Feds Won't Block State Recreational Marijuana Laws

[OLDproLg]

Obama supporters an dems RULE!!!!!!!!!!!

Obama supporters an dems RULE!!!!!!!!!!!

Perhaps you'd care to offer other instances where States' Rights haven't been used for one repressive measure or another. I listed several.

Probably not, huh?

Like I said, it cuts both ways, usually the wrong way, like this-

http://blog.norml.org/2011/05/16/alternet-the-five-worst-states-to-get-busted-with-pot/

Obama supporter? vs what viable alternative? Mitt, the choice of the authoritarian lootocracy?

Try to imagine how a modern Repub admin would react to all of this, then get back to me about being delusional, OK?

COULDNT HAVE SAID IT BETTER THANX,considering the repubs stand,you GOTTA BE NUTZ
thinking the dems or Obama is not atleast being more open on the issue........
HELL the REPUBS wouldnt even listen or look at whats been going on,WOULD THEY?????
Must be a ROMNEY supporter?
BLIND EVIL KILLERS.......the only thing they conserve is their wallets.
How can you be so BLIND these days with atleast 80% dems for MJ,and 90% repubs
AGAINST IT????????????????????????????????/.........are people that BLIND.


SHEEEEEEEZE WAKE UP AN SMELL THE MJ,repub lovers.....oh my farkin GAWD
just amagine romney in control..............................................as you choke for life.
Go dems GO,for the people,way way more than the repubs any day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now smoke some sativa an SEE THE LIGHT PEOPLE,the times are a changin yah!!!!!!
BOB DILLAN..

 

[Johnny Redthumb]

I think they just want to see how blantantly extreme the legal business will go and grow before busting em by the feds. This is 2009 all over again. Get ready for Green Rush 2.0, complete with Russian mobsters, Mexican gangs stealing power, girls in bikinis on the street holding signs for free grams, craigslist explosion....and then comes the backlash...

One step forward, two steps backward, down inna Babylon...

 

[Tony Aroma]

I can't help but get the impression that nobody's actually read this memo. The glass isn't half full, it's just as empty as it ever was.

This is just Ogden 2. In fact, this memo repeatedly states that it is just reaffirming the previous memo. If offers only "guidelines" to prosecutors, and clearly warns that prosecutors can still do whatever they want, whenever they want, to whomever they want. It also very clearly states that this memo cannot be used as a defense against violating the CSA. Sound familiar?

There's already a federal prosecutor in WA saying the state's medical marijuana regulations are inadequate to satisfy the 8 criteria outlined in the new memo, so he will continue to enforce the CSA as he has been. In other words, we have a federal prosecutor saying this memo changes nothing and will have no effect on what he does. That didn't take very long. Talk about bursting Holder's propaganda bubble.

Bottom line, this memo is more of the same. No laws or official policies have changed. Anybody that acts as if they have, deserves what they get. Fool me once...

 

[Skip]

UPDATE: FEDS to Allow Banks to work with Cannabis Businesses!

As I mentioned before, these new guidelines open the way for Banks and credit card companies to allow Cannabizes to open accounts!

Of course this allows closer monitoring of those businesses by the government. So cannabizes must pay taxes if they don't want the DEA or IRS at their door.

Financial institutions and other enterprises that do business with marijuana shops that are in compliance with state laws are unlikely to be prosecuted for money laundering or other federal crimes that could be brought under existing federal drug laws, a senior Department of Justice official said Thursday.

During a briefing on the department's new policy Thursday, the official would not fully rule out prosecution in any case, but the guidance is a reversal of administration policy that had warned banks not to work with marijuana businesses. The Justice official said that the department recognized that forcing the establishments to operate on a cash basis put them at greater risk of robbery and violence.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/30/banks-marijuana_n_3842526.html

 

[Tony Aroma]

I hate to be the eternal pessimist, but:

During a briefing on the department's new policy Thursday, the official would not fully rule out prosecution in any case.

