Homeless in Arizona

Sacrifice a politician????

Arizona lawmakers - Get congressional OK before Syria action

Is Kyrsten Sinema now a big time supporter of the military industrial complex???

For those of you who don't remember Kyrsten Sinema when she was a member of the Arizona Legislator tried to flush Arizona's medical medical marijuana laws down the toilet by slapping a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.

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Arizona lawmakers to Obama: Get congressional OK before Syria action

By Dan Nowicki and Erin Kelly Gannett Washington Bureau Wed Aug 28, 2013 11:06 PM

Arizona Republicans on Capitol Hill are calling on President Barack Obama not to take military action against Syria without first obtaining congressional approval.

Sen. John McCain, a senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Wednesday that the War Powers Act requires consultation with Congress and that he recommends that Obama take the time to reach out to lawmakers before initiating any military strikes, even though he may be legally able to attack without formal congressional permission.

McCain said that, earlier Wednesday, he spoke about Syria with Vice President Joe Biden.

“It would help him (Obama) enormously if he spends time with Congress and talks to Congress about it, and the American people,” McCain told The Arizona Republic after a meeting with the Arizona Small Business Association in Phoenix.

Obama reportedly is considering limited airstrikes against Syria for its military’s alleged use of chemical weapons against civilians and rebels.

However, Obama said Wednesday in an interview with PBS “NewsHour” that he was reviewing his options and had not made a decision.

Key lawmakers are expected to be briefed as early as today.

Reps. Trent Franks, Paul Gosar, Matt Salmon and David Schweikert, the four GOP members of Arizona’s House delegation, are among more than 100 members of Congress from both parties who have signed a letter urging Obama not to ignore them.

“If you deem that military action in Syria is necessary, Congress can reconvene at your request,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter. “We stand ready to come back into session, consider the facts before us, and share the burden of decisions made regarding U.S. involvement in the quickly escalating Syrian conflict.”

Members of Congress are in their home states for their five-week August recess and are not scheduled to reconvene until Sept. 9.

Taking military action against Syria without authorization from Congress “would violate the separation of powers clearly delineated in the Constitution,” the letter states.

“While the Founders wisely gave the Office of the President the authority to act in emergencies, they foresaw the need to ensure public debate — and the active engagement of Congress — prior to committing U.S. military assets,” the letter says.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said Obama probably has the authority to act quickly if he believes “a timely strike is needed or would be advantageous” without asking Congress to reconvene. But if it appears the action could lead to broader involvement, the president “certainly would be wise to come and explain where he’s going,” he said.

“It’s not clear right now how far he wants to go, or if this is just a strike to blunt their ability to use chemical weapons,” Flake told The Republic. “Is it regime change? It seems kind of unclear about where he wants to go.”

During a question-and-answer session with the small-business group, McCain warned that the automatic defense budget cuts that took effect earlier this year as part of sequestration could hamper the military from carrying out an extended mission in Syria.

The “surgical strikes” that Obama may be contemplating probably could be done, but there could be problems if Syria turns into “a long engagement,” he said.

McCain called sequestration “the dumbest thing we ever did,” adding, “It’s the dumbest vote I ever cast.”

Legal marijuana sellers face quandary: No armored cars

Or as I have said before, the government is usually the cause of the problem, not the solution to the problem. And that is very fitting in this article.

Last but not least also remember that President Obama, the glib talking tyrant who promised not to shake down medical marijuana dispensaries is also your enemy. Emperor Obama almost certainly ordered these tyrannical actions against marijuana medical dispensaries and if Obama wanted to he could stop this tyranny in a second!!!

And if you are in Arizona, remember that U.S. Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema is a big fan of Emperor Obama. Kyrsten Sinema when she was an Arizona legislator tied to flush Arizona's medical marijuana laws down the toilet by introducing a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.

If you are a marijuana smoker Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema is also a tyrant that needs to be booted out of office.

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Legal marijuana sellers face quandary: No armored cars

By Jennifer Oldham, Bloomberg News

Posted: 08/29/2013 09:57:09 AM PDT

DENVER — Steve DeAngelo says his staff may need to carry cash in personal vehicles to pay Harborside Health Center's bills after his armored car provider told his co-founder that a federal agency ordered it to stop serving cannabis businesses.

"The only way we have to pay our bills is transporting cash from point A to point B," said DeAngelo, executive director of the medicinal marijuana collective based in Oakland, Calif., with 128,000 patients.

