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I’ve been writing a lot about marijuana news recently, but it’s because a lot has been happening. There’s an increased focus in the media on the absurdity of the current prohibition that feels more intense than ever. I’m not sure it has only one reason, but either way, I welcome the increased spotlight and hope that it triggers even more debate. Here’s the roundup:

– There are two television specials to check out before the weekend. Tonight, CNBC is airing Marijuana, Inc, which takes a look at the economics behind the current growers of the plant in northern California. And tomorrow night on Dateline NBC, they’ll be covering the case of Rachel Hoffman, the young woman in Florida who was killed by drug dealers after she’d been pressured into becoming an informant rather than face jail time for selling pot to her friends.

– Scott Morgan has posted on some breaking news from the Lake Tahoe area this evening, where DEA agents raided a medical marijuana dispensary. President Obama vowed to end these raids, so it will be interesting to see what he does in response.

– Nina Shapiro writes in the Seattle Weekly about the coalition of legislators, the Governor and other public officials who are moving towards ways to reduce the amount of money spent to lock up non-violent drug offenders. This part knocked me for a loop:

Faced with a $5 million budget cut to his office, King County Prosecutor Dan Satterberg in October started kicking felony cases involving less than three grams of narcotics down to District Court, where they are prosecuted as misdemeanors. He says the move affects two-thirds of his caseload.

That’s just amazing. To get an idea of how much 3 grams is, put three paper clips in your hand. Having that much drugs on you has not only been treated as a felony (a felony!), but it bogs down the majority of what even the most progressive County Prosecutor’s office in the state has been working on. Wow!

– Finally, the Cannabis Defense Coalition (full disclosure: I’ve been a member since last year) has updated its website with more information about the upcoming prosecution of medical marijuana patient Bruce Olson in Kitsap County.

Back on Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown,” for the second night with Russell Tice, former National Security Agency analyst:

Not a whole lot new and it seems Tice is bound legally from naming names. Olbermann asks about specific journalists and specific publications, which Tice apologetically dodges.

Olbermann then chats with James Risen, New York Times investigative reporter, about the implications of government wiretapping. Risen, author of State of War (about the CIA), notes the “chilling effect” of government monitoring not just on reporters but on their sources. But the real issue here is that any program of routine monitoring, if tolerated, can produce data that can be twisted, manipulated or outright doctored to incriminate journalists the government finds inconvenient or unacceptable. It simply isn’t true that if you haven’t done anything illegal or wrong, you’re home safe.

Tice’s and Risen’s revelations raise many questions, but I can’t figure out why this isn’t a bigger story in MSM (the blogosphere is another story; Jonathan Golub has a post at Slog. Also Rachel Maddow to her credit is picking up on Olbermann’s report with Shadow Factory author James Bamford, who says PBS is doing a special on February 3). Have we forgotten completely the lessons of the McCarthy era? Isn’t government monitoring targeting journalists a direct flout of the First Amendment?

One hope is that Tice’s revelations will encourage others to step forward, helping President Obama to end the program (to help make amends for his FISA vote) and stop government hounding of news sources on the illegal wiretapping.

Buying an airline ticket is not a jail sentence.

Some enterprising Congress-critters could create a lot of good will among their bosses (that would be voters) by getting their name attached to the proposed legislation that will give airline customers basic human rights.

So far it’s not clear why customs officials couldn’t be bothered to interview a small number of hungry tourists. If it turns out to be a staffing issue, then that needs to be addressed. Flights sometimes get diverted due to weather, and it’s not like PDX is some teeny tiny airport or something, and it does handle other international flights.

But good on the firefighters who bought the passengers hamburgers and helped some sick people.

On Monday, former Stranger news editor Josh Feit introduced Publicola, a news and opinion site intended, amongst other things, to help fill the gap in WA state political coverage left by our ever shrinking political press corps.  Check it out.

Well today I’m pleased to announce HA’s own extended Olympia coverage with the addition of Bryan Bissell to our stable of bloggers.  Some of you may remember Bryan from PolitickerWA, where he covered state politics for much of the past year before its investor pulled the plug.  Bryan is a Tacoma native, and conveniently, a current resident of Olympia, from where he will be providing his own coverage and commentary of this year’s momentous legislative session.

Welcome Bryan.

I don’t pretend that Bryan and Josh can make up for the number of political reporters we’ve lost over the past couple years.  But they’ll try.

Microsoft’s long rumored job cuts are no longer a rumor, with the company announcing plans to cut as many as 5,000 jobs over the next 18 months—about 5-percent of its worldwide workforce—in the wake of a weaker than expected earnings report and what Steve Ballmer called “the most challenging economic climate we have ever faced.”

