Y'all come! Can you be in Washington, DC on December 16th? Join the largest veteran-led civil resistance to US wars in recent history, take a stand for peace!
The War on Democracy, an award winning documentary, reveals since 1945 Uncle Sam has been instrumental in the attempts to overthrow fifty governments around the world, often replacing democratic republics with fascist, authoritarian regimes! The American dream and all dreams for freedom around the world come from our source. The Spirit of '76 was the Holy Spirit and is our true North!
Our founders knew big government would always mean a gang of evil doers, often hiding tyranny under the guise of good intentions. Empire-building, policing the world, and casting off the Constitution's restraints solidifies tyranny at home, devastates the economy, and increases the threats to our national security. I believe in, promote and defend a safer, constitutional, non interventionist foreign policy. This is the safer policy envisioned by our founders.
I support our troops and want to bring them home safe. Secrets put our troops and all of us in more danger than transparency. Truly ethical leaders have no need for secrets, cover ups, covert operations, lies and propaganda.
"Make the injustice visible." Coached Ghandi.
Pfc. Bradley Manning and Julian Assange are Rebels with Just Cause, the very definition of true American heroes! We need transparency not secrets. Morally bankrupt empire builders and warmongers promote big government and the destruction of the American dream of self government free of tyranny and oppression. Our heroes, who have given their lives for this country, died for freedom and for making this world a better place will have died in vain; if the American dream dies.
Ron Paul Says:"'State Secrecy is Anathema to a Free Society"
During the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King called our government “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” True then—and even more so right now!
One of McCool's 2010 Rebel with Just Cause portrait will be awarded to Daniel Ellsberg for the documentary "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers." The Oscar-nominated account of Pentagon insider, Ellsberg's daring endeavor to leak top-secret government papers that disclosed shocking truths about the Vietnam War and Nixon's presidency.
Thanks to US Border Patrol and the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Department, drug war injustice was given world wide coverage by the arrest of Willie Nelson. Thank you Willie for making the injustice visible!
It is overkill and morally bankrupt to arrest nonviolent people for making a safer health choice, cannabis or marijuana, compared to other medicinal/social drugs. The people believe in self-government and self-medication.
The other 2010 Rebel with Just Cause portrait goes to Willie Nelson for his passionate support for marijuana legalization. Willie and Daniel are our heroes of the decade, maybe the past century.
It will be a great blessing if this is THE BEGINNING OF THE END FOR THE WAR ON DRUGS! Forget borders. Drug prohibition is a worldwide problem! The violence, official lawlessness and prison over population are a nightmare created by this out-of-control policy!
Weed out morally bankrupt servants of tyranny, gun control fanatics and racists by taking away the main tool they use these days to extend their agenda, the new prohibition. Take them a step closer to being politically dead bodies. Help construct better, safer drug policies for society and the individual.
Our corrupt policies attract too many of those who want to milk the system for all it is worth. I encourage you to make the LEAP, help restore justice! Attract more of those who will make our system run with the milk of human kindness.
Take control from the hands of despicable people who sell drugs to children, recruit them to sell to their peers and arm them to kill the competition.
Science should trump politics! We have to have a scientific basis for investigation findings and our laws; otherwise, it's no different than witch-hunting. The tobacco, alcohol and prescription drug gangs cause more death annually than all illicit drugs. We tolerate their salesmen. End prohibition; stop driving US to drink and use pharmaceuticals with dangerous often fatal side effects. Drugs like Zoloft and Luvox that cause increased aggression, loss of remorse, depersonalization and mania!
All the unnecessary deaths triggered by our drug policies are democide (death by government). Servants of tyranny play on our fears to make us more accepting of their waste of our precious lives and resources.
A new Vanity Fair article primarily about poor FDA oversight of drug testing, much of which is done overseas, reports:. "In 2009, according to the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, 19,551 people died in the United States as a direct result of the prescription drugs they took. That’s just the reported number. It’s decidedly low, because it is estimated that only about 10 percent of such deaths are reported."
"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things bought and sold are legislators." -- P. J. O'Rourke. The second things bought and sold are regulators! The free market is a more powerful and efficient regulator than government. Let ethics and the free market rule!
Some scientists speculate that cannabinoids play a protective role in the brain, slowing the rate of disease. Patients testify to Cannabis' help in treating post traumatic stress, chronic pain, multiple sclerosis, gastrointestinal (GI) tract disorders, Alzheimer's, Cancer, epilepsy, glaucoma, hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS and more! They swear it is an effective safer replacement for very dangerous pharmaceuticals.
Less than one percent of the population are actually addicts, drug treatment is at least five times less costly than prison, change to ethical policy and show fiscal responsibility!
Restore public safety! Now is the time to insist American warriors get their adrenaline rush catching murderers and other violent predators. I understand that it will not be possible to stop all murders and rapes. However, get tough on violent crime! Restore Justice, the guardian of liberty!
"The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict. He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people. Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal." - MLK
The only real wealth is well being and happiness. We, the nonviolent members of the pro-better-world society, far out number the violent evil doers. Get tough on violent crime! Take away violent offenders' and sexual predators' ability to reproduce. Aggressive behavior can be bred out of us as it has been done in dogs. We shall overcome the violent and inherit the earth. We shall create Peace on Earth!
Track your Senators' and Representative's votes by e-mail
Changing who's in charge will not affect much. The real cause of this huge quagmire of failed policy is the beast, big government, that money hungry beast, Uncle Sam! Ma Freedom tells it like it is! The beauty of it is when we focus on down-sizing our government we regain our roots of self-government and secure the blessings of liberty for future generations and ourselves.
Compiled and written by Colleen McCool
Monday, December 13, 2010
Wednesday, November 17, 2010
Morally Bankrupt, Predatory Capitalism Vs Ethical Capitalism
Capitalism is being given a bad name due to big government interference and protection of the morally bankrupt. Business is not inherently evil. Consumers, we the people, have the power to put corporations out of business that do not behave ethically and show great concern about their impact on the community and environment! Stop patronizing them, refuse to buy what they are selling! The free market is a more powerful and efficient regulator than government.
Predatory capitalism destroys people, benign or ethical capitalism creates a world of abundance for all. This is the main point of Oliver Stones fascinating documentary, South of the Border. Keen on investigating how the US media has depicted Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, Stone journeys south to interview him and speaks with several South American presidents in the process including: Bolivia's Evo Morales, Brazil's Lula da Silva, Argentina's Nestor Kirchner and Cuba's Raúl Castro. The drug war, DEA, etc. are mentioned several times.
An important tip: The South American media was against the election of all these Presidents so that gives us hope to overcome our own propaganda machines.
Empire-building, policing the world, and casting off the Constitutions restraints solidifies tyranny at home, devastates the economy, and increases the threats to our national security. Warmongering, morally bankrupt empire builders and drug warriors think big government needs to solve all our problems.
Violent, hate filled, morally bankrupt, authoritarian warmongers are a different species than us, mere human beings. They use fear and propaganda to make us more accepting of their waste of our precious lives and resources. They are the opposite of true patriots; who believe in the American dream of self-government and value public safety first! Our heroes, who have given their lives for this country, died for freedom and for making this world a better place will have died in vain; if the American dream dies.
We all share a protective mechanism (or flaw?) in our wiring that releases negative energy toward any person we perceive as not sharing our world view. If we consciously recognize this and adjust behavior accordingly; celebrate our similarities plus build bridges of tolerance to differences, we create peace and abundance. We can change the world.
Are you questioning the hypocrisy, corruption and waste of the drug war and other big government tyranny? Are you cultivating a narrow-eyed, deeply skeptical attitude, when confronting a political issue or a health issue?
A California doctor studied aides patients with HIV negative partners over a ten year period and non of these partners had contracted HIV at the end of the study. Aides drugs like many dangerous pharmaceuticals destroy the patients liver and immune system, eventually causing death!
"The HIV/ AIDS Story is Being Rewritten!" Money spent fighting HIV/ AIDS is better spent fighting poverty and providing access to safe water.
In the documentary, House of Numbers: "Leung manages to present a barrage of intriguing theories debunking our generally accepted beliefs... There's no denying, however, the value of exploring such game-changing topics as how HIV-infection numbers are cooked for monetary and political gain; how the effects of global poverty may have led to so many AIDS-related deaths; how such widely used AIDS drugs as AZT have, themselves, often proved fatal; and whether HIV really exists." - Gary Goldstein, Los Angeles Times
"Abraham Lincoln had it right. Our task should not be to invoke religion and the name of God by claiming God's blessing and endorsement for all our national polices and practices -- saying, in effect, that God is on our side. Rather, Lincoln said, we should pray and worry earnestly whether we are on God's side."- Jim Wallis author of GOD'S POLITICS.
In this frame of mind, with modern unbiased, science based statistical reporting our worries are over. We can see where our laws are causing more harm than good and change accordingly. Empirical statistical evidence strongly shows that a republic (the American form of government.) leads to less internal violence and democide. Democide is a term coined by political scientist R. J. Rummel in his book, DEATH by GOVERNMENT to describe "the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide and mass murder." Maybe we need to add cooking the numbers for monetary and political gain to this list!
It is down right sinister, a crime against humanity, for the medicinal uses of cannabis to be suppressed. Some scientific researchers speculate that cannabinoids play a protective role in the brain, slowing the rate of disease. Ooooops! Who spilled the beans? Scientists and patients all over the world, that's who!
Senate leadership is sitting on a bill that would establish a national commission to reassess current policy, beginning the process to restore Justice, the guardian of liberty. Congress needs to hear from reformers around the country in support of this bill. Send a message to Senate leadership now!
Sherman Ash Branch, twice convicted of cocaine possession and once for obstructing an officer, killed Georgia County chief deputy Kevin Roberts last Sunday before turning the gun on himself.
"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe" .- Frederick Douglass
Drug war violence is a policy created problem. Our out-of-control drug policies' monetary and environmental costs are staggering and human suffering unconscionable.
Our corrupt, out-of-control policies attract too many of those who want to milk it for all it is worth. I encourage you to make the LEAP, help restore justice! Attract more of those who will make our system run with the milk of human kindness.
Save the children, just say NO to prohibition! How can anyone think drug prohibition makes our children or streets safer?
Stephen H. Frye M.D, retired medical school professor's book exposes facts related to our babies, teens especially, being collateral damage of this demented, violence triggering policy! "We Really Lost This War! Twenty-five Reasons to Legalize Drugs."
Don't believe the propaganda; we wage this war to protect our children! The devastating and deadly facts are our babies; especially teens have become collateral damage in this grossly failed war. The destruction of the sacred family unit is one of the worst consequences prohibition forces on children.
Brutal, bloody prohibition supports despicable people who sell drugs to children, recruit them to sell to their peers and arm them to kill the competition. Despite having six times the Netherlands adult incarceration rate, this insane policy has created an obscene teenage murder rate that's nineteen times higher than in the Netherlands, where drugs are regulated, controlled and taxed!
Only 50 percent of high school students graduate in our ten biggest cities and only 40 per cent graduate in NYC, Baltimore and Detroit. In the Netherlands 92 percent graduate; that's No Child Left Behind!
I am afraid; murderers and other violent predators roam free, while we police nonviolent adult social, medicinal and religious drug use. Across America paramilitary drug raids trigger violence rather than lessen the risk.
The war waged by Mexican drug cartels has resulted in 610 children deaths reports a study and 3,700 children have been left orphans as a result of the violence or execution of their parents. Many minors who are orphaned have been psychologically scarred after witnessing violent actions against their relatives.
The Mexican military reported that 420 children who had been recruited have died in the clashes between rival groups. There were many examples of adolescents between the ages of 14 and 17 dying in fierce battles with the drug traffickers or being tortured and killed as paybacks between feuding clans.
When the mothers of America realized that prohibitionists were making their kids more vulnerable to booze, the Volstead Act was licked! Today minors testify, it is easier to buy pot than alcohol. Mothers of the world will again unit to stop this no less insane, out-of-control version of prohibition; triggering violence in our streets.
The debate over medical marijuana or cannabis is really a scandalous controversy over whether this safe, effective, very easy-to-grow herb should be allowed to compete with dangerous pharmaceuticals and social drugs for pennies on the dollar.
Harassing the sick and dying is an un-American activity! "A whopping 64% of voters' aged 18 to 34" backed Prop 19 in California because they know it is overkill and morally bankrupt to arrest nonviolent people for making a safer health choice, cannabis or marijuana, compared to other medicinal/social drugs.
Now is the time to insist American warriors addicted to the drug war get their adrenaline rush catching murderers and other violent predators or incarcerating those who sell drugs to children or drive intoxicated.
Regulation, science based education and treating abuse as a medical problem is rational; safer for the individual and society, a better drug policy increasing public safety and harm reduction plus freeing up untold billions in wasted funds to use toward catching more violent and sexual predators or incarcerating more of those morally bankrupt; who sell drugs to children or drive intoxicated.
Use of illegal drugs has increased significantly during the drug war. Use of tobacco has decreased due to truth in education and infomercials about this killer. Educate people with science-based truth and they will make better choices for themselves.