"This includes 15 percent of our $30 million-a-year gross that goes to the cities of San Jose and Oakland and the state of California for our taxes," he said. "This is a huge threat to the safety of my patients and staff, and beyond that it's a huge threat to the general public."

DeAngelo isn't alone. Several large marijuana dispensaries in California and Colorado received similar notices from their armored vehicle services, said Steve Fox, director of government relations for the Washington-based National Cannabis Industry Association.

The U.S. Justice Department declined to comment on the matter, Ellen Canale, a spokeswoman, said by email in response to repeated requests. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration referred questions to the Justice Department, its parent agency.

The end of armored-car service to some marijuana dispensaries underscores ongoing tension between federal law, under which cannabis remains illegal, and laws in 20 states and the District of Columbia that legalized medical marijuana consumption, plus measures in Colorado and Washington that allow those 21 and older to possess up to an ounce of pot.

Attorney General Eric Holder hasn't provided a federal response to the laws in Washington and Colorado that will also allow retail sales of pot next year.

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on the conflicts between state and federal marijuana laws on Sept. 10, Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., announced Aug. 26.

Federal laws bar banks from offering accounts to pot shops, forcing medical marijuana firms to pay their sales taxes and other bills in cash. Cannabis businesses also are unable to obtain credit cards.

DeAngelo's car service, Dunbar Armored Inc., didn't return calls and messages for comment.

Fox, of the cannabis trade group, said that other medical marijuana dispensaries affected by the issue didn't want to come forward because of security concerns.

"In Colorado, one of our larger members told us that the DEA told their armored-car provider they couldn't provide services," he said. "As you can imagine, no one who is being put in a situation where they have to have large amounts of cash unsecured is going to want their name in the paper."

The suspension of armored-car service is the latest in what marijuana advocates say is an increasing number of federal enforcement actions against cannabis firms.

Federal officials have conducted 270 raids on medical cannabis providers since the start of the Obama administration, compared to 260 during George W. Bush's eight years in office, according to a June report by Washington-based Americans for Safe Access, a nonprofit representing patients.

The review found that the Obama administration spent more than $289 million over four and a half years on enforcement, about $100 million more than Bush did in his eight years in office.

Harborside Health Center's DeAngelo said his collective is being audited by the Internal Revenue Service, which asked for detailed financial records.

His seven-year-old not-for-profit assured the city of Oakland in a safety plan it filed before it opened that it would use armored car services and that this is "one of the reasons the city felt we would run a safe facility," he said.

Rebecca Kaplan, an at-large Oakland City Council member, said the city's confident its regulation of dispensaries keeps them safe, yet it's concerned the end of armored-car service places residents in harm's way.

"There is no benefit to shifting medical cannabis funds out of armored cars and into public vehicles," said Kaplan, who was re-elected to a second four-year term last year.

"To require medical marijuana dispensaries throughout the nation to use unguarded cash systems — no rational person wouldn't understand they are creating an environment to support muggings, to support burglaries and to support crime," she said.

Kaplan said she called the city attorney's office to explore the city's legal options.

DeAngelo credits Harborside's investment in a 36-camera security system, biometric locks and a bank vault that is reinforced with 18 inches of concrete with preventing criminal incidents. Keeping cash on the premises may render that plan moot, he said.

"Some businesses do not want to go public because they fear they would be targeted for violent robberies," he said. "I also naturally have that concern. I think this is such an outrageous threat to public security that somebody had to be willing to stand up and talk about it."

Affordable Care Act needs fixes to address costs

Kyrsten Sinema shovels the BS on affordable health care

OK Kyrsten Sinema didn't say it exactly that way, but that's how congressmen or congresswoman in her case get reelected.

Last but not least Kyrsten Sinema is being a real hypocrite in this editorial she or her staff wrote.

Kristen Sinema didn't say a word about how she attempted to make it outrageously expensive for medical marijuana patients to get their drugs when she attempted to slap a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.

If Kyrsten Sinema has been successful in passing her outrageously high 300 percent tax on medical marijuana it would certainly bankrupt the family of Zander Welton who in this article needs to spend $300 a week on medical marijuana to prevent Zander from having seizures.

If Kyrsten Sinema's tax had become law the family of Zander Welton would have been facing a weekly bill of $1,200 for medical marijuana with $900 of that going to pay for taxes which would go to the state of Arizona, while the medical marijuana would only have cost $300.