Sure, these layoffs are a helluva lot less than the massive, 17-percent reduction some rumormongers had predicted, but that’s little solace to the 1,400 workers laid off today, the majority of whom had been working in Redmond.

Microsoft ouch.

Microsoft Corp. said Thursday morning it would lay off up to 5,000 employees, or 5 percent of its work force, over the next 18 months, including 1,400 jobs today, marking the first time in its history that it has laid off workers across the company.

The announcement came as Microsoft posted quarterly results far short of analysts’ and its own expectations.

—snip—

The company said that jobs would be eliminated in research and development, marketing, sales, finance, legal, human resources, and IT. At the same time, the company said it would continue to hire in other areas, including its search business, so its work force would actually fall by between 2,000 and 3,000.

And Intel ouch.

Intel will close an aging computer chip factory in Hillsboro late this year, eliminating 1,000 positions as it ratchets back production in response to a spectacular decline in sales.

The 12-year-old facility, known as Fab 20, is one of five sites worldwide that Intel will shutter in 2009. As many as 6,000 workers will lose their jobs globally, about 7 percent of Intel’s total work force.

People have less money, they buy less stuff, then people lose jobs, meaning they have less money and buy less stuff…

Some really outstanding reporting by Columbian reporter Courtney Sherwood about the failure of Bank of Clark County, the first Washington bank seized by the state since 1993. Well worth a full read if you are trying to understand how a smaller bank got into such serious trouble. For starters, the bank began making riskier loans starting in 2005, according to The Columbian.

Another factor that seems to be worth focusing on is the issue of brokered deposits, which are (of all things) deposits made by brokers on behalf of clients, usually those seeking a higher rate of return. As Sherwood notes in her article, the FDIC has rules about this sort of thing.

With its core deposits falling, the Bank of Clark County appears to have sought out even more of the risky brokered deposits it had come to depend on. Over three months, it brought in $28.7 million this way, and brokered deposits climbed to 35.7 percent of all deposits.

Mounting loan troubles may have triggered an FDIC rule that forbids banks with lower capital ratios from taking on any more brokered deposits, though there’s not yet enough public data about the bank’s finances to be certain.

If I understand correctly, one reason brokered deposits can be risky is that large dollar amounts can quickly be pulled out of a bank when, for example, brokered CD’s expire and investors chase higher returns elsewhere. In other words, the use of brokered deposits is part of the mix, but too heavy a reliance can be dangerous.

The underlying cause of the failure, of course, was a collapse in real estate values. While it wasn’t a Southern California scale bubble, it was still a speculative bubble fueled by lax lending standards in the house buying, selling and financing industry. As we move forward, state and federal regulators (not to mention lawmakers) are going to have to come to grips with what worked and what didn’t work in terms of oversight.

Tomorrow night (Thursday) is NARAL Pro-Choice Washington’s annual Chocolate for Choice fundraiser, celebrating the 36th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, and if love chocolate and support reproductive rights, it’s an evening you don’t want to miss.  This is my third year as a “VIP chocolate judge,” and I always jump at the invitation.

Thursday, January 22, 2009
7-9pm
Safeco Field
1st Base Terrace Club
1250 First Ave South, Club Level

Tickets are only $40 at the door, and I promise you a tongue-dazzling selection of chocolate treats from 50 Seattle-area bakers, restaurants and chocolatiers.  Don’t miss it.

Russell Tice, former National Security Agency analyst, is on Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown” right now saying that the Administration wiretapped all communications of targeted journalists. He has not mentioned specific publications or individuals but did not reject Olbermann’s mention of The New York Times and Olbermann (MSNBC) himself…

This comes after Olbermann ran old video of Bush saying only individuals and groups suspected  of terrorist activities were targeted, only foreign communications, etc. etc.

Olbermann says he will have Tice on again tomorrow…

Also, Olbermann just said Caroline Kennedy has NOT withdrawn her name from consideration.

(Tice is a well-publicized whistleblower but it looks like he’s going to expand his revelations now that there’s promise of change.)

Allrighty then.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts was ushered into the Map Room of the White House on Wednesday night to re-administer the oath of office to President Barack Obama because the original oath on Tuesday had a word out of sequence.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the move was made out of “an abundance of caution” in consultation with White House Counsel Greg Craig. Obama’s second swearing-in, devoid of the pomp of the initial event, took place at 7:35 p.m. in the presence of a few aides and a press pool. The chief justice was wearing a court robe. “Are you ready to take the oath?” Roberts said. “I am,” Obama said, “And we’re going to do it very slowly.”

No word on whether Obama was wearing a flag pin while holding his birth certificate.

