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The Obama administration is encouraging many nonviolent federal prisoners to apply for early release — and expecting thousands to take up the offer

The Great American Giveaway Politics / US Debt Apr 25, 2014 - 04:15 AM GMTBy: Andy Sutton What do the national debt and a designer Hepatitis C drug have in common? This question actually spans two areas near and dear to my heart: economics and medicine. What I’m going to be covering this week is something that I feel is going to be part of a growing trend in America over the coming decades. You see, too many – myself included for quite a while – were asking the wrong questions. Many still are. We shouldn’t be asking what we...

Polling numbers and political maneuverings are increasingly confirming what I first reported months ago. The tea party movement is no longer the large dominant force in the GOP that it was in 2010 or even 2012. But just because the "tea" might be a bit weaker, Republicans hoping to hang on to their elected positions or who seek to claim elected office need to understand that the political atmosphere might still be lightening up. In the South, which has been the hotbed for the tea party cause, many big contested GOP nominations that were expected to go to candidates "they"...

Criminal gangs in the UK’s Shropshire county are using drones to locate marijuana farms, and then blackmailing the farms’ owners or straight up stealing their weed, ITProPortal reports. It’s a tactic that law enforcement authorities worldwide have been employing for years — using thermal imaging to detect possible locations of grow houses. Marijuana requires hot temperatures and hydroponic lamps to grow, meaning that grow houses generally emit a ton of heat, and show up on cops’ thermal cameras. Now, criminals are reportedly using the same technique, except they’re hooking the thermal cameras up to unmanned drones, and joining police in...

Attorney General Eric Holder criticized drug sentences doled out under “the old regime” in a video Monday announcing the Obama administration’s “Clemency Project 2014.” “In 2010, President Obama signed the Fair Sentencing Act reducing unfair disparities in sentences imposed on people for offenses involving different forms of cocaine. But there’s still too many people in federal prison who were sentenced under the old regime and who, as a result, will have to spend far more time in prison than they would if sentenced today for exactly the same crime. This is simply not right,” Holder says in the video....

Attorney General Eric Holder announced today that dozens of lawyers will be reassigned to the Justice Department’s pardon office in anticipation of a surge of applications from drug offenders for reductions in their sentences — applications the Obama administration has signaled it would look upon favorably. This exercise is another transparent usurpation of legislative power by the president. The pardon power is just the camouflage for it. The pardon power exists so that the president can act in individual cases to correct excesses and injustices. It is not supposed to be a vehicle by which presidents rewrite congressional statutes that...

....Thousands and thousands of people like [the woman described above].are serving punishingly long sentences in federal prison based on draconian policies that were a relic of the "tough on crime" antidrug laws of the '80s and '90s. Thirty years after skyrocketing urban violence and drug use sparked politicians to impose longer and longer sentences for drug crimes, America now incarcerates a higher rate of its population than any other country in the world. This dubious record has finally provoked a bipartisan backlash against such stiff penalties. The old laws are slowly being repealed. Now, in his final years in office,...

Has seven time Tour De France champion Lance Armstrong been reduced to working in a bicycle repair shop? Not really, but it does seem that he’s gotten to the point where he’ll take any job that is offered to him. In this video, Armstrong demonstrates how to change a flat tire on a bicycle. However, it’s not a joke. It’s meant for practical instruction. The makers of the video, Outside Magazine, claim they were shocked that when they approached Armstrong about shooting the video for their website that he actually said yes. Armstrong won an unprecedented 7 Tour De France...

(CNN) -- Miley Cyrus could be in celebrity sick bay for another three weeks because of an "extreme allergic reaction" to an antibiotic, her representative said Thursday.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie delivered a message to his fellow members of the Republican Party on Thursday: being pro-life means reforming America’s drug laws and criminal sentencing procedures. Christie has long advocated for drug treatment programs as a means of reforming the country’s prison system, but Christie took a new tactic on Thursday when he framed that advocacy as a pro-life argument. “I’m pro-life, and I believe strongly in the sanctity of life,” Christie told an audience in Jersey City on Thursday. Addressing his fellow Republican governors, Christie said that “it’s great to be pro-life, but you need to...