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Affordable Care Act needs fixes to address costs

By Kyrsten Sinema My Turn Sun Sep 1, 2013 7:31 PM

Three years ago, Congress passed the Affordable Care Act [i.e. Obamacare - an oxymoron when called the affordable care act!!!] to ensure better access to quality care for all Americans. The law is by no means perfect, but now that it is in place, it’s Congress’ duty to improve it for the benefit of hard-working Americans. [Well in reality it will screw the hard working Americans who actually work and force them to pay for the health care of deadbeats who don't work]

Every sound legislative solution requires dialogue from both parties in order for the law to stand the test of time. [Kyrsten Sinema really knows how to shovel the BS!!! Obamacare is anything but a sound legislative solution] The fixes we make to the Affordable Care Act cannot be simply Republican or Democratic ideas. [Well in reality they are socialist ideas, brought to you by the American socialist parties who now go by the name of the Democrats and the Republicans]

The ACA [Obamacare] addressed access to health care, but it did not effectively contain the rising costs of health care. [And in reality it will do anything but reduce health care costs. Expecting the government to reduce health care costs is like expecting an arsonist with a can of gasoline to put out fires] I am working with Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. House to make important fixes. I have co-sponsored bipartisan legislation to help control costs and improve transparency, including:

House Resolution 763 to repeal an annual tax on insurance providers. I do not believe that we should let insurance companies off the hook, but the reality is this tax will simply be passed on to individuals and employers, increasing their health-care costs. Repealing the tax will help keep down the cost of insurance. [Come on Kyrsten Sinema, you must be lying about repealing a tax???? I don't think you have ever met a tax which you didn't LOVE]

The Protecting Seniors’ Access to Medicare Act to ensure that Medicare benefits are not arbitrarily cut.

The Protect Medical Innovation Act to repeal the tax on medical devices. Arizona’s Congressional District 9 is home to some of America’s most innovative companies within the medical-device industry. The repeal of this tax will help companies like Tempe’s Medtronic create jobs and develop new technologies that improve the quality of health care while driving down the cost. [OK, now I get it Kyrsten Sinema, I bet the folks at Tempe’s Medtronic gave you a boatload of cash as a bribe, oops, I mean campaign contribution and now you want to repeal the tax for them???? Hey, you gotta pass laws for the special interest groups that give you bribes, oops, I mean campaign contributions!!!]

It is my job to listen to the families and businesses in Congressional District 9 and ensure the law works for them. [Rubbish, your job, as you appear to do it, it to get as much cash and pork for yourself and the special interest groups that helped you get elected as you can.]

Families and businesses are making serious health-care-related decisions in the coming months, and it is important they have all the information they need and the law is implemented as smoothly as possible.

I’ve heard from families and businesses concerned about the lack of specific information regarding implementation of the ACA, what the law means for them and and what the marketplace costs and options will be. This frustrating lack of information from the federal government is hampering their ability to plan for the future. [Well Kyrsten Sinema, you can only blame that on those idiots, or perhaps better said crooks in Congress who pass all those laws. And, hey, aren't you one of those idiots or crooks???]

My staff and I are working to help businesses and families navigate the current law. [Well I doubt that, but I bet a few people who read this self serving editorial will believe it and vote for you again]

That’s why I supported a one-year delay of the health-insurance mandate for employers and families. This delay will give Congress time to make fixes to the law, and provide businesses time to understand and prepare for the law. [The only fixes that Congress needs to make to the law it to repeal it!!!!]

We’ll be holding a series of workshops this fall to help businesses understand the law and make it work for them, and we’ve invited the Small Business Administration in Arizona to present at these workshops. [Yea, if you have one or two SBA bureaucrats there it won't look like the sole purpose of the workshops are to help you get re-elected!!!]

As our community prepares for the ACA’s implementation, I appreciate the parts of the law that give us security and certainty. Because of this law, children cannot be denied coverage for pre-existing conditions and students can continue receiving care under their parents’ existing plans. In Arizona, the Medicaid provisions of the ACA will help disabled veterans, seniors and those who previously lost access to critical health programs get the care they need.

Beginning in January, adults will no longer be denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions.

I think we can all agree that these improvements are critical for thousands in Arizona and millions across the country. [Well you thunk WRONG Kyrsten!!! Most Americans don't want Obamacare and want you to repeal the stupid, unconstitutional law!!!]

I look forward to continuing our work both here and in Washington to strengthen the ACA and ensure the provision of quality and affordable care for Arizona’s hard-working families.

Kyrsten Sinema, a Democrat, represents Arizona’s Congressional District 9 in the U.S. House of Representatives. [Well in reality she was elected by those people, but represents herself and the special interest groups who funded her campaign for Congress.]

Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema supports bombing Syria

From this I suspect that Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema now supports Emperor Obama's suspected plan to bomb Syria.

"Reps. Ron Barber, Ed Pastor, Ann Kirkpatrick and Kyrsten Sinema said they would wait for information from the White House before passing judgment"

I know the local Arizona anti-war folks have already sent out emails asking people to protest the suspect plan of Emperor Obama to bomb Syria. Why's isn't Kyrsten Sinema on that bandwagon???

I suspect Kyrsten Sinema now supports the military industrial complex because she is not denouncing President Obama's plan to bomb Syria.

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Arizona lawmakers unconvinced for motivation for Syria attack

By Rebekah L. Sanders and Erin Kelly The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Aug 30, 2013 10:37 PM

As President Barack Obama’s administration attempted Friday to build a stronger case to Congress and the American public for “limited” U.S. military intervention in Syria, it was met with reluctance from some lawmakers, including members of Arizona’s delegation.

Arizona House members said they remained skeptical of the case for intervention without more detail from the White House. They continued to demand that the president seek approval from Congress before ordering a military strike.

Members on both sides of the aisle questioned whether Obama’s motive for intervening now, two years after the civil war began and an estimated 100,000 deaths later, is to “save face.” The president previously declared the use of chemical weapons in Syria a “red line” that would require American action. The White House says it has evidence chemical weapons were used against civilians.

Obama said Friday that he was not considering “any open-ended commitment” and would not put “boots on the ground.”

Among Arizona’s representatives in Washington, only U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called for a more severe response than it appears the president is contemplating.

In a joint statement with Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., McCain called for military action that would “take out Assad’s air power, ballistic missiles, command and control, and other significant military targets” in an effort to “shift the balance of power on the battlefield” against Syrian President Bashar Assad and his forces.

The senators expressed concern that the Obama administration’s response to the alleged atrocity won’t “be equal to the gravity of the crime itself and the U.S. national-security interests at stake in Syria.”

“The purpose of military action in Syria should not be to help the president save face. It should not be merely cosmetic,” said McCain and Graham, who both sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

McCain was unavailable to speak with The Republic because he was in Los Angeles to appear on “The Tonight Show.”

The debate comes as U.S. officials announced Friday that hey are confident the Syrian regime deployed chemical weapons last week in opposition-controlled or contested areas near Damascus, killing more than 1,400 people, including hundreds of women and children.

In the strongest terms yet, Secretary of State John Kerry said the evidence is clear and there is no need to wait for U.N. investigators to finish evaluating the situation.

“Our concern is not just about some far-off land oceans away,” Kerry said from the Treaty Room at the State Department. “Our concern with the cause of the defenseless people of Syria is about choices that will directly affect our role in the world and our interests in the world. ...

“(W)e need to ask, ‘What is the risk of doing nothing?’ ”

Kerry said the administration is “mindful” of the public’s fear of repeating the experience of Iraq, when faulty intelligence on weapons of mass destruction led President George W. Bush to order attacks and launch the country into a decade of war.

“We will not repeat that moment,” Kerry said, noting that the White House had taken “unprecedented moves” to inform the public by releasing an unclassified report by American intelligence analysts on the chemical attacks in Syria.

But Arizona’s U.S. House members, who are home on recess until Sept. 9, said they wanted more information.

Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., who was briefed by White House staff Friday in a conference call with other members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he remains “skeptical” about the call to intervene in Syria. Most House members have not received personal briefings.

“I repeat my call to President Obama to specifically detail his ultimate objectives and strategy for engaging further in the ongoing Syrian conflict,” Salmon said in a statement. “(The president should) clearly identify his goals and what he constitutes as victory in Syria before the United States moves forward with military intervention.”

Fellow Republican Rep. Paul Gosar took the strongest stance against intervention. Contrary to the administration’s argument, Gosar said, there is “no U.S. interest at stake.”

