Free Republic

Newsbrief: This Week's Corrupt Cops Story It never ends. This week's winners are Jefferson County (Greater Louisville), KY, Metro Narcotics officers Mark A. Watson and Christie Richards. The daring duo is on trial this week in Louisville on charges of using photocopied judges' signatures to create bogus search warrants, lying on affidavits to obtain search warrants, and pocketing money they were supposed to be paying to informers. Watson faces 472 counts, while Richardson faces 467. The pair are accused of 133 separate incidents of wrongdoing, according to court documents. Watson and Richards were suspended in February 2000 after questions were...

In a little noticed hearing of the House Government Reform Commnittee last week, Indiana Congressman (my homeotwn's Congressman actually) and longtime drug warrior Dan Burton made some stunning comments. In a hearing entitled "America's Heroin Crisis, Colombian Heroin and How We Can Improve Plan Colombia," Burton stopped just a hair short of advocating the decriminalization of drugs. Watch the video here (cut forward to 1 hour, 18 minutes into the hearing). Here's the transcript: Dan Burton: I want to tell you something. I have been in probably a hundred or a hundred and fifty hearings like this at various times...

As a member of the baby boomer generation, I, like many of my cohorts, experimented with marijuana in my youth. Many people, like me, even inhaled it and found it quite enjoyable. But these days we are warned that marijuana is "more dangerous" than ever, and that our youth is in grave danger because today's weed is up to 30 times more powerful than weed in the '60s and '70s. We're being told that we must protect the children and that we should join the chorus of voices pounding it into our children's heads that drugs are bad. First, I...

Bradley Nowell of the band Sublime sang of smoking two joints in the morning and smoking two joints at night. George Mcmahon, a medicinal marijuana user, smokes 300 pre-rolled joints a month and it is perfectly legal. After suffering a lifetime of pain, Mcmahon is now one of only five citizens in the United States to receive federal medical marijuana. Mcmahon feels he is one of the lucky ones and wants to get the message out that marijuana can be beneficial to patients in need, and sometimes is a better cure than many painkillers prescribed today. Each month Mcmahon receives...

Medical marijuana and the feds Debra Saunders If the federal government were right that medical marijuana has no medicinal value, why have so many doctors risked their practices by recommending its use for patients with cancer or AIDS? Marcus Conant, the doctor who identified the first cases of Kaposi's sarcoma among San Francisco AIDS patients, can answer that. Imagine you're the doctor for a 40-year-old lady with breast cancer. They put her on chemotherapy, and every time she takes her therapy, she throws up. She can't sleep; she's up sick all night. She has trouble caring for her children. Medical...

Free marijuana? 10/28/2002 By Kim Kapilovic / 3TV PHOENIX -- It's the campaign claim that has people shaking their heads -- will officers readily be giving out free marijuana? 3TV took this issue to both a proponent and an opponent of the Drug Medicalization, Prevention and Control Act of 2002. Cannibus, hemp, Mary Jane, pot. Marijuana has a lot of names and it has had a lot publicity over the last 6 years in Arizona. Prop 203: Read the initiativeIt passed as a medicinal drug in 1996 and was reaffirmed by the voters in 1998. Four years later, Proposition...

ALBANY, Oct. 16 — Flanked by terminally ill people who told tales of unrelenting pain, Tom Golisano today endorsed the medical use of marijuana, and lashed out at Gov. George E. Pataki for blocking a state program to provide the drug to patients. "My approach to this issue is to return the discretion to the doctors, who are trained to make these decisions," said Mr. Golisano, the Independence Party candidate for governor. He charged that Mr. Pataki was opposed "because he is in the pocket of the big drug companies who stand to lose money if medical marijuana is made...