Feel like smoking pot legally this weekend? Head to Ontario, Canada where the Globe and Mail reports that:

Canada has no laws prohibiting marijuana possession, an Ontario Superior Court judge said yesterday in a ruling that will be binding on judges in the province and may soon be picked up across the country.

"For today, and for the Victoria Day weekend, it's a very pleasant state of affairs for recreational pot smokers," said criminal lawyer Paul Burstein, who helped argue the case successfully.

The proposed decriminalization law may be unnecessaryif this ruling is upheld and broadened across the country. In fact, some say under this court ruling, the new decriminalization law would actually recriminalize pot possession by allowing fines for pot possession.

Randy Paul over at Beautiful Horizens has an interesting post, Back to Reality, on Human Rights Watch's recent report of an attempt by Ashcroft's Justice Department to effectively quash the Alien Torts Claim Act.

In a brief filed in John Doe I, et al. v. Unocal Corporation, et al., a case originally filed in 1996 and currently being reheard by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Justice Department

...argued for a radical re-interpretation of the 1789 Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA). For over 20 years, courts have held that the ATCA permits victims of serious violations of international law abroad to seek civil damages in U.S. courts against their alleged abusers who are found in the United States. The Justice Department would deny victims the right to sue under the ATCA for abuses committed abroad.

“This is a craven attempt to protect human rights abusers at the expense of victims,” said Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch. “The Bush administration is trying to overturn a longstanding judicial precedent that has been very important in the protection of human rights.”

The first national study on drug testing has been released. The findings: Drug testing has no effect on deterring student drug use.

The study, published last month in The Journal of School Health, a peer-reviewed publication of the American School Health Association, found that 37 percent of 12th graders in schools that tested for drugs said they had smoked marijuana in the last year, compared with 36 percent in schools that did not. In a universe of tens of thousands of students, such a slight deviation is statistically insignificant, and it means the results are essentially identical, the researchers said. Similarly, 21 percent of 12th graders in schools with testing said they had used other illicit drugs like cocaine or heroin in the last year, while 19 percent of their counterparts in schools without screening said they had done so.

The same pattern held for every other drug and grade level. Whether looking at marijuana or harder drugs like cocaine and heroin, or middle school pupils compared with high school students, the fact that their schools tested for drugs showed no signs of slowing their drug use.

The Supreme Court, in upholding drug testing of student athletes and those involved in extra-curricular activities, justified the privacy intrusion , relied upon the assumption that the screening combats drug abuse.

This is the largest study ever conducted on the subject. It was paid for by the federal government and tracked students across the nation for 30 years. "The study, published last month in The Journal of School Health, a peer-reviewed publication of the American School Health Association."

Since the Supreme Court did not have the benefit of this study at the time it ruled in the student drug testing cases, we hope the Supreme Court accepts another case on the issue and reverses itself. As one expert says,

"Schools should not implement a drug testing program until they're proven to work," he added. "They're too expensive. It's like having experimental surgery that's never been shown to work."

Put another way, ACLU lawyer Graham Boyd, says,

"Now there should be no reason for a school to impose an intrusive or even insulting drug test when it's not going to do anything about student drug use."

The White House uses television and technology to promote Bush's presidential image --we can't help but wonder who pays for it all, and we have a sinking feeling that we, the people do. One example:

The White House efforts have been ambitious — and costly. For the prime-time television address that Mr. Bush delivered to the nation on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House rented three barges of giant Musco lights, the kind used to illuminate sports stadiums and rock concerts, sent them across New York Harbor, tethered them in the water around the base of the Statue of Liberty and then blasted them upward to illuminate all 305 feet of America's symbol of freedom. It was the ultimate patriotic backdrop for Mr. Bush, who spoke from Ellis Island.

Literary groups are banding together to decry the Patriot Act as an invasion of privacy:

32 organizations, including the American Booksellers Association, the Authors Guild, the Association of American Publishers, the American Library Association, PEN American Center, and the giant booksellers Borders and Barnes & Noble. It endorses a bill filed in March by Representative Bernard Sanders, Independent of Vermont, that would exempt bookstore sales records and library borrowing records from some provisions of the act.

In a separate statement supporting the Sanders bill, former US representative Patricia Schroeder, president of the library association, said, ''Section 215 seriously undermines the First Amendment-protected activities of authors and publishers, booksellers and librarians, and indeed anyone who reads.''

[link via PatriotWatch]

Ed Rosenthal, convicted of cultivating marijuana in federal court despite having a state license to do so, was denied a new trial Friday.

Rosenthal wanted to argue that he was cultivating the drug as an "officer" for the city of Oakland's medical marijuana program approved by California voters. Judge Charles Breyer did not allow defense lawyers to introduce testimony on that issue because growing marijuana for any reason is a federal offense.

Some of the jurors later said they would not have convicted Rosenthal had he been allowed to explain his medical focus in growing the marijuana.

"It is simply not relevant to the question of guilt or innocence," Breyer wrote in denying the appeal for a new trial. "The Court concluded that there was no evidence from which a jury could conclude that the federal government's conduct led the defendant to believe that he was immune from criminal liability."

...."It was not a shock because this judge has consistently ruled for the prosecution," Rosenthal told Reuters. "I think in the end I'll be exonerated and the people who are persecuting me and, by proxy, medical marijuana users, will be hanging their heads in shame."

