A watershed moment for marijuana legalization: “The really big advantage of ending marijuana prohibition is not the possible health benefits, but eliminating the harm caused by the arrest and imprisonment of many thousands of people, many of them poor and disadvantaged. The FBI estimates that some 643,000 people were arrested in for marijuana offenses in 2015, including some 574,000 for mere possession. While only a small minority of these arrests lead to prosecution, the arrests themselves can be traumatic and dangerous, and can end up damaging the educational and employment prospects of those targeted. Arrests also often unavoidably create confrontations in which suspects and police officers could be injured or (in rare cases) killed. Over 12,000 people are incarcerated for marijuana offenses in federal prison. I have not been able to locate good recent data on marijuana-related incarceration in state prisons. But the numbers are likely to be much higher. All of these arrests and incarcerations inflict serious harm on suspects, and expend vast amounts of law enforcement resources that could better be employed combating violent crime.”

Hillary’s expensive plan for ‘National Service’.  Unleashing a vast, peacetime army of tax-subsidized flunkies, paid to promote loyalty to the State under the guise of patriotism or civic duty or whatever, would be nothing more than PR for a federal government that no one trusts any longer.  And it reeks of fascism.

Rogue FBI Twitter bot dumps months of FOIAs

San Antonio cop fired for feeding actual crap sandwich to homeless man

Public schools are probably the gravest threat to privacy today.  Taking hi-res photos, fingerprints, compiling detailed information on every student, bundling it up into a nice package, and then…what?  Do you think that data will be protected from the Surveillance State’s massive databases?

Wonderful essay by Tom Palmer on Hayek “the Dangerous”: Hayek’s thinking, which is vast and sprawling and a joy to explore, represents a danger to all those who have great ideas for the remaking of society, for the enlistment of the masses in their great plans for authentic existence. Hayek’s individualism was not like Ayn Rand’s, which some have accused (perhaps very unfairly) of shading into a philosophy of superhuman power and thus of rule by the able over the rest of us, but is radically different: it is rooted in the limitations of human reason and the importance of evolved institutions of social cooperation.”

FBI director Comey stands by previous conclusion that Hillary didn’t break the law. Got through those 650,000 emails quickly, huh?

Google has quietly dropped the ban on personally-identifiable web tracking

Researchers develop glasses that can fool facial recognition software

Bill Weld gives up on his ticket, shills for Hillary.  Every choice voters have this election season is a hideous one.

Tulsa cop arrested for violating protective order against her

Common myths about marijuana legalization

Justin Raimondo takes aim at the globalist political class bent on robbing us of our liberty and future

Obamacare premiums skyrocket in six states

The top-10 reasons to vote YES on marijuana legalization.  Read the entire article, all good reasons.  One of my favorites is the return of industrial hemp in the US.  The ban on industrial hemp is utterly ridiculous, and economically damaging.  As Ron Paul said, to get high off of hemp, you’d have to smoke a joint the size of a telephone pole.

A win for Proposition 64 means that California’s victims of Prohibition could be released from prison very soon.

The US is pretty terrible at fighting the Drug War abroad, too.  Recent evidence: opium production is up 43% in Afghanistan. That’s after throwing $12 billion at a war against poppy fields.  Now, Afghanistan produces 80% of the world’s opium, the majority of which is distilled into heroin.

Prescription drugs are the true “gateway drug”, not marijuana.  Get hooked on expensive painkillers, go broke, pay a visit to the local heroin or fentanyl dealer down the street…

Police arrest more people for marijuana use than for all violent crimes COMBINED.  A month old, but it’s necessary to be reminded of the nature of the Drug War, which is nothing more than a jobs program that artificially provides “work” for a bloated, militarized police force.  Take away Prohibition and cops would have very little to do, and very little power with which to do it.

Podesta emails reveal Clinton camp’s close ties to environmental Left: “Podesta’s emails reveal a collusive, quid-pro-quo relationship between the Clinton campaign and national environmental groups. They show a disturbing and unusual level of access to power for billionaire donors like Steyer and Simons, and that Bernie Sanders never really stood a chance at getting the endorsement of prominent environmental groups. The emails also reveal attempts to silence academics and discourage the production of oil and gas resources. Lastly, the emails show the political calculus behind forming the Clinton campaign’s policy positions.”

Mass surveillance of every citizen, hidden from the public eye, conducted at every level of law enforcement, is universal in the US, Canada, Britain, and other Western countries.  Glenn Greenwald points to three scandals that reveal this horrifying truth.

