Update Senator Grassley is apparently pulling the amendment, and yet defended it at the same time in a conversation with a reporter:
“[T]he point is, for them to do what we tell them to do. And one of the things that I was anticipating telling them not to do is to — to recommend or study the legalization of drugs.”
Original Post:
Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa is trying to insert a censorship provision into Jim Webb’s National Criminal Justice Commission Act of 2009.
This is an important commission with a goal to look at every aspect of our criminal justice system with an eye to reform.
Here is the Grassley Amendment:
RESTRICTIONS ON AUTHORITY.
The Commission shall have no authority to make findings related to current Federal, State, and local criminal justice policies and practices or reform recommendations that involve, support, or otherwise discuss the decriminalization of any offense under the Controlled Substances Act or the legalization of any controlled substance listed under the Controlled Substances Act.
Despicable.
UnAmerican.
Take Action Now. The Senate Judiciary Committee could vote on this as soon as Thursday.
Update:
There was a problem with the Take Action Now link and apparently it was only processing entries that had email addresses already registered with LEAP. They’re working on getting it corrected.
You can also contact your senators directly here. And here is a list of the senators on the Judiciary Committee.
Of course, one thing that’s interesting about this amendment is that Grassley is essentially conceding that the facts would support decrim or legalization as being best for the country. He doesn’t want it for his own reasons and therefore, the only way he can attempt to stop it is to prevent considering it.
Grassley already accepts money from the collections agency lobby. I thought he couldn’t get lower.
So if i’m reading this right. Sen. Webb’s commission can’t in any way discuss or even look at drugs?
I thought Gordon Brown was bad for ignoring science. We don’t ignore it, we forbid it.
go USA!
Yep, the fix is in.
Prohibs really, truly are dumb. They’d have to be. This move smacks of desperation tactics.
And they’re trying it against the wrong guy. Webb’s Scots-Irish; this would be like waving a red cape in front of a bull. In this case, a very intelligent one intent on having a piece of the torreador. Grassley’s being a fool.
The tide against the ‘law and order!’ crowd is turning, if only because it’s going to get as plain as the nose on anyone’s face that we just can’t afford to lock so many people up for what was not a crime before eed-jits like Grassley made it one. That was no small part of the rationale for Webb’s panel to the begin with.
Do Grassley and Company want to get drawn into what will inevitably become a national debate on the DrugWar, when his buddies have done everything they can to avoid such a debate? For that is exactly what is intended with this panel: force the long-suppressed debate out into the open, taking it from the back of the closet and putting it front-and-center, and impressing it on the public conscience. This would be the fatal blow, for what does the incarceration industry require above all for it’s very survival but the maintenance of the DrugWar?
Really dumb move, Senator Grassley. But go ahead. It only digs the hole deeper…
Further evidence that that the people who support prohibition have weak, unsubstantiated arguments. Their only hope is to avoid debate altogether.
Notice where they’re “circling the wagons?” Around the CSA. They’re being moved into a corner, state by state and it’s becoming uncomfortable. Plus, it’s obvious they’re running out of ammo and the ammo they’ve got left is faulty.
Since the CSA is the driving engine behind the Criminal Justice fiasco we face today, it MUST be addressed, Senator!
Getting a database error trying to send a message on the “take action now” link.. hopefully it gets fixed.
What the hell !! I’m so glad Grassley isnt running again!
If they do this,then whats the point of this commission.Its like their hands are tied. Do the reaserch but cant talk about it. Prohibis are scared they are losing, so they try this shit. TOOOO FREAKING BAD, The truth is out.
Damned prohibitionists like him are outta touch with life in this country.
It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.
Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826), Notes on Virginia
If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny.
Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826)
When a man assumes a public trust, he should consider himself as public property
Thomas Jefferson (1743 – 1826)
http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Thomas_Jefferson
@ Chris,
I received the error too until I changed the e-mail I had listed to the one I used when I signed up for membership on the LEAP website. If you don’t have an account at LEAP, create one and try again.
That’s just depressing. Even more depressing is that we all know it will pass – with bipartisan support – and the mainstream media won’t mention a word about it.