Less than one per cent of the population are actually addicts and drug treatment is at least five times less costly than prison. Restore public safety! Change to ethical policy and show fiscal responsibility! Get tough on DUI, on the morally bankrupt who sell drugs to children and violent crime! Stop this scandalous, detrimental drug war. Restore Justice, the guardian of liberty. Take morally bankrupt profiteers, servants of tyranny, gun control fanatics and racists a step closer to being politically dead bodies.
It is worth repeating, the Spirit of 1776 was the Holy Spirit and is our true North. The real visionaries, who gave birth to this Nation, those who defined what an American patriot would be, were rebels with just cause!
Track your Senators' and Representative's votes by e-mail
Changing who's in charge will not affect much. The real cause of this huge quagmire of failed policy is the beast, big government, that money hungry beast, Uncle Sam! Ma Freedom tells it like it is! The beauty of it is when we focus on down-sizing our government we regain our roots of self-government and secure the blessings of liberty for future generations and ourselves.
Compiled and written by Colleen McCool
Saturday, October 16, 2010
Safe Water, Safer Foreign & Domestic Policies
Nearly 1 billion people still lack access to clean water! It is shocking and disheartening that even today unsafe water causes a litany of struggles, diseases and even death. Every week, nearly 38,000 children under the age of 5 die from unsafe drinking water and unhygienic living conditions. Organizations like water.org and charity: water are bringing fresh water to communities in the developing world.
"Laws control the lesser man... Right conduct controls the greater one," declared Mark Twain, the man whose pen-name means "safe water." He humbly asserts, "My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water."
Save the children, everyone has a right to fresh water!
The propaganda is we wage the drug war to protect our children. The devastating and deadly facts are our babies, especially teens have become collateral damage in this grossly failed war.
The death and devastation begins on kids before they are even born; mothers on drugs are afraid to go to doctors for fear of being arrested or having their babies taken away from them, their fetuses have higher incidences of birth defects, premature births, and miscarriages. The drugs don't cause these problems; it's the lack of prenatal care.
Kids placed in foster care when their parents are incarcerated for drug use have four times the death rate of kids left with their parents. We have deprived millions of children and teenagers of their imprisoned parent(s). Much worse, this drug war has created an obscene teenage murder rate that's nineteen times higher than in the Netherlands, where drugs are legally available to everyone over eighteen.
The war waged by Mexican drug cartels has resulted in more than 610 children's deaths and more than 3,700 children have been left orphans as a result of the violence or execution of their parents. Many minors who are orphaned have been psychologically scarred after witnessing violent actions against their relatives.
The horrific carnage is triggered by the new prohibition and fueled by official lawlessness. The Mexican military reported that 420 children who had been recruited have died in the clashes between rival groups. There were many examples of adolescents between the ages of 14 and 17 dying in fierce battles with the drug traffickers or being tortured and killed as paybacks between feuding clans.
Only 50 percent of high school students graduate in our ten biggest cities and only 40 per cent graduate in NYC, Baltimore and Detroit. In the Netherlands 92 percent graduate; that's No Child Left Behind!
We need to fight drug abuse with compassion; treat nonviolent abusers as patients not criminals. Fight use with factual evidence! We are diminishing the use of tobacco with the campaign, Knowledge is Contagious, so Infect Truth! Educate people with science based truth and they will make better choices for themselves.
True education is our most important duty; the way out of ignorance and repression. Do not doubt history will mark this time as a new beginning for a period of enlightenment and abundance.
Stephen H. Frye, M.D. Retired medical school professor has written a book giving many of the facts quoted here. It is titled: We Really Lost This War! Twenty-five Reasons to Legalize Drugs.
Save the children, just say NO to prohibition! Trigger less violence, official lawlessness, racism, tyranny and ruined lives!
The truth is out and spreading like wildfire! Cannabis cures cancer! This truth will not be suppressed, until every household knows the clamor, the swelling protest, exposing dark, dirty secrets of heinous crimes against humanity! Does anyone you know or love have cancer? It is down right sinister, a crime against humanity, for the medicinal uses of cannabis to be suppressed.
The debate over medical marijuana or cannabis is really a scandalous controversy over whether this inexpensive, effective, safe, very easy to grow herb should be allowed to compete with expensive, dangerous, possibly fatal pharmaceuticals and social drugs for pennies on the dollar!
Harassing the sick and dying citizens or veterans is an un-American activity! It is overkill and morally bankrupt to arrest nonviolent people for making a safer health choice, cannabis or marijuana, compared to other medicinal/social drugs. The people believe in self-government and self-medication.
Why let murderers and other violent predators roam free, while we police nonviolent adult social, medicinal and religious drug use? Regulation, science based education and treating abuse as a medical problem is a better drug policy that increases public safety and harm reduction plus frees up billions in wasted funds to use incarcerating the violent and sexual predators.
Despite having six times their adult incarceration rate our adult murder rate is four times higher than in the Netherlands where drugs are regulated, controlled and taxed for those over 18. Now is the time to insist American warriors get their adrenaline rush catching murderers and other violent predators. I understand that it will not be possible to stop all murders and rapes. However, get tough on violent crime! Restore Justice, the guardian of liberty!
The ravages of homemade meth can disappear like the deaths and blindness caused by bathtub gin ended after repeal of alcohol prohibition. Overdose deaths were unheard of before this war because overdoses were reported to medical personnel without fear of arrest.
Drug prohibition has turned a million of our teenagers into drug dealers, many in deadly drug gangs that have four times the death rate of Texas death row prisoners.
Brutal, morally bankrupt, prohibition supports despicable people who sell drugs to children, recruit them to sell to their peers and arm them to kill the competition. Across America paramilitary drug raids trigger violence rather than lessen the risk. Again, overkill, to use such force on a nonviolent health issue. All this unconscionable bloodshed is on the hands of leadership as much as those who pulled the trigger or contributed to the endless bloody slaughter. It is a policy created problem! We are all caught betwixt and between in this scandalous, senseless war on some drugs.
Our demented out-of-control drug policies' monetary and environmental costs are staggering and the human suffering is unconscionable. The destruction of the sacred family unit is one of the worst consequences of prohibition.
Help end this irrational policy by writing letters with the help of DrugSense.
Six drug former czars composed an OpEd for the Los Angeles Times, laying out their senseless opposition to Prop 19. Just say NO to drug czars and warriors! Just say NOW to Prop 19!
In Oregon a Citizens' Initiative Review panel voted in support of Measure 74.
Colorado voters will be busy this fall deciding a variety of local initiatives. Passage of one measure would allow "medical marijuana-infused products manufacturers within the City of Ouray. However, voters in at least seven other Counties could ban dispensaries all together!
While DrugSense provides this information for free, it's not free to produce. Please support their unique way of following ballot initiatives by making a generous donation. They are an educational 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so your contribution is both tax deductible and funds a great cause.
Go to these links for details concerning ballot initiatives in California, Oregon, and Colorado along with others in Arizona and South Dakota. Just say NO to any more wasted resources, unnecessary violence and destruction of lives and families! Just say NOW to Prop 19!
Volunteer for Online Phone Bank Training. Watch this video then go to YESon19.com and signed up. It is an easy process. You may call from any state.
"During my 18 years of police service I was dispatched to zero calls generated by the use of pot. Alcohol use generated some 1300, including murder, suicide, rape, child abuse, felonious, aggravated and simple assault/battery. Pot is a much safer drug than alcohol both for the user and those around them." Detective/Officer Howard Wooldridge (retired) Drug Policy Specialist at COP, CitizensOpposingProhibition, noted recently. Howard is in California now getting a lot of press and garnering support for Prop 19.
We have the factual information available. Let's construct science based drug policies about saving and rehabilitating instead of ruining lives. Drug treatment is at least five times less costly than prison. Change to ethical policy and show fiscal responsibility!
We are rebels with just cause, when we exercise our right to nullify bad laws like those brave jurors who refused to convict during the Fugitive Slave Act and until FDR said the Volstead Act was licked! Jury nullification is a constitutional power tool we the people pack.
I agree with Glenn Greenwald who wrote The Wars on Drugs and Terror: are mirror images! Tell Congress to be brave; win the war on terror by NOT being afraid
Morally bankrupt profiteers are destroying the American dream of self government, free of tyranny and oppression. The Constitution doesn't authorize Congress to subsidize industries or grant special favors for particular businesses. Many Legislators are outright servants of tyranny; good at ignoring the rule of law, history and science while catering to the needs of special interests but very bad at determining what is best or safer for the individual or society.
If you believe power corrupts Downsize DC recognizes your genius! Strike the root, downsize DC!
In National Geographic's Stress: Portrait of a Killer (2008TV-PG ) Stanford University neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky reveals just how dangerous prolonged exposure to stress can be and looks at the latest science to see what researchers are learning about this insidiously silent killer. He has studied baboon society for 30 years and compares their stress levels in the hierarchy of their social structure to those individuals in British civil service.
A most fascinating segment dealt with his first baboon troop ten years into the study when all alpha males died due to ingesting tuberculosis infected meat someone dumped in their territory. The remaining less aggressive males caused less stress being passed down the pecking order. This lower stress level remains in this baboon troop 20 years later.
Violent, hate filled, morally bankrupt, authoritarian warmongers are a different species than us, mere human beings. They use fear and propaganda to make us more accepting of their waste of our precious lives and resources. They are the opposite of true patriots; who believe in the American dream of self government and value public safety first!
Track your Senators' and Representative's votes by e-mail
Changing who's in charge will not affect much. The real cause of this huge quagmire of failed policy is the beast, big government, that money hungry beast, Uncle Sam! Ma Freedom tells it like it is! The beauty of it is when we focus on down-sizing our government we regain our roots of self-government and secure the blessings of liberty for future generations and ourselves.
Compiled and written by Colleen McCool
"Laws control the lesser man... Right conduct controls the greater one," declared Mark Twain, the man whose pen-name means "safe water." He humbly asserts, "My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water."
Save the children, everyone has a right to fresh water!
The propaganda is we wage the drug war to protect our children. The devastating and deadly facts are our babies, especially teens have become collateral damage in this grossly failed war.
The death and devastation begins on kids before they are even born; mothers on drugs are afraid to go to doctors for fear of being arrested or having their babies taken away from them, their fetuses have higher incidences of birth defects, premature births, and miscarriages. The drugs don't cause these problems; it's the lack of prenatal care.
Kids placed in foster care when their parents are incarcerated for drug use have four times the death rate of kids left with their parents. We have deprived millions of children and teenagers of their imprisoned parent(s). Much worse, this drug war has created an obscene teenage murder rate that's nineteen times higher than in the Netherlands, where drugs are legally available to everyone over eighteen.
The war waged by Mexican drug cartels has resulted in more than 610 children's deaths and more than 3,700 children have been left orphans as a result of the violence or execution of their parents. Many minors who are orphaned have been psychologically scarred after witnessing violent actions against their relatives.
The horrific carnage is triggered by the new prohibition and fueled by official lawlessness. The Mexican military reported that 420 children who had been recruited have died in the clashes between rival groups. There were many examples of adolescents between the ages of 14 and 17 dying in fierce battles with the drug traffickers or being tortured and killed as paybacks between feuding clans.
Only 50 percent of high school students graduate in our ten biggest cities and only 40 per cent graduate in NYC, Baltimore and Detroit. In the Netherlands 92 percent graduate; that's No Child Left Behind!
We need to fight drug abuse with compassion; treat nonviolent abusers as patients not criminals. Fight use with factual evidence! We are diminishing the use of tobacco with the campaign, Knowledge is Contagious, so Infect Truth! Educate people with science based truth and they will make better choices for themselves.
True education is our most important duty; the way out of ignorance and repression. Do not doubt history will mark this time as a new beginning for a period of enlightenment and abundance.
Stephen H. Frye, M.D. Retired medical school professor has written a book giving many of the facts quoted here. It is titled: We Really Lost This War! Twenty-five Reasons to Legalize Drugs.
Save the children, just say NO to prohibition! Trigger less violence, official lawlessness, racism, tyranny and ruined lives!
The truth is out and spreading like wildfire! Cannabis cures cancer! This truth will not be suppressed, until every household knows the clamor, the swelling protest, exposing dark, dirty secrets of heinous crimes against humanity! Does anyone you know or love have cancer? It is down right sinister, a crime against humanity, for the medicinal uses of cannabis to be suppressed.
The debate over medical marijuana or cannabis is really a scandalous controversy over whether this inexpensive, effective, safe, very easy to grow herb should be allowed to compete with expensive, dangerous, possibly fatal pharmaceuticals and social drugs for pennies on the dollar!
Harassing the sick and dying citizens or veterans is an un-American activity! It is overkill and morally bankrupt to arrest nonviolent people for making a safer health choice, cannabis or marijuana, compared to other medicinal/social drugs. The people believe in self-government and self-medication.
Why let murderers and other violent predators roam free, while we police nonviolent adult social, medicinal and religious drug use? Regulation, science based education and treating abuse as a medical problem is a better drug policy that increases public safety and harm reduction plus frees up billions in wasted funds to use incarcerating the violent and sexual predators.
Despite having six times their adult incarceration rate our adult murder rate is four times higher than in the Netherlands where drugs are regulated, controlled and taxed for those over 18. Now is the time to insist American warriors get their adrenaline rush catching murderers and other violent predators. I understand that it will not be possible to stop all murders and rapes. However, get tough on violent crime! Restore Justice, the guardian of liberty!
