I had hoped that by now the blatant murder of three innocent prisoners at Guantanamo and the subsequent cover up by both the Bush and Obama administrations, well documented by Scott Horton, would be a topic of intense discussion at least on the level of Tiger Woods marital infidelities or Sarah Palin’s book tour. However, this atrocity seems to have inspired profound public indifference. Certainly our political class and their sycophants who make up the mainstream media are ignoring it. Now Horton has written a follow up piece and Chris Floyd’s commentary on this latest essay asks us to ”read the whole piece -- and keep it constantly in mind when wading through all the earnest, endless disquisitions about the weighty affairs and political fortunes of our great and good, all of them written as if these people, our leaders, our bipartisan elites, are somehow normal, as if they are not brutally depraved and indifferent to the point of moral insanity.”

Medical marijuana has achieved another success, this time in New Jersey. The legislature has passed the Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act and Governor John Corzine has already pledged to sign it. Marijuana law reformers can count another state, fourteen in all, in their victory column but another group of political activists, those concerned with the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution also have reason to celebrate.

When the law makers in New Jersey decided to change their policy concerning Cannabis use they did so with the full knowledge that the Supreme Court has ruled that federal law supersedes state policy when it comes medical marijuana. In effect these legislators were asserting their rights spelled out in the Tenth Amendment. In an article for the Tenth Amendment Center: the tenther grapevine author Michael Boldin points out that an “honest reading of the Constitution with an original understanding of the Founders and Ratifiers makes it quite clear that the federal government has no constitutional authority to override state laws on marijuana.” In his dissent of Gonzales v. Raich, the decision asserting federal supremacy on this issue, Justice Clarence Thomas countered the majority’s argument that the commerce clause applied by saying that the respondents “use marijuana that has never been bought or sold, that has never crossed state lines, and that has had no demonstrable effect on the national market for marijuana. If Congress can regulate this under the Commerce Clause, then it can regulate virtually anything–and the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers.” Boldin calls this effort to justify an unconstitutional federal intrusion into the affairs of the various states at best dubious and “at worst an intentional attack on the Constitution and your liberty.”

The Democratic Party has long history favoring the constitutional right of the states to resist federal interference, unfortunately most of this support has been associated with unconstitutional slavery and racial discrimination. Would it not be a good thing for both us and them if they reaffirmed that tradition in a much better cause, a more humane and effective drug policy?

Plainly, the issue of whether the politicians in New Jersey have the right to legitimize the use of medical marijuana has implications far beyond the limited subject of cannabis. For example, even before it has passed numerous state attorney generals are talking about challenging the federal health care reform bill with it thousands of unread, by those voting for it, pages and unfunded mandates. No matter what medical reform law President Obama signs there will surely be attempts to nullify it on Tenth Amendment grounds.

Cross posted on The Trebach Report

JP Morgan Chase & Company sponsored an online contest though the social networking system Facebook called The Chase Community Giving contest. The top one hundred nonprofit organizations receiving the most votes were to receive $25,000 and a chance at a $1 million donation. However, an e-mail from Students for a Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP) informs us that “during the final days of the contest, Chase rigged their own system to obscure the vote count and then revoked the winnings of a few groups, including SSDP and the Marijuana Policy Project” (MPP). At the time according to unofficial vote counts both organizations were well within the top one hundred with SSDP being in fourteenth place. Chase stopped giving voting information three days before the contest ended and has announced the winners but is refusing to release the final vote tally.

The New York Timesstory on the controversy quotes Micah Daigle, executive director of Students for Sensible Drug Policy as saying that, “They never gave us any indication that there was any problem with our organization qualifying. Now they’re completely stonewalling me.” The paper also reports that the two above groups “believe that Chase disqualified them over concerns about associating its name with their missions.”

Apparently, Chase Bank wishes to be associated with greater use of alcohol and a class based higher education system. You can join the boycott against Chase by clicking here.

Cross posted on The Trebach Report

In addition to Robert Higg’s excellent post directly below, Justin Raimondo’s complete and superb rebuttal of President Obama’s speech attempting to justify escalation in Afghanistan deserves our attention.

He ends his essay by quoting the president’s talk: "We are passing through a time of great trial. And the message that we send in the midst of these storms must be clear: that our cause is just, our resolve unwavering. We will go forward with the confidence that right makes might, and with the commitment to forge an America that is safer, a world that is more secure, and a future that represents not the deepest of fears but the highest of hopes."

Raimondo then answers with: “The resolve of fanatics and fools is perpetually ‘unwavering.’ Aggressors and bullies are always ‘going forward.’ And the mighty are always supremely assured of the rightness of their cause. They claim to want only ‘security,’ and their appeal is invariably to the ‘highest of hopes.’ And it always ends in oceans of blood.”

Many individuals, including myself, believe that the true goal of Barack Obama and the Democratic leadership in Congress is a single payer government run health care system. So it is vital that we all understand exactly what that would mean for the American people. A most important question is would the availability and quality of care improve or decline with such a change?

Those who argue that there would be a significant change for the worse are ignored, ridiculed, and labeled as enemies of the state, especially when they point out that a decrease in the accessibility of care would result in an increase in the mortality rate, after all the government would never kill anyone. An overwhelming amount of publicity highlighted a study which claimed that the American system of private insurance led to an extra 45,000 deaths per annum. However, a British report,which argued that the state controlled system in place there caused 17,000 unnecessary fatalities each year in that much smaller country, received very little attention from our biased media. It is essential to determine the creditability of each assertion.

