American University law professor Herman Schwartz, writing in the Nation, opines that conservatives may rue the day the Supreme Court ruled that the feds can arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers in states that have legalized medical marijuana use:

The Supreme Court decision may actually encourage abuses. Those who need marijuana to ease their suffering will still manage to get it from illegal sources, and federal officials have indicated they are not likely to prosecute individual users. But California will no longer be able to justify continuing its current efforts to tighten dispensary regulation and to restrict access to the truly needy, for how can a state justify regulating and implicitly approving what the Supreme Court has found illegal? The decision will discourage more states from permitting medical use of the drug, no matter how carefully controlled.

This small victory for federal authority will do little to stem the right-wing campaign to shrink federal power and undermine the welfare and regulatory reforms initiated by the New Deal. Instead, the vital state experimentation on a common problem, which the federal system is supposed to encourage, will be choked off. More people will be forced into the illegal market, and victims of cancer, AIDS and other serious illnesses will be made even more miserable.

Via Loretta at the U.S. Marijuana Party, the Mayor of Birmingham, Alabama has halted the practice of police using stun guns. The Birmingham News reports:

Birmingham Mayor Bernard Kincaid on Tuesday ordered Birmingham police officers to halt the use of Tasers, saying more studies are needed on the impact of the stun guns.

The mayor's order came days after a 41-year-old McCalla man died in the Birmingham City Jail, hours after he was hit by a Taser and sprayed with Mace. Rockey Bryson, a mechanic and father of two who was jailed on a DUI charge, was found dead in his cell about 3:30 a.m. Thursday, more than 12 hours after corrections officers used the electric stun gun to subdue him during a confrontation in his cell.

There are far too many of these taser deaths for the guns to be considered an acceptable law enforcement tool. The Mayor did the right thing.

The Justice Department issued this press release today:

Beginning yesterday morning, the FBI and law enforcement from 10 other countries conducted over 90 searches worldwide as part of “Operation Site Down,” designed to disrupt and dismantle many of the leading criminal organizations that illegally distribute and trade in copyrighted software, movies, music, and games on the Internet.

“By dismantling these networks, the Department is striking at the top of the copyright piracy supply chain - a distribution chain that provides the vast majority of the illegal digital content now available online,” said Attorney General Gonzales. “And by penetrating this illegal world of high-technology and intellectual property theft, we have shown that law enforcement can and will find - and we will prosecute - those who try to use the Internet to create piracy networks beyond the reach of law enforcement.”

[hat tip to John Wesley Hall]

by TChris

The FBI claims that environmental and animal rights activists are "the nation's top domestic terrorism threat" -- a position that plays well with lobbyists for the timber and fur industries, but puzzles those who wonder why the FBI doesn't have greater concern about extremists like Eric Rudolph who blow up abortion clinics and gay bars. Rudolph's "manifesto," casting his bombing spree as a protest against abortion, has been posted to the internet by one of his supporters.

The Webmaster of the site, Donald Spitz, a minister whose site also includes photographs of aborted fetuses, said Friday that he had been writing to Mr. Rudolph in jail for months, and that Mr. Rudolph had mailed him the 21-page handwritten account. Mr. Spitz said he posted the account at [his Army of God website] with Mr. Rudolph's approval.

Terrorism is the use of violence against civilians for a political purpose. The FBI has redefined terrorism to encompass those who cause only economic damage. Why doesn't the FBI believe Rudolph's supporters are a greater terrorist threat than activists who (without killing people) pursue causes that are contrary to the interests of businesses that the administration favors?

Click through these pictures from the LA Times. Then go read the cover story, Dying on Our Dime. [Via Sentencing Law and Policy.]

More arrests are expected in San Francisco.

"We're empathetic to the ill and to the sick, however we cannot disregard federal law," said Drug Enforcement Administration Agent Javier Pena. "We have the power to enforce federal drug laws even in areas where it might not be popular."

Twenty people were indicted on federal drug charges in court documents unsealed Thursday, and an arrest warrant has been issued for another. Two others face state drug charges, and more arrests are pending, Ryan said.

by TChris

Just two weeks after the Supreme Court ruled that federal law enforcement officers need not respect state laws that authorize patients to use marijuana for medical purposes, federal agents today raided three San Francisco medical marijuana dispensaries.

The operation targeted two cannabis clubs on Ocean Avenue and another on Judah Street .... Law enforcement sources said the clubs were not targeted for drug operations but say they were allegedly being used as fronts for money-laundering operations.

Federal agents, in some cases joined by San Francisco police, raided 20 homes and businesses in the city today as part of the operation, sources told The Chronicle.

While most in the country have urged restraint in response to the Supreme Court's historic sentencing decisions in the Booker and FanFan cases, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales today complained that judges are being too lenient now that the U.S. sentencing guidelines are advisory only. He's urging this change:

Making the bottom range of the guidelines mandatory, but leaving the guidelines' upper limit advisory would resolve the Supreme Court's concern, Gonzales said.

Sentencing Law and Policy provides this link to Gonzales' speech.

by TChris

The popular modern response to sex offenders was once applied to lepers: shun them, isolate them, treat them as outcasts. States and municipalities increasingly require the identities and photographs of sex offenders to be posted on registries that are available on the internet. Sex offenders are often required to report to local law enforcement agencies when they move, and the agencies notify their neighbors that an offender resides in the neighborhood. The newest laws prohibit offenders from living within 1,000 feet of schools or parks, often forcing offenders to live outside of cities while depriving them of job opportunities.

These laws effectively cripple an offender's rehabilitative goal of becoming a productive member of society. Are they worth it? New research suggests they aren't.

"I would rather have someone who has committed a sex offense be going to work every day, come home tired, have a sense of well-being that comes from having a regular paycheck and a safe home, as opposed to having a sex offender who has a lot of free time on his hands," said Richard Hamill, president of the New York State Alliance of Sex Offender Service Providers. "You tell me: Who is at a greater risk of reoffending?"

A must read today, Molly Ivins on injustice in Texas.

Are police too quick to use tasers? They say no. This is incredible.

The Aug. 6, 2004 incident began as a normal traffic stop but took an ominous turn when the driver refused to get out of her SUV. It ended with a Boynton Beach Police officer hitting the 22-year-old woman twice with his Taser during her arrest.

Sgt. Sedrick Aiken, a training officer in the Boynton Beach Police Department, narrates the traffic stop, including the moment Officer Rich McNevin (in video) spots Victoria Goodwin’s speeding Isuzu Rodeo and when he twice hits her with 50,000 volts with a Taser. Post reporter Dani Davies interviewed Aiken.

  According to Aiken, McNevin correctly used the stun gun to subdue the driver instead of:

• using his baton
• physically forcing driver out of SUV
• using pepper spray
• getting in SUV to handcuff driver

[hat tip to Cliff]

Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) is calling for saner drug sentencing polices, particularly for women (pdf):

“The most recent casualties in the War on Drugs are women subject to misguided sentencing policy for acting as low level drug offenders. These casualties are referred to as the Girlfriend Problem. Many women are becoming implicated in drug trafficking operations because their boyfriends and husbands are high-level drug offenders. Our prison population now tops 2 million, which means 1 in 142 US residents are now in prison. The female population has increased rapidly with 101,000 women in state or federal custody last year, a 50% increase from 1995.

Irrational and unjust sentencing policies explain the increase in the women’s prison population. In too many cases, a woman is punished for the act of remaining with a boyfriend or husband engaged in drug activity, who is typically the father of her children. Under current law, even the least involved people in drug operations are held liable for the entire quantity of drugs found in connection with the conspiracy.