Five Afghan detainees at Guantanamo have been traded for the release of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, an American soldier being held in Afghanistan. The detainees were delivered to the Government of Quatar in Cuba, while U.S. commandos picked up the soldier in Afghanistan. Quatar was instrumental in the negotiations.

The White House says the detainees were members of the Taliban, not al Qaeda. All five have been held at Gitmo since 2002.

The released detainees are: Mohammad Fazl, about 47, Mullah Norullah Noori, about 47, Mohammed Nabi, about 48, Khairullah Khairkhwa, about 47, and Abdul Haq Wasiq, about 43. [More...]

For anyone looking for the link to the continuously updated Global Incident Map of drug busts around the world that I mentioned in my talk today, here it is. It is searchable by country, drug and date. Just scroll down past the map. The number of persons extradited from Colombia to face criminal charges here is 1,600 since 1997, according to the State Department's International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, Volume I, Drug and Chemical Control, March 2014:

Remember the Colorado cake shop that wouldn't make a wedding cake for a gay couple? The Colorado civil Rights Commission has ordered Masterpiece Bakery to change its discriminatory policy and train its staff accordingly. It also must submit quarterly reports. The owner sounds just as clueless as ever:

On Thursday night, the House of Representatives voted on the myriad of amendments to the proposed DOJ 2015 budget. Amendment No. 25, to prohibit the use of funds to prevent certain States from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana. passed, by a vote of 219 to 189. The roll call vote (no. 258) is here.

The Amendment was co-sponsored by Rep. Sam Farr (D-Calif.) and Reps. Rohrabacher, Don Young (R-Alaska), Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), Paul Broun (R-Ga.), Jared Polis (D-Colo.), Steve Stockman (R-Texas), and Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)

Rep. Steve Cohen said:

“Marijuana does not make people commit crime. It makes them overeat.”

Also passing: An amendment to prohibit the use of funds to prevent a State from implementing its own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of industrial hemp. Vote was 237 - 170 (Roll no. 257)

Critical to the amendment's passage:

“This year’s huge vote increase can largely be attributed to the fact that lawmakers only recently began hearing the moving stories of the many children whose severe seizures are only relieved by marijuana,” said Tom Angell, chairman of Marijuana Majority, in a statement. “Being able to list these CBD states in the amendment text meant that more members of Congress that represent these states voted yes than otherwise would have.

Counting these states, 60 percent of the U.S. population lives in a place where state law disagrees with federal law.” [More...]

I'm off to NORML's annual Aspen legal conference. My talk this year: "Federal Responses to Marijuana Legalization, Both Good and Bad." Here's the entire agenda, it's a privilege to be included with these impressive lawyers.

I'll be back Saturday night, after the annual Owl Farm picnic.

Enjoy the weekend, the weather is beautiful here. This is an open thread, all topics welcome.(I'll put up new open threads if this one fills up.)

(Date corrected from Friday to Thursday)

Bump and Update from 5/25/14: As expected, Anonymou Sabu, aka Hector Monsegur, was sentenced to time served today. The judge called his cooperation "extraordinary." See below for the link to his online postings that resulted in his bail being revoked and serving 7 months.

After three years, Anonymou Sabu, aka Hector Monsegur, will finally face a federal judge for sentencing on May 27. The infamous former member of Lulzsec and Anonymous, who agreed to cooperate the night of his arrest on June 7, 2011, agreed to plead guilty to 12 felonies in August, 2011, including nine counts related to computer hacking; one count of credit card fraud; one count of conspiring to commit bank fraud, and one count of aggravated identity theft. Charges pending in four other federal districts were dropped as part of his deal. His plea agreement is here.

The maximum possible sentence for the 12 counts is 122 years. His sentencing guidelines call for a 259 to 317 months sentence (2 years of which are a mandatory minimum.) His guidelines are based on a total loss amount of $20 million to $50 million (the loss caused by his direct participation was $1.5 to $2 million).

As a reward for his cooperation, the Government is seeking no jail time -- a sentence of time served -- with the served part being 7 months he spent in pretrial detention in 2012 after he violated his plea agreement by posting online without authorization and had his bond revoked. [More....]

"Senor de los Cielos", Telemundo's series, based on Mexican drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, also known as "Lord of the Skies", starts its second season tonight. In the series, his name is Aurelio Casillas.