That’s really strange, although someday it will make a great trivia question I suppose.

I love it when a politician immediately does what they said they will do. In this case, new Superintendent of Public Instruction Randy Dorn is wasting no time doing away with the much-despised Washington Assessment of Student Learning. (Say it out loud–WASL. Now you hate it too.)

From The Seattle Times:

No changes can be made to the WASL for this school year due to time constraints, Dorn said, but beginning in spring 2010, he plans to replace the WASL with two tests. In grades 3-8, students would take the Measurements of Student Progress (MSP). In high school, they would take something called the High School Proficiency Exams.

One way he plans to cut costs is to offer the tests via computer, rather than just on paper and pencil.

Niki Sullivan over at the TVW blog notices something interesting in the official SPI Question and Answer document, and provides a link to the PDF document using some kind of fancy mouse-over deal. The something interesting is that Dorn is claiming he can change the testing system under existing law and the Legislature can request input.

Sounds fun!

There’s a lot of detail to wade through, of course, and Sullivan slyly notes she is checking into how much requesting Legislators might imagine can be done…

Last night, while driving home from Drinking Liberally (two pints of Manny’s over four hours FYI, before any of you trolls start going on about DUI), I ran into a fog bank on 23rd with almost zero visibility.

And it got me wondering… why isn’t anybody bitching about Mayor Nickels’ failure to clear our streets of fog?

I mean, it’s been days now, with no improvement, and what has the Mayor done?  No salt.  No plows.  No fleet of giant fans blowing the mist from major arterials.  Nada.

I’m just sayin’…

Good thing this guy doesn’t have an Arabic sounding name, or speak with a funny accent, else he’d be in real trouble.

A 65-year-old Spokane man has been ordered held in custody on federal charges of illegally possessing automatic weapons and illegally storing explosives in a Bellevue commercial storage shed while agents investigate how he came to possess a huge military-grade arsenal that included … 37 machine guns, 12 silencers, two grenade launchers, more than 60 high-explosive grenades, several pounds of military-grade C-4 plastic explosives and thousands of rounds of ammunition.

[…] At a detention hearing set for Friday, [Asst. US Attorney Thomas] Woods said he will present evidence that Struve possessed “anti-government material.”

According to a complaint filed earlier this month, Struve “planned to use the items at some uncertain date in the future.”

[ATF Special Agent Heidi] Wallace, who was at Struve’s court hearing Tuesday, said there was no evidence at this point that Struve was involved in domestic terrorism.

No evidence he was involved in domestic terrorism? Uh… how about the 37 machine guns, 12 silencers, 60 grenades and several pounds of military-grade C-4, not to mention…

One box contained 54 M406 high-explosive grenade rounds — 40-millimeter shells that can be launched from a shoulder-fired weapon to distances of 300 yards or more, according to military specification.

Its explosion creates a “kill radius” of up to 16 feet from the point of impact and injuries dozens of yards beyond that.

What’s that make him… a collector?  A Second Amendment enthusiast?  A grenade-launcher rights advocate?

Actually, what I’m guessing this makes him is white, considering that dark-skinned people with foreign sounding names are routinely convicted as terrorists in the press, and then in the courts, simply for talking about fantastical plots to wreak havoc in impossible ways with weapons they’ve made no serious effort to obtain.  But this “heavyset and bearded” white guy with the huge cache of illegal weapons and the “anti-goverment material”…?  There is absolutely “no evidence that Struve assembled the arsenal for terrorism purposes.”

So don’t you worry.  He’s not a terrorist.  An ATF agent said so.  And the agent must be right, else both the Times and the P-I wouldn’t have credulously repeated the assertion.

Here are a few updates on some recent news items I’ve been following before I head off to Drinking Liberally:

– The marijuana decriminalization bill introduced in the State House is here. After some more asking around, it appears that the bill is being held up by State Representative Chris Hurst (D-31), whose Criminal Justice and Corrections Committee does not plan on holding hearings, or even allowing a vote. I have an email out to his office in the hopes of getting an explanation. As Dominic Holden has pointed out, the bill would potentially save Washington taxpayers roughly $7.5 million per year. And the decriminalization is extremely limited. In fact, the bill’s proposed marijuana possession limits without being a criminal offense would still be more stringent than Ohio’s.

– The pre-trial motions in the Bruce Olson case (previous posts here, here, and here) will be on Monday, January 26 at 9am at the Kitsap County Courthouse (614 Division St. in Port Orchard). Prosecutors are trying to deny Olson’s ability to testify that he’s an authorized medical marijuana patient. Supporters of the Olsons are encouraging people to come to the courthouse to show their support.