Six months after two states became the first in the nation to fully legalize recreational marijuana use the federal government has yet to articulate an official response to the historic voter-approved measures while simultaneously authoring a vast pot crackdown and refusing to accept even far less sweeping state-based marijuana laws as legitimate. The juxtaposition between [...]
WILL “KEYSTONE COPS,” IN THE NAME OF “SECURITY,” BE SUPPRESSING PROTEST AGAINST KEYSTONE XL PIPELINE IN NEBRASKA? Local officials of the pipeline company behind the oil company, TransCanada, are in negotiations with local police enforcement agents about using “off duty” police officers to insure against “violence” among the protesters. The local protest group, Bold [...]
FEDS WANT MAJOR EXPANSION OF SECRET WIRETAP POWERS OVER WEB-BASED SERVICES. Facebook, Google, Skype and other brand names behind your favorite internet sites and programs are chafing at proposed new rules from the Obama administration that would force companies to comply with sweeping wiretaps and information requests from the FBI and Justice Department. While companies [...]
FOILED BY CONGRESS, GUN CONTROL ADVOCATES TURN TO STATE BALLOTS IN BID TO END VIOLENCE. Lawmakers and organizations in several states are considering whether to place gun-related amendments such as universal background checks on state ballots as soon as the 2014 elections.Though the piecemeal approach is not ideal, activists are beginning to tire of [...]
“WITH VARYING DEGREES OF CONFIDENCE.“ White House sends message to Congress saying that Syria “may” (according to U.S. intelligence agencies) have used chemical weapons against its own population. This cautious wording seems both to move U.S. toward a view that a “red line” may have been crossed that would justify (overt) U.S. intervention in [...]
Captured by law enforcement after what was often a violent 24-hour manhunt. the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings last Monday now recovers in a hospital under the careful watch of state and federal officials. With considerable video evidence of his role in the crime, few think Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is innocent of participating in [...]
WATCH YOUR MOUTH, JOHN KERRY. The new U.S. Secretary of State commits the unpardonable sin of comparing the suffering visited on innocent people at the Boston Marathon with the 2010 Israeli raid and killing of numerous passengers on a “flotilla” of vessels bound with humanitarian aid to breach the Israeli blockage of Gaza. Israeli [...]
“INSUFFICIENTLY PRO-ISRAELI?” New U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had his appointment held up on such “insufficiency” charge but now, on a trip to Israel, he seems to be establishing his sufficiency bones. In presenting a large deal for U.S. arms shipments to Israel, he says that the deal is a “clear signal” to Iran [...]
BOMB AT BOSTON MARATHON KILLS 3 PEOPLE, INCLUDING 1 CHILD AND THERE IS AN OUTPOURING OF U.S. SYMPATHY FOR THE VICTIMS. A secret C.I.A. counter-terrorist raid in Afghanistan kills 17 people, including 12 children. Sympathy out-pouring?—not so much, at least in the U.S. Not so, however, in Afghanistan itself, where the PM Hamid Karzai [...]
Overwhelming public support for tighter gun laws is failing to spur action in Washington, where lawmakers are struggling to pass a “watered down”gun control bill that pro-gun groups have stuffed with measures actually loosening many restrictions on gun purchases. Five months after the Newtown tragedy that briefly united the public and their politicians into a [...]
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