In the article on the American research linked to above they describe the inquiry’s methodology this way: “The researchers examined government health surveys from more than 9,000 people aged 17 to 64, taken from 1986-1994, and then followed up through 2000. They determined that the uninsured have a 40 percent higher risk of death than those with private health insurance as a result of being unable to obtain necessary medical care. The researchers then extrapolated the results to census data from 2005 and calculated there were 44,789 deaths associated with lack of health insurance.” Now, if this description is complete there are two very obvious serious problems with this research. First there does not seem to be consideration of the fact that those without insurance are going have as a group less financial resources and it is a well documented fact that being poor includes all kinds of negative consequences, such as worse food, for ones health that have nothing to do with access to medical care. Many of their deaths can be attributed to factors other than lack of coverage. Secondly, the uninsured includes persons with medical savings accounts, income enough to pay for care themselves, and brother in laws who are doctors they do not have insurance but they have access to medical services. Their deaths can not be attributed to lack of health care but it seems in this analysis they are.

The British data pointing to government caused casualties is more in line with the truth because we can already see the mechanism at work here in America. The U.S. Preventative Services Task Force has just recommended that women wait until they are fifty years old before beginning yearly mammograms. This new pronouncement supersedes the government’s old advice that these procedures start when women turn forty. This latest guideline will result in two things, the overall cost of medical care will significantly decrease while the number of women who die of breast cancer will increase.

This afternoon I heard a telephone interview on CNN with one of the members of the panel who asserted that monetary expense played no role in the determination that women wait until fifty before being tested. I find this extremely difficult to believe since both conclusions were reached with the same data set. The only thing that changed between the earlier finding and this latest one is that financial burden of health care has become of intense concern.

The government has always been willing to trade lives for money, why do you think that in the beginning our soldiers were riding around Iraq in vehicles with no armor on the bottom? With the incredibly sorry state of our economy and its prospects the pressure to make this exchange in the medical field will be irresistible.

The most recent information on marijuana arrests verifies many facts that argue for a repeal of prohibition. A new report, Marijuana Arrests in the United States posted on The Bulletin of Cannabis Reform contains a wealth of significant data including state by state breakdowns.

The account tells us that from 1991 to 2009 the number of marijuana arrests doubled while the number of users has remained consistent. Also, punishment for infractions falls disproportionately on young people and African-Americans and most tellingly that strictness of the law has almost no effect on usage rates. In his executive summary author Jon Gettman points out that “there are wide disparities between states in both marijuana arrest rates and the severity of penalties. These differences bear little relationship to rates of use, while the penalty structure actually serves as a price support for the illicit market.”

Cross posted on The Trebach Report

Recently, Associated Press reporter Julie Jacobson took a photograph of 21 year old Marine Lance Corporal Joshua Bernard who was dying at the time because his legs had been blown off. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates tried very hard to have the picture suppressed but he failed and it appeared in a number of newspapers. Gates cited the anguish of Bernard’s parents as the reason for his attempted censorship. However, Fred Reed, a Vietnam combat veteran who was seriously wounded there, explains, in an article titled Killing America’s Kids posted on LewRockwell.com, exactly why the publication of this image made Robert Gates so furious and it has nothing to do with the feelings of Joshua Bernard’s mother and father.

Also, with so many criticizing Julie Jacobson for taking the photo, Reed feels it is appropriate to point out that she “has more combat time than the aggregate for Bush II, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Obama, Biden, Gonzalez, Clinton, Perle, Abrams, Kristol, Feith, Podhoretz, Krauthammer, George Will, Dershowitz, and Gates. These men, if the word is appropriate, killed that kid. Jacobson just caught them in the act.”

In an article published by the The Jewish Daily Forward Richard Goldstone is quoted as stating that “if this was a court of law, there would have been nothing proven. I wouldn't consider it in any way embarrassing if many of the allegations turn out to be disproved.” However, because these charges are made against Israel no proof is necessary. The unsubstantiated word of Hamas terrorists is good enough for the UN Human Rights Council.

One of the more unfair aspects of the debate over drug prohibition is the demand that those who oppose proscription describe in exacting detail the consequences of a change while those who favor law enforcement approaches get to assume that the only result will be the cessation of use. Well now in Oakland, California there is a concrete example of marijuana legalization in action. A nine block area in downtown Oakland surrounding Oaksterdam University, a school for people wanting to enter the expanding marijuana business, has become a gathering place for users of virtually legal cannabis.

The primary noticeable effect of this occurrence seems to be increased commerce. The Oakland Community and Economic Development Agency reports that 160 new businesses have moved into the downtown area while the vacancy rate has decreased from 25% to 5%. The city has passed an excise tax on marijuana and it is expected to bring in over $1 million during the first year. The founder of the cannabis college, entrepreneur Richard Lee, points out that "the reality is we're creating jobs, improving the city, filling empty store spaces, and when people come down here to Oakland they can see that."

Those who oppose these recent developments use the same tired unfounded arguments they have always employed, unfortunately repeated in the Newsweek article linked to above. However, there is nothing that has happened in Oakland which bolsters their position that legal marijuana is a problem. Quite the contrary it is proving to be beneficial.

Cross posted on The Trebach Report