The ravages of homemade meth can disappear like the deaths and blindness caused by bathtub gin ended after repeal of alcohol prohibition. Overdose deaths were unheard of before this war because overdoses were reported to medical personnel without fear of arrest.
Drug prohibition has turned a million of our teenagers into drug dealers, many in deadly drug gangs that have four times the death rate of Texas death row prisoners.
Brutal, morally bankrupt, prohibition supports despicable people who sell drugs to children, recruit them to sell to their peers and arm them to kill the competition. Across America paramilitary drug raids trigger violence rather than lessen the risk. Again, overkill, to use such force on a nonviolent health issue. All this unconscionable bloodshed is on the hands of leadership as much as those who pulled the trigger or contributed to the endless bloody slaughter. It is a policy created problem! We are all caught betwixt and between in this scandalous, senseless war on some drugs.
Our demented out-of-control drug policies' monetary and environmental costs are staggering and the human suffering is unconscionable. The destruction of the sacred family unit is one of the worst consequences of prohibition.
Help end this irrational policy by writing letters with the help of DrugSense.
Six drug former czars composed an OpEd for the Los Angeles Times, laying out their senseless opposition to Prop 19. Just say NO to drug czars and warriors! Just say NOW to Prop 19!
In Oregon a Citizens' Initiative Review panel voted in support of Measure 74.
Colorado voters will be busy this fall deciding a variety of local initiatives. Passage of one measure would allow "medical marijuana-infused products manufacturers within the City of Ouray. However, voters in at least seven other Counties could ban dispensaries all together!
While DrugSense provides this information for free, it's not free to produce. Please support their unique way of following ballot initiatives by making a generous donation. They are an educational 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so your contribution is both tax deductible and funds a great cause.
Go to these links for details concerning ballot initiatives in California, Oregon, and Colorado along with others in Arizona and South Dakota. Just say NO to any more wasted resources, unnecessary violence and destruction of lives and families! Just say NOW to Prop 19!
Volunteer for Online Phone Bank Training. Watch this video then go to YESon19.com and signed up. It is an easy process. You may call from any state.
"During my 18 years of police service I was dispatched to zero calls generated by the use of pot. Alcohol use generated some 1300, including murder, suicide, rape, child abuse, felonious, aggravated and simple assault/battery. Pot is a much safer drug than alcohol both for the user and those around them." Detective/Officer Howard Wooldridge (retired) Drug Policy Specialist at COP, CitizensOpposingProhibition, noted recently. Howard is in California now getting a lot of press and garnering support for Prop 19.
We have the factual information available. Let's construct science based drug policies about saving and rehabilitating instead of ruining lives. Drug treatment is at least five times less costly than prison. Change to ethical policy and show fiscal responsibility!
We are rebels with just cause, when we exercise our right to nullify bad laws like those brave jurors who refused to convict during the Fugitive Slave Act and until FDR said the Volstead Act was licked! Jury nullification is a constitutional power tool we the people pack.
I agree with Glenn Greenwald who wrote The Wars on Drugs and Terror: are mirror images! Tell Congress to be brave; win the war on terror by NOT being afraid
Morally bankrupt profiteers are destroying the American dream of self government, free of tyranny and oppression. The Constitution doesn't authorize Congress to subsidize industries or grant special favors for particular businesses. Many Legislators are outright servants of tyranny; good at ignoring the rule of law, history and science while catering to the needs of special interests but very bad at determining what is best or safer for the individual or society.
If you believe power corrupts Downsize DC recognizes your genius! Strike the root, downsize DC!
In National Geographic's Stress: Portrait of a Killer (2008TV-PG ) Stanford University neurobiologist Robert Sapolsky reveals just how dangerous prolonged exposure to stress can be and looks at the latest science to see what researchers are learning about this insidiously silent killer. He has studied baboon society for 30 years and compares their stress levels in the hierarchy of their social structure to those individuals in British civil service.
A most fascinating segment dealt with his first baboon troop ten years into the study when all alpha males died due to ingesting tuberculosis infected meat someone dumped in their territory. The remaining less aggressive males caused less stress being passed down the pecking order. This lower stress level remains in this baboon troop 20 years later.
Violent, hate filled, morally bankrupt, authoritarian warmongers are a different species than us, mere human beings. They use fear and propaganda to make us more accepting of their waste of our precious lives and resources. They are the opposite of true patriots; who believe in the American dream of self government and value public safety first!
Track your Senators' and Representative's votes by e-mail
Changing who's in charge will not affect much. The real cause of this huge quagmire of failed policy is the beast, big government, that money hungry beast, Uncle Sam! Ma Freedom tells it like it is! The beauty of it is when we focus on down-sizing our government we regain our roots of self-government and secure the blessings of liberty for future generations and ourselves.
Compiled and written by Colleen McCool
Thursday, September 23, 2010
A Powerful & Just Weapon
Almost always, through out history, the creative dedicated, nonviolent minority has made the world a better place.
"Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals. The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood." Martin Luther King, Jr. reminds us, "Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him. We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies."
Violent, hate filled, morally bankrupt, authoritarian warmongers are a different species than us, mere human beings. They use fear and propaganda to make us more accepting of their waste of our precious lives and resources. They are the opposite of true patriots; who believe in the American dream of self government and value public safety first! "We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."- MLK
Our flag is a symbol of liberty, justice and freedom! It is a beacon for hope in a troubled world. Don't let its reputation be tarnished by incidents of torture and other war crimes. Recapture the Flag by demanding a government that respects human rights, leadership that rejects all forms of corruption, and elected officials who fiercely challenge anyone who seeks to undermine the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. One of 2011 Rebels with Just Cause portraits goes to Bradley Manning for posting Afghanistan war diaries on wikileaks. It is not a crime to expose war crimes.
"An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law." - MLK. Marc Emery is our hero and wins the other 2012 portrait for taking a stand for justice against a morally bankrupt, violence triggering, nightmare policy.
Prohibition is ALWAYS evil, whether the contraband is people, drugs, arms, etc. Prohibition always attracts morally bankrupt, violent people to whom the contraband is just disposable inventory or evidence. A fellow reformer at Drug Policy Forum of Texas noted, "In the 1850s, one slaver ship captain was being pursued by a British naval vessel -- Britain had made transporting slaves illegal -- and he weighted down his cargo of over 350 people and threw them overboard so he wouldn't be captured with any evidence of smuggling!" Join the discussion!
Harassing the sick and dying is an un-American activity! It is overkill and morally bankrupt to arrest nonviolent people for making a safer health choice, cannabis or marijuana, compared to other medicinal/social drugs. The people believe in self-government and self-medication. "The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict. He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people. Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal." - MLK
Brutal, morally bankrupt, prohibition supports despicable people who sell drugs to children, recruit them to sell to their peers and arm them to kill the competition. Across America paramilitary drug raids trigger violence rather than lessen the risk. Again, overkill, to use such force on a nonviolent health issue. All this unconscionable bloodshed is on the hands of leadership as much as those who pulled the trigger or contributed to the endless bloody slaughter. It is a policy created problem! We are all caught betwixt and between in this scandalous reefer madness war on some drugs.
“The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.” - MLK The ravages of homemade meth can disappear like the deaths and blindness caused by bathtub gin ended after repeal of alcohol prohibition. Overdose deaths were unheard of before this war because overdoses were reported to medical personnel without fear of arrest.
"Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress." - MLK.
Why let murderers and other violent predators roam free, while we police nonviolent adult social, medicinal and religious drug use? Regulation, science based education and treating abuse as a medical problem is a better drug policy that increases public safety and harm reduction plus frees up billions in wasted funds to use incarcerating the violent and sexual predators.
Help end this irrational policy by writing letters with the help of DrugSense.
Six drug former czars composed an OpEd for the Los Angeles Times, laying out their senseless opposition to Prop 19. Just say NO to drug czars and warriors! Just say NOW to Prop 19!
In Oregon a Citizens' Initiative Review panel voted in support of Measure 74.
Colorado voters will be busy this fall deciding a variety of local initiatives. Passage of one measure would allow "medical marijuana-infused products manufacturers within the City of Ouray. However, voters in at least seven other Counties could ban dispensaries all together!
While DrugSense provides this information for free, it's not free to produce. Please support their unique way of following ballot initiatives by making a generous donation. They are an educational 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so your contribution is both tax deductible and funds a great cause.
Go to these links for details concerning ballot initiatives in California, Oregon, and Colorado along with others in Arizona and South Dakota. Just say NO to any more wasted resources, unnecessary violence and destruction of lives and families! Just say NOW to Prop 19!
"During my 18 years of police service I was dispatched to zero calls generated by the use of pot. Alcohol use generated some 1300, including murder, suicide, rape, child abuse, felonious, aggravated and simple assault/battery. Pot is a much safer drug than alcohol both for the user and those around them." Detective/Officer Howard Wooldridge (retired) Drug Policy Specialist at COP, CitizensOpposingProhibition, noted recently. Howard is in California now getting a lot of press and garnering support for Prop 19.
The best way to go after the cartel's cash cow (estimated at 70% of it) is to legalize marijuana sales globally. We have the factual information available. Let's construct science based drug policies about saving and rehabilitating instead of ruining lives. Drug treatment is at least five times less costly than prison. Change to ethical policy and show fiscal responsibility!
Now is the time to insist American warriors get their adrenaline rush catching murderers and other violent predators. I understand that it will not be possible to stop all murders and rapes. However, get tough on violent crime! Restore Justice, the guardian of liberty!
Folks in the Netherlands use marijuana, it is de facto legal there, at less than half the rate of Americans and they use cocaine and heroin even less than that. In fact, crime, drug use by teenagers, HIV, overdoses and heroin use all declined after Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001. The money the Portuguese are saving on law enforcement is used for education and medical treatment.
Asthmatic medical marijuana patient Chris Diaz faces up to life in prison for a half-ounce of marijuana and three grams of hash in Brown County. Quadriplegic medical marijuana patient Chris Cain also faces charges in Beaumont.
"You've got to be kidding me. You don't give drug addicts life in prison, so why would you do that to a patient with a legitimate recommendation from another state?" asks Stephen Betzen, director of the Texas Coalition for Compassionate Care, which is lobbying for a medical marijuana bill next year in the state legislature.
"It's critical that we develop a federal medical marijuana law so that people are not treated differently in Texas than in California, and patients who need this medicine in Texas should be allowed to use it without fear of arrest and prosecution. Americans for Safe Access is committed not only to encouraging states to pass medical marijuana laws irrespective of federal policy, but also to push the federal government to develop a policy that will treat patients equitably no matter where in the US they live," noted Kris Hermes, spokesman for ASA.
We are rebels with just cause, when we exercise our right to nullify bad laws like those brave jurors who refused to convict during the Fugitive Slave Act and until FDR said the Volstead Act was licked! Jury nullification is a constitutional power tool we the people pack.
Tim Stevens, 53, who uses medical marijuana to treat the symptoms of HIV won acquittal on marijuana possession charges in 2008 in Amarillo based on a “necessity defense.” - which requires the defendant to establish that an otherwise illegal act was necessary to avoid imminent harm more serious than the harm prevented by the law he or she broke, rarely been successful in Texas, but the jury took just 11 minutes to acquit.
The debate over medical marijuana or cannabis is really a scandalous controversy over whether this inexpensive, effective, safe, very easy to grow herb should be allowed to compete with expensive, dangerous, possibly fatal pharmaceuticals and social drugs for pennies on the dollar!
"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." - George Bernard Shaw. Morally bankrupt profiteers are destroying the American dream of self government, free of tyranny and oppression. The Constitution doesn't authorize Congress to subsidize industries or grant special favors for particular businesses. Many Legislators are outright servants of tyranny; good at ignoring the rule of law, history and science while catering to the needs of special interests but very bad at determining what is best or safer for the individual or society.
The wasted resources and the destruction of lives and families will continue as usual unless we change to a regulated, community-based policy using science-based education and treatment, a safer drug policy for the user and society.
One of the 2010 Rebel with Just Cause portraits goes to Willie Nelson for his passionate support for marijuana legalization. The other will be awarded to Daniel Ellsberg for the documentary "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers." The Oscar-nominated account of Pentagon insider, Ellsberg's daring endeavor to leak top-secret government papers that disclosed shocking truths about the Vietnam War and Nixon's presidency. They are our heroes of the decade, maybe the past century.
"Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity." King continues, "I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word."
All God's children rebel against authoritarian churches, parents and governments! Like Martin, I believe we the meek, the nonviolent, shall overcome the violent and inherit the earth. In the name of justice and humanity, the nonviolent path, respecting individual rights and ending our big bully foreign and domestic policies will make us safer.
Congress has voted to increase its own pay but decided Social Security recipients will not see a cost-of-living increase this year. Some recipients may in fact see a decrease in their checks from rising Medicare premiums. Our fearless leaders best figure out how to replace the funds they siphoned off SS in the past. November is fast approaching!
Track your Senators' and Representative's votes by e-mail
Changing who's in charge will not affect much. The real cause of this huge quagmire of failed policy is the beast, big government, that money hungry beast, Uncle Sam! Ma Freedom tells it like it is! The beauty of it is when we focus on down-sizing our government we regain our roots of self-government and secure the blessings of liberty for future generations and ourselves.
