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House Schedules Historic Vote on Decriminalizing Marijuana at the Federal Level

by Jerry Lambe Aug 28th, 2020, 5:06 pm

House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) announced on Friday that lawmakers would be voting next month on a bill to decriminalize marijuana federally, leaving regulation up to the states. The vote would mark the first time either chamber of Congress ever voted on decriminalization of marijuana.

In a Friday email to lawmakers, Clyburn said the House would take up the Marijuana Opportunity, Reinvestment and Expungement (MORE) Act, first introduced by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), which would remove marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act. The MORE Act would also expunge prior marijuana-related convictions, and impose a 5-percent sales tax which the federal government would reinvest in communities harmed by the “War on Drugs” through the creation of an Opportunity Trust Fund.

“This fund would include grant programs administered by the Department of Justice and the Small Business Administration to support individuals who have been adversely affected by the War on Drugs, provide assistance to socially and economically disadvantaged small business owners, and minimize barriers to marijuana licensing and employment,” Clyburn’s email stated.

Rep. Nadler, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, previously introduced the bill in committee last year where it passed by a 24-10 vote.

In a statement to Marijuana Moment, Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), a known advocate for marijuana reform, said the bill was an opportunity to make amends for decades of discriminatory law enforcement.

“Less than two years ago, we put out our blueprint outlining a path to cannabis legalization in the 116th Congress,” Blumenauer told the outlet. “Now, after many months of hard work and collaboration, we finally have a chance to end the failed policy of prohibition that has resulted in a long and shameful period of selective enforcement against people of color, especially Black men.”

“As people across the country protest racial injustices, there’s even greater urgency for Congress to seize this historic opportunity and finally align our cannabis laws with what the majority of Americans support, while ensuring restorative justice,” he added.

The bill’s lead sponsor is Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris (D-Calif.).

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George Floyd: Former police officers charged over killing turn blame on each other

Holly Bailey

The Independent•September 11, 2020

The four former Minneapolis police officers charged in George Floyd's killing appear to be turning on each other, with each offering significantly different versions of the infamous arrest that acknowledge Floyd should not have been allowed to die that day but also deflect the blame to others.

The four men have said in court documents that they all thought someone else was in charge of the scene on May 25 - with rookie officers arguing they were deferring to a veteran, and the veteran saying he was simply assisting in an arrest that was in progress. All have said in court documents that the relationship between the veteran officer - Derek Chauvin - and the others is at the heart of the issue, as each officer perceived their role, and who was in charge, quite differently. Chauvin was the officer shown with his knee on Floyd's neck as he struggled to breathe in videos of the ill-fated arrest.

"There are very likely going to be antagonistic defenses presented at the trial," Earl Gray, a lawyer for Thomas Lane, wrote in a legal motion filed here this week. "It is plausible that all officers have a different version of what happened and officers place blame on one another."

Gray and lawyers for Chauvin, Alexander Kueng and Tou Thao have been arguing to separate the former officers' cases for purposes of trial, citing competing stories from their clients about the events that led to the 46-year-old Black man's death. The officers are scheduled to appear in court Friday as a judge takes up that question; prosecutors have been asking for a joint trial.

Minneapolis authorities are locking down the area around the courthouse because of planned protests Friday. Windows on government buildings have been boarded up and law enforcement officials are setting up a perimeter to keep protesters at a distance.

Floyd died May 25 while handcuffed and restrained facedown on a South Minneapolis street as police investigated a 911 call about a counterfeit $20 bill that had been passed at Cup Foods, a local convenience store. During a struggle with police, Floyd was placed on the ground, where Chauvin pressed his knee into the man's neck for almost eight minutes as Floyd repeatedly complained of struggling to breathe until he lost consciousness and no longer had a pulse.

Floyd's death sparked a nationwide movement for social and racial justice, with protests emerging in cities from coast to coast along with a renewed and widespread push for police reform. Some of the protests have pitted social justice activists against those backing law enforcement officers.

While police often stand in solidarity during use-of-force investigations, Floyd's case could be an unusual departure, with the officers who allegedly played a role in his killing arguing that other officers should be held to account instead.

Eric Nelson, Chauvin's lawyer, said his client didn't know the full picture of what was happening when he arrived on the scene at 38th Street and Chicago Avenue and saw Kueng and Lane struggling to get Floyd into a squad car.

Nelson, who has argued that Floyd died of a drug overdose and not from Chauvin's knee restraint, blamed the rookie officers in a motion filed this week, suggesting they had mishandled the scene and caused Floyd's death. He said the former officers delayed in requesting an ambulance when they suspected Floyd might be on drugs or was having a medical issue and that they did not do enough to try to calm Floyd down by "sitting him on the sidewalk" or "render aid instead of struggle."

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“Hannity Has Said to Me More Than Once, ‘He’s Crazy’”: Fox News Staffers Feel Trapped in the Trump Cult

Inside the network staffers are cringing, and even Trump’s “shadow chief of staff” has his doubts. “If you were hearing what I’m hearing, you’d be vaping too,” Sean Hannity told a colleague during Trump’s early days.

By Brian Stelter

August 20, 2020

Landing an interview with a president used to be a big deal. Negotiations between a network producer and the White House press office could drag on for months. No detail was too small to haggle over: background, time of day, exact number of minutes. Presidential sit-downs were the pinnacles of many news anchors’ careers.

No more. Just as he has bulldozed so many political norms, Donald Trump has turned the presidential TV interview into a joke. Fox News lets him call in for talk radio-style rant sessions, the length of which are a punch line among rank-and-file Fox staffers who secretly despise him despite working for his media machine. “When Trump was booked for 8:10, and we had an assignment for 8:40, we didn’t bother writing it, because we knew he’d talk until the end of the hour,” a producer for Fox & Friends told me.

He called the “Friends” and Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity and Maria Bartiromo. Every so often he’d consent to an on-camera chat, but he liked the phone. It made him seem busy when he wasn’t. The interviews, if they can really be called that, were subject to his whims, causing no small amount of competition among the Trump bootlickers at Fox. Stars were known to slip ratings reports to the president to make their own shows look more impressive than those of their in-house rivals. Sometimes interviews were suddenly offered to hosts when Trump heard them say something flattering on TV. One personality rushed to the airport for a cross-country flight when a sit-down suddenly materialized. Other times the bookings were simply a product of who had bent Trump’s ear most recently: There were side deals brokered during stopovers at his golf club and pitches made during strategy calls.“Why don’t you call in tomorrow?”

More often than not, he did just that. Trump needed Fox to a degree that almost no one understood. He depended on propagandists like Hannity to keep the walls of his alternative reality intact.
That’s why, on March 26, 2020, the president was scheduled to call into Hannity’s show at 9 p.m. sharp. Nine o’clock couldn’t come soon enough for Trump—his newly established daily press briefings on the COVID-19 crisis were proving to be a disaster. That day, he’d gone before the cameras at 5:30 p.m. and told the public to “relax”; shared his affection for Tom Brady; and attacked the “corrupt” news media. “I wish the news could be real,” he told the journalists who were spread out in the briefing room, respecting social-distancing guidelines. Trump, of course, did no such thing. The country was two weeks into a shutdown of unprecedented proportions. He complained about it; mused about filling the church pews on Easter; and stood uncomfortably close to his coronavirus task force members.

After 39 minutes the president left the briefing early, ordered dinner, and waited for his turn on Hannity. The power imbalance was something to behold: He had the joint chiefs and the cabinet and any number of world leaders at his beck and call. He could talk to any scientist or public health expert he wanted. But when it came to a Fox interview, he was just another caller waiting to be patched into the control room....