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More BS and lies from the White House on marijuana
http://www.webpronews.com/marijuana-legalization-the-white-house-fights-back-2014-08
Marijuana Legalization: The White House Fights Back
By Mike Tuttle
One by one, states are taking matters into their own hands and legalizing marijuana in one form or another. For some, it is for medicinal purposes, commonly called “medical marijuana”. For others, they simply go the route of either “decriminalizing” marijuana — which means reducing possession from a felony to a misdemeanor — or legalizing it entirely.
Just because a state decides to not arrest people in possession of marijuana, doesn’t mean the federal government is going to sit back and allow it. Marijuana is considered a Schedule I drug. To be on Schedule I, the following criteria must be met:
1. The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.
2. The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.
3. There is a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision
This puts marijuana on the same list as heroin, meth, angel dust, and many other very powerful drugs. And it means that the Drug enforcement Agency has a mandate to go after anyone in possession of it.
Recently, the New York Times editorial department officially came out in favor of federal legalization of marijuana, letting the issue of its criminality be left up to individual states, without fear of reprisals or loss of funding in other areas from the federal government.
After a series of editorials calling for legalization, the White House responded with a write-up of its own.
The Office of National Drug Control Policy issued the extensive response, which mainly stated many of the usual talking points against legalization.
“The editors of The New York Times may have valid concerns about disproportionality throughout our criminal justice system. But we as policy makers cannot ignore the basic scientific fact that marijuana is addictive and marijuana use has harmful consequences. Increased consumption leads to higher public health and financial costs for society. Addictive substances like alcohol and tobacco, which are legal and taxed, already result in much higher social costs than the revenue they generate. The cost to society of alcohol alone is estimated to be more than 15 times the revenue gained by its taxation. For this reason, the Obama Administration and the Office of National Drug Control Policy remain committed to drug use prevention, treatment, support for recovery, and innovative criminal justice strategies to break the cycle of drug use and associated crime.”
The White House uses the argument that alcohol cost is higher than revenue, yet alcohol is legal. Cost/revenue comparison alone is no reason to deny individuals the freedom to make a personal choice about their bodies. We tried that once. The cost of Prohibition was far too high.
And that is the error in logic the White House makes, comparing only the benefit of revenue, that is to say taxes, from legalizing something, be it alcohol or drugs. They ignore the high cost of fighting a black market and all the violence and criminal behavior that go along with it.
The major points the Obama administration raised include:
1. Marijuana use affects the developing brain.
2. Substance use in school age children has a detrimental effect on their academic achievement.
3. Marijuana is addictive. [What what I have read in other sources is that their definition of addictive is if heavy users stop smoking it they get headaches - some addiction]
4. Drugged driving is a threat to our roadways.
Each of these points have been addressed and found wanting many times before. Curtailing access of young persons to marijuana, much as they are kept from buying cigarettes or alcohol, would solve three of the four issues. Marijuana growers and sellers welcome age restrictions and enforce them stridently.
As for the drugged driving issue, this has been proven to be a total error in logic. Anyone who has smoked marijuana in the past week or more, then is in a car accident, is considered to have “marijuana present” in his system, and therefore it is chalked up as a factor in the accident.
The fact is, in areas where marijuana is legalized, vehicle accidents have actually gone down.
The true reasons for the White House doubling down on faulty policy are likely more about politics and election year positioning and posing. No one wants to come out as in favor of legalizing, lest they fall on the same grenade as Ron Paul has every time. It is an unpopular position for someone who needs donors, sponsors, and lobbyists behind him. For that reason, they ignore the voices of those who they should really be listening to, the voters who are turning states green every year.
Cops cook the books to make themselves look like heroes??? Probably!!!
http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-crimestats-lapd-20140810-story.html#page=1
Times Investigation
LAPD misclassified nearly 1,200 violent crimes as minor offenses
By Ben Poston, Joel Rubin contact the reporters
Flawed LAPD crime data leave police, public with incomplete picture of crime
Once police had Nathan Hunter in handcuffs, they tended to his wife.
She was covered in blood. She told the officers Hunter flew into a rage that night in February 2013 because she hadn't bought him a Valentine's Day gift. He beat and choked her before stabbing her in the face with a screwdriver and throwing her down a flight of stairs at their apartment in South L.A., according to police and court records.
Hunter, 55, was convicted of felony spousal abuse and sentenced to six years in prison.
Under FBI rules followed by police departments across the country, the beating should have been counted as an aggravated assault because Hunter used a weapon and caused serious injuries.
That's not what happened. The Los Angeles Police Department classified it as a simple assault — a minor offense not included in the city's official tally of serious crimes.
LAPD crime stats
How the LAPD tracks and underreports crime statistics
It was no isolated case. The LAPD misclassified nearly 1,200 violent crimes during a one-year span ending in September 2013, including hundreds of stabbings, beatings and robberies, a Times investigation found.
The incidents were recorded as minor offenses and as a result did not appear in the LAPD's published statistics on serious crime that officials and the public use to judge the department's performance.
Nearly all the misclassified crimes were actually aggravated assaults. If those incidents had been recorded correctly, the total aggravated assaults for the 12-month period would have been almost 14% higher than the official figure, The Times found.
The tally for violent crime overall would have been nearly 7% higher.
Numbers-based strategies have come to dominate policing in Los Angeles and other cities. However, flawed statistics leave police and the public with an incomplete picture of crime in the city. Unreliable figures can undermine efforts to map crime and deploy officers where they will make the most difference.
More than two dozen current and retired LAPD officers interviewed for this article gave differing explanations for why crimes are misclassified.
Some said it was inadvertent. Others said the problem stemmed from relentless, top-down pressure to meet crime reduction goals.
At the start of each year, top LAPD officials set statistical goals for driving down crime in the city. As part of that process, the department's 21 divisions are given numerical targets for serious crimes each month.
Division captains, their command staff and other senior officials worry constantly about hitting their targets, officers said.
Whenever you reported a serious crime, they would find any way possible to make it a minor crime. - Detective Tom Vettraino
"Whenever you reported a serious crime, they would find any way possible to make it a minor crime," Det. Tom Vettraino, who retired in 2012 after 31 years on the force, said of his supervisors. "We were spending all this time addressing what the crime should be called, instead of dealing with the crime itself. It's ridiculous."
In a written response to questions from The Times, LAPD officials said the department "does not in any way encourage manipulating crime reporting or falsifying data."
Deputy Chief Rick Jacobs defended the crime-reduction targets, saying they are an important tool for tracking the department's performance and holding division captains accountable. Captains are not judged solely on the numbers, but on the crime-fighting strategies they use, Jacobs said.
LAPD officials also say classification errors are inevitable in a department that records more than 100,000 serious offenses each year. They say the department has tightened its safeguards and improved its reporting accuracy.
"We recognize there is an error rate," said Arif Alikhan, a senior policy advisor to Police Chief Charlie Beck. "It's important to us to do what we can to reduce that error rate."
cComments
So, the obvious question now is how many of these cases that should have been classified as violent crimes were from the campus of USC and its surrounding area? The place might look like Beirut and worse than first thought. How much pressure did the USC administration place on the LAPD to...
The department "is relying on that data to determine where we are going to send cops … how we actually do things to prevent crime," he added.
Alikhan, a former federal prosecutor and Homeland Security official, said the rate of misclassification has held steady or even declined over the years, so the public can trust figures showing that crime in L.A. has fallen in each of the last 11 years.
Beck declined to be interviewed. In a statement, he said classifying crimes is "a complex process that is subject to human error."
If the misclassifications were mainly inadvertent, police would be expected to make a similar number of mistakes in each direction — reporting serious crimes as minor ones and vice versa, said Eli Silverman, professor emeritus at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
But The Times' review found that when police miscoded crimes, the result nearly always was to turn a serious crime into a minor one.
Prompted by questions from Times reporters, the LAPD took steps this year to improve the accuracy of its statistics through training and "increased scrutiny of crime report classifications," said Cmdr. Andrew Smith, the department's chief spokesman.
With stricter standards in place, the LAPD's count of aggravated assaults rose 12% in the first half of 2014, compared with the year before. At a news conference last month to release the mid-year crime statistics, Mayor Eric Garcetti cited "more aggressive reporting" in explaining the increase.
That trend has continued. Through early August, the number of aggravated assaults was up 14.8% and violent crime overall was up 5.2% compared with the same period last year.
::
The LAPD collects data on all types of crimes, but published statistics focus on what the FBI defines as serious offenses: homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, theft, motor vehicle theft and arson. The first four categories get the most attention.
The Times' analysis of LAPD crime statistics was based on a year's worth of data — from early October 2012 through September 2013 — obtained through public records requests. The information included brief summaries of officers' reports for more than 94,000 crimes and showed how the incidents were classified.
Reporters searched the summaries for terms such as "stab" and "knife" to flag incidents that might meet the FBI criteria for serious offenses. They then read thousands of the summaries, which are typically two or three sentences long. They also reviewed court and police records for dozens of cases.
The Times compiled an initial list of nearly 2,000 misclassified crimes. Almost 1,400 were violent offenses; the rest were property crimes.
Reporters sought to confirm the findings by sharing data on a random sample of 400 incidents with five experts, including crime-reporting specialists at the Massachusetts, Michigan and Oregon state police. The sample was divided among the five experts for review.
Overall, they agreed with The Times in 90% of the cases that serious offenses had been recorded as minor crimes. Cases in which the experts disagreed with the newspaper's assessment were removed from the tally of misclassified crimes. Incidents similar to those also were excluded.
LAPD officials questioned The Times' analysis, saying the incident summaries might not accurately describe what happened. To address that concern, reporters gave the department a random sample of 200 assaults that appeared to have been misclassified.
The LAPD had its own auditors and an outside expert review the sample. Alikhan and Jacobs acknowledged that police had misclassified 89% of those cases and said the errors would be corrected.
Taking that into account, reporters ultimately determined that nearly 1,200 violent crimes had been improperly classified, of which almost 1,100 were aggravated assaults.
With accurate reporting, the city's official count of violent crime for the one-year period would have been 18,046 instead of 16,849, the analysis found.
The misclassified cases included one in which a man suffered third-degree burns when his girlfriend poured boiling water on him as he slept, another in which a man stabbed his girlfriend with scissors and a third in which two men choked and beat a neighbor with a metal bar until he lost consciousness.
All three fit the criteria for aggravated assault but were recorded as minor offenses.
::
Compiling crime statistics is a multi-step process with the potential for errors or intentional distortion at various points.
When called to a crime scene, patrol officers interview the victim and witnesses and write a report that cites the state law they believe was violated.
A station supervisor is supposed to review the report and make sure the description of the offense is clear enough that a civilian clerk can later classify it correctly. The clerk enters a numerical code into the department's crime database, designating it as a serious or minor offense under FBI rules. Detectives are supposed to provide a final check, ensuring the incident is classified correctly.
In the case of Nathan Hunter's assault on his wife, his use of a weapon and the resulting injuries clearly fit the FBI's definition of aggravated assault — an attack meant to inflict severe injury that usually involves the use of a weapon.
The officer who wrote Hunter's arrest report described the incident as "spousal abuse." A supervisor at the 77th Division approved the report without clarifying whether it was a simple or an aggravated assault. A clerk later typed in the code for simple assault.
LAPD officials declined to answer questions about the incident.
James Simpson suffered third-degree burns when his girlfriend poured boiling water on him as he slept. Police misclassified the crime — which fit the criteria for aggravated assault — as a minor offense.
Breakdowns like the one in Hunter's case have a ripple effect. CompStat, the department's computerized tracking system, maps crime so officers can pinpoint trouble spots. But serious crimes that are misclassified don't appear on those maps.
"I need those maps to be honest," said a veteran officer, who requested anonymity because he feared retaliation for criticizing the department. "You're taking tools away from me that I need to do my job."
Department officials have publicly vouched for the accuracy of crime statistics.
"When I talk about these numbers, I'm confident," Chief Beck said after announcing the city's 2013 crime figures. "We make sure that they are accurate and that's a huge concern for us. We don't just put numbers out."
Mayor Garcetti has said he wants the LAPD's CompStat model replicated in other city departments, saying he believes it will increase efficiency and accountability.
Yet internal LAPD reviews have consistently found problems with the accuracy of crime statistics.
