Search Results: dhs (33)

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
I don’t feel like a terrorist just because I smoke weed. Do you?

​You knew it would come to this, right? Lest you think those hard-working goons at the Department of Homeland Security are slacking in their jobs — you know, spying on your everyday activities — it has been revealed that the domestic surveillance agency has been scouring your online postings for, among other things, the word “marijuana.”

Homeland Security personnel regularly monitor updates on social networks, including Facebook, Twitter, and Google+, to uncover “Items Of Interest” (IOI), according to an internal DHS memo released by the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), reports Animal New York.
That baseline list of terms for which the DHS searches — or at least a DHS subcontractor hired to monitor social networks — reveals which specific words generate realtime IOI reports.

weGrow

​Arizona officials must allow medical marijuana dispensaries under the 2010 voter-approved medicinal cannabis law, a Maricopa County Superior Court judge has ruled.

In his Wednesday ruling, Judge Richard Gama struck down some restrictions that state officials had planned to use to determine which applicants were eligible for dispensary licenses, report Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Mary K. Reinhart of the Tucson Citizen.
Judge Gama noted that Arizona voters wanted the Medical Marijuana Act implemented 120 days after it passed and that “this has not been done,” reports Ray Stern at Phoenix New Times.
The reason it wasn’t done, Stern reports, is that Governor Jan Brewer — who spoke out against Proposition 203 before voters approved it in November 2010 — halted the dispensary portion of the new law at the same time she filed an unsuccessful federal lawsuit against it. Brewer decided on Friday that she wouldn’t refile that lawsuit and that the state should begin accepting applications once a lawsuit by Compassion First AZ was resolved.
Judge Gama’s ruling resolved that lawsuit, but it will still be months before the state’s 18,000-plus medical marijuana patients can walk into a dispensary and get their medicine, Phoenix New Times reports.

Jezebel
Want your welfare check? Whip it out, hippie.

​It’s a popular strategy — blame and victimize the poorest and most vulnerable members of society, punishing them for an activity which all social classes engage in, by taking away what little they have.

Michigan’s Department of Human Services says it is still in the “early process” of developing drug-screening policies for welfare benefit recipients, but have said the plan is “feasible.”
Questions of when and how the policy will be implemented can’t be answered yet, according to DHS spokesman David Akerly.

Michigan Radio‘s Rick Pluta reported on Monday that it is “likely” that welfare recipients would receive the testing.
“DHS officials say they want the new policy to be part of an overhaul of the state’s welfare-to-work program in the spring of next year,” Pluta reported. “The department submitted a report with its recommendations to the Legislature earlier this month.”

Protect Arizona Patients, Inc.

​Cannajobs, a cannabis jobs service, has announced that they are founding members of Protect Arizona Patients, Inc., a nonprofit organization fighting the state’s refusal to fully cooperate with the will of Arizona voters by licensing medical marijuana dispensaries. Cannajobs said it has contributed financially to the nonprofit to help it file the first lawsuit against Arizona for ignoring the rights of medical marijuana patients in the state.

Arizona voters passed the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act (AMMA) last November, legalizing medical marijuana in the state. But Governor Jan Brewer in May blocked the rollout of the law, claiming clarification was needed about whether state employees would be subject to federal prosecution, as cannabis is still prohibited under federal law.
Gov. Brewer and the Arizona Department of Health (AZDHS) put all dispensaries on hold while they filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona seeking clarification about the potential federal response.

Photo: FARK

​Twenty police officers, some in masks and riot gear, stormed an Arizona home last week after receiving a tip that the owner was in possession of an ounce of marijuana.

The homeowner, Ross Taylor, is a legal, card-carrying patient under the state’s new medical marijuana law, and is therefore allowed to possess up to 2.5 ounces of cannabis, reports Ray Stern at Phoenix New Times. Taylor is also the owner of Cannabis Patient Screening Centers, a new company that matches up patients with doctors for medical marijuana recommendations.

