Forget expressing no confidence in Michele Leonhardt, or even firing her. The entire agency is corrupt, out of control, and destructive to our society.
DEA’s Leonhart Doomed? Committee Declares ‘No Confidence’ Amid Sex Party Scandal — USA Today
Nearly two dozen lawmakers serving on the House oversight committee say it’s time for leadership change at the Drug Enforcement Administration.
The current DEA administrator, Michele Leonhart, infuriated committee members Tuesday with her testimony about agents who repeatedly attended sex parties with prostitutes that were funded by drug cartel members.
None of the misbehaving agents were fired. Seven of them were punished with suspensions of between one and 10 days. The Department of Justice’s inspector general reported on the wild overseas escapades last month.
Committee Chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, said after the hearing that Leonhart should resign or be fired.
In a remarkably bipartisan Wednesday afternoon declaration, Chaffetz, Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland and 20 other members said they have no confidence in Leonhart.
DEA: Bad Boys Sexing Up Colombian Prostitutes Supplied by Drug Cartels – by Diane Goldstein
As a career police officer and an Executive Board Member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), a group of law enforcement professionals opposed to the War on Drugs, I have long believed that one of the most corrupting influences in policing is the enforcement of our drug laws. […]
I have often written about the Machiavellian effect of the drug war on policing and how it has fueled corruption. This scandal, as so many others is not a salacious tale about sex and drugs, but about the failures of drug prohibition and how power corrupts. The DEA, like the drug war has outlived its usefulness. The agency’s handling of not just this scandal, but also many others since its inception reflects their inability to manage itself. The time has come to dismantle an agency more concerned for its own power then for supporting the will of the American people and the rule of law.
Do they get them for the deal with the Sinola cartel,,,no,,do they get them for laundering drug money for the cartels,,no,,do they get them for their illegal wiretaps on every American citizen,,no,,,we gonna get them for fucking.
Smoke and mirrors,,more we gonna do something and nothing gets done.
Don’t you just want to pick a conservative up and just hug them too death?
It’s sounds like your priorities are skewed. LOL
No matter how many times they rename the agency involved in its prosecution, nothing will ever get drug prohibition to work.
DEA was supposed to be Tricky Dick’s own internal CIA, and with all the revelations concerning its spying on Americans, it has certainly lived up to its potential…exactly why it should be disbanded, and thrown in Tricky’s grave alongside him.
Kev has a “new” piece up on HuffPost where he thinks “important” people are agreeing with him. Oddly, comments are working for now.
He’s right! But not in the way he thinks. Legalization of Cannabis is already happening, so we are past the point of inevitability…
There’s our good old HuffPost, printing this shit for “fair and balanced” journalism, thus keeping Sabet’s name in circulation, just how he likes it.
When he’s our primary opposition = we’ve damn near won the whole damn thing…
I saw some tape of “Madame L.” in/on the news the other night and it was a beautiful moment… She’s seriously awful under pressure.
I wonder if she wishes she’d never had a bike or dreamed of being a twisted conservative version of “Harriet the Spy”… all anxious to get her bike back & get revenge/’justice’ applied to the dastardly thieves that swiped it from her.
I mean she basically told the media (at one point) that she dreamed of growing up and being “a spy” for a living = daydream roleplaying about the drama/excitement.
Maybe she was the catalyst and/or the inspiration for deviant sexual roleplaying taking over the agency?
IIRC, She was banging that professional snitch (C.I.) that was later found to have committed purgury on a regular and repeated basis right?
IDK, Just a thoughT… But she was looking REALLY UNCOMFORTABLE in that committee meeting with Troy Gowdy grilling her saying something like – “what do you actually do there in your job = for a living?” Surely you’re not in charge??
Note: That’s not a direct quote but rather my summary of his indignation, tone and whatnot.
It’s definitely worth Googling and watching if you missed it. It available in EVERY political party (aka flavor) – But looking thru the search results & skimming a fair number of them.
It would seem that some of the socially conservative folks at Fox tried to paint her as part of “Obama’s administration”.
When she’s actually a hold-over from prior administration (or two).
And she essentially failed her way to the top, Taking over for the person above her when they quit or retired into some part of the for-profit prison or rehab/recovery, or pharma industries = typically as a lobbyist of some sort.
Personally, I believe that the “current administration” looked into her murky past and decided that it was way better to let her keep stumbling up the agency ladder.
As opposed to trying to appoint someone else, Why? Because they didn’t want somebody more competent -which would’ve pissed-off the entire couch and all the people who voted for Obama thinking that “Yes, repeatedly that was the point” meant something = a bit of stoner-whistle politics so to speak.
