This was posted to the Facebook forum for Sensible Washington today:

somewhere today in washington state a uniformed police officer went up to one of our fabulous volunteers, took two blank I-1068 petitions and went and put them up at his precinct for fellow officers to sign.

There are over a thousand volunteers collecting signatures around the state, but they still need more help to get it on the ballot (they’re at about 20% of their goal with 3 months to go).

Scott Morgan, one of my favorite bloggers, also works to produce valuable videos that explain your rights whenever being pulled over by police. Here’s a preview they’ve put out for their latest video – 10 Rules for Dealing with Police.

Here’s a post where you can follow the news coming out of the D.C. press conference being held by Wikileaks. Some background on what’s happening here and here. It was initially believed that the secret video they’d be releasing would be related to this incident, but it appears to be an incident from Baghdad where 12 civilians and 2 Reuters journalists were allegedly killed by coalition forces.

UPDATE: Here’s the video:

– Alfred McCoy explains how the history of Afghanistan’s opium problem is not only the heart of what’s so difficult about our mission there – but that it’s also a problem of our own making.

– After likely saving his own life by having a firearm in his home, medical marijuana patient and activist Steve Sarich can no longer legally purchase a firearm because of his medical marijuana use.

– The AARP is asking Idaho Governor Butch Otter to veto a bill that would allow health care workers in the state to ignore people’s advanced directives.

– The case of a medical marijuana patient who was fired from TeleTech Customer Care Management solely for being a medical marijuana user will be heard by the Washington State Supreme Court.

– New Mexico is the first state to explicitly list PTSD as a condition that medical marijuana can be recommended for, intensifying the conflict with the federally run VA system, which does not allow it (but allows other drugs that might be killing people).

– The Census Bureau will be releasing the 2010 population data in a way so that individual states can decline to count prisoners as residents of the (usually more rural) counties that they are imprisoned in. This has historically skewed the amount of representation that rural areas have had when it comes time to draw up legislative district boundaries.

– If there’s a meaningful difference between The Catholic Church and NAMBLA, I can’t seem to figure it out.

– The Drug War Chronicle covers the I-1068 campaign, which when compared to the California effort, is way smaller. But there are now well over 1,000 volunteers across the state collecting the necessary signatures to get marijuana legalization on the ballot here too.

– Teabonics!

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky, who first provided the link. Broadway Joe and BA get partial credit for both guessing right away that it was Detroit.

Here’s this week’s, good luck! And Happy Easter everyone!

With all of the focus on how terrible a newspaper the Seattle Times is, I temporarily forgot how terrible a newspaper the Tacoma News-Tribune is. To be fair, I’ve seen far more incoherent anti-drug editorials than the one in that link, but it ends up completely missing the larger point behind the corruption within the medical marijuana community. The recent violence against members of that community has intensified a few pre-existing rifts, but it also turns out to be a good example of why moderation within that group is as important as ever if we’re to overcome the outdated stereotypes about marijuana and close the curtain on a truly destructive social policy – and why creating a legal and regulated market remains the smartest solution to the problem.

That editorial is a good springboard for tackling various aspects of those topics, so I’ll take it piece by piece:

[Read more…]

I can’t believe Goldy hasn’t posted this yet:

The University of Washington billed it as a debate among distinguished law faculty over whether the new federal health-care law is constitutional.

But while the four panelists at a packed event Tuesday may have differed on some of the finer points, they all agreed on the big question: They said the new law passes constitutional muster and that various lawsuits arguing the opposite — including the one joined last week by state Attorney General Rob McKenna — have little merit or chance of success.

Even John McKay, the former Republican U.S. attorney for Western Washington (who was forced out in 2006 under contentious circumstances) said that while he sympathized with some of the political issues in play, he thought the lawsuits lacked merit. In fact, he questioned the timing and thrust of the cases: “One way to say it is, that this has to be seen as a political exercise,” he said.

Moderator Hugh Spitzer noted the lack of a vigorous dissenting voice.

“I will say that we tried very hard to get a professor who could come and who thinks this is flat-out unconstitutional,” he said. “But there are relatively few of them, and they are in great demand.”

Spitzer, an expert in state constitutional law and a UW affiliate professor, said afterward that organizers even considered setting up some kind of video conference to provide the counter perspective. But in the end, he said, the lack of professors taking that position spoke to the merits of the arguments. He said organizers did not invite McKenna because they wanted to stick with academicians.

Maybe they could get someone on the Seattle Times editorial board instead.

UPDATE (Goldy):
Well, I had been working on a post, but since Lee beat me to it, I’ll just tack on a couple comments here.

First of all, I watched the entire forum live via the TVW feed, and while it was rather striking how unanimous the participants were on the lack of merit of the lawsuit, good law professors that they are, they did make every effort to explore all the angles and underline which legal points on which the attorneys general have the best chance of succeeding. It’s just that nobody thought their best chance was much of a chance at all.

Which brings me to the Times article, and its focus on the lack of dissent at the forum. I’m not sure why reporter Nick Perry should have been so surprised, as the lawsuit has been almost universally condemned by legal scholars as meritless. Unless, of course, Perry’s starting point was his own paper’s editorial page, which vigorously insists that McKenna has a “good case.”