Although Carrillo Fuentes supposedly died on the operating table in 1997 while undergoing plastic surgery to change his appearance, he rises from the dead in the second series and returns to reclaim his business, his family and his assets. Also "returning from the dead" this season is his chief mistress and fellow drug trafficker, Monica Robles.

The network will be all Senor de Los Cielos all night. At 7pm ET, there will be a program “En La Sombra del Narco,” "a one-hour special about the reach of Mexican and Colombian drug cartels into US territory." One of those interviewed will be Juan Diego Espinoza Ramirez, alias El Tigre, the Colombian trafficker and boyfriend of Sandra Beltran, who was an early link between the Colombian and the Mexican traffickers.[More...]

Subcomandante Marcos, the charismatic leader of Mexico's Zapatistas rebels for the past 20 years, has announced he will no longer speak for the group and will no longer exist as Subcomandante Marcos. (The Zapatistas are rebels fighting for the rights of indigenous people in Chiapas, Mexico's poorest state.) He will now be known as Subcomandante Galeano.

I've been a longtime fan of Marcos. He is a prolific writer -- 21 books and more than 250 essays and articles. I especially recommend Our Word is Our Weapon: Selected Writings by Subcomandante Marcos.

In a 10 page communique posted on the EZLN website (in Spanish), Marcos says he no longer exists and has never existed -- that his persona is a hologram created by the group to advance its goals, but that the persona of Marcos has now become a distraction. The group is changing, a new generation is coming in, and it was collectively decided to end the persona of Marcos. He also says rumors of his death and illness are untrue, just a false story put out by the group, in an attempt to separate the group from his persona. Vice has posted the audio of his 55 minute announcement, in Spanish. [More...]

It's been raining and hailing here for 3 days now, but it cleared up enough tonight to grill. Here's my latest: A grilled New York Strip steak sandwich topped with sweet peppers stuffed with goat cheese, lettuce and tomato on a La Brea Bakery Telera roll, with a side of grilled asparagus. No pots needed, except to toss the peppers into boiling water for 2 minutes before stuffing and grilling. Chives would have been good to mix in the goat cheese, but I didn't have any.

Anyone else grilling this weekend?

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

With 96 percent of polling stations in Colombia reporting, President Juan Manuel Santos has 25.5 percent of the vote to right-wing challenger Oscar Ivan Zuluaga's 29.2%. That means a run-off election will be held next month since neither candidate got 50%.

Zuluaga is a protege of former President Aliviro Uribe. He has opposed the FARC peace talks, and before slightly softening his position in recent days, said he would shut them down.

Santos has been a big promoter of the peace talks. Like Zuluaga, at one time he worked in Uribe's cabinet. Santos and Uribe have since had a falling out, thus, Uribe's support of Zuluaga. [More....]

What I'm reading about this weekend: The Government's stepped up investigations of bitcoin exchange sites, Silk Road 2.0 is Better Than Ever and the Fallen Kingpins of Silk Road.

Sounds like everything else in the drug world. Shut down production, processing labs and transit routes in one country and they pop up in another. Reduce demand for cocaine and demand for designer drugs takes its place. Shut down Silk Road, and others just take their place.

Is it even worth the effort? (Here is the 2013 UNODC World Drug Report.) Why not just legalize drugs, and re-apportion our bloated law enforcement, prison and prosecution budgets to things like education and health care? Instead of funding more local cops and drug task forces, why not help local governments struggling with the cost of sorely needed infrastructure fixes or use it for disaster relief?

This is an open thread, all topics welcome.

Fridays before three day weekends are always busy. I'm not done yet, so here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

The House today passed the USA Freedom Act -- after stripping it of several critical reform provisions.

The bill was intended to end the NSA's bulk collection of our phone records. Instead, the bill is ambiguous at best, and at worst, can be viewed as codifying the NSA's authority for bulk record collection. A coalition of tech companies, including FB, Google and Yahoo, warn "the revised version creates an "unacceptable loophole that could enable the bulk collection of internet users' data."

The version that passed the House contains changed definitions, weakens the reforms to Section 702 of FISA, and has no provision for introducing a special advocate in the FISA Court.
[More...]