That's all a bank needs to hear to decide that taking a chance working with state-legal marijuana businesses is not worth the risk. And let's not forget, the threats to banks, credit card companies, armored cars come from the DEA, not the DOJ. The DEA answers to no one, not the DOJ nor the president.

I hope I'm wrong, but unless these statements and memos are followed up with something more substantial and binding, I don't see much of anything changing with respect to the way individual federal prosecutors target marijuana businesses.

On the bright side, the article says bank prosecutions are handled by WDC DOJ, so Holder may have more of a say in regard to banking. Less likely that a local prosecutor would decide a SWAT raid on a bank is a good idea.

 

[Painfull]

Yep>The DOJ is trying to end the "Stop and frisk" in New York City because they can say it is racially motivated, but they can't stop the DEA if they want to raid and bust you.The amount of monies that is funded to the DEA for these projects is called job security and all the police unions are against any and all changes to the war on drugs. They are the #1 lobbyist group against legalizing pot. I wouldn't trust this administration as far as I can spit.

Pain

 

[wantaknow]

well jhhnn you can have a opinion about infowars ,everybodys should ,but his record is impecable and the feds just had mr mark walburg make a movie about alex as a petifile slimball ,so i say go ahead and side whith them because the line in the sand has been drawn ,pick one or the other ,i choose his ,j

 

[Stonefree69]

jhhnn definitely has a point about the states putting up some inertia and even want to go backwards:

Phoenix New Times‘ Ray Stern’s article “Arizona’s Medical-Marijuana Law Safe From Federal Action, For Now, in New Obama Policy” that looks at the story from the Arizona and Maricopa County perspective. He quotes Maricopa Attorney Bill Montgomery’s take on the new memo:

The new policy “has no impact on the White Mountain case and any suggestions to the contrary are a pipe dream. . . . we’ll just have to wait and see how things play out.”

See: Bill Montgomery says he will ignore the Feds and still go after Medical Marijuana

IOW evryone knows there's a**holes in the govt - both on the state and federal level and this guy's ONE BIG AHOLE complete with it's own Hawking radiation. Well if Mr. Bill wants to be so bull headed about the letter of the law:

To quote: "Critics of drug prohibition applauded the decision as major turning point. "Today's announcement by Eric Holder and the Department of Justice should be hailed as a victory for the 10th Amendment, states’ rights, and small-government proponents,” retired police Lieutenant Commander Diane Goldstein, a board member with the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), told The New American. “Just as it was the states that finally ended the failed experiment with alcohol prohibition, it is the states that are propelling radical shifts in our national drug policy today. It is long past due for our politicians and all the branches of our government to support this change."

"The Tenth Amendment, which makes explicit the idea that the federal government is limited to only the powers granted in the Constitution, has been declared to be truism by the Supreme Court." It's none other than the federal government and the DEA who've classed marijuana as a "schedule 1" drug. So if the states vote to legalize it, they have the right which trumphs fed ruling.

You'd think some of these people in govt would want to rename our country as "The People's Republic of America".

 

[Stonefree69]

Yep>The DOJ is trying to end the "Stop and frisk" in New York City because they can say it is racially motivated, but they can't stop the DEA if they want to raid and bust you.The amount of monies that is funded to the DEA for these projects is called job security and all the police unions are against any and all changes to the war on drugs. They are the #1 lobbyist group against legalizing pot. I wouldn't trust this administration as far as I can spit.

Pain

Not all police are bad: Best Marijuana Argument Ever: Given By Superior Court Judge James P. Gray - http://www.copssaylegalizedrugs.com/

But NYC Mayor Michael Rubens Bloomberg & Maricopa Attorney Bill Montgomery must be good friends though.

 

[Jhhnn]

If you expect Obama to get out in front of this you have a long wait ahead of you. It's going to happen. Fatigues explains the demographics in the post above. Obama knows it's going to happen and he's not going to do anything to stop it from happening. But if you expect him to put his name on it you have a long wait.