The problem is, unlike the legal scholars participating in this forum, the Times’ editors are about as familiar with constitutional law as they are with the inside of their own colons. Indeed, considerable less so.

So note to journalists everywhere: there aren’t always two sides to every story. Sometimes there are multiple sides. And sometimes, one side simply has its head up its ass.

UPDATE, UPDATE (Goldy):
After reading the initial bit of trolling in the comment thread, attempting to discredit the forum because moderator Hugh Spitzer (gasp) contributes to Democrats, I’ve decided to embed the TVW video below. So now folks in the thread have no excuse for being ignorant. (Or at least, no more of an excuse than they normally do.)

The medical marijuana trial in Shelton of a terminally ill woman and her husband continues tomorrow morning:

What: Mason County v. Karen Mower and John Reed
When: Wednesday, March 31 @ 9:00 a.m.
Where: Mason County Courthouse, 419 N 4th St. in Shelton
Map

If you happen to have the day off, please consider making the trip down to Shelton to show your support.

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky in less than 10 minutes. It was Missoula, MT.

I have a feeling this week’s won’t take too long either, good luck!

– I started to fully understand the root cause of the infighting at Fox News over Glenn Beck after his insane interview with Eric Massa. The problem is that – unlike pure con artists like O’Reilly and Hannity – Beck actually believes his own bullshit. What he does isn’t an act. He’s an emotionally disturbed person working through various psychological issues while trying to confront an inability to comprehend both the rationale and the popularity of progressive politics. But while the average teabaggers are being exposed as ideologically incoherent buffoons in relative obscurity, Beck is going through that journey in front of millions of television viewers every day. It’s been quite the spectacle.

– Glenn Greenwald has written some good posts recently on our special relationship with Israel. Maybe Americans are finally starting to recognize that the way the Israelis have been treating the Palestinians doesn’t quite jibe with our nation’s historic emphasis on the importance of property rights.

– As always, lots of drug war news to pass along. Paul Armentano debates former Drug Czar Barry McCaffrey about California’s approved ballot measure to legalize marijuana. Scott Morgan writes about the NFL and pot. Radley Balko on the Jonathan Ayers case. Officials in Texas are still waging war against KopBusters creator Barry Cooper. And Pete Guither on the enemy within.

– I’ve recently been checking out the Analytics X competition, a contest that offers up a small prize for anyone who can use analytics to most accurately predict the incidence of homicides across the city of Philadelphia.

– Good to read something from this guy again.

Just a provide even more of an exclamation point on Rob McKenna’s hypocrisy over the Commerce Clause, here’s a page that the Marijuana Policy Project put up shortly after the Gonzales v. Raich decision came down. In Gonzales v. Raich, the Supreme Court ruled that the Commerce Clause gives the federal government the right to arrest people who are following their state’s medical marijuana law. This decision (which was agreed upon by both the more liberal members of the court and Scalia) is why most legal experts believe that the challenge to the health care reform bill’s mandates will rejected.

What’s interesting about that page is that, of the 10 states that had medical marijuana laws at the time of the decision, all but two of the respective state Attorney Generals publicly affirmed that their state medical marijuana laws were still valid despite the ruling. One of the two who sat silent was Rob McKenna. In fact, I can’t find a single public statement from McKenna at that time standing up for the Washington voters who’d voted overwhelmingly to allow marijuana use among seriously ill individuals. This is why the Seattle Times editorial claiming that McKenna’s opposition is somehow rooted in his deep convictions about the Constitution is such a joke.

Instead, Josh Feit gets this one exactly right:

I’ll tell you exactly what Rob McKenna was thinking: Charlie Crist.

Sure McKenna may have jeopardized his shot at winning the governor’s race in 2012, but he has to make it through the primary to even have a chance. And even in a top-two primary (or especially in a top two primary), he needs the Republican base.

Feit thinks that McKenna’s gamble could work and get him to the Governor’s Mansion. I’m not so sure. But for the Seattle Times not to be able to see through his transparent bullshit – well, that’s pretty much what we’ve come to expect from them.

The phenomenon of being a teabagging hysteric who demands that people throw bricks through windows to get the government off our back while simultaneously living off of government welfare seems closely related to the phenomenon of seeing the most fervently anti-gay hysterics ending up in highway truck-stop bathrooms with male prostitutes.

The trial of a terminally ill medical marijuana patient in Mason County begins tomorrow:

Karen Mower is a terminally ill medical marijuana patient. Her husband John Reed is an authorized patient as well. In January 2008, the Mason County Sheriff’s “Special Operations Group” raided their home garden, seizing 38 flowering plants and 36 immature plants.

The Mason County Sheriff issued a press release announcing the raid in which they estimate each plant would produce one pound of dried pot. The press release states that both defendants are medical marijuana patients, but “the amount of product found by deputies clearly exceeded the amount the couple was authorized to possess.” See [here]:

Their case has been dragging on, and is finally going to jury selection. Please consider spending a day in Shelton to observe this trial.

And if you’re going from the Seattle area, on your way back you can stop in Olympia to see Attorney General Rob McKenna not giving a fuck about how the federal government’s broad definition of the Commerce Clause is an “imposition” upon certain citizens in this state.