Say hello to a new political party--the U.S. Marijuana Party. Composed mostly of libertarians and drug policy activists, the party is up and running in several states. Here's what they say about you forming one in your state:

We have tested this formula and it works. We will show you how to use the internet to form a Marijuana Political Party with a full slate of candidates in your state in 6 months. The way we did it was to first form a coalition of Libertarians and drug policy activists. By using the MARIJUANA NAME to highlight the Libertarian platform an army of drug policy activists become available to run as candidates in elections.

What's their mission? Here is the mission statement for the Colorado Marijuana Party.

Other states with Marijuana parties up and running include Tennessee, Alabama, California, Florida, Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, New York and Pennsylvania.

How could such a one-issue party be successful? Here's what they say:

The goal of forming a Marijuana Party in your state is to become the king-maker in your state election. It is not to actually win any seats in your state house of representatives or senate..... The civil rights of Americans have been compromised by the war on drugs. Because the vast majority of citizens who use any illegal substance use only marijuana, the war on drugs is basically a war on marijuana. If you can pull the plug on the war on marijuana, you end the war on drugs as we know it. You shut down the prison industrial complex, and you restore the liberties that have been eroded because of this futile war on marijuana.

The key to success lie's in the party's structure, which you can read all about here.

Here's the latest news on Gary Hart and his potential presidential bid:

Des Moines Register: Hart Uses Speeches to Gauge Support

Baltimore Sun: Despite Baggage, Hart Should Elevate Debate

New York Times: Gary Hart Weighs Strengths Against Past Embarrassment: What did Hart know when he got to Iowa to give a speech Wednesday? He knew reporters wanted to ask about the embarassing incident in his past. He knew he has no money or political organization behind him, except for a few students touting him on a website.

But Mr. Hart, who represented Colorado in the Senate from 1975 to 1987, also knew he had a couple of advantages. As a prophet who kept warning of terrorist attacks well before Sept. 11, he might emerge as the only Democrat with a clear defining issue: the Cassandra candidate. And while the others have a head start, no one knows presidential campaigning the way he does.

How does he explain the "folly," as he has been calling his involvement with the young model Donna Rice, that ended his campaign when he was the front-runner in 1987?

"I made a mistake," he said. "I went to great pains to accept responsibility for it and to apologize to all concerned, starting with my family and everyone else. I said then and I continue to say there's a difference between that kind of mistake and not having the character to lead. Character is revealed over a lifetime."

Mr. Hart's mistake may seem less troubling to some voters who have been conditioned by President Bill Clinton's troubles with a White House intern. After all, Mr. Hart's folly did not occur in the office or involve a subordinate; he did not issue indignant denials or parse the meaning of "is"; he was not accused of perjury or obstruction of justice. Given Mr. Clinton's continuing popularity, have public attitudes changed?

"All I know is how people treat me, ordinary people in restaurants and airports," Mr. Hart said. "An amazing number of Americans come up to and say, `I felt for you' and tell me their life stories. The common theme is, everybody makes mistakes."

Noting that his marriage has lasted 44 years, Mr. Hart dismissed the idea that the mistake was part of a pattern of recklessness. "This was not any kind of relationship or long-term situation," he said. "It was just a totally accidental set of circumstances that I regret, and I regret for everybody involved, including the other party, who was very unfairly characterized. I feel responsible. But how many people on this airplane do you think care anything about that? I've talked about it on television, and I'm talking about it with you, and I'll talk about it two or three more times, and then I'm not going to talk about it anymore. It's a distraction. How many times can you say what I've said?"

We've heard enough, and we're satisfied.

On the War against Iraq:

"Every community in this country is vulnerable," Mr. Hart said in a speech at Iowa State University, which attracted a crowd of nearly 200 on a night with a wind chill of minus 25 degrees. "Not one American soldier should cross the Iraqi border until this country is prepared for the inevitable retaliatory attacks."

Upcoming Speeches

January 25, 2003:
Friends of Libraries Authors Breakfast Philadelphia, 8:30-10:30 AM
Senator Hart will discuss his recent book, Restoration of the Republic, from Oxford University Press.

January 28, 2003:
"US Security in the 21st Century"
New Mexico First 2003 First Forum Dinner
6:00 PM Reception, 7:00 PM Dinner
Sheraton Old Town Hotel
800 Rio Grande Blvd., N.W., Albuquerque, NM

Presidential contender Bob Graham of Florida has put his presidential run on hold while he has heart surgery.

We're opposed to Graham. Why? He's a fervent supporter of the death penalty. Per reporter David Firestone in the New York Times this past Sunday:

Mr. Graham, who came to prominence in Florida through his full-throated support for capital punishment, echoed that thought in an interview last week. "The trouble with a moratorium is that it applies to the full population of death row, where I think the focus should be on a case-by-case basis," he said. "Apparently, Illinois had some very egregious practices, but I think in Florida we have a system with adequate checks and gateposts."