A 2009 audit identified fundamental flaws in the reporting process. "Auditors were unable to determine … who is responsible for determining appropriate crime code classifications," the report concluded. "This lack of ensuring accountability may have attributed [sic] to the inconsistencies when determining the proper crime code classifications."
That audit examined 383 simple assaults during a six-month period and found 1 in 10 should have been reported as aggravated assaults. Had the incidents been reported correctly, the city's aggravated assault total would have been 32% higher than the official figure, The Times calculated.
More recently, a review of 105 assaults from July 2012 concluded that 3% of the simple assaults examined were actually aggravated assaults. If those incidents had been included, the department's tally of aggravated assaults that month would have been about 10% higher.
In presenting the audits to the Police Commission in 2011, the LAPD's top auditor, Jeffry Phillips, said the department was "doing relatively well" classifying crimes. Officials did not explain to the commissioners that, with accurate reporting, the city's violent crime totals would have been significantly higher.
::
At that meeting, Beck did express concern over the potential for division commanders to "hide violent crime" by recording aggravated assaults as minor ones.
A disciplinary case dealing with that very problem had landed on Beck's desk the year before.
John Elder, a veteran detective in the LAPD's Southwest Division, had downgraded nearly 100 serious assaults to minor offenses, "resulting in a significant misrepresentation" of the division's assault totals over a seven-month period in 2008, according to an internal investigation report.
Two clerks in the Southwest station told investigators Elder ordered them to record all cases of domestic violence as minor assaults, regardless of the facts — a strategy that further suppressed the division's violent crime totals, according to the investigative report.
Elder denied the charges and said that any problems in the division's statistics were inadvertent mistakes and the result of inadequate training.
His commanding officer, Capt. Steven Zipperman, found otherwise, concluding that Elder had deliberately attempted to "cook the books."
"This is an integrity issue that erodes the basic foundation by which we are judged," the report said.
The effects went beyond statistics: Assault victims "were not afforded the appropriate investigative urgency," while suspects in some cases "were likely not given the immediate attention warranted," according to the report.
Despite recommendations from Zipperman and others that Elder be fired, Beck concluded the detective had not acted deliberately. The chief reprimanded him and removed him as a supervisor.
Beck declined to discuss the case. Through an attorney, Elder also declined to comment. The LAPD recently paid $325,000 to settle a lawsuit in which Elder claimed the disciplinary case was part of a campaign of harassment, according to court and City Council records.
Several officers of various ranks said that manipulating crime figures is common, if typically less brazen than the conduct attributed to Elder.
A sergeant who is a supervisor in an LAPD station described a recent case of statistical sleight-of-hand.
After a maid had come to clean, items went missing from a house. Officers filed a report describing the incident as a theft — a serious crime under FBI guidelines. A lieutenant who oversees detectives ordered the crime, and all others like it in the future, to be classified as embezzlement, a minor offense that doesn't register on the division's crime totals, the sergeant said.
"Every little game like this has been tried over the years," said the sergeant, who asked that his name not be published because he feared punishment for criticizing the department. "All of a sudden, we're going to put somebody in jail for theft, but we'll call it something else?"
Officers said it is widely believed that if their division repeatedly fails to meet targets for crime reduction, their chances of being promoted will be seriously harmed.
The department's focus on numbers has "grown into a dog and pony show, a resource sucker, a cause for fear," said Patrick Barron, who retired as a detective in 2012 after a 30-year career with the LAPD.
"Detectives should be worried about making sure their cases are thoroughly investigated and their victims and witnesses are treated with dignity," he said. "They shouldn't be worried about the statistics."
For more coverage of accountability in law enforcement, follow Ben Poston and Joel Rubin on Twitter.
Times staff writers Ben Welsh and Doug Smith contributed to this report.
Condoms for porn actors: A statewide law isn't the answer
As usual govenrment is the cause of the problem, not the solution to the problem!!!
I was hoping that after the voters in LA passed this silly law that the capital of porn movies would move from the San Fernando Valley in LA to Paradise Valley in Phoenix. But that didn't happen. I think there are a lot of things in Arizona that make it illegal to film porn movies.
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/editorials/la-ed-condoms-porn-20140810-story.html
Condoms for porn actors: A statewide law isn't the answer
Think requiring porn actors to use condoms has made their lives safer? Think again
Nearly two years ago, Los Angeles County voters passed Measure B, a controversial ballot proposal requiring adult film actors to use condoms when performing sex scenes. The law was presented to voters as a public health measure designed to prevent workers in the so-called porn capital of the world from contracting and spreading HIV and other sexually-transmitted diseases.
But there's no evidence that the law has had its intended effect. Instead, many adult film production companies have moved their shoots outside of the county — and in some cases, out of the state or country. Others have stopped filing for county film permits and have reportedly continued to shoot without complying with the condom mandate. In all, the number of permits issued to adult films in L.A. County dropped 90% in 2013 after Measure B went into effect, and there is no indication that porn stars are any safer today than they were two years ago.
lRelated To keep 'Hollywood' in Hollywood, tax incentives are key
Given Los Angeles County's experience, it's mind-boggling that so many state legislators have backed a bill that would essentially expand Measure B statewide. Assembly Bill 1576 would require film producers to document that actors use condoms during vaginal or anal intercourse, and it would require regular HIV and STD testing of actors.
The bill's author, Assemblyman Isadore Hall III (D-Compton), has argued that porn stars are workers and deserve a safe workplace. He's right. Performers should use condoms and producers should encourage them to do so. In 2010, The Times editorial board supported a proposed ordinance in L.A. that would have required condoms in adult film productions.
The number of permits issued to adult films in L.A. County dropped 90% in 2013 after Measure B went into effect. -
But upon further research, it became clear that government is ill-equipped to mandate and enforce the use of condoms on adult film sets. In fact, state occupational health regulations already call on all employers to prevent their workers from being exposed to blood, semen and saliva in the course of their job — and regulators have interpreted that to mean that porn actors must use condoms. But the rules are routinely ignored, and the state doesn't have the staff to inspect film sets, which, by the very nature of the business, are often in under-the-radar locations such as homes.
Industry leaders argue that their voluntary system of testing actors every two weeks for HIV and STDs, and providing the results to producers, agents and other performers, is a better, more practical way to prevent the spread of disease on set. And there is concern that if the pornography business leaves its base in California and becomes fragmented around the globe, the industry's testing protocols will be weakened and performers will be at greater risk of getting sick.
When the editorial board opposed Measure B in 2012, we said that its proponents were taking an attitude of "let's pass it and see what happens." Well, now we know what happened. Legislators should learn from L.A. County's experience and reject AB 1576.
Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion
Sadly most of the nut jobs with guns are in the government.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/
LAPD investigating officer who allegedly brandished gun off-duty
Los Angeles police are investigating an off-duty officer who was photographed brandishing a gun while driving on the freeway, officials said.
The officer was seen driving a dark blue Chevy Tahoe SUV eastbound on the 60 Freeway when she took a handgun and pointed it into traffic, according to photographs obtained by ABC Channel 7.
A police spokeswoman confirmed that the woman is a Los Angeles Police Department officer but would not identify her. Police and California Highway Patrol officers are investigating the incident.
It is unclear when the photos were taken.
Twitter: latjasonsong
jason.song@latimes.com
Sadly many cops think a gun and a badge means they can have sex with any woman they want.
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/
LAPD detective gets jail, must resign for fondling massage workers
A Los Angeles police detective was sentenced Friday to 180 days in jail and must resign from the force after assaulting three San Fernando Valley massage parlor workers while on the job.
Oris Pace was also placed on formal probation for three years following charges that he forced the women at separate parlors to undress and then fondled their bodies, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office.
In some cases he undressed the women, police said.
Pace, who pleaded no contest in June to the charges, was a supervisor with the Los Angeles Police Commission Investigation Division, making him responsible for enforcing business permits, including at massage parlors.
Authorities first learned about potential problems with Pace in November 2011 when a female massage parlor worker complained about his conduct.
The accusation was not made by one of his victims, but it eventually led to the discovery of the other workers.
The assaults occurred between Jan. 1, 2011, and Jan. 9,...
Dr. Sue Sisley hits the NY Times
One other issued in this article is how the police thugs at the DEA do the best they can to prevent research on the medical uses of marijuana because they don't want legalized marijuana to cut into their high paying jobs arresting people for the victimless crime of using or selling marijuana.
"The federal government categorizes
marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug ...
considered to have no accepted medical"
As the folks at Mary Jane Smokeware say "F*ck the DEA".
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/us/politics/medical-marijuana-research-hits-the-wall-of-federal-law.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=LargeMediaHeadlineSum&module=photo-spot-region®ion=photo-spot&WT.nav=photo-spot
Medical Marijuana Research Hits Wall of U.S. Law
By SERGE F. KOVALESKIAUG. 9, 2014
Nearly four years ago, Dr. Sue Sisley, a psychiatrist at the University of Arizona, sought federal approval to study marijuana’s effectiveness in treating military veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. She had no idea how difficult it would be.
The proposal, which has the support of veterans groups, was hung up at several regulatory stages, requiring the research’s private sponsor to resubmit multiple times. After the proposed study received final approval in March from federal health officials, the lone federal supplier of research marijuana said it did not have the strains the study needed and would have to grow more — potentially delaying the project until at least early next year.
Then, in June, the university fired Dr. Sisley, later citing funding and reorganization issues. But Dr. Sisley is convinced the real reason was her outspoken support for marijuana research.
“They could never get comfortable with the idea of this controversial, high-profile research happening on campus,” she said.
Dr. Sue Sisley said the University of Arizona had fired her because of her outspoken support for marijuana research. Credit Laura Segall for The New York Times
Dr. Sisley’s case is an extreme example of the obstacles and frustrations scientists face in trying to study the medical uses of marijuana. Dating back to 1999, the Department of Health and Human Services has indicated it does not see much potential for developing marijuana in smoked form into an approved prescription drug. In guidelines issued that year for research on medical marijuana, the agency quoted from an accompanying report that stated, “If there is any future for marijuana as a medicine, it lies in its isolated components, the cannabinoids and their synthetic derivatives.”
Scientists say this position has had a chilling effect on marijuana research.
Though more than one million people are thought to use the drug to treat ailments ranging from cancer to seizures to hepatitis C and chronic pain, there are few rigorous studies showing whether the drug is a fruitful treatment for those or any other conditions.
A major reason is this: The federal government categorizes marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, the most restrictive of five groups established by the Controlled Substances Act of 1970. Drugs in this category — including heroin, LSD, peyote and Ecstasy — are considered to have no accepted medical use in the United States and a high potential for abuse, and are subject to tight restrictions on scientific study.
In the case of marijuana, those restrictions are even greater than for other controlled substances. (Marijuana remains illegal under federal law, though nearly half the states and the District of Columbia allow its medical use and two, Colorado and Washington, have legalized its recreational use.)
To obtain the drug legally, researchers like Dr. Sisley must apply to the Food and Drug Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the National Institute on Drug Abuse — which, citing a 1961 treaty obligation, administers the only legal source of the drug for federally sanctioned research, at the University of Mississippi. Dr. Sisley’s proposed study also had to undergo an additional layer of review from the Public Health Service that is not required for other controlled substances in such research.
The process is so cumbersome that a growing number of elected state officials, medical experts and members of Congress have started calling for loosening the restrictions. In June, a letter signed by 30 members of Congress, including four Republicans, called the extra scrutiny of marijuana projects “unnecessary,” saying that research “has often been hampered by federal barriers.”
“It defies logic in this day and age that marijuana is still in Schedule 1 alongside heroin and LSD when there is so much testimony to what relief medical marijuana can bring,” Gov. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island said in an interview. In late 2011, he and the governor of Washington at the time, Christine O. Gregoire, filed a petition asking the federal government to place the drug in a lower category. The petition is still pending with the D.E.A.
Despite the mounting push, there is little evidence that either Congress or the Obama administration will change marijuana’s status soon. In public statements, D.E.A. officials have made their displeasure known about states’ legalizing medical and recreational marijuana.
The agency’s position seems at odds with that of President Obama, whose Justice Department has allowed states to legalize either medical or recreational marijuana as long as they follow certain federal priorities, such as not allowing sales to juveniles. Mr. Obama has also said that he believes marijuana is no more dangerous than alcohol and that he is bothered by the disproportionate number of minorities incarcerated for possession of the drug.