Compiled and written by Colleen McCool
"Nonviolence is a powerful and just weapon, which cuts without wounding and ennobles the man who wields it. It is a sword that heals. The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists who are dedicated to justice, peace and brotherhood." Martin Luther King, Jr. reminds us, "Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him. We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies."
Violent, hate filled, morally bankrupt, authoritarian warmongers are a different species than us, mere human beings. They use fear and propaganda to make us more accepting of their waste of our precious lives and resources. They are the opposite of true patriots; who believe in the American dream of self government and value public safety first! "We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools."- MLK
Our flag is a symbol of liberty, justice and freedom! It is a beacon for hope in a troubled world. Don't let its reputation be tarnished by incidents of torture and other war crimes. Recapture the Flag by demanding a government that respects human rights, leadership that rejects all forms of corruption, and elected officials who fiercely challenge anyone who seeks to undermine the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. One of 2011 Rebels with Just Cause portraits goes to Bradley Manning for posting Afghanistan war diaries on wikileaks. It is not a crime to expose war crimes.
"An individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for the law." - MLK. Marc Emery is our hero and wins the other 2012 portrait for taking a stand for justice against a morally bankrupt, violence triggering, nightmare policy.
Prohibition is ALWAYS evil, whether the contraband is people, drugs, arms, etc. Prohibition always attracts morally bankrupt, violent people to whom the contraband is just disposable inventory or evidence. A fellow reformer at Drug Policy Forum of Texas noted, "In the 1850s, one slaver ship captain was being pursued by a British naval vessel -- Britain had made transporting slaves illegal -- and he weighted down his cargo of over 350 people and threw them overboard so he wouldn't be captured with any evidence of smuggling!" Join the discussion!
Harassing the sick and dying is an un-American activity! It is overkill and morally bankrupt to arrest nonviolent people for making a safer health choice, cannabis or marijuana, compared to other medicinal/social drugs. The people believe in self-government and self-medication. "The hottest place in Hell is reserved for those who remain neutral in times of great moral conflict. He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it. The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people. Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal." - MLK
Brutal, morally bankrupt, prohibition supports despicable people who sell drugs to children, recruit them to sell to their peers and arm them to kill the competition. Across America paramilitary drug raids trigger violence rather than lessen the risk. Again, overkill, to use such force on a nonviolent health issue. All this unconscionable bloodshed is on the hands of leadership as much as those who pulled the trigger or contributed to the endless bloody slaughter. It is a policy created problem! We are all caught betwixt and between in this scandalous reefer madness war on some drugs.
“The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.” - MLK The ravages of homemade meth can disappear like the deaths and blindness caused by bathtub gin ended after repeal of alcohol prohibition. Overdose deaths were unheard of before this war because overdoses were reported to medical personnel without fear of arrest.
"Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress." - MLK.
Why let murderers and other violent predators roam free, while we police nonviolent adult social, medicinal and religious drug use? Regulation, science based education and treating abuse as a medical problem is a better drug policy that increases public safety and harm reduction plus frees up billions in wasted funds to use incarcerating the violent and sexual predators.
Help end this irrational policy by writing letters with the help of DrugSense.
Six drug former czars composed an OpEd for the Los Angeles Times, laying out their senseless opposition to Prop 19. Just say NO to drug czars and warriors! Just say NOW to Prop 19!
In Oregon a Citizens' Initiative Review panel voted in support of Measure 74.
Colorado voters will be busy this fall deciding a variety of local initiatives. Passage of one measure would allow "medical marijuana-infused products manufacturers within the City of Ouray. However, voters in at least seven other Counties could ban dispensaries all together!
While DrugSense provides this information for free, it's not free to produce. Please support their unique way of following ballot initiatives by making a generous donation. They are an educational 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so your contribution is both tax deductible and funds a great cause.
Go to these links for details concerning ballot initiatives in California, Oregon, and Colorado along with others in Arizona and South Dakota. Just say NO to any more wasted resources, unnecessary violence and destruction of lives and families! Just say NOW to Prop 19!
"During my 18 years of police service I was dispatched to zero calls generated by the use of pot. Alcohol use generated some 1300, including murder, suicide, rape, child abuse, felonious, aggravated and simple assault/battery. Pot is a much safer drug than alcohol both for the user and those around them." Detective/Officer Howard Wooldridge (retired) Drug Policy Specialist at COP, CitizensOpposingProhibition, noted recently. Howard is in California now getting a lot of press and garnering support for Prop 19.
The best way to go after the cartel's cash cow (estimated at 70% of it) is to legalize marijuana sales globally. We have the factual information available. Let's construct science based drug policies about saving and rehabilitating instead of ruining lives. Drug treatment is at least five times less costly than prison. Change to ethical policy and show fiscal responsibility!
Now is the time to insist American warriors get their adrenaline rush catching murderers and other violent predators. I understand that it will not be possible to stop all murders and rapes. However, get tough on violent crime! Restore Justice, the guardian of liberty!
Folks in the Netherlands use marijuana, it is de facto legal there, at less than half the rate of Americans and they use cocaine and heroin even less than that. In fact, crime, drug use by teenagers, HIV, overdoses and heroin use all declined after Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001. The money the Portuguese are saving on law enforcement is used for education and medical treatment.
Asthmatic medical marijuana patient Chris Diaz faces up to life in prison for a half-ounce of marijuana and three grams of hash in Brown County. Quadriplegic medical marijuana patient Chris Cain also faces charges in Beaumont.
"You've got to be kidding me. You don't give drug addicts life in prison, so why would you do that to a patient with a legitimate recommendation from another state?" asks Stephen Betzen, director of the Texas Coalition for Compassionate Care, which is lobbying for a medical marijuana bill next year in the state legislature.
"It's critical that we develop a federal medical marijuana law so that people are not treated differently in Texas than in California, and patients who need this medicine in Texas should be allowed to use it without fear of arrest and prosecution. Americans for Safe Access is committed not only to encouraging states to pass medical marijuana laws irrespective of federal policy, but also to push the federal government to develop a policy that will treat patients equitably no matter where in the US they live," noted Kris Hermes, spokesman for ASA.
We are rebels with just cause, when we exercise our right to nullify bad laws like those brave jurors who refused to convict during the Fugitive Slave Act and until FDR said the Volstead Act was licked! Jury nullification is a constitutional power tool we the people pack.
Tim Stevens, 53, who uses medical marijuana to treat the symptoms of HIV won acquittal on marijuana possession charges in 2008 in Amarillo based on a “necessity defense.” - which requires the defendant to establish that an otherwise illegal act was necessary to avoid imminent harm more serious than the harm prevented by the law he or she broke, rarely been successful in Texas, but the jury took just 11 minutes to acquit.
The debate over medical marijuana or cannabis is really a scandalous controversy over whether this inexpensive, effective, safe, very easy to grow herb should be allowed to compete with expensive, dangerous, possibly fatal pharmaceuticals and social drugs for pennies on the dollar!
"A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul." - George Bernard Shaw. Morally bankrupt profiteers are destroying the American dream of self government, free of tyranny and oppression. The Constitution doesn't authorize Congress to subsidize industries or grant special favors for particular businesses. Many Legislators are outright servants of tyranny; good at ignoring the rule of law, history and science while catering to the needs of special interests but very bad at determining what is best or safer for the individual or society.
The wasted resources and the destruction of lives and families will continue as usual unless we change to a regulated, community-based policy using science-based education and treatment, a safer drug policy for the user and society.
One of the 2010 Rebel with Just Cause portraits goes to Willie Nelson for his passionate support for marijuana legalization. The other will be awarded to Daniel Ellsberg for the documentary "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers." The Oscar-nominated account of Pentagon insider, Ellsberg's daring endeavor to leak top-secret government papers that disclosed shocking truths about the Vietnam War and Nixon's presidency. They are our heroes of the decade, maybe the past century.
"Every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity." King continues, "I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality... I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word."
All God's children rebel against authoritarian churches, parents and governments! Like Martin, I believe we the meek, the nonviolent, shall overcome the violent and inherit the earth. In the name of justice and humanity, the nonviolent path, respecting individual rights and ending our big bully foreign and domestic policies will make us safer.
Congress has voted to increase its own pay but decided Social Security recipients will not see a cost-of-living increase this year. Some recipients may in fact see a decrease in their checks from rising Medicare premiums. Our fearless leaders best figure out how to replace the funds they siphoned off SS in the past. November is fast approaching!
Track your Senators' and Representative's votes by e-mail
Changing who's in charge will not affect much. The real cause of this huge quagmire of failed policy is the beast, big government, that money hungry beast, Uncle Sam! Ma Freedom tells it like it is! The beauty of it is when we focus on down-sizing our government we regain our roots of self-government and secure the blessings of liberty for future generations and ourselves.
Compiled and written by Colleen McCool
Saturday, July 31, 2010
VOTE Out Morally Bankrupt Warmongers & Empire Engineers!
How about this decades Pentagon Papers! I hope some more whistle-blowers come forward. Wikileaks is awesome. We need transparency not secrets. Morally bankrupt empire builders and warmongers promote big government and the destruction of the American dream of self government free of tyranny and oppression.
Have you watched the Oscar-nominated 2009 account of Pentagon insider, Ellsberg's daring endeavor to leak top-secret government papers that disclosed shocking truths about the Vietnam War and Nixon's presidency? "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers." I was thinking we need someone like Daniel right now and like a dream come true here's Wikileaks. These reports show that the US is literally funding both sides of the war in Afghanistan—making it clearer than ever that Afghanistan is a quagmire. Contact your Representative demanding a real exit strategy!
No fear! Be brave, end the terror by changing our intrusive, big-bully policies, both foreign and domestic. The monetary and environmental costs are staggering and the human suffering unconscionable.
Let's play POP go the Weasels! Vote them all out in November except those few who have shown by their voting record to stand for the Constitution and limited government. A clear message needs to be sent that we won't keep lethargic, morally bankrupt, servants of tyranny in office.
Wake up leadership! Educate the powerful. Don't vote for the incumbent unless the record shows they are for limited government. No more servants of tyranny, elect true servants of the people! Help send the message to any servant of big government politician, that we're tired of their corruption, propaganda, covert operations and cover ups!
"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things bought and sold are legislators." -- P. J. O'Rourke The free market is a more powerful and efficient regulator than government. Let ethics and the free market rule!
Incumbent politicians support campaign finance laws, like the DISCLOSE Act because these laws kill your ability to fire and replace them. Media companies also love these laws because they cripple your ability to be your own media, by joining with others to fund political advertising campaigns.
The Establishment Protection Act (a much more fitting name for DISCLOSE) will infringe on our privacy, limit our right to free speech, and silence Drug Policy Reform, TEA Party, Downsize DC, Campaign for Liberty and like-minded organizations that hold big government's servants of tyranny accountable.
Please, defend the First Amendment. Oppose the Disclose Act (H.R. 5175/S.
3295)and all attempts to limit our free speech. Educate the powerful!
All servant of big government who are voting members of the Legislature must be morally bankrupt. The US Postal Service, Social Security, Fannie Mae, the War on Poverty, Medicare, Medicaid, Freddie Mac and the Department of Energy are all broken, failed public policies. Every "government service," shoved down our throats, has failed in every way except overspending our tax dollars. We can not trust big government to run healthcare!
The DEA and FDA, are more failed government agencies. Our DEA overseers have harassed the sick and dying, shamed and destroyed families, locked up and killed many (including enforcement) over one of the safest therapeutically active plants known to man, cannabis. While FDA"overseers"allowed more pharmaceutical killers on the market, suppressed the truth about cannabis and failed to grant the terminally ill access to investigational drugs. Both agencies exacerbate problems
instead of solving them. They should be disbanded.
The US House of Representatives has unanimously passed bipartisan legislation sponsored by Rep. William Delahunt (D-MA) which would create a national commission to study the US criminal justice system and make recommendations for reform. It will surely make recommendations for reducing incarceration, eliminating racial and gender disparities, improving reentry efforts, and expanding access to substance abuse treatment, mental health services and health care.
Drug Policy Alliance urges the Senators to quickly pass the bill introduced by Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA). Restore Justice, the guardian of liberty! The Senator stated, “either we have the most evil people in the world or we are doing something wrong with the way we approach the issue of criminal justice.”
“It is a sign of how quickly the tide has turned against punitive criminal justice policies that this bill passed without opposition,” said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. “Prisons are overflowing at great taxpayer expense, in large part because of the failed war on drugs, and members of Congress are finally saying enough is enough, we need ideas for reform.”
There was bipartisan support this week for dramatic change to federal sentencing guidelines for possession of crack cocaine, a major step toward correcting the lopsided imprisonment of blacks for drug offenses. Clemency should be given for those now in prison under the old law.
Veterans in states where medical marijuana is legal may use it without getting thrown out of Veterans Administration pain treatment programs, a life saving victory!
Drug treatment is at least five times less costly than prison. Arresting nonviolent people for making a safer health choice, Cannabis, compared to other medicinal/social drugs is scandalous reefer madness. The people believe in self-government and self-medication.Jury nullification is a Constitutional power tool we the people pack.