It's tough to square that view with the news today about the release of Rudolph Holton, who spent 16 years on Florida's death row. From the AP article:

Holton was convicted of raping and killing 17-year-old prostitute Katrina Graddy and setting her on fire in an abandoned drug house. About 10 days before the slaying, Graddy told police another man had raped her. Holton's attorney was not given the police report. Because of that error, Florida's Supreme Court ruled in December that Holton deserved a new trial.

But prosecutor Mark Ober decided against another trial, citing the unreliability of witness testimony and a lack of physical evidence. Holton attorney Martin McClain said: "Though we are certainly pleased that the state attorney has dropped the charges, this does not change the awful fact that Rudolph Holton served over 16 years on death row for a crime that he did not commit."

McClain said that in addition to the failure to turn over the police report, were other problems with the case. A hair in Graddy's mouth that prosecutors said came from Holton was later tested and found to be her own, he said. Also, jailhouse witnesses recanted their testimony against Holton.

Between 23 and 25 innocent people have been freed from Florida's death row since 1976, according to varying tallies. The AP article above reports that Holton becomes the second person to be released from Florida's death row in about a year. Juan Melendez walked out of prison a free man last January after he won a new trial and prosecutors declined to try him again. In 2000, DNA evidence cleared death row inmate Frank Lee Smith of a 1985 murder. But it was too late for Smith, who had died of cancer 11 months earlier."

This is not " "Adequate checks and gateposts'' to us. Can Graham really think because some mistakes were caught, they've gotten them all? We wish him well with his heart surgery, but he's not our candidate.

From time to time, we read blogs whose authors mention they are looking for work. This was in our inbox today, and we thought we'd share it. But for the fact that we already have a quite demanding day job, we'd be tempted.

Currently, there are two full-time job openings at the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C.:

* Director of State Policies, who will develop and manage all of MPP's state-based campaigns, including overseeing all lobbying activities, hiring and managing campaign managers for state ballot initiatives, coordinating public education campaigns, including press strategies, and managing MPP's State Policies Department staff and interns.

* Legislative Analyst, who will monitor marijuana-related legislation in the states, maintain MPP's state Web pages, write and e-mail legislative alerts to MPP members, and assist the Director of State Policies with research and analysis.

Please do not reply to this message with questions, and no phone calls, please. Instead, please go here for complete job descriptions and application guidelines. We are accepting resumes until February 7, and we will interview selected applicants from February 3 to 14. Positions will begin on approximately March 3 (but this is flexible).

Both positions are in our Capitol Hill office in Washington, D.C., which is conveniently located near the Union Station Metro stop on the Red Line. Both positions require exceptional written and oral communication skills, professional appearance, and political/policy experience.

Sincerely,

Rob Kampia
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.

We (TalkLeft) have no further information, so no need to email us rather than going directly to the MPP's website. We can say that we have known and worked on issues with Mr. Kampia for many years and we are very impressed with his dedication and talent.

We're guest-blogging for Eric Alterman at MSNBC's Altercation today--and it's Slacker Friday. Hope you'll stop by.

Talk about getting egg on your face, how's this from the Chicago Sun-Times: Big 'pot' stash was only hay

What Chicago police thought was more than $660,000 worth of dope in a pickup truck last month turned out to be hay from a Roman Catholic church's nativity scene. Prosecutors dropped felony drug charges Thursday against Jose Galvan, 43, and his co-worker, Juan Luna, 21, after crime lab tests confirmed the mistake, said Jerry Lawrence, spokesman for the Cook County state's attorney's office. The two remained at Cook County Jail as federal immigration officials checked to see if they are in the country legally."

Their criminal defense attorney, Peter Vilkelis, says:

"Somebody must have seen these two big bales, saw the men were Mexican and made an assumption. These guys were treated like they were cartel drug traffickers. Once we finally secure their release, we will be talking to a civil rights lawyer."

The "egg on their face" aspect is amusing. What's not amusing is that these men spent weeks in jail while the cops, at their leisure, tested the non-drugs. And that one of them is still in jail pending a check on his immigration status--it doesn't take three weeks to do that.

Here's more on the marijuana billboard ads we like-- from The Coalition For Medical Marijuana. The ads have an especially appealing tag line, "Medical Marijuana: Compassion Not Federal Prison."

Speaking of federal prisons, check out USA Today's Kevin Johnson on how many offenders are currently packed into them.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons reported a population of nearly 165,000 this month, making the system larger than perennial prison giants California and Texas....

At least part of the increase, officials say, is because of a growing pool of non-citizen offenders who represent nearly one-third of the federal inmate population..... The majority have been convicted of drug-related crimes, and their numbers jumped from 22% in 1998 to 28% in 2002....

