Judge rules that pot evidence was suppressed in man’s case

A Livingston County judge ruled Monday that the marijuana police seized during an Operation HEMP raid cannot be admitted as evidence at trial.
Brian Wayne Pounds, 53, is charged with manufacturing marijuana after the illegal narcotic was discovered in August during an Operation HEMP (Help Eliminate Marijuana Planting) effort, which is the state’s eradication-and-suppression program for pot.
Pounds’ attorney, Lyle Dickson, believes the judge’s decision cripples the prosecution’s case.
“I believe it will be nearly impossible for them (to) go forward since they have no physical evidence,” Dickson said. “They have a marijuana-grow charge, but no marijuana. They have no tangible, physical evidence that’s admissible to show the elements of the offense.”
 
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http://www.livingstondaily.com/article/20120522/NEWS01/205220305/Court-Docket-Judge-rules-that-pot-evidence-was-suppressed-in-man-s-case?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Ctext%7CFrontpage

56 Percent Of Americans Favor Legal Marijuana In New Poll

The Huffington Post  |  By 
Marijuana
Fifty-six percent of Americans think marijuana should be legalized and regulated like alcohol and tobacco, according to a nationwide Rasmussen poll of 1,000 likely voters.
Asked earlier this month, “Would you favor or oppose legalizing marijuana and regulating it in the similar manner to the way alcohol and tobacco cigarettes are regulated today?” only 36 percent of likely voters opposed the concept and 8 percent were undecided.
Neill Franklin, a retired Baltimore narcotics cop and the executive director of advocacy group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, sees the poll as a political weather vane pointing toward the future.
“Polling now consistently shows that more voters support legalizing and regulating marijuana than support continuing a failed prohibition approach,” he said in a statement Tuesday. “Yet far too many politicians continue to act as if marijuana policy reform is some dangerous third rail they dare not touch. If the trends in public opinion continue in the direction they are going, the day is not far away when supporting a prohibition system that causes so much crime, violence and corruption is going to be seen as a serious political liability for those seeking support from younger and independent voters. Savvy forward-looking politicians are already beginning to see which way the wind is blowing.”
 
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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/22/legalize-marijuana-56-percent-rasmussen-poll_n_1537706.html

Fargo lawmaker heads medical marijuana initiative

By: Associated Press, INFORUM
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Rep. Steve Zaiser, D-Fargo.
 
BISMARCK, N.D. — A Fargo Democratic lawmaker is chairman of a campaign to make marijuana use legal in North Dakota for medical reasons.
 
Secretary of State Al Jaeger has about a week to review the initiative petition. After he approves it, medical marijuana supporters may start getting signatures.
 
Fargo Democratic state Rep. Steve Zaiser is heading the campaign. The initiative says someone with a “debilitating medical condition” may grow and use marijuana, and possess up to 2 ½ ounces of the drug.
 
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http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/361648/group/news/

Anonymous Hacks Department of Justice

by 

 
Anonymous is taking credit for a confirmed breach of security at the U.S. Department of Justice, although the exact contents of the data bounty are not yet known.
“Today we are releasing 1.7 GB of data that used to belong to the United States Bureau of Justice, until now,” reads an Anonymous press release, referring to the Department of Justice. “Within the booty you may find lots of shiny things such as internal emails, and the entire database dump.”
The hacktivist collective has been known to make bold claims, but a Department of Justice spokeswoman confirmed to Reuters that Anonymous members did indeed access a server that hosts the Department’s statistical data, including cybersecurity records.
Anonymous released the data dump online through their usual torrent-based delivery system, but an attempted download of the data for further examination failed to complete. Anonymous member @planethacks, who is allegedly responsible for the data dump, has said the download is stalling because another hacker is interfering with the download process.
 
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http://mashable.com/2012/05/22/anonymous-department-justice/

Marijuana prohibition’s end would unite police, community, advocate says

By Michael Roberts
neill franklin cropped.jpg
 
Tonight, Neill Franklin, a former Baltimore narcotics cop who’s now the executive director of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, aka LEAP, will be speaking in Denver (details below) about ending marijuana prohibition in Colorado.
If that happened, he believes, “it would be very significant in reuniting police and the community again.”
Among the topics on tonight’s agenda is “the cost of marijuana prohibition throughout the country, and in Colorado,” says Franklin, who spoke with us in January to decry U.S. Attorney John Walsh’s closure-threat letters to dispensaries near schools. “And there are many different costs, from incarceration to the disparity issues associated with incarceration. Because wittingly or unwittingly, blacks and Latinos are targeted many than any other groups. But we’ll also talk about what benefits there would be to move into a world of regulation and control, including a reduction in crime and improved police relations among communities.
 