Prohibition supports despicable people who sell drugs to children, recruit them to sell to their peers and arm them to kill the competition. Across America paramilitary drug raids trigger violence rather than lessen the risk. It is called, "Overkill" to use such force on a nonviolent health issue. All this unconscionable bloodshed is on the hands of leadership as much as those who pulled the trigger or did the actual butchering and torturing. It is a policy created problem.
Folks in the Netherlands use marijuana,it is de facto legal there, at less than half the rate of Americans. They use cocaine and heroin even less than that. In fact, crime, drug use by teenagers, HIV, overdoses and heroin use all declined after Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001. The money the Portuguese are saving on law enforcement is being used for education and medical treatment.
According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, 23 million suffer from substance abuse or dependency. Over 18 million of those abuse alcohol. Legal substances: pharmaceuticals, alcohol and tobacco trigger problems more severe in their adverse consequences than addiction to cocaine, heroin or marijuana according to our own ONDCP. Morally bankrupt profiteers are destroying the American dream of self government, free of tyranny and oppression.
Use of illegal drugs has increased significantly during the drug war, use of tobacco has decreased due to truth in education and infomercials about this killer. True science based drug education allows everyone to make better health decisions.
The wasted resources and the destruction of lives and families will continue as usual unless we allow nonviolent adults to make their own health decisions and offer science-based education and treatment.
“[M]arijuana was by far the most commonly used (illicit) drug, but individuals who used marijuana had a low prevalence of drug-related ED visits,” according to an analysis published online by the American Journal of Emergency Medicine. Many previous studies have reported that the use of marijuana or cannabis was inversely associated with injuries requiring hospitalization.
"During my 18 years of police service I was dispatched to zero calls generated by the use of pot. Alcohol use generated some 1300, including murder, suicide, rape, child abuse, felonious, aggravated and simple assault/battery. Pot is a much safer drug than alcohol both for the user and those around them." Detective/Officer Howard Wooldridge (retired) Drug Policy Specialist at COP, CitizensOpposingProhibition, noted recently.
He implores fellow officers, "We will arrest a lot more pedophiles, when detectives are not flying around in helicopters looking for green plants. Road patrol will arrest more DUIs, when they don't have their heads buried in some kid's seat looking for a baggie. No question that marijuana prohibition reduces public safety. Our job is public safety, not personal safety."
Now is the time to insist American warriors get their adrenaline rush catching murderers and other violent predators. Regulation, science based education and treating abuse as a medical problem is a better drug policy that increases public safety and harm reduction plus frees up billions in wasted funds to use incarcerating the violent and sexual predators. Get tough on violent crime!
One of my 2010 Rebel with Just Cause portraits will be awarded to Daniel Ellsberg . The other goes to Willie Nelson for his passionate support for marijuana legalization. They are our heroes of the decade, maybe the past century.
You can see the International Drug Policy: Animated Report 2009.
The web has enormous potential for exposing truth, forcing major news media to become the real watchdogs they are meant to be instead of government/corporate propaganda machines. It is the fastest growing communications medium in the history of the world. A powerful tool, a window of opportunity, in our war of good over evil; the Internet continues to revolutionize the way we communicate and has enormous potential for reshaping the political process.
When ethics rule with modern unbiased, science based statistical reporting our worries are over. We can see where our laws are causing more harm than good and change accordingly. Empirical statistical evidence strongly shows that a republic, the American form of government, leads to less internal violence and democide. Democide is a term coined by political scientist R. J. Rummel in his book, DEATH by GOVERNMENT to describe "the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide and mass murder."
Track your Senators' and Representative's votes by e-mail
Changing who's in charge will not affect much. The real cause of this huge quagmire of failed policy is the beast, big government, that money hungry beast, Uncle Sam! Ma Freedom tells it like it is! The beauty of it is when we focus on down-sizing our government we regain our roots of self-government and secure the blessings of liberty for future generations and ourselves.
Compiled and written by Colleen McCool
Have you watched the Oscar-nominated 2009 account of Pentagon insider, Ellsberg's daring endeavor to leak top-secret government papers that disclosed shocking truths about the Vietnam War and Nixon's presidency? "The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers." I was thinking we need someone like Daniel right now and like a dream come true here's Wikileaks. These reports show that the US is literally funding both sides of the war in Afghanistan—making it clearer than ever that Afghanistan is a quagmire. Contact your Representative demanding a real exit strategy!
No fear! Be brave, end the terror by changing our intrusive, big-bully policies, both foreign and domestic. The monetary and environmental costs are staggering and the human suffering unconscionable.
Let's play POP go the Weasels! Vote them all out in November except those few who have shown by their voting record to stand for the Constitution and limited government. A clear message needs to be sent that we won't keep lethargic, morally bankrupt, servants of tyranny in office.
Wake up leadership! Educate the powerful. Don't vote for the incumbent unless the record shows they are for limited government. No more servants of tyranny, elect true servants of the people! Help send the message to any servant of big government politician, that we're tired of their corruption, propaganda, covert operations and cover ups!
"When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things bought and sold are legislators." -- P. J. O'Rourke The free market is a more powerful and efficient regulator than government. Let ethics and the free market rule!
Incumbent politicians support campaign finance laws, like the DISCLOSE Act because these laws kill your ability to fire and replace them. Media companies also love these laws because they cripple your ability to be your own media, by joining with others to fund political advertising campaigns.
The Establishment Protection Act (a much more fitting name for DISCLOSE) will infringe on our privacy, limit our right to free speech, and silence Drug Policy Reform, TEA Party, Downsize DC, Campaign for Liberty and like-minded organizations that hold big government's servants of tyranny accountable.
Please, defend the First Amendment. Oppose the Disclose Act (H.R. 5175/S.
3295)and all attempts to limit our free speech. Educate the powerful!
All servant of big government who are voting members of the Legislature must be morally bankrupt. The US Postal Service, Social Security, Fannie Mae, the War on Poverty, Medicare, Medicaid, Freddie Mac and the Department of Energy are all broken, failed public policies. Every "government service," shoved down our throats, has failed in every way except overspending our tax dollars. We can not trust big government to run healthcare!
The DEA and FDA, are more failed government agencies. Our DEA overseers have harassed the sick and dying, shamed and destroyed families, locked up and killed many (including enforcement) over one of the safest therapeutically active plants known to man, cannabis. While FDA"overseers"allowed more pharmaceutical killers on the market, suppressed the truth about cannabis and failed to grant the terminally ill access to investigational drugs. Both agencies exacerbate problems
instead of solving them. They should be disbanded.
The US House of Representatives has unanimously passed bipartisan legislation sponsored by Rep. William Delahunt (D-MA) which would create a national commission to study the US criminal justice system and make recommendations for reform. It will surely make recommendations for reducing incarceration, eliminating racial and gender disparities, improving reentry efforts, and expanding access to substance abuse treatment, mental health services and health care.
Drug Policy Alliance urges the Senators to quickly pass the bill introduced by Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA). Restore Justice, the guardian of liberty! The Senator stated, “either we have the most evil people in the world or we are doing something wrong with the way we approach the issue of criminal justice.”
“It is a sign of how quickly the tide has turned against punitive criminal justice policies that this bill passed without opposition,” said Bill Piper, director of national affairs for the Drug Policy Alliance. “Prisons are overflowing at great taxpayer expense, in large part because of the failed war on drugs, and members of Congress are finally saying enough is enough, we need ideas for reform.”
There was bipartisan support this week for dramatic change to federal sentencing guidelines for possession of crack cocaine, a major step toward correcting the lopsided imprisonment of blacks for drug offenses. Clemency should be given for those now in prison under the old law.
Veterans in states where medical marijuana is legal may use it without getting thrown out of Veterans Administration pain treatment programs, a life saving victory!
Drug treatment is at least five times less costly than prison. Arresting nonviolent people for making a safer health choice, Cannabis, compared to other medicinal/social drugs is scandalous reefer madness. The people believe in self-government and self-medication.Jury nullification is a Constitutional power tool we the people pack.
Prohibition supports despicable people who sell drugs to children, recruit them to sell to their peers and arm them to kill the competition. Across America paramilitary drug raids trigger violence rather than lessen the risk. It is called, "Overkill" to use such force on a nonviolent health issue. All this unconscionable bloodshed is on the hands of leadership as much as those who pulled the trigger or did the actual butchering and torturing. It is a policy created problem.
Folks in the Netherlands use marijuana,it is de facto legal there, at less than half the rate of Americans. They use cocaine and heroin even less than that. In fact, crime, drug use by teenagers, HIV, overdoses and heroin use all declined after Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001. The money the Portuguese are saving on law enforcement is being used for education and medical treatment.
According to the Office of National Drug Control Policy, 23 million suffer from substance abuse or dependency. Over 18 million of those abuse alcohol. Legal substances: pharmaceuticals, alcohol and tobacco trigger problems more severe in their adverse consequences than addiction to cocaine, heroin or marijuana according to our own ONDCP. Morally bankrupt profiteers are destroying the American dream of self government, free of tyranny and oppression.
Use of illegal drugs has increased significantly during the drug war, use of tobacco has decreased due to truth in education and infomercials about this killer. True science based drug education allows everyone to make better health decisions.
The wasted resources and the destruction of lives and families will continue as usual unless we allow nonviolent adults to make their own health decisions and offer science-based education and treatment.
“[M]arijuana was by far the most commonly used (illicit) drug, but individuals who used marijuana had a low prevalence of drug-related ED visits,” according to an analysis published online by the American Journal of Emergency Medicine. Many previous studies have reported that the use of marijuana or cannabis was inversely associated with injuries requiring hospitalization.
"During my 18 years of police service I was dispatched to zero calls generated by the use of pot. Alcohol use generated some 1300, including murder, suicide, rape, child abuse, felonious, aggravated and simple assault/battery. Pot is a much safer drug than alcohol both for the user and those around them." Detective/Officer Howard Wooldridge (retired) Drug Policy Specialist at COP, CitizensOpposingProhibition, noted recently.
He implores fellow officers, "We will arrest a lot more pedophiles, when detectives are not flying around in helicopters looking for green plants. Road patrol will arrest more DUIs, when they don't have their heads buried in some kid's seat looking for a baggie. No question that marijuana prohibition reduces public safety. Our job is public safety, not personal safety."
Now is the time to insist American warriors get their adrenaline rush catching murderers and other violent predators. Regulation, science based education and treating abuse as a medical problem is a better drug policy that increases public safety and harm reduction plus frees up billions in wasted funds to use incarcerating the violent and sexual predators. Get tough on violent crime!
One of my 2010 Rebel with Just Cause portraits will be awarded to Daniel Ellsberg . The other goes to Willie Nelson for his passionate support for marijuana legalization. They are our heroes of the decade, maybe the past century.
You can see the International Drug Policy: Animated Report 2009.
The web has enormous potential for exposing truth, forcing major news media to become the real watchdogs they are meant to be instead of government/corporate propaganda machines. It is the fastest growing communications medium in the history of the world. A powerful tool, a window of opportunity, in our war of good over evil; the Internet continues to revolutionize the way we communicate and has enormous potential for reshaping the political process.
When ethics rule with modern unbiased, science based statistical reporting our worries are over. We can see where our laws are causing more harm than good and change accordingly. Empirical statistical evidence strongly shows that a republic, the American form of government, leads to less internal violence and democide. Democide is a term coined by political scientist R. J. Rummel in his book, DEATH by GOVERNMENT to describe "the murder of any person or people by a government, including genocide, politicide and mass murder."
Track your Senators' and Representative's votes by e-mail
Changing who's in charge will not affect much. The real cause of this huge quagmire of failed policy is the beast, big government, that money hungry beast, Uncle Sam! Ma Freedom tells it like it is! The beauty of it is when we focus on down-sizing our government we regain our roots of self-government and secure the blessings of liberty for future generations and ourselves.
Compiled and written by Colleen McCool
Thursday, June 24, 2010
The Rape of Justice!
The rape of justice, the guardian of liberty is an assault on the American dream! Big government or the establishment ideology of unethical capitalism and welfare-warfare statism is an assault on the American dream. Morally bankrupt profiteers are well on their way to killing the American dream of self government free of big government tyranny and oppression! Let ethics and the free market rule!
DISCLOSE Act proponents want to reduce political expression by groups that represent anti-Statist, pro self-government ideals and kill our ability to fire and replace incumbents. Please, oppose this bill!
"The House Judiciary held a ultra sober two hour hearing on the problem of rape kits not being opened across the USA. The Members made nice speeches about the problem but no action is expected. Recall NPR had an excellent report 18 months ago about the 400,000 unopened kits. And the lawmakers have snoozed.
All witnesses agreed that the number of kits untested in unknown. Kits are left at hospitals (never picked up), evidence rooms and labs. Police departments are reluctant to find out how many they have, due to adverse publicity. Detroit PD has about 15,000 untested. Los Angeles has about 12,000. New York City recently worked off a 17,000 kit backlog…the only bright spot in testimony.
It costs about $900 to 1000 to process a kit. At 50% of police depts, forensic DNA evidence is NOT a priority.
