Marijuana in the News, Drone Wars, Off the Grid in Latin America

Paul Krugman
Glenn Greenwald
Marc Thiessen

"There's a major political fraud underway: the GOP is once again donning their libertarian, limited-government masks in order to re-invent itself and, more important, to co-opt the energy and passion of the Ron-Paul-faction that spawned and sustains the "tea party" movement. " - Glenn Greenwald

“Sounds like the Democrats spell summit: S-E-T-U-P.” - Mike Pence

"The president’s real objective is to paint GOP leaders as obstructionists -- so that Democrats have an excuse to ram through their health-care legislation using extraordinary parliamentary procedures." - Marc Thiessen

marijuana in the news...
I haven't applied for my medical marijuana card yet, but I probably should if I want to follow the national trend, as reported in the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's National Survey on Drug Use and Health. It states that over 4.5 million people in my age group, 50 - 59 years old, are using marijuana on a regular basis. In this group, medical marijuana is used more than non-medical sources, but the use of illegally obtained prescription drugs is even greater. Consider that the source are members in federal substance abuse programs, I'm not too surprised. I wouldn't know where to get anything sold on the street these days, especially since I'm in bed by 11 pm...

The UPI reports that a semi-trailer containing 1,700 pounds of marijuana was confiscated on Feb 10 in Memphis. Police officers then escorted it to Louisville, where they evidently sat around in their cars and watched several other vehicles drive up to where the truck and trailer was parked and emptied the trailer. My guess is they were too stoned to move. This proves the long known fact that if you want the best drugs, hang out and party with police officers. When I was in college a good friend of mine worked in the Torrance police property room. He said that most drugs seized as evidence never made it to court because they would mysteriously disappear during the time kept under lock and key. And I used to worry if our local boys in blue were getting enough pay...

If you go to the Denver Post's website and click on the news link at the top left of the page, one of the links that are revealed is one for marijuana news... A Colorado man was pretty stupid, going on local television and bragging about the 200 plants he had growing in his basement, for the medical marijuana industry, of course. The Federal District Attorney felt that was too brazen, and the next morning authorities raided his house and confiscated the plants. He has been arraigned in Federal court, and the case could set a prescedent in the battle between Federal law and state's rights.: "Colorado's legal protection for medical marijuana is written into the state's constitution, whereas other medical-marijuana states have lower protection... The U.S. Supreme Court, however, has ruled in a prior case that the federal government can regulate marijuana, even if it is grown, sold and used entirely in a medical-marijuana state.


The other wild card is the Justice Department's October memo, which said the government wouldn't target people in "clear and unambiguous" compliance with state medical-marijuana laws. Hermes said it is possible that defense attorneys could use the memo as ammunition in a federal case. Indeed, there is a defense called "entrapment-by-estoppel," where defendants argue the government fooled them into breaking the law by leading them to believe what they were doing was legal.
But prominent California medical-marijuana attorney Bill Panzer said the memo likely doesn't offer enough protection for that defense.


"All it says," Panzer said, "is you might not want to go after a cancer patient." Medical marijuana was the largest growth industry in Colorado last year, with over 300 related stores and  related outlets opened for business.

"Washington & Jefferson were said to exchange smoking blends as personal gifts. Washington reportedly preferred a pipe full of "the leaves of hemp" to alcohol, & wrote in his diaries that he enjoyed the fragrance of hemp flowers. Madison once remarked that hemp gave him insight to create a new & democratic nation. Monroe, creator of the Monroe Doctrine, began smoking it as Ambassador to France & continued to the age of 73." - donr

a mirage in the desert...
Let's see, the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas is visiting France today. He is exploring to see if France will publicly announce that it recognizes a Palestinian State in Israel even if there have been no agreed upon boundaries, a virtual state, if you will. The French Foreign Minister has said that it is hope that it could be a boost to getting the two parties back to the negotiating table, which stopped when Israel rolled into Gaza last year.

Both spokesmen for Israeli's Prime Minister and Hamas said the same thing in response, that it would be a mirage, proving that some of their body rhythms are in synch...

Breaking out the bottles of champagne, the proud Israeli airforce inaugurated a new family of drone airplanes: "Israel's air force on Sunday introduced a fleet of huge pilotless planes that can remain in the air for a full day and could fly as far as the Persian Gulf, putting rival Iran within its range.


The Heron TP drones have a wingspan of 86 feet, making them the size of Boeing 737 passenger jets and the largest unmanned aircraft in Israel's military. The planes can fly at least 20 consecutive hours and are primarily used for surveillance and carrying diverse payloads." They can fly from Israel and reach the Persian gulf to give an aerial kiss to to Iran, who haven't received their latest anti-aircraft missiles from Russia due to clerical errors...

The US is finding more ways to use our drones, some are in the Gulf of Mexico, looking for drug smugglers, while others are in the Caribbean, looking for Haitian refugees... See, we can do more than miss our military targets and blow up civilians...


power to the...
A few months ago, all of the power went off in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The affected power grids even extended outside of the country. Nobody had a clue as to what had happened, and I haven't been able to find an official excuse. Last month, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was claiming that someone was screwing around with his country's power grid, hacking in and causing blackouts and rolling brown-outs. These large scale operations are controlled by computers, so the question is: is somebody hacking into these systems? If so, are they practicing for something more dramatic in another country? You can see how my paranoia runs loose, because both Iran and China are large trading partners with both of these South American countries, and recent cyber-attacks have been traced back to computers in China... Security experts also have commented on how vulnerable the United State's power grids are a few years ago, after we experienced brown-outs in the Midwest region, giving someone who was then a nerdy teenager an idea...

And now, a moment of Zen: