Pot startup donates $2 million in bid to legalize marijuana in CA

One of California’s largest marijuana-related apps is donating $2 million toward the drive to legalize weed in the state — a move that not only would vastly expand its customer base but also foreshadows an expected increase in political activity from the cannabis industry.

Orange County dispensary-locating startup WeedMaps.com contributed $1 million Friday to a campaign committee called Californians for Sensible Reform, which will back what it feels will be the strongest marijuana legalization measure on the 2016 ballot. The company will also put another $1 million in a political action committee called Californians for Sensible Reform PAC that supports weed-friendly candidates.

“We’re doing it because legal adult use of marijuana is inevitable. California has always an innovator and we’re falling behind other states,” WeedMaps founder Justin Hartfield told The Chronicle Friday. “We wanted to do it to make a statement that we’re serious about this.”

Friday’s donation was a sign that unlike 2010’s failed statewide legalization campaign, cannabis industry businesses are going to be major players.

http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Pot-startup-donates-2-million-to-bid-to-legalize-6207749.php

Hartfield boasted last year to The Chronicle about not accepting “one dime” of Silicon Valley money for any of his pot-related enterprises while his business made “north of $25 million a year.”

Marijuana aficionados decend on Denver for Cannabis Cup, the 'Super Bowl' of the marijuana industry

Missouri National Guard's term for Ferguson protesters: 'Enemy forces'

As the Missouri National Guard prepared to deploy to help quell riots in Ferguson, Missouri, that raged sporadically last year, the guard used highly militarized words such as "enemy forces" and "adversaries" to refer to protesters, according to documents obtained by CNN.

The guard came to Ferguson to support law enforcement officers, whom many community leaders and civil rights activists accused of using excessive force and inflaming an already tense situation in protests that flared sporadically from August through the end of the year.

The National Guard's language, contained in internal mission briefings obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, is intensifying the concerns of some who objected to the police officers' actions in putting down riots. They broke out after the August 9 shooting of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown by city police officer Darren Wilson. A grand jury declined to indict Wilson in the case.

"It's disturbing when you have what amounts to American soldiers viewing American citizens somehow as the enemy," said Antonio French, an alderman in St. Louis.

http://edition.cnn.com/2015/04/17/politics/missouri-national-guard-ferguson-protesters/index.html

FBI overstated forensic hair matches in nearly all trials before 2000

The Justice Department and FBI have formally acknowledged that nearly every examiner in an elite FBI forensic unit gave flawed testimony in almost all trials in which they offered evidence against criminal defendants over more than a two-decade period before 2000.

Of 28 examiners with the FBI Laboratory’s microscopic hair comparison unit, 26 overstated forensic matches in ways that favored prosecutors in more than 95 percent of the 268 trials reviewed so far, according to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers (NACDL) and the Innocence Project, which are assisting the government with the country’s largest post-conviction review of questioned forensic evidence.

The cases include those of 32 defendants sentenced to death. Of those, 14 have been executed or died in prison, the groups said under an agreement with the government to release results after the review of the first 200 convictions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/justice-dept-fbi-to-review-use-of-forensic-evidence-in-thousands-of-cases/2012/07/10/gJQAT6DlbW_story.html

Shout to xchrom

Hope you are well, your absence is noted and your great posts missed.



http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=profile&uid=104676

Alzheimer's trial stirs talk of senior sexuality

Whether Mom still wants sex probably isn't top-of-mind when most people are picking a nursing home for their loved one.

But experts from the Widener University-based Sexuality and Aging Consortium say a ground-breaking Iowa court case illustrates why both consumers and long-term care facilities should do more thinking about sex - before they get into trouble.

In the case, Henry Rayhons, a 78-year-old former member of the Iowa House of Representatives, is charged with sexual abuse for having sex with his wife of seven years in her nursing home. She had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. A doctor at the Garner, Iowa, facility where Donna Rayhons lived, along with her two daughters from a previous marriage, had concluded that she was too impaired to consent to sex.

The case, which is now at trial, raises complex questions about what constitutes consent for a person with dementia and how nursing homes should prepare for the inevitable: People of all ages want and need sexual contact.

"Our need for touch is universal, from birth to death," said Robin Goldberg-Glen, a social work professor at Widener who is co-president of the consortium.


Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/health/20150418_Alzheimer_s_trial_stirs_talk_of_senior_sexuality.html#fFTs8iV7t2AAbYWe.99

Anger after toddlers made to wear yellow stars to mark Holocaust

An Israeli nursery school teacher has been suspended after making toddlers as young as three wear yellow Star of David patches to commemorate the Holocaust.

Parents voiced outrage after seeing their children leaving the kindergarten in Rishon Letzion on Holocaust remembrance day wearing patches emblazoned with the word Jude (Jew), similar to those that the Nazis forced Jews to wear during the Second World War.

"Shocked, completely stunned, find it hard to speak, refuse to understand…this is how my three-year-old daughter returned from the day care centre today," one mother wrote on Facebook after posting a picture of her child wearing the emblem.

"I don't remember if and how I was taught in nursery school about Holocaust remembrance day, we all know and respect its importance, but the message was conveyed to the toddlers today in an appalling, unacceptable way. In a child's world, when they put a sticker or symbol on him, it is seen as a prize for good behaviour, which is very different from the meaning of this symbol, which carries a very heavy burden, too heavy for small children."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/11544337/Anger-after-toddlers-made-to-wear-yellow-stars-to-mark-Holocaust.html

NBC Admits It Named Wrong Syrian Kidnapping Group

NBC’s conduct in engel kidnapping story is more troubling than the brian williams scandal

Throughout 2012, numerous American factions were pushing for U.S. intervention in Syria to bring down the regime of Bashar Assad, who throughout the War on Terror had helped the U.S. in all sorts of ways, including torturing people for them. But by then, Assad was viewed mostly as an ally of Iran, and deposing him would weaken Tehran, the overarching regional strategy of the U.S. and its allies. The prevailing narrative was thus created that those fighting against Assad were “moderate” and even pro-western groups, with the leading one dubbed “the Free Syrian Army.”

Whether to intervene in Syria in alliance with or on behalf of the “Free Syrian Army” was a major debate in the west through the end of that year. Then-Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee John Kerry was openly discussing ways for the U.S. to aid the rebels to bring about regime change. Senator Joe Lieberman was saying: “I hope the international community and the U.S. will provide assistance to the Syrian Free Army in the various ways we can.” Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, while ruling out direct military intervention, said: “[W]e have to redouble our efforts outside of the United Nations with those allies and partners who support the Syrian people’s right to have a better future.”

A U.N. Resolution calling for Assad to step down was supported by NATO states but vetoed by China and Russia, who were concerned that it would be depicted as a “regime change” endorsement to justify western military intervention. By the following year, John Kerry, by then Obama’s Secretary of State, was arguing that direct U.S. military action in Syria against Assad – a full-scale bombing campaign – was a moral and strategic imperative.

As it turns out, the “moderate” “Free Syrian Army” was largely a myth. By far, the most effective fighting forces against Assad were anything but “moderate,” composed instead of various Al Qaeda manifestations and even more extreme elements. After the U.S. and its Gulf allies funded and armed those groups for a while, the U.S. did ultimately go to war in Syria, but more in alliance with Assad than against him.

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/04/16/nbcs-conduct-richard-engel-kidnapping-serious-brian-williams-scandal/

The "kidnapping" was suspicious from the start. Engel is a con artist and drummer for the war machine.

NBC News Alters Account of Correspondent’s Kidnapping in Syria

Source: NYTimes

NBC News on Wednesday revised its account of the 2012 kidnapping of its chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, saying it was likely that Mr. Engel and his reporting team had been abducted by a Sunni militant group, not forces affiliated with the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.

In a statement posted on the NBC News website Wednesday evening, Mr. Engel said that a review of the episode — prompted by reporting from The New York Times — had led him to conclude that “the group that kidnapped us was Sunni, not Shia.” He also wrote that the abductors had “put on an elaborate ruse to convince us they were Shiite shabiha militiamen.”

Mr. Engel and his team were kidnapped in December 2012 while reporting in Syria. They were held for five days. Just hours after emerging, they appeared on the “Today” show.

“This was a group known as the shabiha, this was the government militia, these are people who are loyal to President Bashar al-Assad,” Mr. Engel said on “Today,” citing information he had gathered from the group. In that and other appearances on NBC, and in a Vanity Fair magazine article, he said that he had been rescued by Sunni rebels. At least two people died during the course of the captivity, he said in some versions of the account.


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/16/business/media/nbc-news-alters-account-of-correspondents-kidnapping-in-syria.html