Mariska Hargitay, the star actress from the TV show Law & Order – SUV was especially effective in pointing out how society places so little value on women. The victims (thousands of whom have written her) interpret not testing, as a sign that the police and society do not care about rape. IMHO the victims are correct." Detective/Officer Howard Wooldridge (retired) Drug Policy Specialist at COP, CitizensOpposingProhibition, blogged recently. "NOTE: while testifying, she cracked emotionally for about 10 seconds….very moving."
Sexual predator treatment squeezes state budgets as do rape kit testing.
Now is the time for American lovers to unite and insist American warriors get their adrenaline rush catching murderers and other violent predators. Regulation, science based education and treating abuse as a medical problem is a better drug policy that increases public safety and harm reduction plus frees up billions in wasted funds to use incarcerating the violent and sexual predators.
The only real wealth is well being and happiness. We, the nonviolent members of the pro-better-world society, far out number the violent evil doers. Get tough on violent crime! Take away violent offenders' and sexual predators' ability to reproduce. Aggressive behavior can be bred out of us as it has been done in dogs. We shall overcome the violent and inherit the earth.
Drug treatment is at least five times less costly than prison. Arresting nonviolent people for making a safer health choice, Cannabis, compared to other medicinal/social drugs is scandalous reefer madness. The people believe in self-government and self-medication. Jury nullification is a Constitutional power tool we the people pack.
Cannabis oil is that cure all some of our ancestors used! Thank God, they did not let us all be brain washed into forgetfulness about the wonder of it! Oooops they spilled the beans, in spite of the oppression promoted by medical profiteers.
Prohibition has become a war on parental authority, local government decision making and free speech. Current policies destroy families and official lawlessness rules. Alcohol makes domestic violence 8 xs more likely, cannabis does not. Taking children out of homes of nonviolent cannabis users and placing them in homes in which alcohol is the drug of choice is discrimination and a policy bordering on insanity! Meanwhile, damage from fetal alcohol syndrome fills our prisons with folks who can not comprehend the consequences for their actions..
Taking property from people who have made a safer health choice is legalized discrimination and extortion! States seized $1.52 billion in 2007 End asset forfeiture! We owe reparations to people for all this tyranny.
"I believe the most important facet of American life is our freedom. Life in America should be free from discrimination for every social class, religion, and race. The police in America are charged with the protection of our citizens, not discrimination. Our courts protect our citizens, not encourage their oppression. It is the responsibility of the Federal Government to protect the citizens from these harms and we, the people, have the requirement of holding them accountable.
It is my hope that as my home state of Texas is thrust into the legalization debate that our legislators take into consideration the need to reduce the harm associated with discrimination against its citizens. We need to reduce the harm with sending trained law enforcement after nonviolent offenders. We need to reduce the harm by reducing the number of nonviolent offenders we send to prison. But most importantly, we need to reduce the harms associated with youthful indiscretions and protect our children." - a retired member of our Armed Forces, Larry Talley.
Americans deserve policies that build family bonds instead of destroying them. Our children deserve an education free of lies, half truths, innuendoes and any similar government propaganda.
"Freedom to make bad decisions is inherent in the freedom to make good ones. If we are only free to make good decisions, we are not really free." US Congressman Ron Paul notes. Take action now, join the Campaign For Liberty!
We just have to love our kids, teach them that their body is the temple for their soul and hope they make the right choices. You can't live their lives for them; they will not allow it. Independent individuals will eventually throw off the bonds of tyrannical parents and big government tyranny and oppression
Across America paramilitary drug raids trigger violence rather than lessen the risk. It is called, "Overkill" to use such force on a nonviolent health issue. This unconscionable bloodshed is on the hands of leadership as much as those who pulled the trigger or did the actual butchering and torturing. It is a policy created problem.
Michael Phelps has won 14 career Olympic gold medals, the most by any Olympian. Last I checked, Phelps has broken thirty-seven world records in swimming. Neither the USA Swim team nor Kellogg's cereal and munchie company had a problem with him despite an alcohol-related arrest in 2004. Michael has nothing to apologize for but Kellogg's and the Swim Team should reconsider their decision to punish him for making a safer social and health choice to simply celebrate with friends.
The horrors of meth are triggered by our insane policy. Since the 1930s methamphetamine has been safely manufactured as a legal drug. Today it is routinely prescribed for children with ADHD. Only when its manufacture is forced underground does it become dangerous. Just as legal distilleries make whiskey safely now, yet during the Noble Experiment from which we learned nothing, small illegal stills poisoned users or exploded and burned, causing major public safety problems. Moonshine stills burned down forests and polluted rivers during our first failed prohibition.
Dallas is one of six main sites for a nationwide electronic town meeting entitled “America Speaks: Our Budget, Our Economy” on Saturday, June 26, 2010 from 10:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. at the Dallas Convention Center. (Lunch and childcare will be provided.) Thousands of Americans across the country linked by satellite and webcast will participate in an unprecedented national discussion to help find solutions to our budget deficit and the national debt. Find common ground on some of the tough choices our country needs to make about spending, taxes and the role of government.
Please support the 84 congressional candidates from every political party who have signed a statement against war spending The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost Americans over $1 trillion in direct costs, and over $3 trillion altogether.
Stall war funding for economic relief! At a time when our national debt exceeds $13 trillion, we can no longer afford these wars. It's time for Congress to reject any funding except to bring all our troops safely home.
Ron Kovic presented Tom Cruise with his Bronze Star medal on the final day of filming Born on the Fourth of July for his "courageous portrayal of the true horrors of war." Time Magazine reported that Oliver Stone said, "He gave it to Tom for bravery, for having gone through this experience in hell as much as any person can without actually having been there."
Kovic wrote his autobiography in less than two months. "I wrote all night long, seven days a week, single space, no paragraphs, front and back of the pages, pounding the keys so hard the tips of my fingers would hurt. I couldn't stop writing, and I remember feeling more alive than I had ever felt. Convinced that I was destined to die young, I struggled to leave something of meaning behind, to rise above the darkness and despair. I wanted people to understand. I wanted to share with them as nakedly and openly and intimately as possible what I had gone through, what I had endured. I wanted them to know what it really meant to be in a war — to be shot and wounded, to be fighting for my life on the intensive care ward — not the myth we had grown up believing. I wanted people to know about the hospitals and the enema room, about why I had become opposed to the war, why I had grown more and more committed to peace and nonviolence."
Ron's story was also the inspiration for the novel and movie, Coming Home.
"The scar will always be there, a living reminder of that war, but it has also become something beautiful now, something of faith and hope and love. I have been given the opportunity to move through that dark night of the soul to a new shore, to gain an understanding, a knowledge, and entirely different vision. I now believe I have suffered for a reason and in many ways I have found that reason in my commitment to peace and nonviolence. My life has been a blessing in disguise, even with the pain and great difficulty that my physical disability continues to bring. It is a blessing to speak on behalf of peace, to be able to reach such a great number of people." Ron Kovic, born July 4, 1946.
As we celebrate Independence Day, please consider those heroes, who have given their limbs and lives for this country, sacrificed and died for freedom, for making this world a better place, will have died in vain; if the American dream of self-government free of tyranny and big government oppression dies.
No fear! Be brave, end the terror by changing our intrusive, big-bully policies, both foreign and domestic. The monetary and environmental costs are staggering and the human suffering unconscionable.
True patriots, lovers of liberty, insist morally bankrupt US warriors are held responsible for torture and wars abandoning our ideal of nonintervention. The world knows they violated international law. They are traitors to the republic for which we stand. We will be derelict in our duties to maintain an in fact, free republic if we don't insist on it.
Our founders knew big government would always mean a gang of evil doers, often hiding tyranny under the guise of good intentions. Sometimes a great notion comes along that can save a great nation!
The American dream is, "for the power of love to overcome the love of power." We will overcome! Founded in self-government or the freedom philosophy, both economic and personal, we will overcome!
Track your Senators' and Representative's votes by e-mail
Changing who's in charge will not affect much. The real cause of this huge quagmire of failed policy is the beast, big government, that money hungry beast, Uncle Sam! Ma Freedom tells it like it is! The beauty of it is when we focus on down-sizing our government we regain our roots of self-government and secure the blessings of liberty for future generations and ourselves.
Compiled and written by Colleen McCool
DISCLOSE Act proponents want to reduce political expression by groups that represent anti-Statist, pro self-government ideals and kill our ability to fire and replace incumbents. Please, oppose this bill!
"The House Judiciary held a ultra sober two hour hearing on the problem of rape kits not being opened across the USA. The Members made nice speeches about the problem but no action is expected. Recall NPR had an excellent report 18 months ago about the 400,000 unopened kits. And the lawmakers have snoozed.
All witnesses agreed that the number of kits untested in unknown. Kits are left at hospitals (never picked up), evidence rooms and labs. Police departments are reluctant to find out how many they have, due to adverse publicity. Detroit PD has about 15,000 untested. Los Angeles has about 12,000. New York City recently worked off a 17,000 kit backlog…the only bright spot in testimony.
It costs about $900 to 1000 to process a kit. At 50% of police depts, forensic DNA evidence is NOT a priority.
Mariska Hargitay, the star actress from the TV show Law & Order – SUV was especially effective in pointing out how society places so little value on women. The victims (thousands of whom have written her) interpret not testing, as a sign that the police and society do not care about rape. IMHO the victims are correct." Detective/Officer Howard Wooldridge (retired) Drug Policy Specialist at COP, CitizensOpposingProhibition, blogged recently. "NOTE: while testifying, she cracked emotionally for about 10 seconds….very moving."
Sexual predator treatment squeezes state budgets as do rape kit testing.
Now is the time for American lovers to unite and insist American warriors get their adrenaline rush catching murderers and other violent predators. Regulation, science based education and treating abuse as a medical problem is a better drug policy that increases public safety and harm reduction plus frees up billions in wasted funds to use incarcerating the violent and sexual predators.
The only real wealth is well being and happiness. We, the nonviolent members of the pro-better-world society, far out number the violent evil doers. Get tough on violent crime! Take away violent offenders' and sexual predators' ability to reproduce. Aggressive behavior can be bred out of us as it has been done in dogs. We shall overcome the violent and inherit the earth.
Drug treatment is at least five times less costly than prison. Arresting nonviolent people for making a safer health choice, Cannabis, compared to other medicinal/social drugs is scandalous reefer madness. The people believe in self-government and self-medication. Jury nullification is a Constitutional power tool we the people pack.
Cannabis oil is that cure all some of our ancestors used! Thank God, they did not let us all be brain washed into forgetfulness about the wonder of it! Oooops they spilled the beans, in spite of the oppression promoted by medical profiteers.
Prohibition has become a war on parental authority, local government decision making and free speech. Current policies destroy families and official lawlessness rules. Alcohol makes domestic violence 8 xs more likely, cannabis does not. Taking children out of homes of nonviolent cannabis users and placing them in homes in which alcohol is the drug of choice is discrimination and a policy bordering on insanity! Meanwhile, damage from fetal alcohol syndrome fills our prisons with folks who can not comprehend the consequences for their actions..
Taking property from people who have made a safer health choice is legalized discrimination and extortion! States seized $1.52 billion in 2007 End asset forfeiture! We owe reparations to people for all this tyranny.
"I believe the most important facet of American life is our freedom. Life in America should be free from discrimination for every social class, religion, and race. The police in America are charged with the protection of our citizens, not discrimination. Our courts protect our citizens, not encourage their oppression. It is the responsibility of the Federal Government to protect the citizens from these harms and we, the people, have the requirement of holding them accountable.
It is my hope that as my home state of Texas is thrust into the legalization debate that our legislators take into consideration the need to reduce the harm associated with discrimination against its citizens. We need to reduce the harm with sending trained law enforcement after nonviolent offenders. We need to reduce the harm by reducing the number of nonviolent offenders we send to prison. But most importantly, we need to reduce the harms associated with youthful indiscretions and protect our children." - a retired member of our Armed Forces, Larry Talley.
Americans deserve policies that build family bonds instead of destroying them. Our children deserve an education free of lies, half truths, innuendoes and any similar government propaganda.
"Freedom to make bad decisions is inherent in the freedom to make good ones. If we are only free to make good decisions, we are not really free." US Congressman Ron Paul notes. Take action now, join the Campaign For Liberty!
We just have to love our kids, teach them that their body is the temple for their soul and hope they make the right choices. You can't live their lives for them; they will not allow it. Independent individuals will eventually throw off the bonds of tyrannical parents and big government tyranny and oppression
Across America paramilitary drug raids trigger violence rather than lessen the risk. It is called, "Overkill" to use such force on a nonviolent health issue. This unconscionable bloodshed is on the hands of leadership as much as those who pulled the trigger or did the actual butchering and torturing. It is a policy created problem.
Michael Phelps has won 14 career Olympic gold medals, the most by any Olympian. Last I checked, Phelps has broken thirty-seven world records in swimming. Neither the USA Swim team nor Kellogg's cereal and munchie company had a problem with him despite an alcohol-related arrest in 2004. Michael has nothing to apologize for but Kellogg's and the Swim Team should reconsider their decision to punish him for making a safer social and health choice to simply celebrate with friends.