Link only, Bloomberg...Costly new hepatitis C drugs from Gilead, Merck show near total cure rates

Agents In FBI Shooting Working On Drug Investigation April 12, 2014 10:43 PM OWINGS MILLS, Md. (AP) — Baltimore County police say a man is dead after FBI agents opened fire on the person in a busy shopping area in Owings Mills. The agents confronted the man in an SUV late Friday afternoon on an access road near a Wal-Mart store and Sam’s Club near Reisterstown Road. Officials released little information about the incident and did not identify the man who died.

Legendary singer Willie Nelson will be featured at a high-dollar fundraiser for Democratic governor nominee Wendy Davis. The event will be held April 27 in the Houston backyard of plaintiff’s lawyer Steve and Amber Mostyn, featuring barbecue, Nelson and — for those who stay overnight at the Hotel ZaZa — a campaign briefing on Monday morning.

Texas executed by lethal injection on Wednesday a Mexican citizen who was convicted of bludgeoning a man to death and repeatedly raping the man's wife. Ramiro Hernandez, 44, was pronounced dead at 6:28 p.m. CDT at the Texas state death chamber in Huntsville after receiving a dose of lethal drugs, the Texas Department o Texas executes Mexican national for murder and rapef Criminal Justice said. Hernandez was the sixth convict executed in Texas this year and the 16th in the United States.

Of the thousands of people I have known or covered in the Massachusetts Legislature over the years, Steve Doran of Lexington would be the last I would have expected to wind up in prison. Last week Doran, 58, a former 14-year member of the House of Representatives, was sentenced to three years in prison after pleading guilty to drug charges. At one time, Doran had it all -- a lovely wife, four daughters, an extended family, a fine home, a solid reputation, good friends and an upwardly mobile political career. He threw it all away. What happened

Homeless Tent Cities have proven a disaster in Seattle, Portland, Sacramento and other mainland cities where they have been tried. Homelessness Industry organizers set up their tents in an area--and the meth-addled denizens generate a crime wave targeting local businesses and residents as they seek out anything they can steal to buy drugs. Exasperated local officials pay the organizers off in order to get them to move into a different jurisdiction where the cycle of crime and shakedown begins again. In Honolulu, unofficial tent cities are now set up in strategic locations designed to pressure the tourism industry, the Chinatown...

On Wednesday, two more drug-smuggling tunnels were discovered along the San Diego-Mexico border and a 73-year-old Chula Vista woman was arrested for overseeing the logistics of the operation. According to the federal complaint against Glennys Rodriguez of Chula Vista, she is the only person facing charges. However, others were named in the complaint, including one man who had been previously apprehended for constructing border crossing tunnels. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in San Diego said the tunnels, which extended hundreds of yards linking Tijuana, Mexico with an Otay Mesa industrial park, were elaborate and sophisticated systems embodying a multi-tiered...

"We find that there is a peptide hormone in the gut called GLP1 that increases the secretion of insulin only when the blood glucose is high. This effectively eliminates the risk of hypoglycemic shock. Another advantage is that GLP1 administration has been found to stimulate weight-loss. The hormone offers the promise of revolutionising the treatment of Type II diabetes and reduce obesity," he said.

There are a number of obstacles Americans will face this year related to access to affordable medicine. One of the most troublesome involves Section 708, a portion of the FDA Safety and Innovation Act (S. 3187) passed in 2012. Section 708 requires the Secretary of Health Human Services (HHS) to establish rules regarding the seizure and destruction of imported medicines valued at $2500 or less. The proposed rules are set to be released on April 18. A minimum of 60 days review and comment period will follow. During this time, RxRights intends to mobilize our 75,000 members to respond on...

Boise, Idaho (CBS SEATTLE) – An Idaho state trooper arrested and fully searched a 70-year-old Washington man’s vehicle solely because he had a Colorado license plate – a state where marijuana is legal – a federal “license plate profiling” lawsuit alleges. Darien Roseen was driving along I-84 between his second home in Colorado and Washington state on Jan. 25 when Idaho State Trooper Justin Klitch “immediately” pulled out from the Interstate median and began “rapidly accelerating” to catch up to Roseen, according to the complaint in a Courthouse News Service report. Exiting at a designated rest area, Roseen says he...