He doesn't look sick to me.
Grant M. Haller / P-I
Vivian McPeak, who co-founded Hempfest in 1991 to promote
marijuana legal reform, uses medical marijuana in his home office
before visiting a doctor in Edmonds.
Posted on 08/18/2007 1:49:54 PM PDT by skeptoid
The festival Vivian McPeak and Gary Cooke visualized from day one was something like Woodstock, but their event had hundreds of thousands of people packed in a Seattle park celebrating a green leafy substance.
Even some of their friends thought the idea of a big party pushing for reform of anti-marijuana laws was half-baked.
"When we told people 15 years ago there would be 150,000 people coming to a protest festival with 60 bands from around the country all playing for free and the cops would smile, they didn't think it could happen," McPeak said. "It defied conventional wisdom."
(Excerpt) Read more at seattlepi.nwsource.com ...
Mostly Ron Paul supporters?
So, what's Hempfest all about?
“Where there’s smoke, there’s Hempfest”
Isn’t it a little early for the Libertarian Party Convention?
Dunno, the headline caught my eye and I’m reading up AIW.
:McPeak is a founder of Hempfest.
He can invest thousands of hours ... but he can't work at a real job? Why can't he get a job as an event organizer?
Yeah, bunch of idiots that don't know you need the government to look after us.
If we went back into history, to say, the amount of liberty that we all had as citizens right after the Civil War, the federal government did not claim to have the power to regulate any drug, let alone impose a regulatory scheme on the mere possession of the seeds, stalks and leaves of plants it did not like. In fact, since it lacked the power, it took an amendment to the Constitution to impose a federal ban on alcohol, in that failed social experiment commonly called “Prohibition”.
If it is so compellingly important to ban pot today, let us secure the proper Constitutional authority to do so and not seduce the people by prostituting the Courts into making rulings to ban pot where no authority really exists at present in the text of the Constitution.
Those who detest pot smoking and “pot heads”, and wanting to control pot because they think it is a “gateway drug” (which it very well may be for some people) while nodding in agreement at the unconstitutional laws we have to control drugs are no more consistent with the law than are the gun grabbers who ignore the plain text of the Second Amendment.
Not so long ago-—1920’s-—marijuana was legal.
Its about as much a gateway drug as alcohol is....the only reason it is now a ‘gateway” drug is beacause it is part of the counterculture-—,ie illegal.
Legalize it, tax it, put controls on it for minors, test for it like DUI( alcohol). That will make tax money for anti drug education and rehab. It will take the criminality out of it.
We had no problems more than with alcohol when it WAS legal. this is illegal because of the ‘sin “ marality concept.
Oh, I will save you time..don’t bother to let me know “ You’re not very recovered, ex hippie.”
I say we all work together to get back to that. Where we had a government that didn't support the slackers with "disability payments" or welfare or food stamps or medical care or housing. Where people took personal responsibility and had self-esteem and held others to community standards by shaming and ostracism rather than hundreds of laws.
THEN let's talk about legalizing drugs.
These test really shouldn't be for the presence of a chemical in your body, but should be testing your response to the physical environment, like a field sobriety test.
If you fail, you fail, whether its because you're drunk, stoned, taken too many sleeping pills, have the flu, you're old and have dementia ...
Is the purpose to keep the roads safe?
Either government has the authority or it doesn’t. A plain reading of the plain text of the Constitution plainly states it doesn’t. Only when the Courts have constructed excuse upon precedent upon excuse upon precedent, do they finally reach the point that they recently decided there is indeed a federal nexus, and therefore federal authority, to regulate something that did not cross a state line and originated in the state in question.
This non-reasoning was used by the Court during Roosevelt to find that the federal government had the authority to regulate a farmer growing corn because the corn was fed to his own pigs and if those pigs were sold on the market, they price they fetched might affect the price of hogs in another state.
And that ruling, along with others like it became the foundation stones for Roosevelt's New (socialist) Deal, which later was expanded by Johnson's Great Society and the "war" on poverty.
If one were ever able to repair all this damage, they would have to repair the damage done to the Constitution. When you undo the basis for big and bigger government, you undo the basis for regulation of drugs as well.