I see it differently. Obama just upped the ante with congress, state govts & even MJ activists, put the gun to their head, he did. And he made it look like some sort of capitulation to States' Rights, when it's really rocket fuel for legalization everywhere.

Go ahead- if you legalize it, tax it & control it, we won't get in the way. With that, he abandoned the war on marijuana. By 2017, it'll be way too late to go back.

It's all over but for the sputtering. It's actually an amazing political coup that will energize the traditional liberal base & bring more young voters to Democrats in general.

Social conservatives are way, way at the losing end of this. They're easily placated with other people paying taxes they don't, however.

Yeh, sure, we need to see how it plays out, but the power ultimately lies with Obama & Holder. Both US attorneys & the DEA are accountable to Holder. He has innumerable ways of getting what he wants, if he says he does, and means it.

US Attorneys serve at the pleasure of the President, and Holder already told 'em which way the wind blows. They can be fired summarily, something we saw under the Bush Admin. The law is one thing. Submission to authority in a bureaucracy is entirely another.

Unless they're part of some joint task force with local authorities, the DEA depends on US Attorneys to obtain warrants and to prosecute. No warrants-> no searches-> no arrests-> nothing to prosecute.

There will be no joint action against state legal tax revenue generating entities in Washington or Colorado. Bet on it. The state framework for it no longer exists.

 

[Crusader Rabbit]

I see it differently. Obama just upped the ante with congress, state govts & even MJ activists, put the gun to their head, he did. And he made it look like some sort of capitulation to States' Rights, when it's really rocket fuel for legalization everywhere.

I think that we're actually on the same page here. Obama doesn't want to look like he's leading on this, so he just let the states know that he's loosened the leash, allowing the states to get out ahead on this.

And he made it look like some sort of capitulation to States' Rights, when it's really rocket fuel for legalization everywhere.

Capitulating on this gives the "States' Rights" people a little something. Obama and Holder are preparing for a big battle with the states over voting rights. They don't want to squander their energy fighting the states over marijuana when they have bigger fish to fry.

 

[punkenstien]

FTF!

 

[Jhhnn]

I think that we're actually on the same page here. Obama doesn't want to look like he's leading on this, so he just let the states know that he's loosened the leash, allowing the states to get out ahead on this.

Capitulating on this gives the "States' Rights" people a little something. Obama and Holder are preparing for a big battle with the states over voting rights. They don't want to squander their energy fighting the states over marijuana when they have bigger fish to fry.

I would add that it flips the whole issue upside down & inside out wrt current conservative thinking. It's certainly not what they had in mind, not at all. They're having trouble rationalizing faith, because they can't fit it into the frame of public perception.

Any thanks they offer will be grudging, at best, a muted acknowledgment of being beaten at their own game.

 

[Skip]

Well the LEOs are up in arms over this!

They're afraid of losing their funding, the forfeiture of assets of cannabis users, their overcrowded prisons, etc.

Too bad! They need to learn WE ARE NOT CRIMINALS!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/30/police-eric-holder-marijuana-_n_3846518.html

 

[trichrider]

http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/...actofdojnotchallengingstatemarijuanalaws.html

grin...

 

[Stonefree69]

Well the LEOs are up in arms over this!

They're afraid of losing their funding, the forfeiture of assets of cannabis users, their overcrowded prisons, etc.

Too bad! They need to learn WE ARE NOT CRIMINALS!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/30/police-eric-holder-marijuana-_n_3846518.html

And to quote: "WASHINGTON -- A broad coalition of law enforcement officers who have spent the past three decades waging an increasingly militarized drug war that has failed to reduce drug use doesn't want to give up the fight.

Organizations that include sheriffs, narcotics officers and big-city police chiefs slammed Attorney General Eric Holder in a joint letter Friday, expressing "extreme disappointment" at his announcement that the Department of Justice would allow Colorado and Washington to implement state laws that legalized recreational marijuana for adults."

They look more like:

 

[Jhhnn]

And to quote: "WASHINGTON -- A broad coalition of law enforcement officers who have spent the past three decades waging an increasingly militarized drug war that has failed to reduce drug use doesn't want to give up the fight.

