(no subject)

One more reason Brad Pitt is cool... (Oh, I know, the bleeding heart celebs.  Better than fuckin' gangsta violence bullshit...)

NEW YORK (AP) -- Brad Pitt is taking on poverty and AIDS in Africa - and the tabloids. In an hour-long ABC "Primetime Live" special set to air Tuesday night (10 p.m. ET), Pitt talks to Diane Sawyer about the humanitarian crisis in Africa.

"I can't get out of the press. These people can't get in the press. So let's redirect the attention a little bit," he tells Sawyer.

"We have the potential to end poverty (in Africa) in our time. ... Man - I mean, what is more exciting than that? The potential's there. We gotta go for it."

(no subject)

this article shows an argument between pro- and anti-medical marijuana "advocates"(???)

The thing I noticed right away is the word "smoked" in the "anti" article.  I thought, that's odd.  So I search text for "smok"... and sure as shit... the only piece to talk about smoked pot is the anti article.

The pro article recognizes that there are many different methods to imbibe MJ.  Tinctures, and vaporization are just two examples that pop off the top of my head (these are not mentioned specifically).

There are many problems I find in the debunking.  Some very specious (sp?) arguments...

Wow.

The current medical marijuana decision by the supreme court (in a nutshell)

Via bradhicks:

The ruling pins the whole justification for their decision on a 1942 Supreme Court decision in a food rationing case, Wickard v Filburn. I'd never heard of it. But when I understood the reasoning in Wickard v Filburn, I broke out in maniacal laughter. In Wickard, the Court was asked to rule on whether or not some farmer was violating the food rationing laws by keeping food that he grew for himself. The court ruled that every purchase in a market has effects on the whole national and global market, so if a product is sold in more than one state, every use or purchase has interstate effects. How? By reducing demand. If he grows and eats his own wheat, he's reducing the demand for wheat. Do you see the funny here? Justice Stevens (for the majority) is saying that Congress has federal authority to stop her because by growing her own marijuana, Angel McClary Raich is depressing the nation-wide market for marijuana. And Lord Knows, We Wouldn't Want That Now, Would We?

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Full Article

(no subject)

Recently, I believe I posted about the ruling of the Supreme Court as regards medical marijuana that occurred on 6/6/05.

I certainly think from a purely constitutional perspective that the ruling was completely wrong. I agree with the conservatives on this one (they were actually being traditional conservatives)... In fact, I appreciate O'Connor's emphasis on the concept of experimentation. I've thought this for some time. States should be allowed to have very different dynamics internally. But now we have an overarching federal scheme that essentially makes states very, very similar.

Now, my point in this post is to "reverse-engineer" the issue... The conservative case is that Congress has no authority to regulate intrastate medical marijuana, due to the fact that there is no interstate commerce involved. And especially in this case, where the patient(s?) was/were growing it their selves, without going through any distribution channel... There is fucking no commerce involved at all.

So, I thought about what it would mean if the court HAD voted the conservative way, and that Congress has no right to ban intrastate growing and consumption of marijuana. They don't say, of course, that the States don't have the right. The individual states could still ban it in whatever way they see fit (so long as they don't infringe upon constitutional rights)... Now, though, if this were the ruling, the federal court would in effect say that with regards to federal law, there is no legal way for them to prevent you from growing marijuana yourself and using it. Wrap that around your head... If the strict constitutionalists would have been the majority, you would have every right as a citizen of the United States, to grow your own weed. That doesn't mean you necessarily have that right at the state level, but there wouldn't be a damn thing the government could do to stop you if your State DID allow you to grow it and smoke it.

This is just one example of the reason I'm for a limited federalism. By this I mean a confederation of states, with limited national unity, to serve for common purposes, but not much else. I don't like the way it's called the "Federal Government", because to me, it's more of a "national government". In theory it's a federation of loosely regulated states, but in actuality, it's not the case.

bah. anyways.