The horrors of meth are triggered by our insane policy. Since the 1930s methamphetamine has been safely manufactured as a legal drug. Today it is routinely prescribed for children with ADHD. Only when its manufacture is forced underground does it become dangerous. Just as legal distilleries make whiskey safely now, yet during the Noble Experiment from which we learned nothing, small illegal stills poisoned users or exploded and burned, causing major public safety problems. Moonshine stills burned down forests and polluted rivers during our first failed prohibition.
Dallas is one of six main sites for a nationwide electronic town meeting entitled “America Speaks: Our Budget, Our Economy” on Saturday, June 26, 2010 from 10:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. at the Dallas Convention Center. (Lunch and childcare will be provided.) Thousands of Americans across the country linked by satellite and webcast will participate in an unprecedented national discussion to help find solutions to our budget deficit and the national debt. Find common ground on some of the tough choices our country needs to make about spending, taxes and the role of government.
Please support the 84 congressional candidates from every political party who have signed a statement against war spending The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost Americans over $1 trillion in direct costs, and over $3 trillion altogether.
Stall war funding for economic relief! At a time when our national debt exceeds $13 trillion, we can no longer afford these wars. It's time for Congress to reject any funding except to bring all our troops safely home.
Ron Kovic presented Tom Cruise with his Bronze Star medal on the final day of filming Born on the Fourth of July for his "courageous portrayal of the true horrors of war." Time Magazine reported that Oliver Stone said, "He gave it to Tom for bravery, for having gone through this experience in hell as much as any person can without actually having been there."
Kovic wrote his autobiography in less than two months. "I wrote all night long, seven days a week, single space, no paragraphs, front and back of the pages, pounding the keys so hard the tips of my fingers would hurt. I couldn't stop writing, and I remember feeling more alive than I had ever felt. Convinced that I was destined to die young, I struggled to leave something of meaning behind, to rise above the darkness and despair. I wanted people to understand. I wanted to share with them as nakedly and openly and intimately as possible what I had gone through, what I had endured. I wanted them to know what it really meant to be in a war — to be shot and wounded, to be fighting for my life on the intensive care ward — not the myth we had grown up believing. I wanted people to know about the hospitals and the enema room, about why I had become opposed to the war, why I had grown more and more committed to peace and nonviolence."
Ron's story was also the inspiration for the novel and movie, Coming Home.
"The scar will always be there, a living reminder of that war, but it has also become something beautiful now, something of faith and hope and love. I have been given the opportunity to move through that dark night of the soul to a new shore, to gain an understanding, a knowledge, and entirely different vision. I now believe I have suffered for a reason and in many ways I have found that reason in my commitment to peace and nonviolence. My life has been a blessing in disguise, even with the pain and great difficulty that my physical disability continues to bring. It is a blessing to speak on behalf of peace, to be able to reach such a great number of people." Ron Kovic, born July 4, 1946.
As we celebrate Independence Day, please consider those heroes, who have given their limbs and lives for this country, sacrificed and died for freedom, for making this world a better place, will have died in vain; if the American dream of self-government free of tyranny and big government oppression dies.
No fear! Be brave, end the terror by changing our intrusive, big-bully policies, both foreign and domestic. The monetary and environmental costs are staggering and the human suffering unconscionable.
True patriots, lovers of liberty, insist morally bankrupt US warriors are held responsible for torture and wars abandoning our ideal of nonintervention. The world knows they violated international law. They are traitors to the republic for which we stand. We will be derelict in our duties to maintain an in fact, free republic if we don't insist on it.
Our founders knew big government would always mean a gang of evil doers, often hiding tyranny under the guise of good intentions. Sometimes a great notion comes along that can save a great nation!
The American dream is, "for the power of love to overcome the love of power." We will overcome! Founded in self-government or the freedom philosophy, both economic and personal, we will overcome!
Track your Senators' and Representative's votes by e-mail
Changing who's in charge will not affect much. The real cause of this huge quagmire of failed policy is the beast, big government, that money hungry beast, Uncle Sam! Ma Freedom tells it like it is! The beauty of it is when we focus on down-sizing our government we regain our roots of self-government and secure the blessings of liberty for future generations and ourselves.
Compiled and written by Colleen McCool
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Our Heroes are Rebels with Just Cause!
As we remember fallen soldiers this year, please consider those heroes, who have given their lives for this country, died for freedom and for making this world a better place will have died in vain; if the American dream of self-government free of tyranny and big government oppression dies.
The US Veterans Administration (VA) has adopted a policy prohibiting VA physicians from recommending medical marijuana to their patients, even if marijuana is the safest and most effective medicine to treat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other service-related conditions. Harassing the sick and dying is an un-American activity. The people believe in self-government and self-medication.
Rest in peace, Dennis Hopper! The director and intuitive costar of the counterculture film classic "Easy Rider" was a rebel with just cause. How about a heavy dose of reality, Hollywood?
Commenting on the success of "Easy Rider," Hopper said: "Nobody had ever seen themselves portrayed in a movie. At every love-in across the country people were smoking grass and dropping LSD, while audiences were still watching Doris Day and Rock Hudson." It was proof to flaunt in the face of the movie moguls that you could get high, express yourself and make money all at the same time.
He was greatly influenced by James Dean. "The most personal tragedy in my life was Dean," Hopper said "I was 19 years old and had such admiration for him."
They met during the filming of "Rebel Without a Cause." More fantasy from big government via Hollywood inferring life in America was just about perfect. It is an all time favorite of mine in spite of the title being a take off on the true definition of an American patriot; a rebel with just cause! All God's children rebel against authoritarian parents and governments!
KopBusters Founder Barry Cooper is a rebel with just cause! Let's make him our Attorney General!
Since 2006 I have awarded two free portraits yearly, each dedicated to the freedom philosophy or the American dream. I call it the, "Rebel with Just Cause Award." It is given to true American patriots; those who stand for freedom against tyranny and injustice. The real visionaries, who laid down America's laws, those who defined what an American patriot would be, were rebels with just cause. It's not just our right it's an American's patriotic duty to rebel against big government corruption.
Since the 1930 Wickersham Report appraisals of police activity have consistently called for civilian review boards of law enforcement performance. Police departments have consistently blocked that from happening. This Atlanta Journal-Constitution report shows why civilian review is needed and how prohibition triggers official lawlessness and more problems.
Civil asset forfeiture refers to property or cash which is seized by law enforcement agents who merely suspect it was used in a crime. “Texas has some of the worst civil forfeiture laws in the country, and what's driving this is the fact that police and prosecutors get to keep the property they seize,” according to Scott Bullock, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, a D.C.-based libertarian law firm studying civil forfeiture laws nationwide. “They can use it to buy better equipment, to buy better automobiles, even to pay salaries, and we feel is an untoward profit incentive.” End asset forfeiture!
Check out the UT Texas Tribune poll and point it out to your Congress critters. Forty-two percent of Texans are open to the idea of legalizing marijuana: 28 percent say possession of small amount should be legal, while 14 percent say any amount should be legal. Twenty-seven percent say it should be legal for medical purposes only, while only 27 twenty-seven say it should be illegal under any circumstances.
Saving lives instead of ruining them appeals to more and more in law enforcement these days. “With time, experience and an open mind,” Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said, “you sit back and study this and you say, ‘What did we do? We just destroyed ourselves thinking we were doing good when we really weren’t.” The waste of resources on policing use instead of on using science based education and rehab to fight nonviolent abuse is becoming blatantly obvious. Drug treatment is at least five times less costly than prison.
Read a compelling argument for accurate, non-fear-based, science based drug education in public schools and for not wasting our resources. Get tough on violent crime! Stop this scandalous, detrimental drug war. Restore Justice, the guardian of liberty.
With addiction..."The problem lies in understanding more about the user than the drug." Jerry Epstein, President, Drug Policy Forum of Texas (DPFT) It's in our genes! Accepting the fact, individual reactions to any drug vary widely, also points us toward a cautious path for any use.
Here is a good document to base a harm reduction framework on since it includes provisions for evidence and science. "Search for alternatives just starting; need has never been greater," says Marcela Sanchez in DMN.
Baltimore officers, under Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, in one of the nation's most violent cities are no longer being told to beef up arrest statistics with nonviolent drug crimes. The number of arrests has declined the past two years, yet homicides and shootings are down!
"I'm not trying to win the drug war," Bealefeld said. "I'm out to win the war on violence and deal effectively with violence."
Fox news reports "After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread. Even US drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn't worked."
"In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified."
Law enforcement has recruitment problems because current policy attracts those interested in working in a corrupt system and milking it, thereby creating a pervasive disrespect for the law. Our system could run with the milk of human kindness, if America had the ethical, efficient and constitutionally limited government our founders envisioned.
You can peruse the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Statistical Report 2009. Signaling a policy shift, Texas budget cuts may close prisons.
Marijuana arrests drive the drug ‘Treatment’ boom, almost six out of ten admitted nationwide are referred there by the criminal justice system Seventy percent of marijuana treatment admissions in Texas come from criminal justice referrals, significantly and predictably higher than the national average.
Houston radio host Dean Becker is a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. He has earned high regard and respect for getting top-tier guests and having intelligent discussions about the war on drugs for his weekly show, Drug Truth Network on KPFT. So much so that the world-renowned James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University will keep an archive of Becker's broadcasts and make them available to listeners at any time on its website.
Give the drug dealers nightmares! Join Vigils to End Marijuana Prohibition outside the Texas Republican Party Convention at the Dallas Convention Center on Saturday, June 12th, 10am - 11:30am. Also at the Texas Democratic Convention in Corpus Christi on Saturday, June 26th. RSVP for more info.
Marijuana evangelist, Richard Lee is a Houston native and has become a force behind California’s vote to legalize pot.
US Rep. Mark Souder in his eighth term (R-IN) has announced his resignation after it came to light that he was conducting an affair with a female staffer. The leading drug warrior asked forgiveness for his sins. Reformers are happy to see him go because his self righteous, deeply ignorant and hate-filled views about drug users have influenced almost every bit of official drug policy-making in Washington for over a decade.
Marc Emery's extradition of to the United States is no great travesty. It's certainly not the worst crime committed in the insane, unholy war on drugs. Mark is just another casualty of our morally bankrupt, violence triggering, nightmare policy.
The Ottawa Citizen ask us to consider the criminality of countless innocent people killed in botched raids in the US, Canada and around the globe. "Or the police officers who died in pursuit of the impossible. Or the lives lost to easily preventable overdoses, adulterations, and blood-borne diseases. Or the funding handed on a
silver platter to thugs, terrorists, and guerrillas, like those killing our soldiers in Afghanistan. Or the civil liberties eroded, the corruption fostered, the chaos spread. Or maybe (the criminality of) it belongs to the hundreds of billions of dollars governments have squandered in a mad, futile, and destructive crusade."
Marc's wife, Jodie Emery, said she was stunned and "appalled that the Canadian justice minister would order the extradition. It's the worst option. We didn't even entertain it as an option." She accused Minister of Justice Nicholson of wanting "to silence the most vocal opponent of the drug war." Marc Emery has always maintained that the prosecution was politically motivated. He accepts 5 years as a political prisoner in the land of the free.
Authorities have found between 20 and 25 corpses in an abandoned silver mine in southern Mexico. The body count triggered by drug policy continues to soar.
Recently on HuffingtonPost com Ethan Nadelmann, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance criticizes Obamanation's new drug war strategy. " The strategy released today offers nothing that will reduce the prohibition-related violence in Mexico, Central America and Colombia, or seriously address the challenges in Afghanistan. It dares not take on the embarrassment of America's record breaking and world leading rate of incarceration, especially of nonviolent drug offenders. And it effectively acknowledges that politics will continue to trump science whenever the latter points toward politically controversial solutions."
It's Time to Mend the "Crack" in Justice. So-called "crack babies" — children exposed to crack cocaine in utero, twenty years later, many of the children who were perceived to be "at-risk" are proving the predictions wrong as young adults. Mary Barr, an reform activist who is vocal about her own drug abuse during pregnancy, and Nisa Beceriklisoy, her daughter were interviewed recently on NPR. Meanwhile, damage from fetal alcohol syndrome fills our prisons with folks who can not comprehend the consequences for their actions.
Drug test results are often flawed. Drug test benefit the manufacturer of the test kits and that is all they are good for. They continue to ruin lives with false positives.
Oregon advocates for medical marijuana have submitted more than the amount of required signatures, for a ballot measure to allow state-licensed pot dispensaries. Don't let your government RUN FROM THE CURE for cancer!
The marijuana culinary culture results in great times with really good food that makes you feel groovy!
Californian, James Stacy is facing federal drug charges for running a medical marijuana storefront and has asked a judge to let him argue to the jury that, essentially, President Barack Obama and his administration said it was OK to do so.
In Colorado 49% say marijuana should be legal, taxed, yet wearing a"Yes We Cannabis" T-shirt leads to 1-year ban from Aurora mall! "And if wearing a T-shirt espousing a political view that's shared by half the state's population is too offensive to wear, then none of us are safe." It seems Aurora authorities don't see marijuana advocacy as representing family values. "That's wrong!" firmly states Jessica Corry and fellow attorney Rob Corry, for Gailey the terrible T-shirt wearer, "because it represents the values of their family."