And they wouldn’t have let him pick someone pragmatic or realistic. Nope they’d have made them beg, just to pick someone like Kev-Kev or worse… And they weren’t really big fans of Kev-Kev, he was just ‘already there’…
And that could have broken out into a reverse-reverse-reverse psychology cl*sterf*ck, not something they wanted to risk.
FWIW, Kev-Kev’s *New*, “Third-Way” garbage = the whole, “We don’t want to arrest/jail young people for marijuana” was part of Nixon’s initial sales-pitch!
*Depending on who he was talking to, how drunk he was, etc.*
ANYWHO, I can’t wait to see how this scandal works out, I mean just how dumb are these people? Sleeping with various local cartel-connected hookers, that’s just begging for nasty new disease.
Watch, they’re gonna end up finding the next *Worse than HIV V.D.* like that, Ick!
I’m hoping they fire’em all and use the money for something else that crushes the souls of the middle & lower classes = You know, something else that makes them feel better about life – they aren’t picky.
Replacing Michele Leonhart won’t be easy. She’s the lipstick on the hog. A new makeover at the DEA won’t appease the 2016 electorate. Nixon tried it twice, transforming Anslinger’s FBN into the BNDD, and then the DEA, and he still failed to stem corruption in drug law enforcement. There’s no way out. Corruption is deliberately built into federal and international systems of law that use the drug laws for social and political oppression. DEA must go.
The bipartisan Congressional action against Leonhart raises the specter of suspicious timing. It looks as if government is doing some house cleaning so political candidates can avoid being being harangued by drug war questions and topics during the 2016 election campaigns. If that’s what the politicians want, then we can’t let them have it.
Instead, the political slogan of the 2016 election will be “It’s the drugs, stupid!â€, or to paraphrase onetime presidential candidate George Wallace: drugs now, drugs tomorrow, drugs forever!
It’s a damn shame when everyone’s fried eggs get littered with chunks of your old teflon-coating.
Any questions?
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I’ve got a question. How the heck does the factory get Teflon to stick to the pan?
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Its mission is to hang on, but it’s not prohibited from letting go.
Even corruption this gilded should have a shelf life. When everybody starts getting ill from the flakes, the Commander-in-chief should throw the frying pan out.
Ah…there’s the problem that had scientists pulling their hair out.
Actually, teflon is Polytetrafluoroethane or PTFE, the nonstick is a property of fluorine, which has no available bonds. That makes it very slick (or unsticky more accurately). In order to make a product that could be applied and stay put, they tried everything. The ethylene provides the portion ofthe molecule that can bond. The molecule looks like a V, except it is three dimensional and has four “tips”. It was discovered by a DuPont researcher who was actually looking to create a new fluorine based refrigerant gas. He put this stuff into an iron gas canister to dispense under pressure into his refrigerator unit. But all the gas didn’t come out. He was measuring the volume of gas in the container by the weight, and he found that a bunch had not flowed out. Curious, he sawed the bottle in half, and bingo, it had managed to attach it’self to the iron. Now, what he had at that point was actually a plasic very much like polyethylene. But it was slick, showed the lowest coefficient of friction ever found, and had that “unsticky-ness”. Now, it still wouldn’t adhere permanently, that took a special coating put down over aluminum, that was developed later. It was first used during the Manhattan project, to coat pipes and vessels holding uranium hexafluoride, which is very corrosive. Later he used it on his fishing tackle, and it was dude’s WIFE who got him to try it out on her pots and pans. Bingo, Teflon. The brand name was Tefal, the TEF from teflon, and AL from the aluminum it was applied to.
I know, I know, too much information.
” It looks as if government is doing some house cleaning so political candidates can avoid being being harangued by drug war questions…”
I concur. This issue is too explosive, given the length and breadth of it, and how deep it runs. It is a futile attempt, though, due to the demographics. No matter how much the political machine tries to diffuse and divert, this issue is sure to ruffle feathers…and singe a few.
For example, almost all incumbents still have (mendacious!) Gub’mint supplied anti-drug propaganda on their Websites. They still haven’t gotten the message, or are hoping against hope, that the electoral tsunami that is approaching them will magically part, Moses-fashion, and spare them on this issue. IT WILL NOT!
An indicator that the pols are getting the message will be when they begin to remove that offensive, lying BS from their Webpages. So far, few, if any, are doing so.
