The decision by the Drug Enforcement Administration, reported by news outlets late Wednesday, means marijuana will remain classified as a Schedule 1 drug. A formal announcement is expected Thursday.
Many scientists have been calling for the federal government to reschedule the drug, which they said would open the door to more medical research into marijuana and its potential effects, both beneficial and harmful.
To conduct research with Schedule 1 drugs, scientists have to gain DEA approval and often upgrade the security protocols in their labs, expensive and time-consuming hurdles.
Scientists have argued that thorough research is all the more important with medical marijuana available in 25 states and Washington, and a small number of states starting to legalize recreational marijuana as well.
Researchers also need the highest level of permission to run clinical trials of marijuana and drugs derived from it, and to study constituents of marijuana, even if they are free of the components that make people high.
A component of marijuana called cannabidiol has shown promise […]
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen
“Who is going to save our Church? Do not look to the priests. Do not look to the bishops. It’s up to you, the laity, to remind our priests to be priests and our bishops to be bishops.”
– Archbishop Fulton Sheen
Archbishop Sheen was right, as usual. Our pastors cannot lead us out of the current crisis in the Catholic Church, because they, as a group, do not recognize the nature of the crisis. In fact, despite the abundant evidence all around us, they are not prepared to admit that there is a crisis. They do not see the problem, because they are the problem.
The crisis is—let’s speak plainly—a crisis of clerical corruption. Our priests and especially our bishops have failed as Church leaders, because they adopted the wrong standards of leadership. They are using the wrong yardsticks to measure success and failure. And this clerical system tends to perpetuate itself: bishops train and promote priests who adopt the same […]
Michael Brown Sr., center, addressed a crowd during a memorial ceremony in Ferguson, Mo., on Tuesday marking two years since the death of his son, Michael Brown.
Credit David Carson/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/AP
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is moving forward with a plan to better track killings by police officers, as heightened national scrutiny of such deaths has reinforced criticism of its reliance on self-reporting by state and local law enforcement agencies.
Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America’s Democracy
by David Daley
Republican Speaker of the House John Boehner with Democrat Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader, as he passed the speakership to fellow Republican Paul Ryan, Washington, D.C., October 2015
Political paralysis. Hyperpartisanship. Decline of political civility. Denial of voting rights to groups that support the opposition. Low voter turnout. There may be other valid grievances about what’s become of our democracy, but that’s a useful list to start with. To mention them raises the question of where to begin to resolve at least some of our political problems. I’m not alone in thinking that the single problem most worth attacking first, the solution to which could go a long way toward untangling our political […]
Louisiana Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards
The state of Louisiana is receiving a crash course in “elections have consequences.”
Last January, Louisiana voters elected John Bel Edwards governor (the only Democrat governor in the Deep South). On just his second day in office he signed an executive order that made Louisiana the 31st state to expand Medicaid, which is a crucial part of Obamacare. Edwards’s predecessor, Bobby Jindal, rejected the measure on the grounds – and I’m not making this up – that expanding access would “jeopardize the care of the most vulnerable in our society.”
At the time, Edwards noted that Louisiana “consistently ranked one of the poorest and unhealthiest states” and that improving Medicaid access would break the cycle of the state’s residents having to choose “between their health and their financial security.” Indeed, Louisiana is fourth from the bottom, among states, in life expectancy.
Seven months later, the impact of Edwards’s executive order is […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
