Month: March 2014

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Last August, CNN’s Chief Medical
Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta completely
reversed his position on the use of medical marijuana. He was
once an opponent, buying into the flippant claim from government
prohibitionists that the plant had no medical value. Then he
discovered
Charlotte Figi, the little girl whose life-threatening seizures
resisted all treatments other than medical marijuana. He came
around and even apologized for his previous position, realizing he
hadn’t done enough research.

Now, he says he’s
“doubling down” on his support for medical marijuana (though if
we’re going to abuse gambling metaphors, I’d say he’s going “all
in”). He’s been continuing researching medical marijuana and will
be airing a new documentary on Tuesday, March 11, on CNN. He
writes:

More remarkable, many doctors and scientists, worried about
being ostracized for even discussing the potential of marijuana,
called me confidentially to share their own stories of the drug and
the benefit it has provided to their patients. I will honor my
promise not to name them, but I hope this next documentary will
enable a more open discussion and advance science in the
process.

Marijuana is classified as a Schedule I substance, defined as
“the most dangerous” drugs “with no currently accepted medical
use.”

Neither of those statements has ever been factual. Even many of
the most ardent critics of medical marijuana don’t agree with the
Schedule I classification, knowing how it’s impeded the ability to
conduct needed research on the plant.

Acknowledging that marijuana’s Schedule I classification is
utter nonsense is a nice touch. Read what else he has to say

here. He has interviewed several of what he calls “cannabis
refugees” – families who have had to move to Colorado in order to
get access to medical marijuana because they could get arrested for
drug trafficking if they tried to bring it back to their home
states.

As
expected, the Obama administration announced yet another delay
to Obamacare this afternoon. Via Politico:

The Obama administration will allow some health plans that fall
short of Obamacare coverage requirements to continue past the
November elections and through most of President Barack Obama’s
second term.

The decision, announced Wednesday by federal health officials,
extends for two years an earlier decision by the White House to let
people keep their existing health plans through 2014, even if those
plans fell short of the Affordable Care Act requirements.

Without the change, Democrats worried that another wave of
canceled health policies would hit in October, stirring up another
round of controversy as the midterm elections approached.

If you like your plan, you can keep your plan…until 2016. If
your state insurance commissioner agrees. 

So, the timeline thus far goes something like this: President
Obama signs a law into effect, promises that it won’t do something
he knows full well it will do, and insists to opponents that it
can’t be undone because it’s the law of the land; then when it
eventually does that thing that he promised it wouldn’t do, and
Democrats start to panic about the unpleasant political
consequences, he responds by altering its implementation using
dicey legal authority.  

Taking upskirt photos of women in public
is not a crime in Massachusetts, according to the state’s
Supreme Judicial Court (SJC). In a ruling Wednesday, the SJC sided
with defendant Michael Robertson, who was charged in 2010 for
taking upskirt photos of two women on Boston’s Green Line
train. 

But the Massachusetts law used to charge Robertson was
inapplicable, the court said, because the women he photographed
were fully clothed. As the law is written, it applies only to
people in private or people who are fully or partially
nude in public. From the court’s decision: 

“We conclude that (the law), as written … is concerned with
proscribing Peeping Tom voyeurism of people who are completely or
partially undressed and, in particular, such voyeurism enhanced by
electronic devices. (The law) does not apply to photographing (or
videotaping or electronically surveilling) persons who are fully
clothed and, in particular, does not reach the type of upskirting
that the defendant is charged with attempting to accomplish on the
MBTA.” 

Lawyers for Massachusetts had argued that women riding public
transit have a reasonable expectation of privacy in not having a
stranger secretly photograph up their skirts. “The proposition is
eminently reasonable, but (the law) in its current form does not
address it,” the court concluded. 

The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument on
Tuesday in a case testing the reach of qualified immunity, a legal
doctrine designed to shield government officials from civil
lawsuits “insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly
established statutory or constitutional rights of which a
reasonable person would have known.” By the time the proceedings
came to a close, observes Senior Editor Damon Root, it looked as if
a majority of the justices were prepared to vote in favor of the
West Memphis police officers whose use of deadly force to end a
high-speed car chase lay at the heart of the case.

View this article.

• Former IRS official
  Lois Lerner once again invoked the Fifth Amendment before a
  House Oversight Committee hearing about the targeting of Tea Party
  groups and declined to answer questions.
• The Senate has
  rejected Debo Adegbile as President Barack Obama’s pick to run
  the Department of Justice’s civil rights division. He drew
  opposition for his work defending Mumia Abu-Jabal. Seven Democrats
  voted against the pick.
• Under pressure from gun control groups,
  Facebook will block minors from seeing posts about gun sales
  and will take down posts about gun sales that don’t require a
  background check.
• A
  United Nations special envoy was forced to abandon a mission in
  the Crimean region of Ukraine by apparent armed supporters of
  Russia.
• Washington State has issued its first business license to
  
  legally sell recreational marijuana.
• Major changes are afoot for
  SAT tests. Obscure vocabulary words are going to be deleted, as
  well as the mandatory essay. But calculators will no longer be
  permitted in some of the math sections.

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