Happily, more and more people like myself see this structure as a total fabrication that cannot be justified and must be vacated. The Court’s response has been, and indeed the Senators grilling prospective Justices have echoed the same, that precident is more important than the plain text of the document they are all sworn to preserve, protect and defend. Thus, we are treated to Senator Schumer and Kennedy for hours lecturing the nominees on ‘settled law’ for a ruling (Roe v Wade) that is clearly bankrupt and must be vacated.
All these people fool only a few, and the more vocal they support this status quo, the more they look like the power-drunk fools they really are. Even so, hardly anyone in power can must their courage to say anything to the contrary, except Cong. Paul and even then look at how few will give him the time of day.
The only relief comes where the MSM is on the decline and for the time being at least, the internet offers unfetter access to the facts, even as it gives the moonbats a place to resonate and amplify moonbattery.
Beware the man that touts the community and its supposed power to enact standards into law. --
--- The man who claims conservative credentials, while he argues that our US Constitution was not intended to protect our individual rights from state or local government infringements.
These men claim that 'We, -as a society', decide which rights we will protect --- And if 'We' choose not to protect your right to do [whatever], so be it. - If and when a majority of the people decide that we should protect a right, then we will. - Given that we're a self-governing nation, there's nothing to stop the majority from deciding this.
--- For instance, they argue that if there's nothing in a state constitution about the right to keep and bear arms [and States can change their constitutions by super-majority decisions], - then --- States can ban all guns if they so chose.
This is a wonderful topic, one that helps to delineate between conservatives and libertarians. I would beware of a man who says he is conservative or wants to champion liberties and yet keeps voting for bigger and bigger government, more thousands of pages of regulations (each having the weight of law) published each week in the Federal Register, and perpetuating a tax system that destroys financial privacy. Yes, indeed, I would be very wary of such a person.
Putting that aside, you have told me a question: what exactly does the Federal Constitution do? How does one re-interpret the federal Constitution, a document that regulates the relationship of each state to the other and to the federal government, as well as each citizen in regards to the federal government, so that it now has a hand that can reach inside of a state and touch a citizen in a matter or dispute that may only take place within the boundaries of the man’s own back yard, or on his back porch, even where the subject of the enforcement action was acting totally alone and without the knowledge of any other person?
Was it, for example “intended to protect our individual rights from state or local government infringements”, even though to this very day, while the Supreme Court has expanded free speech to include nude dancing and flag burning, and they have extended the First Amendment to the whole of state and local government through the doctrine of “incorporation”, they have not yet seen fit to give the same expansive incorporation to the Second Amendment?
The Federal Supreme Court did not utter a peep when the Supreme Court of California declared there was no right to keep and bear arms in that State’s Constitution.
But the same federal Supreme Court ruled in Gonzales v. Raich that there was a federal nexus and the federal government had jurisdiction to prohibit growing of pot in a person’s own backyard, with seeds and soil that had not crossed any state line. If they can do this with pot, they can do this with life-saving cancer medicine and they can do this with home-made firearms.
But, as James Madison, the acknowledged father of the document is quotes as having said, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution.” It is interesting to note exactly what he was talking about. In 1794 Congress has appropriated $15,000 for French refugees. Today, it is assumed that this falls under the “General Welfare” clause, which just shows us how socialist we have become in reading plain English phrases.
Well, I cannot undertake to lay any of my fingers on articles in the Constitution, especially given the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, that give the federal government authority to intercede in a private matter that does not cross any state line, nor touch on any power that we the people delegated to that government.
The only reason that the federal government has that power today, is that the Supreme Court has found a wordy way to allow it to be seized, and we have not complained loud enough to impeach those justices who support this reasoning.
People who insist that the power is there also support a welfare clause that is a blank check to create and sustain the Welfare State, upon which every one of the Democrat candidates for President expect to use to seize control of the entire medical industry and private health care.
see: How did we get here? By Dr. Walter Williams.
http://www.gmu.edu/departments/economics/wew/articles/fee/here.html
Excellant argument there.
I haven't found the article on industrial and household uses of HEMP yet.
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