Asked if there was an inconsistency between the president’s stance and that of the Drug Enforcement Administration, a White House spokesman, Matt Lehrich, said: “The administration’s policy continues to be that while the prosecution of drug traffickers remains an important priority, targeting individual marijuana users is not the best allocation of federal law enforcement resources. The D.E.A. is carrying out that policy.”
There are signs, though, of a possible shift in attitude within the federal government. In May, the D.E.A. issued new rules to increase the government’s production of marijuana for research this year to 650,000 grams from 21,000 grams.
And at the National Institute on Drug Abuse, for instance, records show that at the beginning of this year there were 28 active grants for research into the possible medical benefits of marijuana in six disease categories. Most of the studies focus on the potential therapeutic uses of individual cannabinoid chemicals from marijuana or synthetic versions and not the plant itself. Furthermore, a dozen or so of those studies are being conducted with animals and not humans.
Additionally, other National Institutes of Health entities have been supporting marijuana research. As for independently funded marijuana research, the federal government has cleared 16 projects since 1999, 13 of them at the University of California, San Diego.
Moving the drug to a less restrictive category could do more than reduce some obstacles to research, proponents say. It would be a significant step toward allowing doctors around the country to prescribe the drug. Federal lawmakers say it could also permit medical marijuana operations that are legal at the state level to take business deductions on their federal taxes.
Dr. Sisley’s predicament shows that even in states like Arizona, where medical marijuana is legal, the matter remains politically volatile. Last month, Arizona authorized the use of marijuana for patients undergoing conventional treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder. Dr. Sisley’s study is supposed to use five different strains of marijuana that would be smoked or vaporized by 70 veterans. The goal is to develop a marijuana drug, in plant form that would be smoked or vaporized, approved by the Food and Drug Administration.
Her firing seemed to stem from a fight over money. In March, the Arizona House passed a Republican-sponsored bill designed to provide her project with some funding from fees collected in the state’s medical marijuana program. But the measure died when State Senator Kimberly Yee, a Republican who is the chairwoman of the Education Committee, refused to put the legislation on the panel’s agenda. Ms. Yee said at the time that she preferred the funds be used for antidrug education.
Angry about her opposition to the bill, a group of veterans began a recall effort against Ms. Yee. Some of those veterans had been treated by Dr. Sisley in the past, and Senate leaders concluded that Dr. Sisley herself was involved in the campaign.
The State Senate president, Andrew Biggs, called the university’s chief lobbyist, Tim Bee, to complain that Dr. Sisley seemed to be lobbying too aggressively and inappropriately. “Tim said he would call me back after he found out more,” Mr. Biggs said in an interview. “And then he did and told me, ‘This will not be a problem going forward.’ ”
In April, a university vice president, who said he was calling on behalf of the president, Ann Weaver Hart, told Dr. Sisley that Mr. Biggs thought she should resign, Dr. Sisley recounted. In June, she received a letter from the university saying her annual employment contract would not be renewed as of Sept. 26.
Dr. Sisley denied participating in the recall effort. She acknowledged talking to senators and their aides about funding, but as a member of the Arizona Medical Association. “The university could not take the political heat from the hyperconservative legislators and fired me and deserted all these veterans who have been fighting alongside me for years,” she said.
A university spokesman, Chris W. Sigurdson, said that while university policy prevented him from discussing specifics about Dr. Sisley’s case, the school had not been pressured to fire her. (Mr. Biggs also denied trying to get her fired.) He added that the university had proposed that another faculty member take over the project as lead investigator.
Late last month, the university notified Dr. Sisley that it had denied her appeal for reinstatement. Rick Doblin, founder and executive director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, which is sponsoring Dr. Sisley’s research, said he would now try to persuade the Arizona Board of Regents to allow the study to continue at another state institute with Dr. Sisley as the lead investigator.
Mr. Doblin said he was committed to staying with her as the lead investigator and would help her look for an alternate research location. A switch to a new study location would require further regulatory review for the proposed research, which still needs another approval from the D.E.A., Mr. Doblin said.
Two questions 1) Don't these cops have any REAL criminals to hunt down???? You know like robbers and rapists!!! Not dumb parents who accidentally or stupid leave their kids in cars. 2) If this is REALLY a problem which requires government intervention shouldn't it be done by the health department, not the cops and prosecutors???? Kinda like marijuana. If marijuana abuse is really a problem, shouldn't it he handled by the health department, not the police and prosecutors??? http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona/2014/08/08/maricopa-county-campaign-to-prevent-hot-car-deaths-abrk/13794501/ Maricopa County launches campaign to prevent hot car deaths Katie Bieri, The Republic | azcentral.com 5:31 p.m. MST August 8, 2014 The Maricopa County Attorney's Office has announced its launch of a countywide public-awareness campaign about the dangers of leaving children in hot cars. "These tragic incidents occur with an unfortunate regularity every summer, and we believe many are preventable," County Attorney Bill Montgomery said as he introduced the "Don't Leave Me Behind" campaign on Friday. So far this year, 21 children have died nationwide as a result of being forgotten in vehicles, Montgomery said. No Valley children have died this year as a result of being left in hot cars, Montgomery said, but 35-year-old Shanesha Taylor of Phoenix made national headlines in March after she left her 2-year-old and 6-month-old sons alone in a car while she attended a job interview. Taylor reached a deal with prosecutors last month that would allow her to forego felony charges if she completes parenting classes and sets up trust funds for her children. "Enough is enough," Montgomery said. "We're going to be much more overt in trying to carry this message." The first part of the Maricopa County campaign includes a large, mobile billboard that features a child and a dog in a hot car with the words, "Don't Leave Me Behind." The billboard will travel throughout the Valley on busy streets, highways and shopping centers for about 40 hours a week through August. Don't leave me behind truck "We want to provide an impactful and visual reminder to people to make sure they don't forget a child or pet when they park their vehicle," Montgomery said. The second part of the campaign includes a public-safety announcement that will be broadcast on local television stations in August and September. Last, the county will give away windshield shades at community-outreach events for drivers to place in their cars as a reminder of the consequences of leaving children in vehicles. Montgomery also recommended an app called "Baby Reminder," which helps to monitor parents' driving times and set alerts to remind them they have a baby in the car. The app is available for free in the iTunes App Store, along with other similar apps and products that have surfaced recently. Statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration show that more than 600 children have died in vehicles due to heatstroke between 1998 and 2013. Currently, heat-related illness represents the No. 1 cause of death for children in cars under the age of 14, aside from crash-related fatalities. While the "Don't Leave me Behind" outreach effort was proposed fairly late this summer, Montgomery promised that the county will reinstate the campaign much earlier next year.
Our grandchildren will bear the country's debt Let's assume there really is a National Debt, which will eventually be paid off by us serfs. Currently the National Debt is $17.6 trillion dollars according to the National Debt Clock at: http://www.brillig.com/debt_clock/ What's your share of the National Debt??? Divide $17.6 trillion by the 318 million people in the USA and your share is about $55,000. Now considering that children don't pay taxes, and that children are slightly more then half the population you have to assume that your share of the National Debt jumps to about $110,000. For that mythical American family of 4, your share of the National Debt is about $220,000. Let's say that tomorrow our elected officials in the Federal government demanded that we all pay off our share of the National Debt, how many people do you think had enough cash on hand to pay for their share.? Maybe Bill Gates and a few other people. But most of us don't have $55,000 in the bank, much less $110,000. Of course a lot of people say that the National Debt is a sham. And that Congress has been running the printing presses to pay it's bills. For more on that theory check out the book "Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve" by G. Edward Griffin. http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/letters/2014/08/08/our-grandchildren-will-bear-the-countrys-debt/13810157/ Our grandchildren will bear the country's debt John G. DeLasaux 5:57 p.m. MST August 8, 2014 President Barack Obama would have you believe that he is doing all those trillions of borrowing from the Chinese. In truth, he is borrowing from our grandchildren. They are the ones who will eventually have to pay back all that debt. How do you feel about suffocating your own grandchildren with trillions of debt? — John G. DeLasaux, Phoenix
Reagan aide Jim Brady's death ruled homicide Huhhhhhhh????? I'm not sure on this but I think the gun grabbers in the government are attempting to say that when gun grabber Jim Brady was shot 30+ years ago that was the cause of his death this week???? And of course if that is true these government gun grabbers will use that in their propaganda to flush the 2nd Amendment down the toilet. http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/2014/08/08/jim-brady-reagan-aide-ruled-homicide/13800837/ Reagan aide Jim Brady's death ruled homicide WASHINGTON — A spokeswoman says a Virginia medical examiner has notified police that this week's death of former White House press secretary James Brady has been ruled a homicide. Brady was shot in the head during the 1981 assassination attempt by John Hinckley Jr. of President Ronald Reagan. Brady lived through hours of surgery and further operations over the years, but he never regained normal use of his limbs. His family said he died Monday from a series of health issues. District of Columbia police spokeswoman Gwendolyn Crump says the department was notified of the homicide ruling Friday. It was made by a medical examiner in northern Virginia, where Brady died. Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity of all charges against him Brady undertook a personal crusade for gun control after suffering the devastating bullet wound. http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/politics/2014/08/04/jim-brady-former-white-house-press-secretary-dies/13582881/ Former White House press secretary Jim Brady dies WASHINGTON — James Brady, the affable, witty press secretary who survived a devastating head wound in the 1981 assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan and undertook a personal crusade for gun control, died Monday. He was 73. "We are heartbroken to share the news that our beloved Jim "Bear" Brady has passed away after a series of health issues," Brady's family said in a statement. "His wife, Sarah, son, Scott, and daughter, Missy, are so thankful to have had the opportunity to say their farewells." Brady, who spent much of the rest of his life in a wheelchair, died at a retirement community in suburban Alexandria, Virginia, where he lived with his wife. He suffered a bullet wound to his head in the assassination attempt outside the Washington Hilton Hotel on March 30, 1981. Although he returned to the White House only briefly, he was allowed to keep the title of presidential press secretary and his White House salary until Reagan left office in January 1989. Former first lady Nancy Reagan said she was "deeply saddened to learn of Jim Brady's passing today. Thinking of him brings back so many memories — happy and sad — of a time in all of our lives when we learned what it means to 'play the hand we're dealt.'" "I still remember vividly that day in March 1981, when Sarah and I sat together in a tiny room near the emergency room at George Washington University Hospital, trying to comfort each other while we both were gripped with unspeakable fear," Mrs. Reagan said. "The bond we established then was unlike any other." A federal law requiring a background check on handgun buyers bears his name, as does the White House press briefing room. Josh Earnest, President Barack Obama's press secretary, said Brady "showed his patriotism and commitment to the country by being very outspoken on an issue that was important to him and that he felt very strongly about." Of the four people struck by gunfire in the assassination attempt by John Hinckley Jr. — later found to be insane — Brady was the most seriously wounded. A news clip of the shooting, replayed often on television, showed Brady sprawled on the ground as Secret Service agents hustled the wounded president into his limousine. Reagan was shot in one lung while a policeman and a Secret Service agent suffered lesser wounds. Brady never regained full health. The shooting caused brain damage, partial paralysis, short-term memory impairment, slurred speech and constant pain. The TV replays of the shooting did take a toll on Brady, however. He told The Associated Press years later that he relived the moment each time he saw it: "I want to take every bit of (that) film … and put them in a cement incinerator, slosh them with gasoline and throw a lighted cigarette in." With remarkable courage, he endured a series of brain operations in the years after the shooting. On Nov. 28, 1995, while he was in an oral surgeon's office, Brady's heart stopped beating and he was taken to a hospital. His wife, Sarah, credited the oral surgeon and his staff with saving Brady's life. Brady remained as transition spokesman after Reagan's election. But his advisers appeared hesitant to give Brady the White House spokesman's job. Mrs. Reagan was said to feel the job required someone younger and better-looking than the 40-year-old, moon-faced, balding Brady. "I come before you today not as just another pretty face, but out of sheer talent," Brady told reporters. A week later, he got the job. He was divorced from the former Sue Beh when, in 1973, he courted Sarah Jane Kemp, the daughter of an FBI agent who was working with him in a congressional office. Sarah Brady became involved