Sleepwalking into a new Cold War, Pentagon-style.  From the Ron Paul Institute.  The Warfare State has a multi-trillion dollar plan that only a trumped-up war with Russia could justify.

Police have killed 897 people in the United States in 2016 so far, according to The Guardian‘s invaluable database, The Counted.

Amazon has already patented a drone that will work with police.  And of course it will be armed with a nice real-time facial recognition camera, capturing and storing everything the police wish it to.

Law enforcement surveillance of journalists in real-time is just one very good argument against allowing police the ability to surveil anyone they want in real-time.

Cop gives thumbs-up as he poses with overdose victim for picture.

Google reveals it received secret FBI subpoena, known as a National Security Letter, in the first half of 2015.  NSLs come with an automatic gag order, that may eventually be lifted by the government, or never lifted at all: “Government watchdogs have criticized the FBI for abusing national security letters multiple times over the years — for restricting First Amendment protected speech, failing to provide enough evidence to make the requests, and targeting a massive number of Americans without notifying them or giving them the chance for redress. The provisions in the Freedom Act were meant to address some concerns — including what many have argued are unconstitutionally lengthy gag orders.”

Koch Bros. fund pro-surveillance, pro-war Senate candidates

Pipeline activist shot with rubber bullet while being interviewed on-camera

Drunken cop caught on video beating his K9 partner outside a casino. The cop was given “administrative leave”, or as the article points out, paid vacation, for the badged, subhuman piece of garbage you see in the video.  He was eventually fired, only to be reinstated in late October.  The judge argued that it was only his first offense, thereby putting citizens in danger from a confirmed violent, alcoholic criminal.  But, then again, cops don’t really mind violence against dogs at all, do they?

Legal marijuana is more popular than ever in the US, but bureaucratic barriers to studying the medicinal benefits are frustrating researchers

Speaking of marijuana, California will almost certainly legalize recreational pot on November 8th.

Jeffrey Tucker makes a convincing case for allowing children to work again: “A century ago, we invented a system that imagined children as civic soldiers. Kids bolted to chairs with absolutely no skin in the game have abstract “information” pounded into their heads by tax-paid instructors who teach from state-approved books.

We push these kids through the system and deny them any chance to realize their human value in gainful employment in a community of productivity and real learning. Then we tell them to scrape together $100,000 for yet another degree that will somehow gain them entry into the workforce, but all these demoralized and cynical kids end up with is an empty CV and 15 years of debt.”

Would President Trump free Julian Assange? Justin Raimondo ponders. (I remain doubtful)

FBI opens investigation into one of its own Twitter accounts

Contrary to the rising cacophony of political opinion, this is the least-important election of our lifetime, says Daniel Harsanyi

How to block the ultrasonic signals you didn’t know were tracking you: “The technology, called ultrasonic cross-device tracking, embeds high-frequency tones that are inaudible to humans in advertisements, web pages, and even physical locations like retail stores. These ultrasound “beacons” emit their audio sequences with speakers, and almost any device microphone—like those accessed by an app on a smartphone or tablet—can detect the signal and start to put together a picture of what ads you’ve seen, what sites you’ve perused, and even where you’ve been. Now that you’re sufficiently concerned, the good news is that at the Black Hat Europe security conference on Thursday, a group based at University of California, Santa Barbara will present an Android patch and a Chrome extension that give consumers more control over the transmission and receipt of ultrasonic pitches on their devices.”

Colorado cannabis industry outperforms all other industries in the state: 18,000 cannabis-related jobs created in 2015, over $1 billion in sales.

Sheldon Adelson fights marijuana legalization while funding pro-marijuana research

The Internet of Things is a Cyberwar Nightmare

Obamacare’s Chickens Come Home to Roost

Outrage over rising drug prices is devastating Big Pharma’s bottom line

Libertarians finally fed up with Bill Weld

How Hillary Clinton Poisons American Politics: Justin Raimondo ably explains the grim consequences of anti-Russian fearmongering.

Because their current “cyber defences” are in shambles. Ars Technica

Colorado Sen. Pat Steadman, with Reps. Millie Hamner and Johnathan Singer, sent a letter to the anti-pot organization, Arizonans for Responsible Drug Policy, politely asking them to stop lying about Colorado’s experience with legal marijuana.  Here’s the letter:

“Dear Mr. Leibsohn and Ms. Polk:

It has been brought to our attention that your committee has produced and aired television ads that convey inaccurate and misleading statements about Colorado’s experience with regulating and taxing marijuana for adult use.

