Free Republic

Sens. Cory Gardner, a Colorado Republican, and Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, introduced a bill Thursday intended to protect the laws of states that have legalized some form of marijuana from federal intervention. The Strengthening the Tenth Amendment Through Entrusting States (STATES) Act would ensure that states can make and enforce their own laws pertaining to the production and distribution of marijuana as long as states comply with a few federally-mandated basic protections. Currently, 46 states and additional territories have laws permitting medical and/or recreational marijuana. Both Colorado and Massachusetts have legalized recreational marijuana. But on the federal level, the...

Cannabis activists paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue with flags, banners, a 51-foot inflatable joint, and a plan to get high at 4:20 p.m. two years ago in a last-ditch bid to convince President Barack Obama to administratively legalize marijuana. Attendees blew smoke through a shofar, took selfies, and reveled in a communal cloud as police watched, but the rally didn't sway Obama, who left office with pot still a Schedule I drug under the Controlled Substances Act, meaning illegal for any purpose outside limited research. "I think he will go down among potheads as fitting the stereotype as someone who was...

President Trump called Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner this week to tell him there will be no crackdown on states that legalized marijuana for recreational use. Trump also said he will support legislation to allow state autonomy under federal law, which currently makes pot possession for any reason outside limited research a crime. Gardner, a Republican, won the assurances by blocking Justice Department nominations after Attorney General Jeff Sessions withdrew the so-called Cole Memo in January.

As California's Summer Gas Is Approaching $4.00/gal what can we expect from President Trump and changes to onerous EPA regulations? Part of gasoline’s price increase is largely seasonal, as refiners tend to process less crude oil into fuel during maintenance and are starting to transition to summer-grade gasoline, which is more expensive to make. According to analysts prices will likely climb further as the weather warms and driving picks up. We need to get gas prices under control in order to MAGA.

In a state consumed by conservation and environmental issues, one highly endangered species has long gone unnoticed and unprotected – the California Conservative. Is it still possible to rescue them from the brink of extinction? Can their numbers be revived? And can they thrive here once again? While the nation continues to view California as a homogeneous voting block of individuals in lock step with an increasingly progressive liberal agenda, for Common Sense Californians up and down the left coast state, there’s a sense that a different tide is rising. The ripple began in Los Alamitos where the city council...

Binge drinking across the United States is at an all time high. Yet, a new report from the Wall Street investment firm Cowen & Company shows that this dangerous alcoholic behavior is on the decline in states that have legalized the leaf in a manner similar to alcohol.It was just a month ago that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) published new data suggesting that more Americans are now engaging in regular binge drinking. What was once considered a foolish exploit of College students has now apparently infiltrated citizens from every demographic and all walks of life. [...]But the investment analysts at...

SAN FRANCISCO — Texas and more than a dozen other states led by Republican governors are supporting the Trump administration in its lawsuit over California’s so-called sanctuary laws that protect people in the U.S. illegally. In a court filing Monday, the states say the laws are designed to interfere with or block federal immigration enforcement, and California doesn’t have that authority.

The Trump administration is pushing forward with a colossal public works project in Northern California — heightening the towering Shasta Dam the equivalent of nearly two stories. The problem is that California is dead-set against the plan, and state law prohibits the 602-foot New Deal-era structure from getting any taller. {snip} The sudden momentum behind heightening the dam — a plan the federal government only a few years ago put on the shelf amid concerns it was incompatible with state environmental laws — threatens to trigger a constitutional conflict that tests the state's authority over what gets built on federal...

A federal judge has frozen plans to require all products containing the widely popular herbicide glyphosate to display a Proposition 65 warning in a landmark ruling that could signal the turning of the tide for California's nanny-state regulations. The decision by Federal District Judge William Shubb represents a significant blow to both to the much maligned Proposition 65 and the organization that accounts for so many of its listings, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Shubb's ruling is a major victory for states' rights – due to the size of California's economy, its overregulation spills over into other...

WASHINGTON -- Federal prosecutors won't take on small-time marijuana cases, despite the Justice Department's decision to lift an Obama-era policy that discouraged U.S. authorities from cracking down on the pot trade in states where the drug is legal, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Saturday. Federal law enforcement lacks the resources to take on "routine cases" and will continue to focus on drug gangs and larger conspiracies, Sessions said, speaking at a Federalist Society event in Washington, D.C. The comments come after the Trump administration in January threw the burgeoning marijuana legalization movement into uncertainty by reversing the largely hands-off approach...