Organizations that include sheriffs, narcotics officers and big-city police chiefs slammed Attorney General Eric Holder in a joint letter Friday, expressing "extreme disappointment" at his announcement that the Department of Justice would allow Colorado and Washington to implement state laws that legalized recreational marijuana for adults."

They look more like:

View Image

They've been pooched, and the broad extent of that will become even more obvious over time.

It's the beginning of the end, with this and legalization in 2 states being the marijuana war equivalent of Stalingrad. Just more subtle, with a smile. MMJ has obviously been at the forefront, still is in some states. More bitching, moaning, whining, fear mongering and fighting are to be expected, but the outcome really is no longer in doubt.

Don't forget, however, that there are still "dry" counties & towns in this country, 80 years after the end of Prohibition.

 

[Stonefree69]

Dumbwit:

"And many law enforcement groups are fighting it.

"We oppose it," said Jim Pasco, executive director of the Fraternal Order of Police, the nation's largest police union. "I think the law enforcement community is universally consistent in its opposition to legalizing pot, in the interest of public safety and public health."

Pasco said his group is also against legalizing medical marijuana.

"There's no scientific or medical basis in lighting something and breathing it in. Further, you have no idea how it was handled, and it's bad for you. If you want medicine to be good for you, you get it in pill form," he said." from http://abcnews.go.com/US/push-legalize-pot-nationally-gaining-momentum-advocates/story?id=17827832

 

[that smell]

Is that the same medicine in pill form that kills over 100,000 people a year. More than illegal drugs and traffic accidents combined, Remind me again how many people have died from marijuana?

 

[clips]

think they figured out they couldnt take it to court to overturn state laws =) now to remove their crutch on the un treaty which holds no weight vs the constitution .

the Supreme Court indicated in Prigg v. Pennsylvania, 41 U.S. 539 (1842), that the states cannot be compelled to use state law enforcement resources to enforce federal law. The Supreme Court reaffirmed this principle in cases such as Printz v. United States, 521 U.S. 898 (1997) and New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144 (1992), which held that the federal government may not enact a regulatory program that "commandeers" the state's legislative and administrative mechanisms to enforce federal law. States therefore may refuse to use their legislative or administrative resources to enforce federal law.

“It seems to have occurred to no one that Congress might act not only to limit who could provide goods and services to the interstate market, but also to limit what kinds of interstate markets could exist. In short, both positive and negative evidence suggests that the Framers did not intend, and probably did not even imagine, that the Interstate Commerce Clause would be read in such a way as to give Congress the power to restrain interstate intercourse, as well as promote it.”
“Those who believe Congress has the power to restrain interstate commerce, generally rely on the argument that, since Congress’s power to regulate interstate commerce appears in the same sentence granting the power “to regulate” foreign commerce, the argument fallaciously promotes that the two powers should be read in pari materia, or treated the same, as a subject matter. Unfortunately this argument does not yield any evidence or standing from the Founders to support this position.”

”The Congress also tried to utilize the Postal Clause to limit the selling of goods across state lines, to which the Supreme Court struck the statutes down as an unconstitutional attempt to use the Commerce Clause to enact police regulation, relating exclusively to the internal trade of the States. Suitably chastened, Congress did not repeat the mistake.”
“Throughout the nineteenth century, Congress adhered to the view that it’s power over interstate commerce did not include the power to prohibit that commerce, at least when doing so was not an in-service law necessary to conserve the safety and well-being of channels of interstate commerce, or a helper law necessary to help ensure the effectiveness of state policy making..

The following qualifies as one of the greatest lies the globalists continue to push upon the American people. That lie is: "Treaties supersede the U.S. Constitution".

The Second follow-up lie is this one: "A treaty, once passed, cannot be set aside".