A fire needs to be lit under them, informing them of the mendacious nature of what they have been trustingly providing as their justification for supporting prohibition…and that to continue to purvey such BS shows that they are not in touch with the times, or the needs and desires of the electorate. And thus, they might want to vacate the seat for someone who is, HINT, HINT, HINT.
The shadowy special interests behind the pols know that all their (dirty, prohibition-tainted) money used to support prohibition from a faux-moral standpoint cannot stand against the sheer electoral numbers of those who want to end it; no amount of vote-scamming will hide that. And so, some pols are trying to divert that tsunami, to channel it so they can tame it, neuter it and pull its teeth.
They can’t; like pebbles in an avalanche, this issue has gotten way past their control. And as usual, the pols are wasting time, effort and money better spent in implementing the obvious will of over half of America, by inserting Rube Goldberg-ian nonsense into the legislation to kleimanize it, maiming the reform baby in the legislative crib so it can’t walk right when its time to. We’re wise to that dodge, now, too, and it won’t fly again without being shot down the first few seconds.
So, some of the pols are scrambling, trying to look as if they are on top of this issue, because they are beginning to realize that not only have the political winds shifted, they’ve reached near-gale force within a very short period of time. They’re being blown sideways, hanging on to the rocks, trying to sound as if they are not desperate, when in fact their knuckles have gone alabaster from hanging on so hard. And this is just the beginning of the storm. OUR storm
(clap, clap, clap, clap, clap), nice comment Kapt, stand to the applause!
Nixon created the DEA via Executive Order. Reagan gave it additional powers, but could it not be disbanded by Executive Order?
Legal scholars here wanna comment?
Obama and Holder can remove cannabis as a controlled substance or lower it to a scgedule#2 so fat pharma keeps its monopoly. Guess where he stands?
I know that. But my question was if the Executive Order creating the DEA could be undone by Executive Order.
The short answer is yes. But the odds of that are nil.
Like dc wrote, the short answer is yes, for the DEA, however, that does NOT work for the ONDCP which was created by congress at the behest of Biden.
More DEA crime and criminals in the headlines, including this choice morsel from the WaPo:
A continuing criminal enterprise like the DEA corrupts absolutely.
Great video of a rep tearing into that ignominious lady. Best sound byte: “Do you have any idea how ridiculous that all sounds to an ordinary human being?”
https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=1132848203407850&id=188649667827713&ref=m_notif¬if_t=feed_comment
Breaking: Obama Reiterates Enthusiastic Support Of Medical Marijuana
Photo of Jonah Bennett
In a CNN special to be aired on Sunday, not only will President Barack Obama state his full support of medical marijuana, he’ll also advocate for alternative models of drug abuse treatment which don’t involve incarceration. The television special, called “Weed 3,†features CNN’s chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta
One for the head scratch huh?
Grassley clashes with police association over controversial asset seizures
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2015/04/15/grassley-clashes-with-police-association-over-controversial-asset-seizures/
In a statement, Fraternal Order of Police president Chuck Canterbury said the proposal would deprive local and state departments of “hundreds of millions†in funding needed to fight crime and terror.
Grassley dismissed the statement, saying civil-asset forfeiture laws have created a “perverse incentive†for police to cut corners and seize cash and property without clear evidence of a crime.
In G.W. Bush’s waning Oval Office days, interim acting DEA Administrator, Michele Leonhart, issued a final order on UMass-Amherst botany Professor Lyle Craker’s petition to obtain a license to grow marijuana, based on a non-binding recommendation exceedingly in his favour; by the DEA’s own Administrative Law Judge Mary Ellen Bittner. This was in 2009, which meant that the professor’s original application to establish a privately funded facility (in 2001) at UMass for DEA and FDA approved marijuana research was successfully blocked for nearly all of Bush’s stint in the White House.
Letters of support came from 45 House members agreeing with ALJ Bittner’s decision in favour of granting the professor a license saying NIDA’s Mississippi-grown supply provided to approved scientists was insufficient for the research marijuana merits.
Also in 2009, Fred Gardiner in Counterpunch wrote; ‘…California cannabis producers and distributors would have to live in fearful confusion until the new President’s new Attorney General appointed a new DEA Administrator. The White House provided reassurance that the incoming DEA head would implement a hands-off policy.â€
These last couple of years of Leonhart’s rein puts to mind the chaos following Nero putting the torch haphazardly to everything surrounding the Emperor.