The Bureau of Prisons is one of the fastest-growing arms of the federal government. In 1980, the bureau's budget was $330 million, and there were 24,000 inmates in 44 prisons. In 2002, the budget was $4.6 billion, and there were 102 prisons. Eleven more federal prisons are in various stages of construction.

War on Drugs, War on Iraq, Prison Nation....does the Government think money grows on trees?

Bump from January 23:

We posted this yesterday, and now the mainsteam media has picked up on it:

People for the American Way is announcing a win for civil liberties with respect to the Total Information Awareness Program --via the Wyden Amendment which was successfully included in the Senate spending package. From their press release, received today:

"WASHINGTON - In a bold bipartisan move, the U.S. Senate today adopted an Amendment that could protect Americans from the broad reach of government data-mining efforts associated with the office of Total Information Awareness. The Amendment, proposed by Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), conditions funding of some data-mining programs on actions by the executive branch to protect privacy and monitor the usage of personal information.

"With concerted, bipartisan effort, the Senate today has advanced a common-sense measure to protect the constitutional liberties of all Americans," said Ralph G. Neas, president of People For the American Way. "The House of Representatives should accept the Wyden Amendment in conference, and President Bush should promptly endorse this vital provision."

People for the American Way (PFAW) has joined the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund in opposing Miguel Estrada's confirmation to the federal Court of Appeals. PFAW President Ralph G. Neas criticizes Hatch for calling for an immediate vote on Estrada while announcing additional hearings on rejected nominees Charles Pickering and Priscilla Owen.

People For the American Way today joined the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund in opposing the confirmation of Miguel A. Estrada to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Senate Judiciary Committee Orrin Hatch has called for a vote on Estrada's nomination on Thursday, January 30.

People For the American Way President Ralph G. Neas rejected suggestions
that Estrada's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on September 26, 2002 had
cleared the way for his confirmation.

"At his confirmation hearing, Mr. Estrada stubbornly refused to answer many
important questions from Senators concerning his jurisprudential views and
legal philosophy," said Neas. "There is too much at stake to give someone a
powerful a lifetime seat on the federal appeals court without understanding
how he will approach fundamental legal and constitutional questions."

Neas said it was outrageous that on the same day Sen. Hatch announced that
there would be a Judiciary Committee vote on Estrada's nomination next week,
he also announced that he would hold additional hearings on appellate court
nominees Charles Pickering and Priscilla Owen, who were rejected by the
Committee last year after in-depth public hearings - two of them in
Pickering's case.

"Sen. Hatch is intent on pushing through a nominee like Miguel Estrada, who
revealed as little as possible about his approach to judging," said Neas.
"Yet at the same time, he plans to expend more of the Committee's time and
energy on nominees whose records were examined exhaustively at public
hearings and whose nominations were rejected."

Thanks to new data now available on TRACFED, subscribers can quickly examine the actual performance of individual federal prosecutors from Fiscal Years 1986 to 2002. Also available on TRAC's public site is a summary report that reveals wide variations found among assistant U.S. attorneys (AUSAs) in the percentage of investigative matters they decline to prosecute.

"Until now, because of the complexity of the judicial process, knowledge about the record of each federal prosecutor was largely anecdotal. With the new TRACFED prosecutors tool reporters, lawyers, public interest groups and others can quickly obtain the case-by-case listings of individual AUSAs as well as counts on referrals process and statistical information about the percent of matters declined, kinds of cases handled, etc. Compare the sentences achieved by one prosecutor with the sentences of all prosecutors in the district or the U.S."

The New York Times today justly takes the Administration to task for its failure to respectThe Right to Counsel in the case of Jose Padilla:

The administration is treating the right to counsel in these cases as an inconvenience and possible impediment to investigators. But under our system of law, all defendants, even alleged terrorists, are innocent until proven guilty. Without access to a lawyer, people thrown in prison on terrorism charges cannot protest their innocence, assert their constitutional right to a speedy trial or otherwise challenge their confinement.

It is always easier for law enforcement if defendants do not know their rights. But the Sixth Amendment provides that "in all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to have the assistance of counsel for his defense." As the Supreme Court explained in the landmark case of Gideon v. Wainwright in 1963, the "noble ideal" of a fair trial cannot be achieved if a defendant has to face his accusers without access to a lawyer.

The Bush administration should let Mr. Padilla meet with his lawyer, and it should start respecting the right to counsel guaranteed by the Constitution.

Via Lisa English at Ruminate This: Rep.Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) introduced legislation last week that aims to repeal the unprecedented authority Congress gave George Bush last fall...the power to declare war whenever and for whatever reason. Jackson Lee and her co-sponsors in the House, Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Diane Watson (D-CA) need your support. Pick up the phone, dial your representatives ( 1-800-839-5276), and let them know you want to repeal the authorization for use of force against Iraq. That's 1-800-839-5276