Photo: Freedom Is Green
Sandy Fiaola, New Jersey multiple sclerosis patient, is still waiting for her medicine

​Ninety physicians are already registered in a program for medical marijuana in New Jersey, which is the first state in the nation to require that doctors complete special requirements and register with the state to recommend cannabis.

The scheme follows a set of regulations proposed by Governor Chris Christie’s administration, reports Chris Goldstein at Freedom Is Green. After 18 months of frustrating delays, the rules still haven’t been officially finalized. The Legislature even took the very unusual move of passing a resolution saying that the regulations are working against the intent of New Jersey’s compassionate use law.

Photo: James King/Phoenix New Times
Whack-job Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne started working on a nefarious plan to stop medical marijuana almost as soon as voters had approved it last November.

​Elected state officials busily working to defeat the will of their state’s own voters — it’s an unseemly spectacle, and it’s unfolding as we speak in Arizona. Making the entire scene even more ugly is the fact that seriously ill patients are needless suffering as a result.

Within weeks of Arizona voters approving medical marijuana in their state, the top law enforcement official in the state was devising ways to stymie the will of the people. Whack-job Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne discussed a plan to launch legal action agains the state’s medical marijuana law during a January meeting with the law’s biggest opponent, it has been revealed.

Carolyn Short, who led last year’s unsuccessful campaign to stop Proposition 203, which legalized medical marijuana in Arizona, refers to the meeting in a February 16 letter [PDF] to state Department of Health Services Director Will Humble, reports Ray Stern at Phoenix New Times:

Photo: Opposing Views
Jan Brewer was against Proposition 203 before it passed — and now that it’s law, she wants to ignore the voters.

Prosecutors will still be prohibited from convicting legal medical marijuana patients

The misguided efforts of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer and Attorney General Tom Horne to quash the state’s new medical marijuana won’t work, reports Ray Stern at Phoenix New Times.

Authorized patients can possess up to 2.5 ounces of cannabis legally in Arizona since the passage of Proposition 203 by voters — with or without “state approval,” New Times reports.
“That’s why Brewer and Horne, two Republicans who are putting politics above the wishes of the electorate, haven’t mentioned any plans to stop the state from handing out medical marijuana registration cards,” Stern writes. “The smartly written Arizona Medical Marijuana Act anticipated an anti-democratic reaction like the one we saw Tuesday and included a powerful work-around.”

Photo: News Real Blog
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer will not defend her state’s medical marijuana law, approved by the voters last November. Instead this asswig is asking the feds for instructions on how to run her own state. Nice “leadership” there, Jan.

​Redundant Lawsuit Supposedly Aims To Establish Federal Legality
In a press conference Tuesday afternoon, Gov. Jan Brewer and Attorney General Tom Horne announced that they are filing a lawsuit in federal court to challenge the medical marijuana program established in Arizona by the passage of Proposition 203 last November.
Even though the law was passed by a majority of Arizona voters, the governor and attorney general will not defend the law and instead asked the courts to decide if it is illegal under federal law.
 
“We are deeply frustrated by this announcement,” said Rob Kampia, executive director of the Marijuana Policy Project. “The law Governor Brewer wants enjoined established an extremely well thought-out and conservative medical marijuana system.”

Photo: Jesse Kasten/The Lumberjack
Flagstaff, Arizona’s Cheba Hut is a friendly haven for the high and hungry. But plans to located a medical marijuana dispensary next door have been derailed by city officials.

​Aw, man. It would have been so perfect.

Locating a medical marijuana dispensary next to a sandwich shop known for its stoner-friendly atmosphere and its subs named after strains of cannabis? Genius idea, and good for both businesses.
Several ganjapreneurs evidently had the same idea, even going to far as to secure a letter of intent from the landlord to rent them the commercial space next to the Cheba Hut in Flagstaff, Arizona. Cheba Hut markets to stoners, winkingly putting in quotes “Toasted” Subs and featuring “palm trees” in its logo that look quite a bit like cannabis leaves. Oh, and check out alllll that smoke pouring out the chimney.