It's official. Effective today, Great Britain has reclassified and downgraded marijuana. Instead of being a class B drug like amphetamines, it is a class C drug like tranquilizers and steroids. Possession of small amounts results in an on-the-spot warning.

Under the reclassification, the possession, production and supply of marijuana are still illegal, but the penalties are different. Adults found carrying the drug are now more likely to receive a warning than a prison sentence. And the maximum prison sentence for possession has dropped from five to two years. Legally, this brings Britain in line with some European countries such as the Netherlands, although in practice these laws are likely to be more strictly enforced in Britain.

At least in Britain, reefer madness is slowly giving way to acceptance that marijuana does have medical benefits:

...the drug may have positive effects for some. Marijuana is thought to dull chronic pain and may ease the symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS), an incurable disease of the nervous system that causes spasms, pain and tremor.

In a recent large-scale trial, 60% of MS patients who took synthetic cannabis said it helped their mobility and eased their pain and muscle stiffness. "It doesn't suit everyone, but it does suit some," says Clare Hodges, MS sufferer and founder of the Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics, a pressure group that lobbies for the medicinal use of marijuana. About 10,000 seriously ill patients in Britain use cannabis to control their symptoms, says Hodges. Sufferers tend to smoke or eat the drug.

A leading British criminologist gives the reasons why the downgrading should be extended to small home growers.

How do our presidential candidates stack up on the issue? Check out NORML's presidential score card and find out where they stand on decriminalization, on medical use and on the Higher Education Act provision that prevents convicted marijuana offenders from receiving student aid.

John Kerry scores the highest of the viable candidates. He is the only candidate expressing any support for medical marijuana:

Buzzflash scores an interview with George McGovern, now 82, and points out he was right about Vietnam and he's right about Iraq:

"Let me say that one thing that Richard Pearle and Dick Cheney and George W. Bush have in common is that none of them have ever been near a combat scene. They're perfectly willing to send younger people -- other people's sons -- into war. They're very generous with that blood of the young men and women that they throw into combat so casually. But they've protected their blood and their limbs by never serving near a battlefield. That's true of the President. It's true of the Vice President. It's true of Pearle and Wolfowitz -- that whole crowd of neo-conservatives that have the ear of the President."

-- Former Senator George McGovern and 1972 Democratic Candidate for President.

We don't care if he did, in fact, we think it would be a plus if he did--he'd look friendlier-- but you decide--Drudge has the pictures. Kerry denies it. But his wife has said in interviews she's a botox user.

We hope if Kerry is using it, he'll just say so. Getting caught in a lie is always worse--even if it's on such a trivial matter.

Maybe Kerry just had a facial and a peel. Maybe he just looks better when he's smiling. After all, before Iowa, he didn't have much to smile about.

Update: 24 hours later, the story still has legs.

Canada has officially called for a full public inquiry in the Maher Arar case.

Justice Dennis O'Connor, who led Ontario's Walkerton tainted water inquiry, will head the Arar inquiry, McLellan announced. It is not clear when hearings will begin or who will be called to testify.

Arar was detained by American agents at an airport in New York in the fall of 2002 on suspicion he had links to al Qaeda. He was deported to Syria and imprisoned for 10 months in Damascus, where he says he was tortured. He was released without explanation this fall. He has consistently denied any links to terrorism and has pressured Ottawa for months to call an inquiry into the affair.

Mr. Arar had this response to the news:

Arar welcomed the announcement as "a great day for Canadian justice.

"It is . . . very important to ensure this inquiry can, indeed, clear my name and answer all of our questions so that we can begin to rebuild our lives," said Arar, who has been on public assistance since the incident and expects the inquiry to address compensation for him and his family.

As always, Damned Foreigner has more. Our coverage of the case can be accessed here.

Eric at Hamster has the details on the John Kerry ad that will run in South Carolina--including the script. The ad features Kerry and one of the men he served with in Vietnam.

David Alston: "When the bullets began to hit the side of the boat, the boom, the pow, pow, pow, we found out that John Kerry can lead."

Kerry: "There's this sense after Vietnam that every other day is extra. That you have to do what's right. You know it's right to roll back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy to guarantee all Americans health care and invest in our kids. That's why I'm running for president."

It's coming down to the wire. What will Gov. Arnold do with his first life or death decision? He's being asked to delay the execution of Kevin Cooper so that additional DNA tests may be performed:

On CNN tonight, Rubin Hurricane Carter and (curiously) former White House Counsel Lanny Davis were championing Cooper's cause. A roster of actors, including Denzel Washington, Sean Penn and Anjelica Houston, are petitioning Gov. Arnold to delay the execution.

