DEA Thumbs Nose at Science, Refuses to Reschedule Marijuana

Stephan:  The corruption of the American government is just gobsmacking, as this report demonstrates. Who cares about science when so many law enforcement agencies, prosecutors, and the American gulag are so dependent on the continued illegality of  Marijuana? We put the old Latin American banana republics to shame.
 Federal drug enforcement authorities will continue defining marijuana as a drug with a high potential for abuse and no accepted medical value, a decision that keeps in place significant restrictions on biomedical research.

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 […]

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Catholic bishops ‘don’t get it’—the fundamental problem is a corrupt clerical culture

Stephan:  I am watching a growing trend of pushback by the Roman Catholic laity who are tired of having their donations to the church go to pay off judgments and settlements against priest and bishop pedophiles. Here is an example of what I mean.
Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen

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 […]

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Justice Department to Streamline Tracking of Police Killings

Stephan:  Believe it or not up until now it has been very difficult to get solid numbers on how many people in the U.S. are killed by police. There has been enormous resistance by law enforcement lobby groups aided and abetted by the NRA to actually doing this research. The Obama Administration is now changing that. I consider this very good news.
 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

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.

 In a notice published in the Federal Register this week, the Justice Department said it would ask law enforcement agencies and medical examiner’s offices to fill out forms when there is a news report or another indication that a person died while in police custody.
 Under the proposed system, which would cover 19,450 state and local law enforcement agencies and about 685 medical examiner’s or coroner’s offices, they […]

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American Democracy Betrayed

Stephan:  Here is thoughtful essay and book review that makes some important points about the status of American democracy. They will sound very familiar to SR readers. Once again it is telling us that we must take a care that the democracy we were bequeathed is in parlous danger.

Ratf**ked: The True Story Behind the Secret Plan to Steal America’s Democracy
by David Daley

Liveright, 257 pp., $26.95
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

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 morass, […]

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In Louisiana, what a difference a Democrat makes

Stephan:  Here is yet another test of hypothesis that wellness oriented policies are superior to Theocratic Rightist alternatives. This difference is so glaring that I am always surprised that it is not discussed more. This is the first piece I have seen like this in weeks. For SR readers it will be familiar territory.
Louisiana Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards

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 being […]

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