I wrote a letter full of verve and rhetoric on that form, only DATABASE ERROR.
I’m too bummed to rewrite it right now. Perhaps later.
Does anyone know where we can get the address of our representative in the judiciary committee? I have no idea… and it makes it easier than getting database errors.
It helps if you already signed the Petition for Support of Senator Webb’s Blue Ribbon Commission at Leap.cc.
It really bugs me that something like this can occur in Congress without any notice to Americans and the vote can go though on it at such a short notice. I’m really getting sick of the way Congress screws the American people behind their backs.
We have to PUT A STOP TO GRASSLEY’S GHASTLY FASCIST ACTIVITIES ASAP!!!!!!!!!!
The CSA is a damned lie as long as Cannabis is in Schedule I “by any measure of rational analysis”.
CSA is a despicable fraud as long as Cannabis is ANYWHERE in it and tobacco isn’t.
btw Enjoy this: http://tinyurl.com/Tashkin
😀
MARIJUANA REVOLUTION by John Sinclair
This essay was first published in pamphlet form in 1971 by the Rainbow People’s Party of Ann Arbor, Michigan.
It might seem strange to a lot of people to spend so much time and energy — and so many pages — on the subject of marijuana, which is after all only an innocuous naturally-occurring weed that people smoke to get high. But what’s even stranger is that an increasingly frightening number of people are being ordered to spend inconsiderable amounts of time (9½ to 10 years in my case) in penitentiaries and prisons simply for smoking this weed in America these days. People who do smoke marijuana are probably pretty much aware of the things I want to say in this article, but for those who can’t understand what all the commotion is about, maybe my remarks will be helpful. continued…
The Great Marijuana Hoax by Allen Ginsberg
7:38 P.M. Nov. 13, 1965 San Francisco, California, USA, Kosmos
How much to be revealed about marijuana especially in this time and nation for the general public! for the actual experience of the smoked herb has been completely clouded by a fog of dirty language by the diminishing crowd of fakers who have not had the experience and yet insist on being centers of propaganda about the experience. And the key, the paradoxical key to this bizarre impasse of awareness is precisely that the marijuana consciousness is one that, ever so gently, shifts the center of attention from habitual shallow purely verbal guidelines and repetitive secondhand ideological interpretations of experience to more direct, slower, absorbing, occasionally microscopically minute engagement with sensing phenomena during the high moments or hours after one has smoked. contnued…
Nixon Tapes Reveal Twisted Roots Of Marijuana Prohibition
The Connoissuer’s Handbook of Marijuana by William Daniel Drake
First License Issued To Montana Hemp Farmer
October 29th, 2009 Liz Posted in Family Farms, Peace
Montana has issued its first license for an industrial hemp-growing operation, setting up a possible test case of whether the Drug Enforcement Administration is willing to override a state law allowing propagation of the plant.
HEMP FOR HEALTH: The Facts On Medical Marijuana, by Chris Conrad (Copyright 1997) has been my ‘bible’ since 1999.
It thoroughly covers the Medicinal and Nutritional Uses of Cannabis Sativa.
Twelve years ago today, three tiny hemp plants were raided from my beautiful hobby greenhouse which was brilliantly filled with warmth and joyous color.
My true goal was to have tomatoes protected and still ripening during Christmas season. Although that freedom was also taken from me within the ‘war’ zone of destruction, the Spirit of Desire still thrives.
I just completed an interview with Tom Angell, media relations director for LEAP, where we discussed Webb’s bill and Grassley’s attempt to neuter it. Tom had some very interesting things to say on that subject, as he did on many others. I’ll have the interview posted this time tomorrow in the Opium Den archives, and encourage everyone to give it a listen. And if you have any comments, please feel free to post them.
Daniel
http://www.theopiumden.net
Tom Angell, media relations director for LEAP, just finished an in-depth interview with me inside the Opium Den. We discussed, among other things, Webb’s bill and Grassley’s attempt to neuter it. It should be available for download from Opium Den archives some time tomorrow.
I invite everyone to check it out.