in gun-control efforts in 1985, and later chaired Handgun Control Inc., but Brady took a few more years to join her, and Reagan did not endorse their efforts until 10 years after he was shot. Reagan's surprise endorsement — he was a longtime National Rifle Association member and opponent of gun control laws — began to turn the tide in Congress. "They're not going to accuse him of being some bed-wetting liberal, no way can they do that," said Brady, who had become an active lobbyist for the bill. The Brady law — formally known as the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act — required a five-day wait and background check before a handgun could be sold. In November 1993, as President Bill Clinton signed the bill into law, Brady said: "Every once in a while you need to wake up and smell the propane. I needed to be hit in the head before I started hitting the bricks." Gun control efforts ran aground in the current Congress, however. Despite the December 2012 slayings at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, when 20 children and six adults were killed, a drive to expand background checks and a ban on assault-like weapons died in the Senate — due in part to opposition by the National Rifle Association. Clinton awarded Brady the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1996. In 2000, the press briefing room at the White House was renamed in Brady's honor. The following year, Handgun Control Inc., was renamed the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence as a tribute to Brady and his wife. I was right, they are trying to say that James Brady's death this week was the result of the assassination attempt 30+ years ago by John W. Hinckley Jr. I suspect this is an attempt by the gun grabbers in the US government to use his death to flush the 2nd Amendment down the toilet. http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/james-bradys-death-ruled-homicide-by-dc-medical-examiner/2014/08/08/686de224-1f41-11e4-82f9-2cd6fa8da5c4_story.html?hpid=z2 James Brady’s death ruled a homicide by Virginia medical examiner By Peter Hermann and Michael E. Ruane August 8 at 8:45 PM Monday’s death of President Ronald Reagan’s press secretary James S. Brady has been ruled a homicide resulting from the gunshot wound he suffered in the assassination attempt on Reagan in 1981, more than three decades ago. The ruling was made by the medical examiner’s office in Virginia, where Brady, 73, died in an Alexandria retirement community, and was announced Friday by Gwendolyn Crump, the D.C. police department’s chief spokeswoman. There was no immediate word on whether the shooter, John W. Hinckley Jr., who has been treated at St. Elizabeths psychiatric hospital since his trial, could face new criminal charges. Hinckley, 59, was found not guilty by reason of insanity after he shot Reagan and three others on March 30, 1981. But the decision to pronounce Brady’s death a homicide 33 years after he was wounded outside the Washington Hilton on Connecticut Avenue NW raises questions about whether prosecutors can, and will, try to get around double jeopardy — the legal concept that protects a person from being tried twice for the same crime — and pursue a murder charge. Bill Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said Friday that prosecutors are reviewing the ruling and that his office would have “no further comment at this time.” James Brady, the former press secretary to President Reagan, has died. Current White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest reflected on Brady's legacy during Monday's daily briefing. (The Associated Press) In recent years, Hinckley has been granted extended trips away from St. Elizabeths and can now spend as many as 17 days a month with his mother in Williamsburg. His attorney, Barry Wm. Levine, said he had not seen the medical examiner’s report but was confident that there is nothing for prosecutors to consider. “The prosecution will face insurmountable legal barriers to any prosecution,” he said. “It ought to be self-evident. Is there any conceivable theory of facts that would differ from the facts that applied to the prosecution in 1982? Is there something new or different other than the fact that Brady died? [Hinckley] was found not guilty of the assault. How could he be found guilty of the more serious charge?” He said Hinckley “has lived his whole life since that event riddled by guilt, and he has the greatest respect for the Bradys and the greatest amount of remorse for what happened. A sensitive public would know that at the time he committed that act, he was ravaged by mental disease.” The shooting of Brady three decades ago and the revelation of Hinckley’s mental illness — he told authorities he hoped that assassinating Reagan would impress the actress Jodie Foster — had largely faded from the headlines until Brady’s death this week. Brady, along with his wife, Sarah, became leading advocates of gun control after the shooting, fighting six years for passage of legislation requiring background checks for handguns bought from federally licensed dealers. Gail Hoffman, a Brady family spokeswoman, said she could not immediately comment on the decision but said “Jim had been suffering health issues since the shooting.” Prosecutors would face several hurdles if they decided to file new charges against Hinckley, including overcoming possible challenges to the medical examiner’s ruling. Hinckley had been charged with 13 counts, two of them related to Brady’s shooting: assault with intent to kill and a firearms offense. John Hinckley Jr. arrives at U.S. District Court on Nov. 18, 2003, in Washington. Hinckley was in court to request he be allowed to visit his parents without supervision. (EVAN VUCCI/AP) Thomas Zeno, the former prosecutor who for decades led the government’s efforts to block Hinckley’s requests for more freedom, said he expected his former colleagues to weigh charging Hinckley with Brady’s death. “They are going to have to look at the legal questions,” he said. “They are going to have to look at the factual questions, if they can really show the direct linkage [between the assault and Brady’s death] beyond a reasonable doubt. And then they are going to have to make the decision about whether it is the right thing to do.” Mark MacDougall, a former federal prosecutor, said “the real hurdle for the government would seem to be proving, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Hinckley actually caused Mr. Brady’s death 33 years after the shooting.” But such cases are becoming more common as advances in medical care help people live longer. In 2007, a Pennsylvania man who had served 16 years for shooting a police officer in 1966 was arrested again and charged with murder after the officer’s death, which was ruled a homicide based on the bullet wound 41 years earlier. The man was tried by a jury and acquitted. And in 2012, there was a shooting case in the District that was ruled a homicide when the victim died 23 years later. In that case, the shooter was serving an 85-year prison sentence. New charges were not filed. Brady was shot some 69 days into the Reagan presidency. The day of the shooting, he had at first asked an aide to accompany the president on a routine assignment — to address a gathering of the AFL-CIO at the hotel. He changed his mind at the last minute. After Reagan spoke to the union delegates, he and his party left the hotel and were walking to the presidential limousine when they were fired on about 2:30 p.m. Brady was hit first, above the left eye. The bullet that entered his head shattered into more than two-dozen fragments. Reagan was hit by a bullet that ricocheted off the limousine. Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and D.C. police officer Thomas Delahanty were also wounded. Brady’s recovery was marked by ups and downs. Within several months, he underwent two surgeries to stop spinal fluid from leaking from his cranial cavity, had an operation for a pulmonary embolism, and had epileptic seizures, pneumonia and persistent fevers. He was discharged from the hospital but needed continuous nursing care at home. He also required extensive outpatient physical therapy. A year later, he was back in the hospital because of a blood clot in his left leg, which had been partially paralyzed, along with his left arm. Hinckley was at St. Elizabeths, where his attorney and health-care workers petitioned for him to be allowed off hospital grounds. It set off a legal battle, and in December, a federal judge gave Hinckley more freedom, allowing him to spend more than two weeks in his mother’s home town of Williamsburg. U.S. District Judge Paul L. Friedman, in a 106-page opinion, expanded Hinckley’s monthly Virginia visits from 10 days. Friedman wrote that Hinckley “will not be a danger to himself or to others.” He said longer periods away from the hospital might “provide new opportunities for employment and structured community activities.” Hinckley’s doctors and therapists had asked Friedman to increase the length of Hinckley’s trips to his mother’s home to up to 24 days and eventually allow him to live there full time. Friedman, though, wrote that it would be “unwise” to allow Hinckley more freedom without further evaluation. Hinckley, he said, “continues to exhibit deceptive behavior even when there are no symptoms of psychosis or depression” and had “not cultivated any friends or established ties to any groups of people in Williamsburg.” Adam Goldman and Annys Shin contributed to this report. Maybe I will get cultured and attend the play 'Book of Mormon' The only other play I attended was "Guv: The Musical". It was a play at the Mill Avenue Theatre in Tempe which mocked impeached, indited and recalled Arizona Governor Ev Mecham. The play was hilarious. Despite being an uncultured slob I loved the play. Believe it or not I got dressed up and put on my best Levis and best t-shirt when I attended the play. Kathy would have been proud of me!!!! http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/letters/2014/08/08/book-of-mormon-play-not-for-easily-offended/13810121/ 'Book of Mormon' play not for easily offended Michael Butterfield 5:56 p.m. MST August 8, 2014 To the woman who was upset at the use of F-bombs during a performance of "Jersey Boys" at Gammage ("F-bombs destroy ASU version of 'Jersey Boys'," Opinions, Wednesday): She might as well turn in her tickets for "The Book of Mormon" when it appears here next year. "Mormon" makes "Jersey Boys" look like a Disney G-rated production. It is also (in my opinion) much better, funnier, more clever, etc. It is a great evening at the theater, but if you are easily offended, please stay home. Leaving during the first 15 minutes of this musical will greatly disturb the rest of the audience. Just don't go. — Michael Butterfield, Phoenix More of the old "Do as I say, not as I do" from our religious leaders, government masters and police??? http://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-napster-executive-death-20140807-story.html Deputy was texting before he hit, killed cycling Napster executive When a Los Angeles County sheriff's investigator began looking into the fatal bike accident on Mulholland Drive, one of the things he said he did was inspect the cellphone of the deputy who had slammed into the cyclist. It showed little of interest, court documents show — no history that it had been used for a phone call or text message in the minutes before the accident. Milton Olin Jr. Former Napster executive Milton Olin Jr. was hit from behind by a patrol car as he rode his bike along a winding stretch of Mulholland Drive in December. But another detective looking into the Dec. 8, 2013, accident was unconvinced and requested a search warrant for Deputy Andrew Francis Wood's cellphone records. The accident, he wrote in his request, had the telltale signs of distracted driving. "It appears that Deputy Wood may have been distracted by using his cellular telephone or viewing and/or using the Mobile Digital Computer (MDC) in his radio car at the time of the collision," Det. Russell A. Townsley wrote in his request. When the packet of information from Verizon Wireless arrived, it showed that Wood had sent six text messages in the moments leading up to the collision, according to court records. lRelated L.A. councilman wants developers to build covered walkways on sidewalks Local L.A. councilman wants developers to build covered walkways on sidewalks See all related 8 It's been almost eight months since former Napster executive Milton Olin Jr. was killed as he rode his Cervelo R3 mountain bike along a winding stretch of Mulholland, hit from behind by the patrol car. The deputy has since returned to active duty, though he is no longer doing patrol work. The sheriff's investigation into the accident has been concluded and forwarded to the district attorney for review. But for the family of the 65-year-old entertainment attorney and executive, answers remain elusive. Related: Family mourns former Napster executive hit by sheriff's patrol car Related: Family mourns former Napster executive hit by sheriff's patrol car Ruben Vives "Losing a loved one is never easy, but when it happens catastrophically it is difficult to get a sense of closure," said Chris Olin, one of Olin's two grown children. "We're still grieving and struggling." Olin, a Vietnam veteran who attended UC Santa Barbara and went to law school at UCLA, was an outdoor enthusiast and ardent cyclist who was familiar with the twists and turns on Mulholland. The family has now filed a wrongful death suit and is hopeful the discovery process, when reports and evidence can be obtained, will yield a clearer picture of what happened that December afternoon. cComments Who is worse - Deputy Wood, who accidently killed someone because of seemingly distracted driving, or the un-named Los Angeles County Sheriff's Investigator who seemingly covered up Deputy Wood's cell phone records, or, the L.A. County Sheriff's department for not investigating a... luxord at 6:07 PM August 08, 2014 Add a comment See all comments 78 Police reports say Olin was struck from behind with enough force that it projected him into the air. He landed in a heap on the road behind the patrol car, authorities said. Witnesses told investigators that the deputy had failed to negotiate the curve on Mulholland and drove straight into the bike. There was no indication the patrolman ever hit his brakes before colliding with the bike, they said. The coroner's office determined that Olin died of blunt-force trauma. Bruce Broillet, the family's attorney, said the Sheriff's Department had denied them access to the vehicle, the download from the patrol car's black box and measurements taken at the accident site. "This is really a straightforward incident; this is not a nine-car collision that occurred over the course of miles," Broillet said. "This is taking too long." The Sheriff's Department traffic services detail conducted the investigation into the incident, as it does for all on-duty traffic-related incidents that result in death or injury, said Sheriff's Department spokeswoman Nicole Nishida. The investigation took approximately four and a half months and was presented to the Los Angeles County district attorney's office on May 14. Nishida declined to comment on the specifics of the investigation. "You can draw your own conclusions as to whether there's something the matter with the Sheriff's Department investigating itself," Broillet