Rosenthal will be sentenced on June 4, and then will appeal the conviction to the 9th Circuit Court of appeals. You can access all of our prior coverage of the case here.

From the BBC....Via Tapped:

Witnesses told us that the special forces knew that the Iraqi military had fled a day before they swooped on the hospital.

"We were surprised. Why do this? There was no military, there were no soldiers in the hospital," said Dr Anmar Uday, who worked at the hospital.

"It was like a Hollywood film. They cried 'go, go, go', with guns and blanks without bullets, blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show for the American attack on the hospital -- action movies like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan."

There was one more twist. Two days before the snatch squad arrived, Harith had arranged to deliver Jessica to the Americans in an ambulance. But as the ambulance, with Private Lynch inside, approached a checkpoint American troops opened fire, forcing it to flee back to the hospital. The Americans had almost killed their prize catch.

Tapped isn't sure whether to believe the story.

On the other hand, this kinda fits. It might explain, for instance, the shifting stories about Lynch's injuries. First the Pentagon reported that she had broken bones, but no gunshot wounds. Then, later, she was somehow discovered to have wounds "consistent with low-velocity small arms," according to a family spokesman in Lynch's home town, who, oddly, seems to speak in military jargon. Did they add the story of the gunshot wound after the fact to make it sound more dire? It would also explain why the man who supposedly alerted U.S. forces to Lynch's whereabouts, an Iraqi lawyer known only as Mohammed -- they know he's a lawyer but not his last name, even though, according to Newsweek, he had three visits with a Marine detachment before the raid -- has mysteriously disappeared. If the BBC is to be believed, maybe he didn't exist at all.

The curious part of the story to us has always been that the lawyer disappeared and was reported to have been sent to a refugee camp. If he was really the hero the press made him out to be, why wouldn't he be rewarded? But then , a few weeks ago, reports came out saying that the lawyer and his wife and child had been flown to America where they will receive asylum.

Utah still retains the firing squad as a means of execution, and two death row inmates have recently chosen it over lethal injection, according to Pravda.Ru. The reason? To ridicule the system.

On schedule to die are Troy Kell and Roberto Arguelles. Arguelles will be shot June 27 and Troy next day. Both men have chosen to stop any pending appeals and to die the rough way.

It is not uncommon that prisoners on death row take that course. Earlier this year, Earl Bramblett was executed in the electric chair of the state Virginia. He could have chosen to drift into sleep on the execution gurney, will death be pumped in his arm by an injection needle, but went out in a blaze of electricity to state his innocence. Other motives for preferring a terrible death like hanging on the gallows, the firing squad or the electric chair are simply a call for attention, the hope that its cruelty will lead to a stop of execution or even a pardon or even to brag in public about how tough someone is. And sometimes, it can be asked, it may not be clear to the condemned was he is choosing.

How does it work?

....They will be strapped to a chair in dark clothing. Five men or women, mostly peace officers of the district the murders occurred will take aim and fire four bullets and a blank in a human body. Death will be instant, if the aim is all right.

[comments now closed]

LA Weekly is featuring Taryn Simon and The Innocents--highly recommended. The Innocents recounts 46 stories of exonerations from wrongful convictions. It is,

a collaboration of Simon, a 28-year-old photography wunderkind, and the Innocence Project, Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck’s New York–based effort that employs DNA testing to free the wrongly convicted. In the 11 years since its founding, the project has helped secure the release of 127 men and women. All 45 men and the one woman featured in The Innocents were freed with the help of the project, which provided some funding for the book as well as case narratives and a brief opening commentary by Neufeld and Scheck.

But the bulk of the work for the book fell to Simon. With the help of a Guggenheim Fellowship, she spent three years crisscrossing the country, interviewing and photographing the book’s subjects, whose wrongful convictions occurred in 18 different states, from California to Kentucky, Texas to Indiana.

Here's more.

The Justice Department is inflating terrorism charges according to the Deluth News.

Of the 56 terrorism cases filed by Justice in January and February, 2003, the agency concedes that 41 did not involve terrorism. The article has a host of examples of the non-terrorist cases. Here's one.

Meanwhile, in Detroit, the case of Hassan Nasrallah -- whose name is the same as that of the chief of the Lebanese group Hezbollah -- was, like the 55 others, labeled as terrorism.

His attorney, Mark Haidar, said he is charged with using six phony checks to pay his MasterCard bill.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric M. Straus, who is prosecuting the case, said last week: "He is not the leader of Hezbollah.... This is not a terrorist case." [hat tip to Matthew of Untelevised.Org]

Received from NORML:

A primary compound in marijuana, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), is effective in reducing "tics" in patients suffering from Tourette's Syndrome (TS), according to clinical trail data published in a recent edition of the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry. Tourette's Syndrome is a complex neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by motor tics (sudden spasms especially in the facial muscles, neck and shoulders) and one or more vocal tics.

Twenty-four patients participated in the double-blind placebo-controlled trial over a period of six weeks. Treatment with up to 10 mg of THC resulted in significant improvement of tic severity, authors wrote. No serious adverse effects to the treatment were reported.

In a separate article published in Neuropsychopharmacology, authors elaborated, "No detrimental effect was seen on learning curve, interference, recall and recognition of word lists, immediate visual memory span, and divided attention" from THC during or after the treatment.

Sam Hamod and Elayne Cassel tell readers how they can resist the Bush Administration's War on Liberty with some concrete ideas for activism.