re: Tues. Hearing on marijuana laws

[RainDog]

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/11/us/answers-sought-for-when-marijuana-laws-collide.html

A deputy attorney general told the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday that the Justice Department had begun working with Treasury officials and financial regulators to clarify how it legally deals with banks and other businesses that serve marijuana dispensaries and growers in states that have legalized the drug for medical or recreational use.

The deputy attorney general, James M. Cole, said the Obama administration was dedicated to enforcing federal drug laws and was choosing the best among a number of imperfect solutions by relying on states to regulate marijuana “from seed to sale.”

Financial institutions, security providers and landlords that serve marijuana businesses can be prosecuted for racketeering, money laundering and trafficking under current federal laws, which Mr. Leahy said also hinder states in regulating the banking and taxation of growers and dispensaries.

But Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, the panel’s ranking Republican, said the Justice Department move was a step toward broad legalization of marijuana that would result in disastrous consequences for public safety and might violate international treaties. More broadly, he and other critics said, the Justice Department’s new policy was another example of the Obama administration’s picking which laws to enforce and which to disregard.

Grassley went on to claim prohibition of marijuana was based upon science, not a whim. Of course, Grassley was also lying out his ass or else too stupid to know that the reality of marijuana prohibition was entirely based upon the whim of racists and, later, yeah, still racists.

Is Grassley too fucking stupid to be in office if he can deny the claims of medical benefit in decades of research? Should someone ask him why the U.S. holds a patent for cannabinoids based upon medical utility if marijuana has no medical benefit? Should someone ask him if he knows how to read an abstract from a scientific journal?

Should someone ask him why he denies the scientific record?

Is this person competent to do the job required of him?

Or does the beltway just sooo entirely not give a fuck about truth that any one of them will lie in a hearing and not care if their claims can be disputed in less than 5 minutes?

What sort of govt. has such imbeciles deciding the life and death of anyone?

[immoderate]

1. It's a paraphrase, but "No one ever went broke...

... betting on the stupidity of Charles E. Grassley?

--imm

[Scuba]

2. With a name like "Grassley" you'd think.... well, never mind.

[eShirl]

3. Selective Stupidity is a staple of politicians.

[RainDog]

4. Policy based upon lies debases democracy

the entire concept of democracy is based upon the ideas formed in The Enlightenment that people are capable of using reason to determine the validity of various stances and issues.

naturally, if you have no rational reason for a law to exist, you try to muddy the waters with lies.

in fact, that's sort of a description of the republican party's existence at this time.

[bunnies]

5. Is Grassley too fucking stupid to be in office...

Yes. Without a doubt. Its embarrassing.

[RainDog]

6. Someone needs to ask Grassley if this is a scientific claim

“Marihuana influences Negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows and look at a white woman twice.”…….Hearst newspaper 1935

or is this the scientific evidence?

When Montana outlawed marijuana in 1927, the Butte Montana Standard reported a legislator’s comment: “When some beet field peon takes a few traces of this stuff… he thinks he has just been elected president of Mexico, so he starts out to execute all his political enemies.” In Texas, a senator said on the floor of the Senate: “All Mexicans are crazy, and this stuff [marijuana] is what makes them crazy.”

What's the difference between those "scientific" statements from respected legislators and prohibitionists then and now?

Are Republicans afraid to vote for the will of the people because prohibition has been such a useful tactic for them to engage in voter suppression by the demonstrated racial bias in arrests?

Is marijuana prohibition just another iteration of Jim Crow laws?