said. "But," he added, "the bottom line is, we want to get all the evidence." debbie.truong@latimes.com LAPD Chief Charlie Beck in the hot seat over horse deal This kind of reminds me of the NORML issue here in Phoenix. Some people say Kathy Inman has a conflict of interest in NORML because her son in law Andrew Myers is the head of the Arizona Dispensary Association. Some people think Andrew Myers wants the government to give his dispensaries a monopoly on growing and selling marijuana in Arizona when it becomes legal. And of course the question is Kathy Inman representing her son in law who seems to want a government monopoly on growing and selling marijuana. Or is Kathy Inman representing the other NORML members who want anybody to be allowed to grow and sell marijuana. http://www.latimes.com/local/cityhall/la-me-beck-horse-20140807-story.html#page=1 LAPD Chief Charlie Beck in the hot seat over horse deal LAPD Chief Charlie Beck is beset by the unlikeliest of controversies days before a vote on a second term Days before a vote on whether he receives a second five-year term, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck is being buffeted by the unlikeliest of controversies—the department's acquisition of a horse belonging to his daughter. The latest twist came Wednesday with a signed document obtained by The Times that showed Beck had approved the deal after repeatedly insisting he had no role in the transaction. The imbroglio stems from the LAPD's purchase earlier this year of George, a 10-year-old quarter horse, for its equestrian unit for $6,000 — a price department officials said was a bargain. Police commissioners said they approved the deal without knowing the horse was owned by Brandi Pearson, Beck's daughter and an officer with the department. Though Los Angeles police Chief Charlie Beck said earlier this week he had nothing to do with the LAPD's $6,000 purchase of a horse from his daughter, he signed a form approving the deal. In the paperwork sent to the commission by Beck, he assured them that "all possible conflicts of interest have been researched and there does not appear to be any issues that would reflect negatively on the Department." In retrospect, the chief's spokesman said, Beck now acknowledges the department should have given commissioners more information about the horse and its owner. The horse purchase is the latest of several issues that Beck has confronted in recent months as the civilian police commission decides whether he should be awarded another term in office. Beck has generally earned high marks for his performance, but has come under criticism for what some see as his inconsistent discipline of officers and lack of transparency with his civilian bosses. In addition to the horse kerfuffle, the police commission said it was investigating whether Beck played any role in softening the disciplinary action against a male sergeant accused of having an inappropriate relationship with the chief's daughter. Beck has denied any involvement in the case. Despite the recent turmoil, Mayor Eric Garcetti on Wednesday reiterated his support for Beck. "The chief has done a great job in making this a safer city and in strengthening ties between LAPD and the community," Garcetti said through a spokeswoman. The five-member commission, appointed by Garcetti, is set to vote on a second term next Tuesday. In March, the commanding officer who oversees the LAPD's mounted platoon sent a formal memo to Beck making the case for the purchase. He said the animal had been evaluated and was well-qualified to work as a police horse. The money to buy the horse, the officer explained, would come from a private donor who had visited the platoon and written a check to the Police Foundation, which raises funds used by the department to purchase equipment and services not covered in the official budget. The seller of the horse was identified only as "a department employee assigned to the Mounted Platoon." In two places at the bottom of the memo, next to the word "approved," Beck signed his name alongside those of other high-ranking officials. Within weeks, foundation officials had cut a check to Pearson, according to internal documents and interviews. When news of the horse deal surfaced earlier this week, the chief defended the purchase by saying through a spokesman that he had deliberately recused himself from all aspects of the decision to acquire his daughter's horse. Beck reiterated that stance during a news conference Tuesday. The internal deliberations over the horse between members of the mounted platoon and senior command staff had been "steered completely around me," the chief insisted. On Wednesday, Beck's spokesman referred inquiries on the matter to Assistant Chief Michel Moore. Moore said he oversaw the evaluation of the horse's qualifications and value and that Beck was not involved. When asked about the chief's signatures on the documents, Moore said Beck told him that he "views his signature as a formality. He did not see his role as, in any way, tipping the scale" regarding the decision to buy the horse. Commissioners want Beck to account for the apparent discrepancies. "The documents that have come to light make it important that we hear an explanation from the chief and the people around the chief on how they could say something that seems to be contradicted by the documents," said Steve Soboroff, the commission president. "I look forward to that explanation." Soboroff stressed that he does not believe there was anything wrong with buying the horse, since the price appears to have been fair and members of the mounted platoon have said it is performing well in the field. He expressed frustration, however, that Beck and other top officials failed to avoid the public backlash by simply disclosing the horse belonged to his daughter at the time of the deal. And, although the commission must sign off on all donations to the department, other documents obtained by The Times through a public records request make clear that more than three months passed after the sale of the horse before department officials asked the commission for its approval. Moore said he and other officials were looking into the delay. Before the flap over the horse and the sergeant's discipline case, Beck endured a particularly rough stretch of controversies that seemed to have passed. In February, he opted not to punish a group of officers involved in a flawed shooting, which drew a public challenge from Soboroff. A few weeks later, members of the oversight board criticized the chief for not firing Shaun Hillmann, an officer who was caught making racist comments and later denied doing so to investigators. The chief's decision to spare Hillmann, whose father was an LAPD officer and uncle was a deputy chief in the department, has become a rallying cry for many officers who believe Beck is unfair in how he metes out discipline. Those controversies were followed by revelations that officers in South L.A. had been tampering with recording equipment in patrol cars to avoid being monitored. Commissioners demanded to know why Beck had left them in the dark about the matter. The questions surrounding the horse purchase, which were first raised by political consultant Jasymne Cannick on her personal website, have reignited doubts among commissioners over whether the chief is committed to working with his civilian bosses and keeping them apprised of potential controversies. Robert Saltzman, a commissioner who has been particularly critical of Beck, said he was "surprised and troubled" by the memo Beck signed. Saltzman said he would withhold judgment until the commission's inspector general completes an ongoing investigation into the purchase of the horse. In light of the memo, Saltzman said he had "strongly urged the inspector general to report back to us, if possible, before we vote on the chief's reappointment." joel.rubin@latimes.com Twitter: @joelrubin A lot of religious folks like these folks that stoned Shamseh Abdullah to death for the victimless crime of adultery say atheists like me don't have morals. That's rubbish. Last Muslim's aren't the only religious folks that stone people to death for victimless religions crimes. The Christian, Jewish and Muslim religions all share the Old Testament as a common religious book and all three religions use this barbaric form of the death penalty to punish people that commit victimless crimes against their Gods. http://news.yahoo.com/women-stoned-death-syria-adultery-174549066.html Women stoned to death in Syria for adultery Associated Press By BASSEM MROUE BEIRUT (AP) — A cleric read the verdict before the truck came and dumped a large pile of stones near the municipal garden. Jihadi fighters then brought in the woman, clad head to toe in black, and put her in a small hole in the ground. When residents gathered, the fighters told them to carry out the sentence: Stoning to death for the alleged adulteress. None in the crowd stepped forward, said a witness to the event in a northern Syrian city. So the jihadi fighters, mostly foreign extremists, did it themselves, pelting Faddah Ahmad with stones until her body was dragged away. "Even when she was hit with stones she did not scream or move," said an opposition activist who said he witnessed the stoning near the football stadium and the Bajaa garden in the city of Raqqa, the main Syrian stronghold of the Islamic State group. The July 18 stoning was the second in a span of 24 hours. A day earlier, 26-year-old Shamseh Abdullah was killed in a similar way in the nearby town of Tabqa by Islamic State fighters. Both were accused of having sex outside marriage. The killings were the first of their kind in rebel-held northern Syria, where jihadis from the Islamic State group have seized large swaths of territory, terrorizing residents with their strict interpretation of Islamic law, including beheadings and cutting off the hands of thieves. The jihadis recently tied a 14-year-old boy to a cross-like structure and left him for several hours in the scorching summer sun before bringing him down -- punishment for not fasting during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. The group has also brutalized Shiite Muslims and others whom it views as apostates. In neighboring Iraq, Islamic State militants have driven members of the Yazidi religious minority out of a string of towns and villages. Thousands of the fleeing Yazidis have been stranded on a mountaintop for days, a humanitarian crisis that prompted the U.S. to airlift aid to them this week. On Friday, Kamil Amin, the spokesman for Iraq's Human Rights Ministry, said hundreds of Yazidi women under the age of 35 are being held by the Islamic State group in schools in Iraq's second largest city Mosul, which the militants captured in June. The stonings in Syria last month were not widely publicized at the time, but in the following days three photographs appeared online which appeared to document the grisly spectacle and were consistent with other AP reporting. The pictures posted on a newly-created Twitter account showed dozens of people gathered in a square, a cleric reading a verdict through a loudspeaker and several bearded men with automatic rifles either carrying or collecting stones. "A married woman being stoned in the presence of some believers," read the caption of the photographs on the Twitter account, which has since been suspended. Abu Ibrahim Raqqawi, the activist who witnessed Ahmad's stoning, said locals where angry to see foreign fighters impose their will on the community. "People were shocked and couldn't understand what was going on. Many were disturbed by the idea that Saudis and Tunisians were issuing (such) orders," he said in an interview via Skype. Ahmad, he said, appeared unconscious, and he had overheard that she was earlier taken to a hospital where she was given anesthesia. The stoning took place after dark, he said, at about 11 p.m. He could not see blood on the body because of the black clothes she was wearing. Ahmad did not scream or shake, and died silently. "They then took the dead body in one of their cars and left," he said. The two cases were first reported by the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which collects information through a network of activists around the country. Bassam Al-Ahmad, a spokesman for the Violations Documentation Center, a Syrian group that tracks human rights violations, also confirmed the stoning. An activist based in the northern province of Idlib, who collects information from other activists in northern Syria, said Ahmad was a widow. A man who asked to be identified as Asad for fear of repercussions, said that in the other stoning, in Tabqa, residents also refused to take part, and that the act was carried out by Islamic State members. The U.S. Embassy in Syria, in a statement posted on its Twitter account, condemned the "barbaric stoning" of a woman in Tabqa. International human rights groups did not report the stoning, and Human Rights Watch said it had no independent confirmation. "It is a very worrying trend if true," said Human Rights Watch researcher Lama Fakih. The Islamic State group has "imposed incredibly restrictive rules on the civilian population which have served to make women and girls particularly vulnerable and to quite clearly discriminate against them," she said, adding that the reports of the stoning were the first the group had received out of Syria. "This is just a more sort of extreme manifestation of those restrictive rules which are all in violation of international" human rights law, she said. Such acts have alarmed members of mainstream Syrian opposition groups fighting to remove President Bashar Assad from power since 2011. "These behaviors have nothing to do with the nature and mentality of Syrian society," said Abdelbaset Sieda, a senior member of the main Western-backed Syrian National Coalition. He said the group had no official confirmation of the stoning cases although he did not rule it out. "We expect such acts to be carried out by the Islamic State," he said. The Hazm Movement, another rebel group active in northern Syria, said the stonings did take place. It added that such acts "contradict the principals of the revolution" and encourage the world to refrain from giving any support to the rebels. "The world should know that every day they delay real support to active moderate groups is direct support to extremist factions," the group said in response to written questions from The Associated Press. _____ Follow Bassem Mroue on Twitter at www.twitter.com/bmroue Think of it as a govenrment welfare program for the folks in the military industrial complex the give campaign contributions to our govenrment rulers. And of course it's also a jobs program for generals. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/world/middleeast/us-airstrikes-on-militants-in-iraq.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&version=BannerSubHedSumLargeMedia&module=a-lede-package-region®ion=lede-package&WT.nav=lede-package Obama Says Iraq Airstrike Effort Could Be ‘Long Term’ By MICHAEL D. SHEARAUG. 