As we discussed earlier, the Justice Department issued a statement after the passage of state laws legalizing marijuana that they would not affected federal enforcement. Obama officials also stated after the election (after being silent during the campaign) that marijuana policy would not change. Now, President Obama has given an interview that the federal government will not make enforcement a “priority” against recreational users. This is being billed as a major scope on “Obama’s pot problem.” However, there may be less than meets the eye here. He does not address the organizations and distributors of legal marijuana, which his Administration has cracked down on for the last four years. It also raises an interesting contradiction with other fields where Obama had insisted that matters are left to the Justice Department on questions of enforcement.
Obama told ABC “We’ve got bigger fish to fry . . . It would not make sense for us to see a top priority as going after recreational users in states that have determined that it’s legal.” His use of “recreational users” is telling. The state police generally goes after recreational users. The controversy for the last four years has been the Administration’s crackdown on distributors and growers who supply legal marijuana for medical use etc.
The statement also contradicts the statements of officials in the Administration. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Seattle (the highest Justice official in the state) issued a public warning after the election that “[r]egardless of any changes in state law, including the change that will go into effect on Dec. 6 in Washington state, growing, selling or possessing any amount of marijuana remains illegal under federal law. … Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress.”
As I noted earlier that the Justice Department statement is a curious statement since the Obama Administration recently did precisely that in the immigration area — it declared that it would no longer enforce the express law with regard to certain illegal aliens. It also refused to defend such laws as the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). Moreover, the Justice Department routinely makes decisions on the allocation of resources and priorities. Likewise, soon after taking office, Obama notoriously went to the CIA and assured CIA employees that they would not be prosecuted for torture, even though he admitted that water boarding used is torture. The President’s statement would reflect that he is going that route, but only for recreational users.
He remains uncertain, however, on how he can refuse to enforce this federal law despite his promise not to prosecute torture at the CIA or refusal to enforce immigration rules: “This is a tough problem, because Congress has not yet changed the law,” Obama said. “I head up the executive branch; we’re supposed to be carrying out laws. And so what we’re going to need to have is a conversation about, How do you reconcile a federal law that still says marijuana is a federal offense and state laws that say that it’s legal?”
He can clearly make marijuana enforcement a non-priority and I agree with that move. Yet, such statements on “users” avoids the primary question. Will he continue his controversial policy of cracking down on distributors and growers in these states?
Source: ABC
Gun Control Is A Parenting Issue
By Lisa Belkin
Posted: 12/14/2012
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-belkin/newtown-gun-control-parenting-issue_b_2302526.html
Excerpt:
Please don’t tell me that if only the staff at Sandy Hook Elementary School were also armed that this would have ended well. It might have ended differently, but concealed weapons in the teachers lounge is not the way we want to raise our kids.
Jose Luis Nunez had a handgun in order to protect his son. The 4-year-old accidentally shot himself in the face with it in Houston on Tuesday. Joseph V. Loughrey had one for the same reason. His 7-year-old son Craig died on Saturday outside of Pittsburgh when that handgun accidentally went off while the boy was getting into his safety seat in front of a gun store.
And that was just this week. The same week that the NRA proudly tweeted it had reached 1.7 million “likes” on Facebook.
Gun Deaths: A Familiar American Experience
By Bill Weir
Jul 21, 2012
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/07/gun-deaths-a-familiar-american-experience/
Excerpt:
A study in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery found that the gun murder rate in the U.S. is almost 20 times higher than the next 22 richest and most populous nations combined.
Among the world’s 23 wealthiest countries, 80 percent of all gun deaths are American deaths and 87 percent of all kids killed by guns are American kids.
But regardless, polls show that public attitudes don’t change, even after a mass slaughter like this. Forty-nine percent say it’s more important to protect gun rights while 45 percent favor tighter gun control.
But no one of any political stripe can denying the human cost of our collective trigger fingers.
According to the Children’s Defense Fund, in the 44 years since Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King were shot to death, bullets have ended the lives of more than one million people — including 12 in Aurora, Colo., who came together at midnight, just looking to cheer for a superhero.
what we have is a system that elevates a pos nobody into a 24/7 news item. want to be the most talked about person for the year? want everyone you ever knew to be asked about you? want to make the president of the united states cry on live tv? all you have to do is want to kill yourself and not care who else dies. no ban on magazines or type of loading mechanism will change it. you can’t make every type of material that burns or goes boom unlawful. forcing jesus into everyone won’t change it.
and no, i don’t know what to do about it either.
just don’t cry over the sob. don’t write books or make movies about him.
don’t even say his f@cking name
OS
I remember reading about Deputy Simpson from a post you made here some time ago. Hope she manages somehow. Takes a lot of strength to make it through something like that.
What Darren said.
Darren, Deputy Stephanie Simpson is now on 100% disability. Being shot in the face at close range with a .308 deer rifle will ruin your whole day. And the rest of your life.
http://www.timesnews.net/article.php?id=9009433
Shano, I stand corrected. There were 19 fatalities of kids under the age of six. On the other hand a total of 168 people lost their lives, and another 680 people were injured with wounds that ranged from life-threatening to relatively minor. 324 buildings were either destroyed or badly damaged, along with several dozen motor vehicles.
As my friend YankeeFarmer says upthread, the worst thing we can do is pass draconian legislation in the heat of passion. That kind of thing got us the Patriot Act and I certainly do not want to go down that path again.