HERE ARE THE CLEAR IRREFUTABLE FACTS: The U.S. Supreme Court has made it very clear that

1) Treaties do not override the U.S. Constitution.
2) Treaties cannot amend the Constitution. And last,

3) A treaty can be nullified by a statute passed by the U.S. Congress (or by a sovereign State or States if Congress refuses to do so), when the State deems a treaty the performance of a treaty is self-destructive. The law of self-preservation overrules the law of obligation in others. When you've read this thoroughly, hopefully, you will never again sit quietly by when someone -- anyone -- claims that treaties supercede the Constitution. Help to dispell this myth.

"This [Supreme] Court has regularly and uniformly recognized the supremacy of the Constitution over a treaty." - Reid v. Covert, October 1956, 354 U.S. 1, at pg 17.

This case involved the question: Does the NATO Status of Forces Agreement (treaty) supersede the U.S. Constitution? Keep reading.

The Reid Court (U.S. Supreme Court) held in their Opinion that,

"... No agreement with a foreign nation can confer power on the Congress, or any other branch of government, which is free from the restraints of the Constitution. Article VI, the Supremacy clause of the Constitution declares, "This Constitution and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all the Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land...’
"There is nothing in this language which intimates that treaties and laws enacted pursuant to them do not have to comply with the provisions of the Constitution nor is there anything in the debates which accompanied the drafting and ratification which even suggest such a result...

"In effect, such construction would permit amendment of that document in a manner not sanctioned by Article V. The prohibitions of the Constitution were designed to apply to all branches of the National Government and they cannot be nullified by the Executive or by the Executive and Senate combined."

Did you understand what the Supreme Court said here? No Executive Order, Presidential Directive, Executive Agreement, no NAFTA, GATT/WTO agreement/treaty, passed by ANYONE, can supersede the Constitution. FACT. No question!

At this point the Court paused to quote from another of their Opinions; Geofroy v. Riggs, 133 U.S. 258 at pg. 267 where the Court held at that time that,

"The treaty power as expressed in the Constitution, is in terms unlimited except by those restraints which are found in that instrument against the action of the government or of its departments and those arising from the nature of the government itself and of that of the States. It would not be contended that it extends so far as to authorize what the Constitution forbids, or a change in the character of the government, or a change in the character of the States, or a cession of any portion of the territory of the latter without its consent."

"In effect, such construction would permit amendment of that document in a manner not sanctioned by Article V. The prohibitions of the Constitution were designed to apply to all branches of the National Government and they cannot be nullified by the Executive or by the Executive and Senate combined."

Did you understand what the Supreme Court said here? No Executive Order, Presidential Directive, Executive Agreement, no NAFTA, GATT/WTO agreement/treaty, passed by ANYONE, can supersede the Constitution. FACT. No question!

At this point the Court paused to quote from another of their Opinions; Geofroy v. Riggs, 133 U.S. 258 at pg. 267 where the Court held at that time that,

"The treaty power as expressed in the Constitution, is in terms unlimited except by those restraints which are found in that instrument against the action of the government or of its departments and those arising from the nature of the government itself and of that of the States. It would not be contended that it extends so far as to authorize what the Constitution forbids, or a change in the character of the government, or a change in the character of the States, or a cession of any portion of the territory of the latter without its consent."
Assessing the GATT/WTO parasitic organism in light of this part of the Opinion, we see that it cannot attach itself to its host (our Republic or States) in the fashion the traitors in our government wish, without our acquiescing to it.

The Reid Court continues with its Opinion:

"This Court has also repeatedly taken the position that an Act of Congress, which MUST comply with the Constitution, is on full parity with a treaty, the statute to the extent of conflict, renders the treaty null. It would be completely anomalous to say that a treaty need not comply with the Constitution when such an agreement can be overridden by a statute that must conform to that instrument."
The U.S. Supreme court could not have made it more clear : TREATIES DO NOT OVERRIDE THE CONSTITUTION, AND CANNOT, IN ANY FASHION, AMEND IT !!! CASE CLOSED.

so much fer DEA'S CRUTCH OF UN DRUG TREATY =)