Free Republic

As promised, the Obama administration has now officially spoken on the matter of banks and pot dispensaries. According to a memo from the Justice Department, the Treasury will allow banks to accept accounts from marijuana shops. This announcement is meant to encourage banks to do business with legal state dealers, despite the fact that selling marijuana is still illegal under federal law. It's unclear whether banks will take this encouragement to heart. As Ryan J. Reilly at The Huffington Post explains, "The DOJ memo falls short of expressly protecting banks that work with state-compliant marijuana businesses from prosecution. It states...

Leftist lawmakers in Mexico City’s legislature introduced a bill Thursday that would legalize the sale of marijuana within the capital, expanding on a national law that already decriminalizes the possession by users of small amounts of pot throughout the country. It wasn’t immediately clear how wide support was for the idea within the local assembly, which is controlled by the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, but Mayor Manuel Mancera backed the idea and the legislature is one of the most liberal in Mexico. It has previously legalized abortion and gay marriage.The ambitious plan is sure to create controversy in a country...

While it may be logical to view the “research university” as a hijacking of higher education, universities could, nonetheless, learn a thing or two from their research wing. Some universities have become so unintentionally comical that they are beyond satire. Nevertheless, those same universities are capable of churning out solid research. Consider Columbia. “Columbia University and Barnard College students filmed a feminist pornographic film in Columbia’s Butler Library to fight what they see as ‘gender tension’ at the school,” Katherine Timpf reported on Campus Reform, a Leadership Institute web site. “The NSFW film, titled ‘Initiatiøn,’ was filmed as a feminist...

The emergence of Twitter as a social media goliath has unleashed gossip and speculation as a media force. The long term consequences are unknowable, but in the meantime, with a far left president with a dicey past, it is producing some highly amusing results. Last night, President Obama explained to Bob Costas of NBC Sports why he wasn’t attending the Sochi Olympics, but the substance of what he had to say was lost in the controversy that erupted on Twitter over whether or not he was stoned. Yahoo writer Mike Oz took the high road, as would nearly any journalist,...

Currently, one of nine drivers involved in fatal crashes would test positive for marijuana,” Dr. Guohua Li, director of the Center for Injury Epidemiology and Prevention at Columbia, and co-author of the study told HealthDay News. The researchers found that drugs played an increasing role in fatal traffic accidents. Drugged driving accounted for more than 28 percent of traffic deaths in 2010, which is 16 percent more than it was in 1999. The researchers also found that marijuana was the main drug involved in the increase. It contributed to 12 percent of fatal crashes, compared to only 4 percent in...

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) -- Enough petition signatures have been verified to place an initiative seeking to legalize marijuana on the ballot this summer in Alaska, election officials said Tuesday.

SEATTLE (CBS Seattle) – According to a recent study, fatal car crashes involving pot use have tripled in the U.S. “Currently, one of nine drivers involved in fatal crashes would test positive for marijuana,” Dr. Guohua Li, director of the Center for Injury Epidemiology and Prevention at Columbia, and co-author of the study told HealthDay News. Researchers from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health gathered data from six states – California, Hawaii, Illinois, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and West Virginia – that perform toxicology tests on drivers involved in fatal car accidents. This data included over 23,500 drivers that...

New York cops have just made 4 ARRESTS in connection with Philip Seymour Hoffman's death … Law enforcement sources familiar with the situation tell TMZ. Our sources tell us … police have obtained a search warrant and are currently on scene at a NY apt. We're told police are targeting two individuals who they believe sold PSH heroin. Sources say cops raided 3 units in the same building. Read more: http://www.tmz.com#ixzz2sS8X0iZL

President Obama may have raised expectations too high when he vowed last week to take unilateral action to get around Congress — since his speech he has been flooded with requests and complaints from some of his staunchest supporters wondering why he left their issues out of his executive to-do list. Immigrant rights advocates say he should have extended his existing non-deportation policy to cover all illegal immigrants, while marijuana advocates said he could follow through on his recent statements on pot by unilaterally taking the drug off the strictest tier of controlled substances. Gay rights groups said Mr. Obama...

For the past four months, Sarah Callaway has had to watch as her daughter Greylynn’s body has been wracked by uncontrollable spasms several times a day. “They don’t hurt her. But they scare her, and she cries. And you can’t do anything for her except comfort her,” said Callaway, a Chatsworth resident. “That’s the most frustrating part. I just say to her, ‘I’m sorry I can’t do anything for you. I’m sorry.’” When Greylynn was born six months ago, doctors diagnosed her with a brain malformation and gave her only weeks to live. She survived, but her condition has left...

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal tells CNN's Candy Crowley they are looking at lowering pot penalties in his state. Video at link.

Reports from the trickle of western visitors to North Korea consistently indicate that cannabis is actually widely tolerated in the Hermit Kingdom- in fact, it's not even considered a drug there. Travelers speak of pot growing wildly by the side of the road, sold, rolled, and smoked openly- right in the heart of the most repressive Stalinist regime on Earth... A recent visitor to the capitol Pyongyang said he went and purchased a substantial 'shopping bag' of the wacky tabacky at an open-stall vegetable market (at a rock-bottom price), no problem. There is simply exists no taboo around pot smoking in the DPRK- foreign businessmen say...

Through the course of thirty-five years of practicing psychology, I have come to believe that the key to happiness and success in life resides in the power of valuation. True valuation is the ability to recognize the most important value in every circumstance and to behave in order to actualize that value. The happiest people automatically recognize and act upon true values. Applied psychology has not fulfilled its potential to make the world a better place because it has not focused on the powers of valuation. America's happiness and success as a nation have resulted from the one-pointed emphasis on...

resident Obama says he opposes marijuana legalization but thinks Colorado and Washington should be able to try it. Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who sought to run against Obama in 2012 as a Republican presidential contender, takes the same position. You might call this policy federalism -- but not if you are Barack Obama. According to the president, he has the authority to enforce the federal ban on marijuana even in states that have legalized the drug. But he chooses not to exercise that authority, because he is curious to see how these experiments turn out. In an interview with The...

“In some ways I think the best thing that could have happened to the anti-legalization movement was legalization, because I think it shows people the ugly side,” said Kevin A. Sabet, a former drug policy adviser to President Obama and the executive director and co-founder, with Mr. Kennedy, of Smart Approaches to Marijuana. The group, founded last year, supports removing criminal penalties for using marijuana, but opposes full legalization, and is working with local organizations around the nation to challenge legalization.

Considering the way things are heading, should we now ask every person with whom we conduct business (especially medical professionals) if they use marijuana?

I understand the arguments for the legalization of marijuana: It can generate tax revenue. It can reduce illegal supply and demand. It can strip power from cartels and lessen crime across and at our borders. And it isn't so dangerous as other illegal drugs or alcohol. President Barack Obama even claimed one of those arguments when he recently told New Yorker Editor David Remnick, "As has been well-documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through...

Please enjoy my pithy posts from Facebook. They’re brilliant, or reasonably insightful, or at least not stupid in most cases. If a male politician found a sugar mommy to pay his way through school, and to accept and raise his children as her own without him, he wouldn't dare make heroic single daddy-hood the centerpiece of his identity and campaign. If he tried, the media would slaughter him. If he were a Republican, anyway. Liberals think people are too flawed to make it in life without paternalistic restraints and controls. Conservatives think people are too flawed to be trusted with...

Floridians will vote on medical marijuana come November, after a divided Florida Supreme Court ruled Monday that ballot language for a proposed constitutional amendment meets all legal requirements. If at least 60 percent of voters agree, Florida could become the first Southern state to legalize use of marijuana for health-related reasons.

With bartenders naming cocktails after Seahawks players, it’s no surprise a local pot grower has come up with a strain called “Beast Mode,” in tribute to Marshawn Lynch. “It’s extremely strong,” said Nate “Diggity” Johnson, owner of the Queen Anne Cannabis Club, which carries the strain named after the burly Seahawks running back. Most of the weed sold in Seattle medical-marijuana dispensaries has a THC content between 12 and 20 percent. An indica-dominant strain of the OG Kush family, Beast Mode has a THC content of 17.6, according to testing by Analytical 360, Johnson said.