Correction:
In G.W. Bush’s waning Oval Office days, interim acting DEA Administrator, Michele Leonhart, issued a final order denying UMass-Amherst botany Professor Lyle Craker’s petition to obtain a license to grow marijuana, going against a non-binding recommendation exceedingly in his favour…
Well, here is a torpedo right up the stern of the good ship DEA:
“Sanjay Gupta: U.S. should legalize medical marijuana now”
“CNN’s top doc says it: “We should legalize medical marijuana. We should do it nationally. And, we should do it now.”
http://tinyurl.com/lfkp77f
http://tinyurl.com/nmkdamx
Ignore the sensationalist headline, as it’s a ruse. He barely endorsed medical cannabis and says our drug policy shouldn’t be “just” enforcement,… But still mostly that, no doubt.
http://thenationalmarijuananews.com/2015/04/breaking-president-obama-support-marijuana-sunday-cnn/
Even so, admitting to medical use of cannabis is, one would hope, a step on the path to admitting the wrongness of cannabis in schedule 1 (or 2 for that matter), and, god-willing, may lead to a change in that direction.
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I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be more sensible to vaporize the DEA. Just like we don’t want to poison the ground water with rotting prohibitionists we should endeavor to avoid polluting the air by burning DEA agents.
We don’t want the EPA coming after us, now do we?
Major drug bust in China destroys a total of 854,000 lives!
In less than six months, China has created a total of 844,000 political dissidents who, if they survive their ordeal, will work the rest of their lives to overthrow the Chinese government. Tyranny is its own worst enemy.
Oh well. Pass the popcorn. Let the show begin.
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Vermont legislators have filed House Bill 502 proposing the re-criminalization of drinking alcohol in the state.
Is that bill for real? If so, I’ve been waiting for somebody to do just that. Next thing I’d like to see is a petition to the DEA to reschedule alcohol as a Schedule 1 Controlled Substance. I’d love to see the DEA defending the safety an medicinal uses of alcohol.
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I see that you didn’t bother to click the link I provided. It’s a link to the Vermont Legislature’s home on the ‘net.
Regardless of the extreme irony, drinking alcohol is an effective antidote for methyl alcohol poisoning. Standardized Treatment of Severe Methanol Poisoning With Ethanol and Hemodialysis
So much for being “tough on crime”?
Pingback: Defies Ethical Anything | Spirit Wave
What if we repurposed the DEA to fight dangerous drugs instead of recreational drugs? Drugs like antibiotics, whose abuse threatens everybody on the planet? That way, at least some of these guys could keep their jobs, and there might be less resistance to repealing prohibition?
I don’t know what kind of parties pig farmers throw, but it probably wouldn’t be as much of a temptation as cartel parties.
Leonhart has to go…to take her place among the Anslingers and Hoovers in the US Hall of Fame…
I think the DEA should be combined with Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to create a super agency DAFT…their mission??..to keep us all safe from unicorns, while thinking about the children, of course
State seizes 11-year-old, arrests his mother after he defends medical marijuana during a school presentation
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/04/17/state-seizes-11-year-old-arrests-his-mother-after-he-defends-medical-marijuana-during-a-school-presentation/
On March 24, cannabis oil activist Shona Banda‘s life was flipped upside-down after her son was taken from her by the State of Kansas
Vermont Lawmakers Threaten To Reinstate Booze Prohibition If Pot Isn’t Legalized
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/04/16/vermont-alcohol-ban-marijuana-_n_7079484.html
Best things regular people can do to deschedule marijuana
http://blog.sfgate.com/smellthetruth/2015/04/16/best-things-regular-people-can-do-to-deschedule-marijuana/
They did more than take her child, they closed down her FB account so that her gofundme campaign to fight the kidnapping of her child is effectively stopped and now they are even preventing her from entering her own home.
76-year-old Gets Mandatory Six Months in Jail for Small Pot Garden
http://www.cannabisculture.com/blogs/2015/04/01/Not-April-Fools-Joke-76-year-old-Gets-Mandatory-Six-Months-Jail-Small-Pot-Garden
Senior Americans Overwhelmingly Support Legalizing Pot
http://endingcannabisprohibition.yuku.com/topic/1853
Marijuana and Seniors: America’s Underserved Could Benefit Most
CYA
Information for Health Care Professionals:
Cannabis (marihuana, marijuana) and the cannabinoids
[Health Canada, 2013]
This document has been prepared by the Controlled Substances and Tobacco Directorate at Health Canada to provide information on the use of cannabis and cannabinoids for medical purposes.
Ah but but but… eh…
Cannabis is not an approved therapeutic product and the provision of this information should not be interpreted as an endorsement of the use of this product, or cannabis generally, by Health Canada.