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — UPDATE (6:15 p.m.): The National Rifle Association has filed a federal lawsuit over gun control legislation Florida Gov. Rick Scott has signed, saying it violates the Second Amendment by raising the age to buy guns from 18 to 21. The lawsuit came just hours after Gov. Scott, a Republican, signed the compromise bill Friday afternoon. Lawyers for the NRA want a federal judge to block the new age restriction from taking effect. The new legislation raises the minimum age to buy rifles from 18 to 21, extends a three-day waiting period for handgun purchases to include...

“States rights” was a curse in the mouths of liberals when it came to condemning southern segregationists in the Jim Crow era. But for liberals today, the right of states like California to defy federal immigration law has suddenly become a hallowed principle. Take Joseph Alioto Veronese, candidate for San Francisco DA. On his Fox News show tonight, Tucker Carlson challenged Veronese: “it is now illegal for private citizens in California to assist federal law enforcement authorities [regarding illegal immigration] . . . how is that different from what happened in the South in the ’50s and ’60s?” Responded Veronese:...

Our nation’s Founding Fathers - were geniuses. They overcame the unbelievable handicaps of being white, male and by nigh all accounts all heterosexual - to create the greatest form of government in the history of personkind. Amongst their very many brilliances - was federalism. The concept of a very limited federal government with expressed powers - leaving the unexpressed and all the rest to the states and the people. The Ninth and Tenth Amendments to our Constitution help lock down this federalism. The Founders knew they weren’t perfect (though they came exquisitely close). Their federalism allows states to experiment with...

Can states just say “no” to foreign refugees? Tennessee is testing that proposition in federal court. Tennessee vs. U.S. Department of State is a case every state and taxpayer should watch closely in light of new FAIR research showing per-capita refugee costs running nearly $80,000 over five years. Like other states, Tennessee experienced a surge in refugee arrivals during the Obama administration, with attendant increases in social-service costs to the state and its localities. The FAIR study does not break down the costs by state. Nor does it incorporate all the expenses incurred by them. So the $80,000 price tag...

The hippies of the 70s are old. Time is merciless and none of us get out of here alive. My dad is a baby boomer born in 1944. He enjoyed his time as a 20 and 30 something in the '60s and '70s of America. It was a crazy time marked by free-love, tie-dyed shirts, pot-smoking, a free-wheeling youth, and the chaos of Vietnam. That was a long time ago. Until a year ago, my dad, now in his early 70s, was diagnosed with ParkinsonÂ’s Disease. My dad was a strong man who worked construction much of his life. His...

Gov. Phil Scott has signed Vermont's marijuana legalization bill into law. A Scott administration official tells WCAX the governor signed the bill shortly before 2 p.m. Monday. Scott is now the first governor in the country to sign marijuana legalization into law. Eight other states legalized marijuana through public referendums. In a letter to lawmakers, Scott said he signed the bill, H.511, with "mixed emotions." The bill allows Vermonters over the age of 21 to have an ounce of weed and to grow a few plants. Once signed, the new law goes into effect July 1.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. A 9-year-old girl unwittingly ate, and handed out to other classmates, THC-laced candy, school officials said. The girl brought the candies to school last Thursday and said she could not see...The student who brought them to school did not know they were medicinal...

You would think that the Justice Department has better things to do than to restart a federal war on marijuana or that it would want to stay away from interfering with the will of the people in the 29 states, plus the District of Columbia, that allow at least the medical use of marijuana. But you would be wrong. Thanks to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, we have now an emerging conflict between federal and state laws. That conflict should be resolved in favor of the states. When he was a senator, Sessions once said during a Senate hearing, "Good people...

Attorney General Jeff Sessions is being attacked on both sides of the aisle for rescinding the Obama policy that opened the floodgates to marijuana addiction. Funded by libertarian billionaires such as the Koch brothers, pro-pot senators like Cory Gardner are demanding that AG Sessions stand down and continue Obama’s misguided policy. Sessions rescinded Obama’s command that the Department of Justice ignore federal law against marijuana production and sales, and instead Sessions instructed U.S. Attorneys to begin enforcing well-established federal statutes against large-scale cultivation and distribution of marijuana. These federal laws preempt state law, particularly in Colorado and California where a...

If you live in a place where recreational pot use is legal, you’re probably wondering whether you need to start worrying about getting prosecuted for it. The answer is probably not, at least according to initial indications from the dozen or so U.S. attorneys general who get to make that call. [...] Of the 13 U.S. attorneys presiding in the eight states with laws making recreational use legal, several have indicated they’re interested only in going after marijuana distributors or users with ties to crime or violence. [...]