Blog Heap of Links for the day 1 March 2009

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder declared this week that President Obama's campaign promise to stop "using Justice Department resources to try to circumvent state laws" is now the active policy of the United States government. That could at least partially change the parameters of debate over whether or not to legalize medicinal cannabis when the subject comes up for discussion again in the Tennessee Legislature later this session. [Yeah, sure.]

The time has come for the People of Planet Earth to rise up and demand the Re-Legalization of Marijuana. In the weeks between the election and the inauguration President Obama created the change.gov website in order to gather policy recommendation from the American People. To Obama's surprise the most recommended "change," from the American People was to Re-Legalize Marijuana for both medical and personal use. And how did President Obama respond to "We the American People?" He flatly rejected the will of the American People by stating: "I am not going to Legalize Marijuana."

An Internet security company claims that Iran has taken advantage of a computer security breach to obtain engineering and communications information about Marine One

Paul Harvey, the news commentator and talk-radio pioneer whose staccato style made him one of the nation's most familiar voices, died Saturday in Arizona, according to ABC Radio Networks. He was 90. Harvey died surrounded by family at a hospital in Phoenix, where he had a winter home, said Louis Adams, a spokesman for ABC Radio Networks, where Harvey worked for more than 50 years. No cause of death was immediately available.

BARTLESVILLE — Charles Roy "Chuck" Spears, owner of Spears Travel, died Thursday. He was 82.

"Bartlesville does something right," Inhofe said during a visit to the Bartlesville Regional Chamber of Commerce. "Bartlesville, the city, thinks things out. They've raised (water) rates for three consecutive years." He said community support goes a long way in achieving solutions to the city's issues. "There are a lot of elements that lead me to believe that we'll be able to do a little better job on the rates that the Corps (of Engineers) is charging," Inhofe said.

Printing presses normally used to make Australian dollar bills produced solar power cells in a trial near Melbourne last week. The giant machines arranged and stamped flexible solar panels onto plastic film.

Two Aiken County men have been jailed after local and federal agents recovered 400 pounds of marijuana at a storage unit in Martinez and raided a Hampton Avenue home in Aiken Friday.... Narcotics investigators then served a search warrant at the 1375 Hampton Avenue home Lewis lives in with his father, a retired Aiken Public Safety officer. Local investigators said they have no reason to believe the former officer had any knowledge of the drug trafficking, but he was at home during the raid in Aiken and detained briefly while deputies seized a Ford Explorer utility trailer and a stolen motorcycle....

Usually, Curtis Thurmond is using his fork lift to pick up plywood. But, on Friday morning, investigators had other ideas. "They just came to ask me to give them a hand," says Curtis. "I had no idea what I was giving them a hand for at the time." That lift of his was picking up some of the 400 pounds of marijuana from a storage unit at the Flowing Wells Industrial Park in Martinez. "I was shocked to hear in this immediate area, we had that type of activity going on..." [Shocked!]

It has been nearly 40 years since President Nixon began the "war on drugs" in 1971. Its objective from the outset was to suppress the manufacture, distribution and consumption of illicit drugs. By all of those measures -- and by common agreement -- the multibillion-dollar effort has been a failure. Supply is plentiful, distribution sophisticated and consumption steady. Today, there is rare consensus among policymakers, law enforcement leaders and healthcare professionals: Our drug policy, they concede, is not working.

VANCOUVER — The Conservative government continued its law-and-order blitz Friday by reintroducing tougher penalties for drug offences. The changes came a day after Ottawa announced Criminal Code amendments aimed at gang violence. But a veteran defence lawyer gave the government's lock 'em up strategy a failing grade, saying it doesn't get at the roots of gangsterism — alienated young people and widespread demand for illegal drugs.

The list of athletes caught using marijuana is long. Could it be that drug warriors have been lying about marijuana's health impact? They've definitely been lying about the deterrent value of marijuana prohibition.

Will smoking weed soon be legal (for medicinal purposes only, of course) in the Garden State? New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine sure hopes so and he isn't alone. On Monday the New Jersey State Senate passed the "New Jersey Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act" by a 22-16 vote. The bill proposed by Sen. Nicholas Scutari (D-Union) would permit terminally and chronically ill patients to get permission to grow, possess and smoke weed. In total patients could possess up to six plants and one ounce of weed, according to the bill.

North Coast medical marijuana growers and distributors offered guarded optimism to news that federal authorities are expected to stop raiding California pot dispensaries. "In general, we are very happy about it," said John Sugg, president of the Sonoma Patient Group in Santa Rosa. "It makes us feel better we're not going to be attacked just for political reasons." [Dream on! (What is he smoking? Oh, yeah....)]

The Temecula branch of Alternative Care Clinics opened four months ago, part of a growing network of Inland businesses connecting patients with medical marijuana. "We used to get a lot more questions," said Jonathan Arbel, ACC's director of operations. "Now it's just more recognized as a legitimate treatment." "It seems like it's a lot less of a negative thing now," said Tom Wiggins Jr., administrator for Inland Empire Cannabis Consultants of Temecula. The trend worries a local anti-drug organization.

The long-awaited 'Watchmen' movie takes loyalty to new limits. And that's exactly what's wrong with it.

Director Zack Snyder needed a superhero's fortitude to finish the controversial comic-book saga. We'll find out if that was enough after Friday.

Who watches the "Watchmen"? Or maybe the question is: How closely will lovers of "Watchmen" be watching? If you don't think the answer is "very," you're living in an alternate universe. The Warner Bros. superhero action-drama arrives Friday with more than 20 years of heavy expectations. For the comic-book set, this is the Holy Grail of graphic novels. And director Zack Snyder and the rest of the team behind the film knew all the pitfalls and perils that such a notorious pop-culture work would bring.

In response to user feedback, Microsoft has made numerous changes to the Windows 7 user interface as it readies the operating system -- viewed by many as a make-or-break product for the software maker -- for formal launch later this year or early next year.

A Seattle-area PC seller will offer free Windows 7 upgrades to customers who buy new Vista-powered machines starting next week, beating Microsoft Corp. and its biggest hardware partners to the punch by months.

Notes from CPAC, the national conservative conference, where this week youth has been served.

As I stated in The New Evangelicalism And Its Bohemian-Style Emergent Church, it's just a matter of time before those in the Emergence against Sola Scriptura that are hitting the bong finally 'fess up like the man in the following story "testifies" for the Lord. Within that post I also pointed out that, from my days in a reggae band with two Rastas from Kingston, I personally can tell you for a fact that the spiritual seekers known as the Rastafarians beat both of them to the shtick that God supposedly gave us this herb for "wisdom."

Mitt Romney returned yesterday to a conservative gathering where his 2008 presidential campaign was both birthed and buried, helping to establish the onetime moderate Massachusetts governor as a movement favorite, de-facto leader of an out-of-power party, and an early, default front-runner for the 2012 nomination.

The Cannazine Cannabis News portal has come up with a novel way to use social networking phenomena Twitter. According to the CannaZine's in-house cannabis grower Red Dragon, who produces cannabis growing material for magazines such as Weed World magazine in the UK and Soft Secrets in Holland as well as the CannaZine, this is the future for a busy generation which is short on time....

Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Oklahoma) addressed the recently approved stimulus, the Guantanamo Bay prison and troop withdrawal from Iraq while in Bartlesville on Friday to discuss local water issues. Inhofe, who opposed passage of the $787 billion federal stimulus bill, referred to stimulus funds as "welfare" during his visit, and said Oklahoma will get $1.9 billion in stimulus funds. "It's 7 percent stimulus and 93 percent welfare, that's essentially what we have and it is huge..."