This document should not be construed as expressing conclusions from Health Canada about the appropriate use of cannabis (marihuana) or cannabinoids for medical purposes.
10 Diseases Where Medical Marijuana Could have Impact
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: It’s Time for a Medical Marijuana Revolution
Let’s see. DEA budget request for 2012 = $2,364,104,000. What percentage of that is for keeping marijuana at schedule one? Big figures like this stun me. They had $75,000,000 first year the DEA started. How many of those 30,000 arrests in 2013 by the DEA were for marijuana related? We could save A LOT of money in this country by just one whack of a useless, outdated branch of the (in)justice dept.
I can’t believe she’s still in post after all these screw ups. I have to conclude she has some sort of J Edgar Hoover type filing cabinet filled with dirt on the current administration. Presumably she’s been accessing Obama’s phone conversations along with everyone else’s.
I would bet that the only reason she’s still there is because they have so much dirt on her – that they can keep her in check, at least to some extent.
She’s spent all her “political capital” long ago, and if they fire her the “think of the children”- zealots on both sides of the aisle – will try to replace her with someone much more serious about “the cause”…
And someone who has some credibility left, who has hasn’t screwed up repeatedly & publicly, seriously if you’re serious about ending the war on drugs = The Absolute Last Thing you want is a ‘fresh face’ taking her place!
That person might be given a wide berth to try some B.S. ‘Third-Way’ renamed… And a new person *taking the fight to* (whoever/wherever) – and a clean slate (so far as f*ck*ps & scandals) – who being new to the job = will be given plenty of slack to start.
Do you/(we) really want a new/different person with a shiny new record to tarnish, Or the current one = whose record is chock full of demerits and reprimands
Seriously, let’s be careful what we wish for here folks. We got fooled (to some degree) when they brought in Gil K. -mostly- Based on his record in Seattle.
And from that we got the “we’ve officially ended the drug war”, (Actually = we’re just not using the PHRASE anymore because it reveals the truth = we’re fighting a civil war on ourselves).
And we got the *shoddy/incomplete vocabulary*… *we use a limited dictionary* speech.
We want reform of the whole system not just a firing of the Director.
We shouldn’t try to cut the off the head of the Hydra – and expect it not to regrow (one or more) new heads? The second likely being some new “oversight position” -f*ck that noise- we want them to make an intelligent change in policy not just whitewash the mess that’s there!
(Which is kinda what they tried to do with Botticelli = except we have some great folks on our side now that called them on their bullshit, Example: Botticelli not knowing anything about Anslinger’s lies.
We’re quite lucky to have a few congress people that are immune to old tricks = those that shall not be easily fooled or caught on the wrong end of a handwave. – BUT, I’m not sure we REALLY want to gamble that much just yet – replacing her right now?
“It is your DOJ drug war that is killing our people,†shouted 55-year-old David Wiggins, a Baltimore resident, at the town hall meeting Thursday evening.â€
http://tinyurl.com/kywqrt7
i suppose the dea agents were wearing the same clothes as the emperor when cavorting with cartel whores.
The will of the American people is to legalize marijuana outright, by majority poll.
Overwhelmingly, the citizens of America in huge numbers poll after poll show it wants marijuana legalized for medical purposes. The fact it has medical value is no longer disputed. NIDA and NIH state it in their published online literature.
The Drug Enforcement Administration was created by President Richard Nixon through an Executive Order in July 1973… to combat “an all-out global war on the drug menace.” http://www.dea.gov/about/history.shtml
The DEA provides global war. It represents a never ending war on marijuana and anyone who uses it – by design. That is its reason for being there.
End the DEA. Stop them from carrying out their mandate of all out global war. On you.
Richard Nixon: “Enforce the law, you’ve got to scare them.” http://tinyurl.com/qbb3svx
No one can say they ended the drug war without disbanding the DEA.
No one can legalize marijuana without ending the stranglehold of the DEA. Its their job to stop you.
If you want marijuana legal, your job is to stop them.
They are legends in their own minds and terrorists in ours…so looking forward too when all those drug war heroes on NatGeo and other cable channels are seen for the propaganda and bullshit they are.
here’s an article about medical herb in my old stomping grounds, Tacoma,Wash. i’m just glad i live in calif now. i think we may unillegalize in sixteen. http://tinyurl.com/lvhras8
Ding dong the witch is dead….
http://wtop.com/u-s-government/2015/04/dea-chief-expected-to-resign/