Specifically, your ad titled “Empty Promises” features a former Colorado local school official saying, “We were promised millions of new revenues for our schools, but they were empty words.” It also features a Colorado school principal saying, “Politicians spent more money on regulation and bureaucracy than in the classroom.” Similarly, in your ad titled “Mistake,” former Denver mayor Wellington Webb says, “We were promised new money for education. Instead, that money is going to regulation and the pot industry.”

The proponents of the initiative you are opposing and members of the Arizona media have raised questions about the validity of these claims. We have also heard from Colorado residents who read or saw stories about these ads in our local media outlets and were confused by the claims that they make.

As members of the Colorado Legislature who played intimate roles in the budgeting and appropriation of marijuana tax revenues, we feel it is our duty to set the record straight so that voters in both states have accurate information about this subject. 

We can say with certainty that the claims about Colorado marijuana tax revenues featured in your committee’s ads range from highly misleading to wholly inaccurate. As you can see in the attached issue brief provided by Colorado Legislative Council staff and fact sheet produced by the Colorado Department of Education:

•    Of the approximately $220.8 million in total marijuana tax revenue distributions made in FY 2015-16 and FY 2016-17, more than $138.3 million was distributed to the Colorado Department of Education to benefit Colorado schools. This far exceeds the amount that was distributed for the purposes of regulating marijuana, which included $15.8 to the Department of Revenue, $2.4 million to the Department of Agriculture, $2.8 million to the Department of Law, and less than $500,000 to the Governor’s Office of Marijuana Coordination.

•    Of those funds, $114.9 million was distributed to the Building Excellent Schools Today (BEST) public school construction program. When Colorado voters adopted Amendment 64, they were promised a tax on wholesale marijuana transfers would raise $40 million per year for the BEST program. That tax actually raised more than $40 million in the last fiscal year, resulting in $40 million for the BEST program in FY 2016-17, plus an additional $5.7 million for Colorado’s Public School Fund.

•    In addition to the funds raised for the BEST program and the Public School Fund, more than $5.5 million was used to increase the presence of health professionals in our schools, and more than $4.3 million was used for health-related programs in schools. In addition, $2.9 million was used for drop-out prevention programs, and $2.9 million was used for school bullying prevention and education.

It is also worth noting that more than $1.5 million in marijuana tax funds were distributed to the Department of Public Health and Environment to conduct the Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, which is the most comprehensive survey of our state’s middle and high school students. As you can see in the attached fact sheet from that department, the survey’s findings contradict the claim that “marijuana use among our students soared,” which is made in your ad titled “Empty Promises.” Rates of teen use have actually remained relatively unchanged since 2009 and are in line with the national average. In fact, they were slightly lower last year than they were prior to legalization.

We respectfully request that you stop airing or otherwise publishing campaign ads that contradict these facts. We also trust they will be reflected in any of your future communications to Arizona voters regarding Colorado’s experience with regulating and taxing marijuana for adult use.

Sincerely,

Rep. Jonathan Singer
Member, Colorado House Appropriations Committee

Rep. Millie Hamner
Chair, Colorado Joint Budget Committee
Vice Chair, Colorado House Appropriations Committee

Sen. Pat Steadman
Member, Colorado Joint Budget Committee
Member, Colorado Senate Appropriations Committee”

Of course, the experience Colorado has had with legalized marijuana has been entirely positive, as the legislators make clear.  Supporters of Prohibition have no facts on their side, so naturally, they have to lie.

CopBlock.  Typical SWAT raid story: adrenaline-jacked cops bust door down, break windows, trash house, scare the crap out of a 7-year old boy and his father, discover it’s the wrong house, deny it’s the wrong house, etc.  At least no one was killed, and that no dogs were in the house. They would surely be dead.

Rapidly advancing surveillance technology has allowed law enforcement at every level to conduct continuous, blanket surveillance of innocent American citizens.  We don’t even notice it when they scan our license plate, search biometric databases that contain our image, or make use of the many other spy tools at their disposal.  The fact that we don’t notice it is the insidious aspect of it.  The Electronic Frontier Foundation points to a story of police conducting mass, dragnet-style surveillance of a popular, California gun show.  The cops scanned license plates and ran them through a database, and all without the attendees aware that it was happening.  There’s really no regulation on the books tying the hands of law enforcement in matters of mass surveillance, but there should be.  A massive surveillance infrastructure is being built in the shadows, and it will soon contain the high-resolution images, history, and daily movements of every US citizen.

Defense Tech.  Is an exclusively robot army in our future, complete with the ability to disable the enemy’s robot army?