Lanny Davis said one of the victims had blond hairs clutched in her hand and the jury didn't get to hear about it. Cooper is a black man. Another witness said her boyfriend or husband came home bloodied that night, missing the hatchet that was used in the crime. One of the victims who survived reportedly told the police at the time he was attacked by three hispanic men. Now and adult, the victim denies that he ever said that. Some of the jurors have changed their minds about Cooper's guilt.

Rubin Carter said there are tell-tale signs this case was wrongly decided:lack of hard evidence; witnesses who have changed their statements after conferring with police; jailhouse snitches; unreliable eyewitness testimony; lab fraud.

The crime was horrendous, no question. But was the wrong man convicted?

Art Garfunkel has decided to fight his pot charge rather than pay a $100 fine. Our prior post on the bust in which a state trooper stopped the limo in which Garfunkel was a passenger is here.

Bump and Update: We are glad to see this case make the national news. We just listened to the prosecutor on CNN. She was emphatic that the nurses left this poor boy in agony for three days and did nothing. He finally died sitting in a chair.

*******************
Original Post 10:54 a.m.

This is sickening. We need changes in our juvenile detention facilities.

Two nurses at a juvenile jail were charged with murder Tuesday, accused of failing to treat a 17-year-old inmate who died of a burst appendix after three days in pain.

In a scathing attack on the juvenile justice system, a Miami-Dade County grand jury said the women skipped examinations or falsified medical records on Omar Paisley, who spent his last days "in agony lying on a concrete bed."

Following a nine-month investigation, the grand jury noted in frustration that the state Department of Juvenile Justice is immune to criminal indictments. The panel called for wholesale changes at the jail to "prevent another unnecessary death."

The nurses, Gaile Tucker Loperfido and Dianne Marie Demeritte, were expected to surrender Wednesday. They face up to nine years in prison on charges of third-degree murder and aggravated manslaughter of a child. It was not immediately known if they had attorneys.

The nurses weren't the only ones involved in the death. The Grand Jury report says:

A new report by the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty shows that 41% of people in Illinois now oppose the death penalty.

The report also says two-thirds of voters would be either more likely to support their legislator or have no objection if he or she voted to abolish the death penalty. According to the report, of the 39 capital cases resolved in Illinois in 2003, only two resulted in a death sentence. Neither of those sentences was issued in Cook County. Additionally, four of the five juries who considered the death penalty in 2003 rejected it.

...The report also pointed to the disproportionate number of minorities facing possible death sentences in Cook County. Of the 175 pending capital cases the coalition identified, 74 percent of the defendants are black and 15 percent are Latino. Meanwhile, both death sentences handed down in the state in 2003 involved crimes against white victims.

Illinois spent $32 million in 2003 trying capital cases.

[Executive director of the coalition, Jane] Bohman said the cost of trying capital cases, combined with the shrinking number of death sentences due to skepticism about wrongful convictions and the lack of a foolproof system for convicting criminals, means the use of the death penalty in Illinois cannot be justified. "Our state can no longer be haunted by the specter of execution of an innocent person," Bohman said.

You can access the report here.

Avedon Carol of Sideshow sums it up just right:

From all appearances, Hutton just refused to accept what the BBC said and accepted whatever Blair said instead, regardless of the fact that it's as plain as the nose on my face that the BBC was right and you'd have to be completely incompetent to believe that stupid "45 minutes" claim. So the head of the BBC fell on his sword, and everyone is supposed to pretend that Blair wasn't full of it. Please.

There was a stand-off at San Francisco General Hospital yesterday, as a doctor refused a police request to search a female suspect's private body parts for cocaine.

San Francisco has had some touchy police standoffs -- but nothing quite like the 10-hour showdown that came to a head in the San Francisco General emergency room between cops, doctors and a female drug suspect who refused to surrender several rocks of crack cocaine she was concealing in her very private parts.

Before it was all over, a doctor was herself being threatened with arrest -- and the head of the city's Health Department was on his way down to do the search himself.

The police obtained a "body cavity" search warrant. The doctor refused to perform it, stating it wasn't a medical emergency.

Daily Kos reports that the Dean campaign has undergone a major shakeup. Joe Trippi is out as Campaign Manager--Roy Neel is taking his place. Neel is Al Gore's former chief of staff.

What do you think? Is it too late?

Update: Oliver at Liquid List has this analysis, which we pretty much agree with as to Dean. We're not ready to count Clark out yet, although like Oliver, we're hoping Edwards gets a bump from South Carolina.