Folks. Even if we just went out and banned all firearms except for those used in hunting and such, which seems to be the last acceptable use for which all but the most extreme would seem to permit, it is not going to stop violence completely.
Here is one example. A deputy who was with the department I formerly worked for was off duty and hunting near Soap Lake and he was shot and terribly wounded by a man who I think was just looking to kill a man. The suspect was convicted of Assault 2nd and went to prison. Earl nearly died. I get angry and saddened every time I think of that day.
http://www.komonews.com/news/local/15791592.html?tab=video&c=y
It’s going to happen for the reasons in large part due to what OS and Gene said. And then it’s going to happen for no reason at all, and that is often the worst part of it. No happy ending in the true sense.
Please watch the video in the link.
Shano,
That chart is a good demonstration on how to lie with statistics. The sample size is too small to have any power. Any sample smaller than about thirty does not have the power to draw any firm conclusions, or predictive ability. You can use a simple statistical tool to determine a .05 confidence level, but that is misleading because the confidence level does not give a true picture of predictive power when the small sample size is taken into consideration.
Great links shano!
Bill Clinton explains in his autobiography, “My Life”:
“The NRA had already lost the fight to defeat the Brady Bill and was determined to prevail in this one so that Americans would retain their right to “keep and bear” rapid-fire, large magazine weapons designed for one purpose only: to kill a great many people in a hurry. These weapons worked: crime victims shot with them were three times more likely to die than those whose assailants had fired regular handguns.” (p. 610)
…
“Just before the House vote (on the “Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act”), Speaker Tom Foley and majority leader Dick Gephardt had made a last-ditch appeal to me to remove the assault weapons ban from the bill. They argued that many Democrats who represented closely divided districts had already…defied the NRA once on the Brady bill vote. They said that if we made them walk the plank again on the assault weapons ban, the overall bill might not pass, and that if it did, many Democrats who voted for it would not survive the election in November. Jack Brooks, the House Judiciary Committee chairman from Texas, told me the same thing…Jack was convinced that if we didn’t drop the ban, the NRA would beat a lot of Democrats by terrifying gun owners….Foley, Gephardt, and Brooks were right and I was wrong. The price…would be heavy casualties among its defenders.” (pp.611-612)
…
“On November 8, we got the living daylights beat out of us, losing eight Senate races and fifty-four House seats, the largest defeat for our party since 1946….The NRA had a great night. They beat both Speaker Tom Foley and Jack Brooks, two of the ablest members of Congress, who had warned me this would happen. Foley was the first Speaker to be defeated in more than a century. Jack Brooks had supported the NRA for years and had led the fight against the assault weapons ban in the House, but as chairman of the Judiciary Committee he had voted for the overall crime bill even after the ban was put into it. The NRA was an unforgiving master: one strike and you’re out. The gun lobby claimed to have defeated nineteen of the twenty-four members on its hit list. They did at least that much damage….” (pp. 629-630)
“One Saturday morning, I went to a diner in Manchester full of men who were deer hunters and NRA members. In impromptu remarks, I told them that I knew they had defeated their Democratic congressman, Dick Swett, in 1994 because he voted for the Brady bill and the assault weapons ban. Several of them nodded in agreement.” (p. 699)
http://election.princeton.edu/2012/12/14/did-the-federal-ban-on-assault-weapons-matter/
Graphs on mass killings before, during and after assault weapon bans.
OS,
If I understand your argument correctly, if someone can kill someone with any other weapon, we cannot reasonably restrict people from having semi-automatic weapons? Did you buy enough fertilizer to bring down a building at one time? The underlying cause is this country’s infatuation with guns. Why is it that the US has 19.5 times the number of gun homicides than other high income countries? http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20571454
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/12/14/every-day-is-the-day-to-talk-about-gun-control.html
David Frum
OS, no, more children were killed today (20) than at Ok City (19).
raff,
Fertilizer is not the only way. I know how to make black powder, although I choose not to because the stuff is dangerous. As for fertilizer, I have bought the stuff by the pickup truck load at the farmer’s co-op store. I used to use it in huge quantities on my Bermuda grass lawn. Never did get a visit from law enforcement. I have bought enough over the years to bring down the average size courthouse. I know enough chemistry to make things that will blow up with stuff I can probably find under your kitchen sink and in the garage. As I said, a mass murderer will find a way. The cheapest and most effective is ordinary gasoline, and that is a heck of a lot more horrific than bullets. At least you have a chance to dodge bullets. Smoke inhalation and fire, not so much.
If we can forget the tools for a moment and focus on the underlying cause, we switch from band-aids to treating the disease.
That should read “happens” not appends!
OS,
As Gene said it is all about range. If the rifle was not used maybe he had other plans for it. BTW, what appends if you buy a lot of fertilizer and you are not a farmer? You get a visit from the FBI. I will always vote to make that murderer work harder to kill innocents when it can be prevented reasonably.
OS,
I was thinking of Happy Land when I mentioned fire up above. ” A mass murderer will find a way. Always.” In that we are in total agreement.
Gene, raff must not have ever seen a Filipino Kali knife fighting demonstration.
Also, click the link provided by YankeeFarmer upthread. Furthemore, Timothy McVeigh killed a lot more kids with fertilizer and a truck than were killed today. A mass murderer will find a way. Always. I have known enough of them to learn how their minds work from first hand experience.
Mark McKinnon @mmckinnon
And for those talking about “fake tears for an agenda”, you must not have kids, or a heart. Take your foot off the political pedal for a day