9, 2014 WASHINGTON — President Obama sought to prepare Americans for an extended presence in the skies over Iraq, telling reporters on Saturday that the airstrikes he ordered this week could go on for months as Iraqis try to build a new government. “I don’t think we’re going to solve this problem in weeks,” Mr. Obama said before leaving for a two-week vacation on Martha’s Vineyard. “This is going to be a long-term project.” The president repeated his insistence that the United States would not send ground combat troops back to Iraq. But he pledged that it and other countries would stand with the Iraqi leaders against militants if they built an inclusive government in the months ahead. Mr. Obama said that the “initial goal” of the military intervention was to protect Americans in the country and to help the Iraqi minorities stranded on Sinjar Mountain. “We’re not moving our embassy anytime soon,” he said. “We are going to maintain vigilance and ensure that our people are safe.” Continue reading the main story Interactive Graphic A Rogue State Along Two Rivers The victories gained by the militant group calling itself the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria were built on months of maneuvering along the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, which define a region known as the cradle of civilization. OPEN Interactive Graphic But he said the broader effort was intended to help Iraqis meet the threat from the militants over the long term. “The most important time table that I’m focused on right now is the Iraqi government getting formed and finalized,” the president said before boarding Marine One. Mr. Obama described for the first time a more complicated effort to rescue Iraqis stranded on Sinjar Mountain, saying that the American military and others might have to create a safe corridor down the mountain. “The next step, which is going to be complicated logistically, is how can we give people safe passage,” Mr. Obama said. He suggested that helping those people make it to safety would take time. He also said that getting an inclusive Iraqi government formed, and giving all Iraqis a reason to believe that they are represented by that government, would help give Iraqi military forces a reason to fight back against the militants. Continue reading the main story Graphic The Iraq-ISIS Conflict in Maps, Photos and Video A visual guide to the crisis in Iraq and Syria. OPEN Graphic “There has to be a rebuilding and an understanding of who it is the Iraqi security forces are reporting to, what they are fighting for,” he added. Once that happens, Mr. Obama suggested, the American military, working with the Iraqi and Kurdish fighters, can “engage in some offense.” The president said the military did not immediately required additional funding from Congress to conduct the airstrikes and humanitarian assistance that he had ordered. But he said that could change. “If and when we need additional dollars,” he said, “then we will certainly make that request.” Looks like Kathy Inman did the right thing and resigned from NORML. Some people think Kathy Inman has a conflict of interest because her son in law, Andrew Myers is the head of the Arizona Dispensary Association. Andrew Myers also played a part in writing Prop 203 which is Arizona's Medical Marijuana Act. If you read Prop 203 it looks like a government welfare program for medical marijuana dispensaries. The Arizona Dispensary Association seems to want a govenrment monopoly on growing and selling marijuana so they can sell marijuana to the rest of us at rip off $300 and ounce prices when it becomes legal for recreational use. And of course the if the Arizona Dispensary Association gets there monopoly on growing and selling marijuana once it is legalized, they will continue the insane "war on drugs" arresting anyone that dares to grow their own marijuana to avoid paying their $300 an ounce rip off prices. If you ask me when marijuana is legalized, it should also be 100 percent legal for ANYONE to grow marijuana. NOBODY, including the Arizona Dispensary Association deserves a government monopoly on growing and selling marijuana. Important Announcement for NORML in Arizona Saturday, August 9, 2014 1:28 PM From: "Norml In Arizona" daronbabin@gmail.com August 9th, 2014 This email sadly announces the resignation of Kathy Inman as State Director of NORML in Arizona. Since 2008 when Kathy began organizing the Phoenix NORML meetings, to the the incorporation of NORML in Arizona in 2012... Kathy has been a foot soldier for reform. She had proudly worn the NORML colors, stood behind those in need of support in court and talked to many to help them understand the safety and efficacy of the plant. She has not been afraid to talk to legislators or law enforcement...to help "sway public opinion" regarding marijuana. She has dedicated many hours to a job that can sometimes be quite daunting. Kathy now steps down from NORML to spend some quality time with her family and to pick up the gauntlet with MomForce. Thank you for your years of service Kathy. The State Director Position: has been temporarily filled by, State Co-Director, Daron Babin. Daron is an entrepreneur, and has been serving with NORML since the beginning of 2014. As the last President of Phoenix NORML, Daron stepped into the role of Co-Director to assist the Board leading up to the Elections in January 2015. Daron Babin - State Director Norml In Arizona You want the government to protect you from polluters??? Sorry to tell you this, but governments are the worst polluters on the planet. The US Government caused this f*cked up mess on the Navajo Reservation and will probably never fix the damage they caused. http://www.azcentral.com/longform/news/arizona/investigations/2014/08/04/uranium-mining-navajos-devastating-health-effects/13591333/ Abandoned uranium mines continue to haunt Navajos on reservation Brandon Loomis, The Republic | azcentral.com CAMERON -- In 1957, Charley Colorado climbed down a uranium mine shaft near his ancestral sheepherding grounds and began hammering at a rock that would power the atomic bomb and help America stare down the Soviets. Now, Colorado, 87, spends much of his time wedged between a medical oxygen tank and a twin bed, parked in an easy chair before a wood stove at his family's home on the high desert west of Gray Mountain, near Cameron. He has frequent blackouts and trouble breathing. "We did our part to keep America free!" reads the 2014 Cold War Patriots calendar on the corner wall behind him. A mini U.S. flag juts from a clay pot nearby. "They (said) that it wasn't dangerous," he wheezed in the Navajo, or Dine, language, "that it wouldn't cause problems. "I guess that it did." Decades after America's Cold War uranium binge, the Colorado Plateau remains scarred, poisoning and frightening a people who still live with the radioactive residue of 521 abandoned mines scattered across their reservation's 17.2 million acres, which is larger than West Virginia. The U.S. promises a thorough cleanup, but at current funding levels, it could take generations to complete. Anger is rising. As a young man, Colorado hadn't known quite what he was working with, or why the mine's White managers wore protective suits and masks while he and his Navajo comrades walked away nightly powdered with yellow grains of uranium. He was a shepherd who grew handy with rock drills — a hard worker who would go on to dangle on a cable and drill into rock cliffs to help build another Southwestern legacy, Glen Canyon Dam. In the year or so he spent underground mining radioactive rock, his wife, Carol, washed his dusty clothes by hand. She sent him back to work clean on the outside, stained in his lungs. "They didn't even say nothing," she said in Navajo, translated by daughter Linda. "They didn't tell the people. None of them knew." In 1957, Charley Colorado hammered rock that would power the atomic bomb and help America stare down the Soviets. It was just one of the now 521 abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation. Decades later Charley is suffering the consequences. David Wallace/The Republic A 2000 study published in the journal Health Physics found Navajo uranium miners had a lung-cancer rate nearly 29 times that of Navajos who did not work in the mines. From 1969 to 1993, two-thirds of new lung cancers in Navajo men afflicted the miners. And the uranium is still a threat. Old miners are fading, but their children, who grew up drinking from contaminated wells, are falling ill even as their grandchildren play around the pits and piles. A $1 billion court settlement with one mining company this year raised hopes that serious cleanup will soon begin. But it is only enough to tackle a few dozen of these ghost mines, and neither U.S. nor tribal officials even know whom to blame for most of the rest. They don't know whom to blame, that is, other than a government that demanded a hazardous payload at any cost. "There's a moral responsibility for the federal government to find responsible parties for cleanup," said U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., "or to do the work ourselves." When the U.S. needed Navajos to mine uranium for atomic bombs, they went willingly. Decades later, the Navajo Reservation is dotted with signs like this one posted by the Environmental Protection Agency in Church Rock, N.M. There are 521 abandoned uranium mines on the reservations. (Photo: David Wallace/The Republic) In 2007, while chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Waxman conducted a hearing that set in motion a five-year plan for federal cooperation on cleanup. A Government Accountability Office audit in May found that the plan had achieved many of its goals, including prioritizing the 43 most hazardous mines, replacing homes that had been built with radioactive materials from mine sites, and delivering safe water to thousands of Navajos who had lacked it. But the audit found that the plan had failed to identify the full scope and cost of total cleanup, and that the second five-year plan now under development would not do that either. It remains, according to the audit, "unclear how many 5-year plans would be needed." Uranium Part 1 Ch 2 When the U.S. needed Navajos to mine uranium for atomic bombs, they went willingly. Decades later, the Navajo Reservation is dotted with signs like this one posted by the Environmental Protection Agency in Church Rock, N.M. There are 521 abandoned uranium mines on the reservations. Public-health officials know that chronic uranium exposure is bad, but no one has spent the time and money to learn just how bad in this population. Uranium is a naturally occurring radioactive rock which, when refined and concentrated, can sustain nuclear fission to fuel power reactors or bombs. In ore and debris, it emits alpha particle radiation — an energy that cannot penetrate skin and is relatively harmless unless ingested or breathed as dust. Even with internal exposure, most of the toxic material works its way through the body and is expelled within days. With chronic exposure, though, it can accumulate in the bones and tax the kidneys as they work to expel it. Chronic exposure, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, is known to damage kidneys and can increase the risks for cancer and liver disease. Most of the mining occurred between World War II and the 1980s, during the buildup of America's nuclear-weapons stockpile. At certain mine sites, gamma radiation is well above recommended doses. Gamma rays are the sort of high-frequency radiation released by a reactor or a detonated atomic bomb, and are more penetrating. They do not require ingestion to be hazardous, and some of the sites with higher readings pose hazards to visitors. While the link to miners' health is clear, there is not definitive information about how uranium has sickened the Navajo population. Public-health officials know that chronic uranium exposure is bad, but no one has spent the time and money to learn just how bad in this population. "I sometimes shake my head and wonder how we've gotten this far without having more answers," said Dr. Charles Wiggins, director of the New Mexico Tumor Registry. "We don't really have a lot of solid studies that document the effects of exposure." The University of New Mexico and the Southwest Research and Information Center are collaborating on a study of mothers and babies that promises to be the first hard look at the health effects of Navajo uranium exposure. In early results, University of New Mexico researcher Jennifer Ong said, uranium is ubiquitous in blood and urine samples — including in babies. Nearly every one of the first 208 samples had uranium levels above the 50th percentile for the United States, and 15 percent spiked past the 95th percentile. "Navajo community members are in fact being exposed to uranium," she said. Milton Tso, president of the Cameron Chapter of the Navajo Nation, uses a geiger counter to measure radiation on a sweat lodge adjacent to an abandoned uranium mine in Cameron. Nearby soil potentially from the abandoned mine was used to construct the sweat lodge. Readings on the geiger counter showed twice the level of background readings. Cleanup to take billions Kinder Morgan has agreed to spend millions of dollars to quantify radioactive hazards, but maintains the U.S. should pay for cleanup. A toy Hot Wheels car sat in a dry mud hole this spring, a tiny reminder of the many exposure risks that remain in Navajo country. The depression, like several on the plateau around it, was left by uranium prospectors sampling ore on the hills overlooking Cameron, seat of the local Navajo chapter — a tribal subdivision akin to a county. Milton Tso, a year into his chapter presidency, hiked past two weathered basketballs and a tangle of all-terrain vehicle tracks to show how intertwined his community and its dirty past remain. Geiger counters held over some rocks on a nearby hill indicate radiation 10 times higher than background levels — a hazard that has caught the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's attention. "This is a high priority," Tso said of the prospecting holes, "and we're not sure who owned it." Unlike most other parts of the reservation, the owners and potential cleanup funders for two dozen mines around Cameron are known: El Paso Natural Gas, acquired by Houston energy company Kinder Morgan in 2012. The company has agreed to an EPA order that it spend millions of dollars scanning the mines to quantify radioactive hazards, but it maintains that the government should pay for cleanup. "Because of the United States government's pervasive encouragement of the uranium-mining efforts and its complete control of the weapons-making process," company spokesman Richard Wheatley said in an e-mail, "(the company) believes that the federal government is responsible for the environmental impacts ... including those associated with the mining of uranium for weapons production purposes." The EPA has so far had success in court squeezing cleanup money from mining companies it can prove responsible. Most notable was a $1 billion settlement with Anadarko Petroleum Co. for past mining by subsidiary Kerr-McGee Corp., which it acquired in 2006. The money is part of a record $5 billion nationwide settlement for various environmental offenses. The $1 billion for Navajo cleanup targets Kerr-McGee's responsibility at just 49 of the 521 reservation mines. But the full job will take billions more, experts and regulators agree, and likely decades. It could take several more years for the Kinder Morgan talks to culminate and Cameron cleanup to start. Across the Navajo Reservation generally, action is much further off. Reservation wide, government lawyers are still following paper trails to determine who dug 443 of the mines. Even if they find answers, some may lead to small prospecting companies that are long gone, with no corporate heir on which to pin the cleanup. If that proves true for many of the mines, Congress and the federal agencies will have to vastly increase the $110 million they spent between 2007 and 2012 on science, water delivery, and just one completed mine cleanup in Monument Valley during an initial five-year plan for the reservation. "The federal government should continue to assess potential contamination and work — to the extent possible — to ensure that responsible parties are held accountable for their prior conduct," Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said in a written statement in response to a question about the government's role. A spokesman said the senator would not address hypotheticals such as whether the U.S. should pay costs that cannot be charged to mining or energy companies. The federal government should continue to assess potential contamination and work — to the extent possible — to ensure that responsible parties are held accountable for their prior conduct. Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., believes the federal government has a responsibility that should include a commitment to cleaning up mines for which there is no known responsible party, spokesman Brian Rogers said. In Washington's challenged fiscal reality, though, Rogers said it may be more productive to push for as many settlements with "bad players" as possible. "The mining techniques and environmental protections laws used during the early years of the Cold War arms race were far less protective than they are today, and tribes like the Navajo Nation paid an unfair price," Rogers said in an e-mail. Rep. Ann Kirkpatrck, D-Ariz., whose district includes the reservation's vast Arizona swath, said the government should allocate the necessary funds to complete the work first, and then seek reimbursement from any responsible parties that can be tracked down. "This is about people who are suffering," she said. Many residents in and around Cameron can point down one dirt road and then another listing family who have died of cancer. But only some of the sickened people, usually the early miners like Colorado, can make an undisputed case for government reparations in the tens of thousands of dollars. "People are trying to gather check stubs to be eligible for compensation, but they can't find the employers," said Don Yellowman, a Navajo activist who accompanied Tso on his tour of mine sites. "The burden is on them." His 80-year-old father is on dialysis. He worked at a uranium mill site in Tuba City, "but when your kidneys are no good, people say it's your diet," Yellowman said. Uranium Part 1 Ch 4 Milton Yazzie, 57, assists his mother, Della Yazzie, 83, who is partially blind, after Milton had a medical checkup at the Sacred Peaks Health Center in Flagstaff. Milton has diabetes and pancreatitis, which along with Della's blindness, could be related to uranium exposure from living among abandoned uranium mines. In 2005, three other family members have died from kidney cancer or failure. Milton Yazzie has lost multiple relatives to illnesses. They drank from a well near the home, one the EPA has found on the border of violating drinking standards. The fall of 2005 launched a nine-month spiral of loss for Milton Yazzie and his mother, Della. In September, Yazzie's 53-year-old sister died of kidney cancer. Then, in November, his 78-year-old father, a former uranium miner, died of kidney failure while Yazzie agonized with him beside his truck at Wupatki National Monument, waiting to meet an ambulance from Flagstaff. The following June, his 58-year-old brother died, also of kidney failure. Yazzie's home is atop a yellow hill in the rolling spread near Black Falls, a wide riffle in the Little Colorado River when it's running. On his living room wall is a picture of the San Francisco Peaks — sacred ground for the tribe — next to a window with a clear view of the real thing. The ground around his sheep corral is a jumble of mystery cobbles spilled onto the ground by nature: red and blue agates, yellow gravel and some little hunks of petrified wood. Down the road is a series of denuded patches in the grasslands — backfilled uranium pits that became soothing pools in the intermittently rainy summers, where family members splashed and played. "It gets too hot and you just follow your sheep or cattle," Yazzie recalled. "You take a dip and then continue on." The family also drank from a well a half-mile from home — one that the EPA has since tested and found on the border of violating federal drinking standards for uranium and arsenic. The government has not studied which wells were contaminated by mining, and which have naturally high levels. Three years ago, Yazzie was diagnosed with pancreatitis. "It would grab you and freeze you right there," he said, "the pain was so intense." He also has diabetes, as did his father. Though he confesses to a wild youth that may have affected his health, Yazzie wonders what role his 57-year relationship with the uranium pits and contaminated water have played. Yazzie knows it would be difficult to prove a link. Even his grandfather, who had been a uranium miner, could not prove to the government's satisfaction that he deserved compensation. He was a medicine man who occasionally smoked a traditional herb known as mountain tobacco during ceremonies, Yazzie said. That was enough to raise questions about the origins of his eventual lung disease. Uranium Part 1 Ch 5 Peterson Bell, center, 58, who has diabetes, arthritis and vision impairment, sits and listens during a community meeting to take public testimony for a measure that could enable new uranium mining in the Church Rock, N.M., area at the chapter hall in Church Rock, N.M., on the Navajo Reservation on May 28. The area has numerous abandoned uranium mines that have never been cleaned up. 'This is unreal' Residents waited decades for the companies who stopped digging uranium there in the 1980s to start moving the stuff away. Navajo Nation Council delegates Leonard Tsosie and Leonard Pete faced a bitter crowd this spring at the chapter hall in Church Rock, N.M. Dozens of residents sat in the folding chairs with folded arms, skeptical of the politicians' support for renewed mining. Church Rock is the site of two massive uranium waste-rock piles. It is also where a 1979 dam break unleashed one of the biggest radioactive uranium contaminations in U.S. history. Contamination flooded downstream to the Rio Puerco and Gallup, eventually disappearing out of sight and beyond tracking in the aquifer somewhere above the confluence with Arizona's Little Colorado. Residents waited decades for the companies who stopped digging uranium there in the 1980s to start moving the stuff away. It's a cleanup still in the planning, with General Electric and Anadarko on the hook for much of the cost. Tsosie and Pete were taking testimony for a measure they backed that could enable new uranium mining. They are on the council's natural-resources committee. Others on the council wanted to bar access for mining. "This is unreal, gentlemen," said mining opponent Edmund Yazzie, the delegate from Church Rock and no relation to Milton. "The kidneys are going to be affected. Our young kids are going to be affected. Why? We say for the power of money." Uranium Resources Inc., a Texas company, wants to use an in-ground leaching system to dissolve and extract uranium for power plants. The company controls a private square of land surrounded by reservation land, and it wants a right of way to access it. During a break outside the hall, company environmental-affairs Vice President Mark Pelizza said the new technology leaves "nowhere close" to the same mess as old pits and tunnels — mines that he points out were mostly dug before the EPA and environmental regulations even existed. "It doesn't help, I don't think, to have a direct comparison of the past with the future," he said. Old wounds are reopening elsewhere, as well. A mine near the Grand Canyon's North Rim is back in business after a long lull in uranium prices, and three others straddling the national park could reopen — all of which need to truck their ore across the reservation to a mill in Blanding, Utah. Mine opponents at the Church Rock meeting grumbled about the company's overtures, including the donation of 200 turkeys to chapter officials to distribute to residents at Thanksgiving. Pelizza defended the gifts. "You have people that may go without at the holidays," he said in an interview. "I just think that's a good thing to do." As he said it, a man walked by shouting at him: "No uranium! You hear? And get off this land, too." Inside, Tsosie reminded the crowd that the tribe survives on money from its natural resources such as coal, which is coming under increasing regulatory scrutiny for its climate effects. Pete wondered aloud whether the tribe could remain afloat if it waited for full cleanup before seeking new revenue deals such as what the mine might offer. "If we're going to say, 'No mining, no mining, no mining until this is all done,' are we chasing a big rainbow with no pot of gold at the end?" he said. "If cleanup takes 50 years, 75 years, 100 years, and we don't have the revenue to survive, what happens?" Bertha Nez rose and wept. "We were born first, then the mines came," she cried. "They messed the place up. "Please," she begged the delegates, "help us. No uranium." Uranium Part 1 Ch 6 Charley Colorado, 87, who has pulmonary fibrosis, breathes oxygen through a respirator at his home outside of Gray Mountain on the Navajo Reservation. Colorado worked at a uranium mine in the late 1950s near Cameron. "They (said) it wasn't dangerous," he said through a translator. Colorado has received compensation and currently receives health care paid for from the U.S. Department of Labor for his uranium mining services. A grateful nation? For those already clearly and irretrievably sickened by uranium, such as ailing former miner Charley Colorado, the government attempts to ease pain and suffering. For those already clearly and irretrievably sickened by uranium, such as ailing former miner Charley Colorado, the government attempts to ease pain and suffering. In the 1990s, due to his mining service, he qualified for compensation and got the first of three payments; $10,000, then $50,000, then $20,000, according to his family. Then, according to a doctor's report last summer, he developed pulmonary fibrosis and qualified for continuing home health assistance from the U.S. Department of Labor. He gets 12 hours of home health-aide assistance daily, some provided by a traveling nurse and some by family members who are reimbursed for their care. Colorado needs oxygen and inhaled steroids for relief, the doctor wrote. His lungs are worsening, and he's falling more frequently. Pulmonary fibrosis is common among the miners, said nurse Gary Foster when he stopped at Colorado's home to check on Charley one afternoon last winter. At 87, Colorado has outlived most miners. "If they don't lose their ability to breathe," he said, "they're all going to get cancer." Others he has treated succumbed in their 70s. Also typical among his patients across the reservation: multiple-organ failure, kidney disease, dialysis. "All of the patients I've dealt with, they've had to have it explained to them why they're sick," he said. "They don't understand the concept of it sitting in their lungs and staying there forever." Navajos and Pueblo Indians' historically low cancer rates Navajos and their Southwest neighbors, the Pueblo Indians, historically have had some of the nation's lowest cancer rates. Tobacco use primarily for ceremonies Experts say that could be due to the tribes' use of tobacco primarily for ceremonies and not habitual smoking - a rarity among U.S. tribes. Their rates of lung, oral and bladder cancer remain extraordinarily low, and their overall cancer rate remains lower than Whites' rate. High rates of stomach, kidney and liver cancer Yet they have high rates of stomach, kidney and liver cancer - each at least twice the rates for Whites. Those diseases may be influenced by uranium exposure, but just as easily by diet, obesity, alcohol abuse and more. Stomach cancer among Navajos Among Southwest Indians, of whom the 200,000-plus Navajos on the reservation are by far the largest group, 15.4 of every 100,000 men died of stomach cancer between 1999 and 2009, compared with just 3.6 White men. Among native women, 5.6 in every 100,000 died of kidney cancer, compared with 2.4 White women. These numbers came from a peer-reviewed study that Dr. Charles Wiggins, director of the New Mexico Tumor Registry, co-authored this year for American Journal of Public Health. The home is perched on an ochre hill of sparse grasses and bare dirt, patrolled by a ragged band of wary dogs. On that day, it smelled of bleach doused on the hard floor. Two day-old lambs mewed from a cardboard box under the wood stove, pleading for milk. The family was looking to give them away. Dogs still trail sheep home to shelter in the evenings, but Colorado hasn't been able to follow in five years. Navajo miners were lured into the ground not just by wages, but by an appeal for them to defend their homeland, said Chris Shuey, a New Mexico public-health researcher who has befriended many of these men over the years. Navajos have a proud tradition of armed service, he said, and the Cold War-era government capitalized on it. Tony Hood, a Church Rock Navajo who is a Vietnam-era veteran, said his family's military service stands at four generations. "They wanted to carry on that tradition of being a warrior," he said, "maintaining that warrior mentality." Yet now, he said, he feels betrayed by a government that is too bogged down by regulations to act decisively to make his community safe. The neglect of dangerous mine wastes, Shuey said, is "an injustice compounded over the decades." The government is spending millions of dollars a year, but not the billions that cleanup will take. It's a major improvement from 2007, Rep. Waxman said, when agencies such as the EPA, the Indian Health Service and Housing and Energy departments were not working together. Now, he said, there's a concerted effort and momentum, even if it relies on lawyers digging through records to locate and fine responsible mining companies. "We're confident we'll get enough money," EPA Regional Administrator Jared Blumenfeld said. In the meantime, the agency will work on ensuring the areas are properly marked with caution signs and that community members are attuned to the risks. America's debt to the Navajos began piling up before the mining, when the Navajo Code Talkers developed and used a Dine-based code that helped defeat the Empire of Japan, Blumenfeld said. "These folks helped win World War II and then they helped win the Cold War," he said, "and the least we can do is get these abandoned uranium mines cleaned up." Lying our way into war? We've done it before Nice this editorial even mentions how the American government lied to cause the Mexican American war. In that war the US Government used lies as an excuse to invade Mexico and steal half of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California and parts of Nevada and Colorado from Mexico. It p*sses me off when ever I hear the local racists demand that English be the national language, because here in Arizona, Spanish was the national language long before we became a part of American Empire. Of course we won't mention