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http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/2012/05/marijuana_prohibition_unite_police_community_leap.php

Nevada Plays Favorites with Steroid Users but Hates Marijuana

Jeremy Botter

Keithkizer_crop_650x440
 

Nevada Plays Favorites with Steroid Users but Hates Marijuana

By

 (UFC Lead Blogger) on May 22, 2012

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Keithkizer_crop_650x440

Photo by BoxNews.com

The UFC’s issues with drug-related failures are a problem, but they have yet to reach epidemic levels. Not yet, anyway.
Truthfully, they haven’t even come close to damaging as many fights as training injuries have. But the major drug-related cases we’ve seen this year have been high-profile—witness the cases of Alistair Overeem and Nick Diaz—and thus the spotlight seems a little bit brighter than normal.
I’ve talked about the issue of performance-enhancing drugs here in the past, and I’ll continue to do so in the future. It’s an issue that isn’t going away anytime soon, and it looks like Dana White is finally amenable to taking drastic steps inside his own company to help clean up the sport before it gets out of control:

Lance Pugmire: (Junior dos Santos vs. Frank Mir) came together only because Alistair Overeem tested positive for testosterone. How devastating was that to your sport?
Dana White: “The steroid, PED thing affects the whole sport. The key is to make sure these guys never get on it, because once they do, they change. The problem with Overeem is that I want to sit in a room with him man to man and believe him. He told me before he ever fought for us, ‘Don’t worry, I’m the most tested athlete in sports.’ But I think we have about 42 fights a year . . . you have a guy or two popping [positive tests] here and there, that’s a pretty good ratio.”
LP: Do you want to increase testing?
DFW: “Yes. We’re going to do our own testing, order these guys into [a lab]; we’re sorting it out now. You have to do this to save the sport. You can’t have these guys fighting on this stuff.”

The one-year suspension handed down to Nick Diaz by the Nevada State Athletic Commission yesterday was a complete and total farce, and everyone with half a brain knows it.
Yes, weed is illegal inside of competition in Nevada, even if you have a medical marijuana license in another state. And yes, Diaz should have stopped smoking a little bit sooner than the eight days he says he did, if only to ensure that his donated urine sample on fight night was clean as a whistle.
I’m not a pothead. I’ve smoked the stuff before, and I didn’t like it. I doubt I’ll ever try it again. But the fact that Diaz—who had trace amounts of marijuana metabolites, and not THC evident of actual marijuana use on that day—got a full-year suspension while Overeem got nine months after admittedly taking anabolic steroids (and also ducking urine tests) is completely and undeniably absurd and asinine.
 
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http://bleacherreport.com/articles/1191869-nevada-plays-favorites-with-steroid-users-but-hates-marijuana

Bali drugs prisoner Schapelle Corby has jail sentence cut by five years

By Jahn Vannisselroy
schapelle-corby.jpg
 
Convicted Australian drug smuggler Schapelle Corby could be released from her Indonesian prison as soon as August.

Corby was yesterday granted clemency by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who cut five years from her jail term for bringing a commercial quantity of cannabis into Bali.
Corby has been incarcerated in Bali’s notorious Kerobokan Prison since 2005 when she was busted with a boogie board bag containing about 5kg of cannabis and subsequently sentenced to 20 years behind bars.
She continues to deny she knew anything about the marijuana and maintains she was set up.
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.tntmagazine.com/news/australia-news/bali-drugs-prisoner-schapelle-corby-has-jail-sentence-cut-by-five-years

Candidate Vows To Get High In Congress, Elevate Political Discourse

CANDIDATE VOWS TO TOKE WITH JOE LIEBERMAN – Lucia Graves: “Democratic congressional candidate Andy Caffrey has made a surprising campaign promise: If he wins his election this fall, he’ll smoke a joint on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. Caffrey, who’s running to replace retiring Rep. Lynn Woolsey in California’s second district, has lit up more than once on the campaign trail — first at an Occupy event in Mendocino, and again last week outside the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, a Fairfax-based dispensary that was closed by federal officials in December.”
 
Read complete article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/21/huffpost-hill—candidate_n_1534482.html