Americans believe in "SAFETY First," a most important family value! Morally bankrupt policy creates a violent nightmare! Paramilitary drug raids increase the chances for violence to occur in American homes and streets. History repeats its self! Remember the political and official lawlessness, the bloody massacres of the roaring twenties? Not learning from past mistakes is a serious flaw in reasoning, unwanted in leaders. "Save the Children, from Prohibition!" was the slogan used to repeal the ban on alcohol sales.
Snipers, killers and violent sexual and other hate-filled predators roam free, while we use up limited resources policing nonviolent medicinal, social and religious drug use. Look up botched raids at Cato.org/raidmap/
Marijuana or cannabis is one of the most benign chemicals know to man. Safer than alcohol or tobacco, patients swear marijuana is a safe, effective replacement for expensive,dangerous pharmaceuticals. Folks who make a safer choice, are rebels with just cause, the very description of true American patriots.
The HealthCare Bill and the Controlled Substances Act are bad laws like the Fugitive Slave Act and the Volstead Act. When more juries refuse to convict on "drug or healthcare crime," warriors for those causes will be politically dead bodies. Jury nullification is a constitutional power tool we the people pack!
There is a problem: if you disagree with the drug war or healthcare on moral grounds, you will not be chosen for jury duty.
The solution is to keep an open mind and insist that you will listen fairly to all the evidence presented, tell them honestly that you care passionately about the law, and that you'll withhold decision until you've heard the entire case. Getting on that jury is the first step. After closing arguments are through and the judge has instructed you on the law, you have earned the opportunity to refuse to convict on these nonviolent crimes.
The Spirit of '76 was the Holy Spirit and is our true North!
We are rebels with just cause,
when we exercise our right to nullify bad laws
like those brave jurors who refused to convict
during the hard times of the Fugitive Slave Act, way back
and until FDR said the Volstead Act was licked!
Jury nullification, a constitutional power tool we the people pack.
Track your Senators' and Representative's votes by e-mail
Changing who's in charge will not affect much. The real cause of this huge quagmire of failed policy is the beast, big government, that money hungry beast, Uncle Sam! Ma Freedom tells it like it is! The beauty of it is when we focus on down-sizing our government we regain our roots of self-government and secure the blessings of liberty for future generations and ourselves.
Compiled and written by Colleen McCool
The US Veterans Administration (VA) has adopted a policy prohibiting VA physicians from recommending medical marijuana to their patients, even if marijuana is the safest and most effective medicine to treat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other service-related conditions. Harassing the sick and dying is an un-American activity. The people believe in self-government and self-medication.
Rest in peace, Dennis Hopper! The director and intuitive costar of the counterculture film classic "Easy Rider" was a rebel with just cause. How about a heavy dose of reality, Hollywood?
Commenting on the success of "Easy Rider," Hopper said: "Nobody had ever seen themselves portrayed in a movie. At every love-in across the country people were smoking grass and dropping LSD, while audiences were still watching Doris Day and Rock Hudson." It was proof to flaunt in the face of the movie moguls that you could get high, express yourself and make money all at the same time.
He was greatly influenced by James Dean. "The most personal tragedy in my life was Dean," Hopper said "I was 19 years old and had such admiration for him."
They met during the filming of "Rebel Without a Cause." More fantasy from big government via Hollywood inferring life in America was just about perfect. It is an all time favorite of mine in spite of the title being a take off on the true definition of an American patriot; a rebel with just cause! All God's children rebel against authoritarian parents and governments!
KopBusters Founder Barry Cooper is a rebel with just cause! Let's make him our Attorney General!
Since 2006 I have awarded two free portraits yearly, each dedicated to the freedom philosophy or the American dream. I call it the, "Rebel with Just Cause Award." It is given to true American patriots; those who stand for freedom against tyranny and injustice. The real visionaries, who laid down America's laws, those who defined what an American patriot would be, were rebels with just cause. It's not just our right it's an American's patriotic duty to rebel against big government corruption.
Since the 1930 Wickersham Report appraisals of police activity have consistently called for civilian review boards of law enforcement performance. Police departments have consistently blocked that from happening. This Atlanta Journal-Constitution report shows why civilian review is needed and how prohibition triggers official lawlessness and more problems.
Civil asset forfeiture refers to property or cash which is seized by law enforcement agents who merely suspect it was used in a crime. “Texas has some of the worst civil forfeiture laws in the country, and what's driving this is the fact that police and prosecutors get to keep the property they seize,” according to Scott Bullock, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, a D.C.-based libertarian law firm studying civil forfeiture laws nationwide. “They can use it to buy better equipment, to buy better automobiles, even to pay salaries, and we feel is an untoward profit incentive.” End asset forfeiture!
Check out the UT Texas Tribune poll and point it out to your Congress critters. Forty-two percent of Texans are open to the idea of legalizing marijuana: 28 percent say possession of small amount should be legal, while 14 percent say any amount should be legal. Twenty-seven percent say it should be legal for medical purposes only, while only 27 twenty-seven say it should be illegal under any circumstances.
Saving lives instead of ruining them appeals to more and more in law enforcement these days. “With time, experience and an open mind,” Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said, “you sit back and study this and you say, ‘What did we do? We just destroyed ourselves thinking we were doing good when we really weren’t.” The waste of resources on policing use instead of on using science based education and rehab to fight nonviolent abuse is becoming blatantly obvious. Drug treatment is at least five times less costly than prison.
Read a compelling argument for accurate, non-fear-based, science based drug education in public schools and for not wasting our resources. Get tough on violent crime! Stop this scandalous, detrimental drug war. Restore Justice, the guardian of liberty.
With addiction..."The problem lies in understanding more about the user than the drug." Jerry Epstein, President, Drug Policy Forum of Texas (DPFT) It's in our genes! Accepting the fact, individual reactions to any drug vary widely, also points us toward a cautious path for any use.
Here is a good document to base a harm reduction framework on since it includes provisions for evidence and science. "Search for alternatives just starting; need has never been greater," says Marcela Sanchez in DMN.
Baltimore officers, under Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, in one of the nation's most violent cities are no longer being told to beef up arrest statistics with nonviolent drug crimes. The number of arrests has declined the past two years, yet homicides and shootings are down!
"I'm not trying to win the drug war," Bealefeld said. "I'm out to win the war on violence and deal effectively with violence."
Fox news reports "After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread. Even US drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn't worked."
"In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified."
Law enforcement has recruitment problems because current policy attracts those interested in working in a corrupt system and milking it, thereby creating a pervasive disrespect for the law. Our system could run with the milk of human kindness, if America had the ethical, efficient and constitutionally limited government our founders envisioned.
You can peruse the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Statistical Report 2009. Signaling a policy shift, Texas budget cuts may close prisons.
Marijuana arrests drive the drug ‘Treatment’ boom, almost six out of ten admitted nationwide are referred there by the criminal justice system Seventy percent of marijuana treatment admissions in Texas come from criminal justice referrals, significantly and predictably higher than the national average.
Houston radio host Dean Becker is a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. He has earned high regard and respect for getting top-tier guests and having intelligent discussions about the war on drugs for his weekly show, Drug Truth Network on KPFT. So much so that the world-renowned James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University will keep an archive of Becker's broadcasts and make them available to listeners at any time on its website.
Give the drug dealers nightmares! Join Vigils to End Marijuana Prohibition outside the Texas Republican Party Convention at the Dallas Convention Center on Saturday, June 12th, 10am - 11:30am. Also at the Texas Democratic Convention in Corpus Christi on Saturday, June 26th. RSVP for more info.
Marijuana evangelist, Richard Lee is a Houston native and has become a force behind California’s vote to legalize pot.
US Rep. Mark Souder in his eighth term (R-IN) has announced his resignation after it came to light that he was conducting an affair with a female staffer. The leading drug warrior asked forgiveness for his sins. Reformers are happy to see him go because his self righteous, deeply ignorant and hate-filled views about drug users have influenced almost every bit of official drug policy-making in Washington for over a decade.
Marc Emery's extradition of to the United States is no great travesty. It's certainly not the worst crime committed in the insane, unholy war on drugs. Mark is just another casualty of our morally bankrupt, violence triggering, nightmare policy.
The Ottawa Citizen ask us to consider the criminality of countless innocent people killed in botched raids in the US, Canada and around the globe. "Or the police officers who died in pursuit of the impossible. Or the lives lost to easily preventable overdoses, adulterations, and blood-borne diseases. Or the funding handed on a
silver platter to thugs, terrorists, and guerrillas, like those killing our soldiers in Afghanistan. Or the civil liberties eroded, the corruption fostered, the chaos spread. Or maybe (the criminality of) it belongs to the hundreds of billions of dollars governments have squandered in a mad, futile, and destructive crusade."
Marc's wife, Jodie Emery, said she was stunned and "appalled that the Canadian justice minister would order the extradition. It's the worst option. We didn't even entertain it as an option." She accused Minister of Justice Nicholson of wanting "to silence the most vocal opponent of the drug war." Marc Emery has always maintained that the prosecution was politically motivated. He accepts 5 years as a political prisoner in the land of the free.
Authorities have found between 20 and 25 corpses in an abandoned silver mine in southern Mexico. The body count triggered by drug policy continues to soar.
Recently on HuffingtonPost com Ethan Nadelmann, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance criticizes Obamanation's new drug war strategy. " The strategy released today offers nothing that will reduce the prohibition-related violence in Mexico, Central America and Colombia, or seriously address the challenges in Afghanistan. It dares not take on the embarrassment of America's record breaking and world leading rate of incarceration, especially of nonviolent drug offenders. And it effectively acknowledges that politics will continue to trump science whenever the latter points toward politically controversial solutions."
It's Time to Mend the "Crack" in Justice. So-called "crack babies" — children exposed to crack cocaine in utero, twenty years later, many of the children who were perceived to be "at-risk" are proving the predictions wrong as young adults. Mary Barr, an reform activist who is vocal about her own drug abuse during pregnancy, and Nisa Beceriklisoy, her daughter were interviewed recently on NPR. Meanwhile, damage from fetal alcohol syndrome fills our prisons with folks who can not comprehend the consequences for their actions.
Drug test results are often flawed. Drug test benefit the manufacturer of the test kits and that is all they are good for. They continue to ruin lives with false positives.
Oregon advocates for medical marijuana have submitted more than the amount of required signatures, for a ballot measure to allow state-licensed pot dispensaries. Don't let your government RUN FROM THE CURE for cancer!
The marijuana culinary culture results in great times with really good food that makes you feel groovy!
Californian, James Stacy is facing federal drug charges for running a medical marijuana storefront and has asked a judge to let him argue to the jury that, essentially, President Barack Obama and his administration said it was OK to do so.
In Colorado 49% say marijuana should be legal, taxed, yet wearing a"Yes We Cannabis" T-shirt leads to 1-year ban from Aurora mall! "And if wearing a T-shirt espousing a political view that's shared by half the state's population is too offensive to wear, then none of us are safe." It seems Aurora authorities don't see marijuana advocacy as representing family values. "That's wrong!" firmly states Jessica Corry and fellow attorney Rob Corry, for Gailey the terrible T-shirt wearer, "because it represents the values of their family."
Americans believe in "SAFETY First," a most important family value! Morally bankrupt policy creates a violent nightmare! Paramilitary drug raids increase the chances for violence to occur in American homes and streets. History repeats its self! Remember the political and official lawlessness, the bloody massacres of the roaring twenties? Not learning from past mistakes is a serious flaw in reasoning, unwanted in leaders. "Save the Children, from Prohibition!" was the slogan used to repeal the ban on alcohol sales.
Snipers, killers and violent sexual and other hate-filled predators roam free, while we use up limited resources policing nonviolent medicinal, social and religious drug use. Look up botched raids at Cato.org/raidmap/
Marijuana or cannabis is one of the most benign chemicals know to man. Safer than alcohol or tobacco, patients swear marijuana is a safe, effective replacement for expensive,dangerous pharmaceuticals. Folks who make a safer choice, are rebels with just cause, the very description of true American patriots.
The HealthCare Bill and the Controlled Substances Act are bad laws like the Fugitive Slave Act and the Volstead Act. When more juries refuse to convict on "drug or healthcare crime," warriors for those causes will be politically dead bodies. Jury nullification is a constitutional power tool we the people pack!
There is a problem: if you disagree with the drug war or healthcare on moral grounds, you will not be chosen for jury duty.
The solution is to keep an open mind and insist that you will listen fairly to all the evidence presented, tell them honestly that you care passionately about the law, and that you'll withhold decision until you've heard the entire case. Getting on that jury is the first step. After closing arguments are through and the judge has instructed you on the law, you have earned the opportunity to refuse to convict on these nonviolent crimes.
The Spirit of '76 was the Holy Spirit and is our true North!
We are rebels with just cause,
when we exercise our right to nullify bad laws
like those brave jurors who refused to convict
during the hard times of the Fugitive Slave Act, way back
and until FDR said the Volstead Act was licked!
Jury nullification, a constitutional power tool we the people pack.
Track your Senators' and Representative's votes by e-mail
Changing who's in charge will not affect much. The real cause of this huge quagmire of failed policy is the beast, big government, that money hungry beast, Uncle Sam! Ma Freedom tells it like it is! The beauty of it is when we focus on down-sizing our government we regain our roots of self-government and secure the blessings of liberty for future generations and ourselves.
Compiled and written by Colleen McCool
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