the fact that the Spanish government initially stole all this land from the Indians who owned it for eons before the invading Conquistadors stole it. http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2014/08/08/vietnam-war-anniversary/13791023/ Lying our way into war? We've done it before Kyle Longley, AZ I See It 1:59 p.m. MST August 9, 2014 ASU professor: LBJ's "bitch of a war" - Vietnam - killed millions and tore apart American society. But we haven't learned its lessons. On Aug. 10, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. It granted him the right to "all necessary measures to repel any armed attacks against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression." He received these broad discretionary powers from Congress only days after an attack on the USS Maddox by North Vietnamese torpedo boats and then a reported assault on U.S. ships on the murky night of Aug. 4. Under pressure from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and congressional hawks, the administration launched air attacks on North Vietnamese bases and dusted off a resolution prepared months earlier. Some voices of dissent arose, although the House approved the resolution in 40 minutes. In the Senate, Wayne Morse, D-Ore., accused U.S. forces of provoking a response by supporting South Vietnamese infiltrators. Sen. Ernest Gruening, D-Alaska, complained that the resolution was a "predated declaration of war." Yet the final vote in the Senate was 88-2. It became obvious that the administration lied to the American public when it said that the U.S. ships had been conducting normal operations in international waters. Also, it ignored contradictory evidence that the Aug. 4 attacks did not occur. Such maneuvers served their purposes and accelerated the rapid slide down a slippery slope that ultimately led to a massive American buildup in Vietnam. Everyone knows the devastating outcomes. The lies and half-truths helped ensure the deaths of more than 58,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians. The war ripped apart the United States like no time since the Civil War. Suspicion of government heightened, and the war caused the bunker mentality in the Richard Nixon White House that helped lead to Watergate. For Johnson, he paid a horrible price for his deception. The "bitch of a war," as he called it, destroyed his grand plans for a "Great Society" and likely contributed to his death in 1973. Resolution This undated image provided by the National Archives shows the Joint Resolution for the Maintenance of International Peace and Security in Southeast Asia, also known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, that president Lyndon B. Johnson signed. Fifty years ago Sunday, Aug. 10, 2014, Johnson signed the resolution that historians call the crucial catalyst for deep American involvement in the Vietnam War.(Photo: AP) Congress also rebelled with a repeal of the resolution in 1971 (by then a symbolic act) and with subsequent efforts to rein in the executive branch with actions such as the War Powers Act of 1973. Of course, the events surrounding the resolution were not the first time that an American president misled the country into war. James Polk set the bar very high in 1846 when he ordered U.S. troops into a disputed area south of the Nueces River, thus provoking a bloody confrontation with Mexico. And it was not the last time. But if anything, the Gulf of Tonkin episode underscores an expiration date on such memories. In this case, suspicions of the executive branch played a substantial role in preventing Ronald Reagan's administration from intervening in Central America in the 1980s. Arizona Republic columnist EJ Montini and reporter Richard Ruelas discuss a group of Vietnam Vet pilots seeking compensation for health issues that may be related to their exposure to Agent Orange. The Republic | azcentral.com Even as late as 1991, the vote in the Senate to grant support of a war against Iraq over Kuwait was very close, 52-47. Yet the quick victory allowed George H.W. Bush to declare in victory, "By God, we kicked the Vietnam Syndrome once and for all." It set the stage for a rebirth of American interventionism. A decade later, George W. Bush and his advisers marched the United States right into another morass. There were more voices of dissent than in 1964, with people pointing out that invading Iraq would strengthen Iran, destabilize a country of three distinct religious groups and turn American attention from real terrorist threats. But most Americans followed right along behind the administration, one that fabricated evidence and cherry-picked information. The Vietnam War Memorial in Washington D.C. Furthermore, much like LBJ before, Bush lacked a real plan to deal with the aftermath of getting in. This time, the results were the same (although not to the same magnitude), as thousands of Americans and tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of Iraqis died. Many more Americans returned home with significant mental and physical challenges, and the conflict emptied the U.S. Treasury of trillions. The final questions remain: When will we really learn? How much residue will the most recent interventions have? A decade? Maybe two? The sad part is that many Americans often do not know and understand their history. The trend worsens as more schools diminish the requirements for the study of history and government. In the future, another crisis likely will develop requiring, according to some, intervention. Again, some will question its wisdom and whether our leaders have manufactured it. Unfortunately, not enough people will raise alarms, and we likely will crash right into another Vietnam. Kyle Longley, a professor at Arizona State University, is the author of "Grunts: The American Combat Soldier in Vietnam" and "The Morenci Marines: A Tale of Small Town America and the Vietnam War." http://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/glendale/2014/08/08/group-files-suit-glendale-tax-initiative/13761561/ Group files suit over Glendale tax initiative Peter Corbett, The Republic | azcentral.com 7:11 a.m. MST August 8, 2014 A group battling the Glendale sales tax is suing the city in hopes of getting its initiative on the November ballot, even as county officials are still counting signatures to determine if the measure will qualify. Protect Glendale Taxpayers filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Maricopa County Superior Court claiming the Glendale city clerk improperly rejected 8,540 valid signatures on its petitions. More than 9,000 were thrown out for a variety of reasons, including missing or inaccurate information on the documents, according to the suit. The taxpayers group, funded by the Arizona Free Enterprise Club of Phoenix, wants voters to decide whether to extend a 0.7 percent sales-tax increase beyond August 2017. But the initiative drive could be in trouble unless a judge orders a recount of the signatures on petitions due to the high number of rejected names. The group's chairman, Scot Mussi, and city officials could not be reached for comment. The Glendale City Council approved the 0.7 percent sales-tax hike in June 2012, but business leaders launched an initiative to put it on the ballot. Glendale voters approved the tax hike in November 2012 after they were promised the tax was only needed for five years to help the city dig out of its financial hole. Good, efficient govenrment is an oxymoron??? Damn right. And despite the fact that I rarely agree with Mesa cop Bill Richardson he does a good job of showing us how government in Pinal County seems to be run by a bunch of morons or crooks who only serve themselves. http://eastvalleytribune.com/columns/east_valley_voices/article_8732fd9e-1e64-11e4-b164-001a4bcf887a.html Richardson: Babeu's bad-mouthing of feds causing fiscal issues for Pinal County Jail Retired Mesa master police officer Bill Richardson lives in the East Valley and can be reached at bill.richardson@cox.net. Posted: Friday, August 8, 2014 9:45 am By Bill Richardson, guest commentary While Pinal County “Sheriff Underpants” Paul Babeu has been out on the campaign trail touting gubernatorial candidate and “forensic accountant” Christine Jones, Pinal County Jail employees have been sweating bullets worrying about whether or not they’re going to have a job. All that thanks to the long running dispute between their boss and the federal government over the cost to house federal prisoners in the county jail and any number of other Babeu made up reasons to bad mouth the feds. It’s no surprise after being slammed and attacked by Babeu the feds decided to not renew their multi-million dollar contract with the county that funded jobs and pumped millions into Pinal County coffers for years. The bottom line — the feds probably got fed up with Babeu’s constant badmouthing them and publicity stunts and they went out found a cheaper place to house prisoners thus saving you and me money. Pinal County drew a line in the sand and the feds didn’t take the bait and now the 52 jobs are being eliminated and $5 million is being slashed from the sheriff’s budget. That’s a lot of “pink slips” for the Babeu to sign — pink slips that might have not been necessary had the sheriff not made a political career out of badmouthing the feds publicly all the while taking a quarter-million bucks a month in jail fees and millions of dollars in grant money from Uncle Sam. To hear Babeu tell it, the United States government and Washington, D. C. are the enemies and not the vast cast of homegrown criminals that call Pinal County home. While the sheriff was out running down the feds at campaign events, endless fundraisers, in the paper, on Fox News and on right wing radio, Babeu was focused on himself and his own political future all the while spending tax money on an array of questionable projects that by all appearances were more about publicity than keeping the residents of Pinal County safe and his employees jobs secure. Whatever happened to the used helicopter taxpayers bought him? Oh yeah, it crashed and hundreds of thousands of dollars went down the toilet. Now the Pinal County Board of Supervisors has to slash the sheriff’s budget in order to make up for the lost revenue and the sheriff’s sometimes-questionable spending practices. More cuts could be on the way. I guess that will mean more layoffs too. Questions have been raised about Babeu’s focus on the problem. It’s hard to run a sheriff’s office when you’re constantly calculating your next political move. Too bad Babeu didn’t call on Jones' “forensic accounting” skills to help him save dozens of jobs. The time has come for the board to conduct a microscopic examination of the sheriff’s office expenditures and what the sheriff has been doing with county, state and federal tax dollars. Is it time for the Board to look at privatizing the jail to save money? Should the board consider “Home Rule” and get away from electing a sheriff and hiring a qualified and experienced professional to police the county? The board definitely has a mess on their hands and Babeu has his fingerprints allover it. “Sheriff Underpants” maybe an elected Constitutional officer, but it’s board of supervisors that signs the checks and balances the checkbook. Don't these cops have any REAL criminals to hunt down??? I suspect the reason the police love to arrest people who commit harmless crimes like prostitution and victimless drug war crimes like smoking or selling marijuana is that those folks are easier to find and arrest. It's hard finding and arresting real criminals like robbers and rapists. But it's rather easy to set up a sting and arrest people for victimless crimes like prostitution or drug war crime. http://eastvalleytribune.com/local/chandler/article_21c67dc6-1dc1-11e4-9b6a-001a4bcf887a.html Valley police arrest 150 'Johns' during operation focused on sex trade Posted: Wednesday, August 6, 2014 5:00 pm ABC15.com Focusing on online classified ad sites and street reversals, 150 would-be sex buyers were arrested in the Valley last week. Investigators and decoys from the Phoenix, Glendale, Chandler, Mesa and Tempe police departments were supported by the Phoenix FBI office in the week long operation, according to a press release. In the Valley, efforts concentrated on online classified ad sites and street reversals. Ninety-one of the arrests came from “Backpage.com” ads, some of which solicited sex from juveniles. Nationwide, there were nearly 500 arrests made. In the Valley, Phoenix police made 69 arrests, Mesa police arrested 28, Tempe police took 21 into custody, Glendale police arrested 19 and Chandler police made 13 arrests. Police said 80 vehicles were impounded during the operations. According to the press release, the focus of the operation was to reduce demand in the sex trade, targeting those who are trying to buy sex. Upcoming operations will continue to target the sex-buyers, or “Johns,” but will also target pimps and others who profit from trafficking and promoting the sex trade. The real gun nut seems to the the author of this letter to the editor, Larry Johnson, who seems to think anybody with a gun, except himself is a danger to society. I wonder is Larry Johnson a police officer???? This is typical of the mentality a large number of cops seem to have. For the record this letter to the editor is from a gun in Arizona, where it is legal for almost anyone to openly carry a concealed weapon. Hell this is Arizona and almost anyone can legally carry a concealed weapon too without a the silly concealed weapon permit which the author has. http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/letters/2014/08/09/guy-carrying-rifle-public-know-risks-getting-shot/13833219/ Any guy carrying a rifle in public should know he risks getting shot The Republic | azcentral.com 2:18 p.m. MST August 9, 2014 I am a responsible, law-abiding gun owner with a permit to carry a concealed firearm. I am trained, and I practice. When in public, I am always armed, although most of you would not know it. If I happen to encounter someone who is carrying a rifle with a high-capacity magazine attached, I have to make a decision as to what kind of nut I am facing. [Some one like the author of this letter, Larry Johnson, who is also legally carrying a gun] Is this a well-respected doctor trying (but failing badly) to make a point? Or is this a homicidal nut intending to murder 30 innocent people to make his point? It's kind of hard for me to tell just by looking. So, here is what I will do: First, I'll call 911 to report a "disturbing the peace" situation. Then, I will approach the nut with the proposition that I intend to stay with him until the police arrive to answer the question: "What kind of nut are you?" [So anybody except the author of this letter to the editor who is carrying a gun is guilty of committing the crime of disturbing the peace??? Larry Johnson seems to have a big time double standard here] If, prior to the police arriving, there is any attempt to move the rifle off his shoulder, I will subdue him with whatever force is necessary up to and including putting a bullet between his eyes. [So Larry Johnson is going to attack and kill any person he sees who is also legally carrying a gun like he carries??] Personally, I do not want the public to become desensitized to men carrying rifles in airports, malls or schools. I prefer that activity to always draw suspicion, given the world in which we now live. — Larry Johnson, Cave Creek |