expected, Governor Gregoire is about to unleash a giant mess:

Gov. Chris Gregoire appears to be weighing either a partial veto or a full veto of a medical marijuana bill passed by the Legislature last week.

The governor at a news conference on Wednesday said “I’m looking at it only with what I can save. Not whether I will sign it.”

As a result of the governor’s expected veto, a slowly emerging medical marijuana industry that wants to operate legally, pay taxes, and adhere to state regulations is now preparing for armed raids of their establishments [emphasis mine]:

Alas, a bill is on Washington Governor Chris Gregoire’s desk right now—a bill that would license dispensaries and growers, which she could sign at any moment—that would do exactly that. Gregoire could eliminate this federal issue with the stroke of her pen. But as I reported last week, Gregoire says she’ll veto that part of the bill. Gregoire, as it turned out, fabricated a controversy to argue that if state employees issued the dispensary licenses, they could be held criminally liable (even though other states license dispensaries, none of those state employees have been prosecuted, and federal policy and procedure on medical pot hasn’t changed). Gregoire’s speculation is unfounded, but that’s her argument. As of today her office says she still intends to veto the bill’s dispensary provisions.

In doing so, Gregoire would guarantee that that these dispensaries remain out of compliance with state law, and thus, Gregoire is inviting federal raids on sick people and their care providers. So in order to avoid a fake specter of something unrealistic happening (feds busting state employees), she is welcome a real, consequential set of raids on some of the most vulnerable people in the state. Tonight those folks are literally preparing for armed raids by federal agents wielding guns and battering rams.

This can’t be stressed enough. Gregoire’s stated reasons for vetoing this bill are pure fiction. There’s absolutely no chance – zero, zilch, none – that a state employee will be held criminally liable for taking part in the regulation of medical marijuana. A half-dozen other states already do this, and nothing even remotely like that has ever occurred, or ever will occur under Obama. His Justice Department has made it very clear that their policy is to respect state laws. In fact, one of the main regulators in Colorado is a former law enforcement officer who’s appeared on television doing his job. Yet she’s still maintaining this nonsense as if it’s true:

“I cannot and will not subject state employees to criminal prosecution at the federal level. I think that would be highly irresponsible on my part,” she told reporters.

She was referring to state employees who would collect fees or inspect and audit dispensaries and producers under the legislation.

Curiously though, she also said this today:

Gregoire said there are some aspects of the bill she’d like to save, if possible, such as a patient registry. “I think we need a registry to prevent arrest of medical patients,” she said.

So let me get this straight. She’s worried (wrongly) that the federal government will expend resources to arrest state employees taking part in Washington’s voter approved medical marijuana law, so she won’t sign that part of the bill. However, she supports a part of the bill that would put medical marijuana patients (who are just as in violation of federal law as those state employees) on a list that the federal government could potentially get their hands on? And she thinks this will prevent the arrest of medical marijuana patients? Especially since patients will have to grow for themselves again due to this veto? Is she the dumbest fucking person in the state?

– As I mentioned last week, I’m getting more involved with Sensible Washington and the I-1149 campaign. My main focus has been on making sure that Sensible Washington gets enough signatures to make the November ballot. With an all-volunteer effort, this is a massive organizational task, so I’ve been helping build some high-tech tools to make it happen. One of the main differences between last year and this year has been a larger base of volunteers, especially in the parts of the state where drug law reform hasn’t been as popular. If any of you want to help us get on the ballot, please sign up at the website.

– With the likely veto of the medical marijuana bill, the Cannabis Defense Coalition is welcoming Steph Sherer, the Executive Director of Americans for Safe Access, to provide training for dispensary operators and cooperative grow members who could potentially end up being raided over the next few weeks. There will be sessions in Seattle, Spokane, and Ellensburg. Governor Gregoire could obviously make all of this moot by just signing the bill that made it through the legislature, but the public safety of Washington residents apparently doesn’t trump her desire to serve in the Obama Administration.

Between Donald Trump’s birther nonsense (which was the top story on Anderson Cooper tonight for some reason) and that damn wedding, I’m not watching cable news until next week. Someone send me an email if Gaddafi finally gets killed by one of his sons.

When it comes to baseball, I’m not much of a traditionalist. Our good friend, N in Seattle, most certainly is. So I’ve been curious to hear his thoughts on the proposed playoff expansion. I might be wrong, but I’m betting he hates it even more than Tim Lincecum. That said, I think I have a proposal that he’ll hate even more than that, but it would be a much more exciting playoff format than anything I’ve heard proposed before.

The two main complaints that I’ve seen about expanding the playoffs by two teams is that it will extend the season even more, and it will give the division winners too much time to rest up while the wild cards battle it out. This idea solves both of those problems AND it adds two more teams to the mix. Here’s how it works:

Six teams in each league make the playoffs. The three division winners and the three teams with the next best records are all seeded by record (so if a team wins a division with a terrible record, like the Seahawks did this year in the NFL, they’ll still make the playoffs, but as the 6 seed). They then play 9 games in 11 days, 3 each against a different playoff team:

Seed 1 plays: 4, 5, @6
Seed 2 plays: @5, 6, 3
Seed 3 plays: 6, 4, @2
Seed 4 plays: @1, @3, 5
Seed 5 plays: 2, @1, @4
Seed 6 plays: @3, @2, 1

The higher seeded team in each match-up plays at home. After the 9 games, the two teams with the best record will move on to play in the LCS and the rest of the playoffs will continue as it always has. If there’s a tie in the standings at the end of 9 games, the tie-breaker should probably be run differential, which could make for some interesting strategies in some late games.

I’m now ducking…

UPDATE: I’m putting way too much thought into this, but I’ve updated the original schedule so that even the 1 and 2 seed will have to play some road playoff games and the 5 and 6 seed get home games. The top three seeds would get 6 home, 3 away. Wild cards get 3 home, 6 away. Still waiting for that call from Bud Selig…

Last week’s contest was won by waguy. It was Cheney, WA, where hopefully lots of Eastern Washington University students are working to get I-1149 on the ballot.

This week’s location is related to something in the news from this past month. Good luck and Happy Easter!

– Sensible Washington is having 4/20-related events around the state, including a press conference and rally tomorrow starting at 1pm in Westlake Park.

– Seattle city officials sent a very strong message today to both the State Senate and Governor Gregoire that passage of the medical marijuana bill is vitally important to ensure we have a well-regulated system for handling medical marijuana.

– Glenn Greenwald on the bizarre priorities of our government.

– Charli Carpenter writes about the opportunity that we’ve been wasting for the nearly ten years we’ve been in Afghanistan.