He called attention to Obama’s past opposition to military intervention in Iraq.

“President Obama should listen to Senator Obama, who understood no president could authorize unilateral military action without an actual and imminent threat to our country,” Gosar said in a statement.

Republican Rep. David Schweikert repeated the demand that the president seek congressional approval before moving forward. More than 100 lawmakers, including Arizona’s four GOP members, signed a letter underlining that demand.

Democrats said they, too, were skeptical, but took a more measured tone.

Reps. Ron Barber, Ed Pastor, Ann Kirkpatrick and Kyrsten Sinema said they would wait for information from the White House before passing judgment.

“Nobody wants to rush into it,” Pastor said in an interview, arguing that the president should wait until Congress returns. “I don’t want to send a bunch of missiles over there and we end up in a worse situation than before.”

Pastor, a member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said he questions why the president wants to act now. “(Thousands of) people were killed by bullets and bombs and shrapnel, and that wasn’t enough for us to go in and do something,” he said. “The question I have for the administration is: ‘Is it a political reason? A saving-face reason? Is it a moral reason?’”

Kirkpatrick said, “It’s critical that Congress is closely consulted and the American people are properly informed.”

Republican Rep. Trent Franks, usually an outspoken voice on national-security issues and the Middle East, did not respond to a request for comment. Democratic Rep. Raúl Grijalva did not respond.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., said through his press secretary that he was withholding comment until he received a briefing from the administration today.

Republic reporter Dan Nowicki contributed to this article.

Sinema visits Arizona troops in Afghanistan

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Sinema visits Arizona troops in Afghanistan

By Rebekah L. Sanders The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Aug 31, 2013 10:51 PM

U.S. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., spent three days last week in Afghanistan as part of a bipartisan congressional delegation to visit troops and learn about the U.S. military drawdown.

The one-time anti-war protester said she wanted to personally thank the men and women in uniform for their sacrifices. She pledged to help veterans transition once they return home.

“Sometimes when troops are overseas working these incredibly long hours in a difficult situation, they’re not always hearing how much they’re appreciated,” Sinema said in an interview Friday after a multiple-leg journey back to Phoenix. “As you know, I did not support the United States’ engagement in Iraq and have long had concerns about Afghanistan. ... But I obviously have always been 100 percent supportive of our military.”

Over meals and at briefings at various bases and the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Sinema said she met Arizona service members who, in some cases, were serving their sixth tour of duty.

One of five House lawmakers on the trip, Sinema was the only member not on the Armed Services or Homeland Security committees. But the freshman Democrat said she began lobbying to go to Afghanistan almost as soon as she was sworn in as a freshman this January. The arrangements were made by the Department of Defense and the State Department.

Sinema said the experience gave her additional perspective on the coalition forces’ role as advisers to the Afghan military and the country’s transition to local civilian control, expected to be completed by early 2014.

The trip brought to life debates on Capitol Hill, Sinema said: “Getting a PowerPoint briefing in Washington does not compare.”

One such issue was whether the U.S. should purchase Russian-built Mi-17 helicopters for the Afghan forces instead of American-made Chinooks or Black Hawks. But Sinema said after talking with Afghan and U.S. staffers on the ground, she understood their argument that the Russian-made choppers are simpler to operate and maintain and more likely to be of lasting use to the Afghan National Security Force.

Sinema received criticism last year from Democratic and Republican opponents in the race for Arizona’s 9th Congressional District for her peace activism in the early 2000s. The district includes parts of Phoenix, Scottsdale, Tempe, Mesa and Chandler.

She countered by pointing to state legislation she worked on to help military families and noted that she has family members in the military, including brothers who are Marine Corps and Navy veterans. Military issues are sure to come up again in 2014, as one Republican running for her seat is Wendy Rogers, a retired Air Force pilot.

Sinema said Friday that she still remains wary of military action in some cases, including in Syria. She has called on the president to release more information about his objectives. But Sinema, who wrote her doctoral thesis on the Rwandan conflict and has studied humanitarian crises, said she has supported military intervention in some cases, such as in Sudan where she says it was clear genocide was occurring.

Sinema said she will support veterans issues in Congress. Her office said she has co-sponsored more than 40 veterans and military family bills, including legislation that would help eliminate the Department of Veterans Affairs’ administrative backlog.

Opponents of U.S. involvement in Syria arrested in Tempe

Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema used to go to these demonstrations, but from the way she votes and acts it sounds like she has flipped sides and is now on the side of the military industrial complex.

Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema also supports the police state and when she was an Arizona Legislator introduced a bill that would have flushed Arizona's medical marijuana laws down the toilet by slapping a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.

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Opponents of U.S. involvement in Syria arrested in Tempe

By Karen Schmidt The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Aug 31, 2013 10:27 PM

Three people protesting a possible U.S. intervention in the Syrian conflict were arrested Saturday night in Tempe, according to Tempe Police spokesman Greg Duarte.

Spokesman Mike Pooley said protesters were marching on Mill Avenue at around 8 p.m. when some were taken into custody. Charges, respectively, against the three protesters were: disorderly conduct, blocking a thoroughfare and disturbing a police horse, Pooley said.

"Right now we have several officers assisting us in trying to maintain a peaceful protest," Pooley said.

About 100 to 150 protesters marched, chanting "Hands off Syria." There were no reports of violence.

Layal Rabat, whose family is from Syria, was at the protest with her mother, aunt and uncle.

“We don’t want the United States to interfere with what’s happening in Syria and we don’t want to be led into another war," Rabat said. "The situation in Syria is very unclear.”

Rabat said protesters marched from Ash and University to Mill Avenue because it was a “heavily trafficked area” and “a good time to make people aware of the cause.”

"We have plenty of our own problems in the United States," protester Andrea Garcia said. "We don’t belong in any more foreign wars."

The local demonstration is one of many that have been held around the world and in the U.S. to protest possible U.S. intervention in Syria.

The Associated Press reported protests in London, Frankfurt, Germany and Jordan. Closer to home protests are planned in Boston and Houston, according to the AP. The latter city also is planning a protest in favor of the U.S. engaging in military action in Syria, according to the AP.

45 Enemies of Freedom

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45 ENEMIES OF FREEDOM

People who have been trying to control your life since reason was founded in 1968

From the August/September 2013 issue

In 2003, to celebrate 35 years of publishing a monthly magazine dedicated to Free Minds and Free Markets, reason named “35 Heroes of Freedom”—innovators, economists, singers, anti-communists, pornographers, professional athletes, and even the occasional politician who contributed to making the world a freer place since 1968.

These weren’t necessarily the 35 best human beings to span the globe. Richard Nixon, for example, was selected for encouraging “cynicism about government” through his rampant abuses of power. And, well, let’s say Dennis Rodman hasn’t aged particularly well. But the list reflected the happy, unpredictable cacophony that has helped liberate the world one novel or deregulation or electric guitar at a time.

Our 45th anniversary has come along at a darker time. The post-9/11 lurch toward unchecked law enforcement power has now become a permanent feature of our bipartisan consensus, with a Democratic president now ordering assassinations of American teenagers and with millions of Americans unaware that the feds are combing through their telecommunications. Keynesians in Washington responded to the financial crisis of 2008 by ushering in a lost decade of government spending, sluggish growth, and the worst employment numbers since Jimmy Carter was president. And after an initially promising Arab Spring, whole swaths of the Middle East seem poised for a long, sectarian, transnational war.

So it’s fitting that this time around we’re anointing reason’s 45 Enemies of Freedom. Again, these aren’t the worst human beings who bestrode the planet since 1968 (though Pol Pot and Osama bin Laden rank right down there). Some, like John McCain, are even genuine American heroes. What unites them is their active effort to control individuals rather than allow them free choice, to wield power recklessly rather than act on the recognition that the stuff inherently corrupts, and to popularize lies in a world that's desperate for truth.

You’ll see some familiar names there (we can’t quit you, Tricky Dick!) and some others that deserve to be more notorious. But in our otherwise alphabetical list we’ll start with the man who nearly everyone on our staff nominated, a figure who embodies so much that is wrong with public policy and the political conversation in these United States.

1. Michael Bloomberg

Here is how New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg explained the importance of his widely derided 16-ounce limit on servings of sugar-sweetened beverages after a state judge overturned it last March: “We have a responsibility as human beings to do something, to save each other, to save the lives of ourselves, our families, our friends, and all of the rest of the people that live on God’s planet.” Bloomberg literally thinks he is saving the world one slightly smaller serving of soda at a time.

As grandiose as that may seem, it is consistent with Bloomberg’s view of government. A few years ago in a speech at the United Nations, he declared that “to halt the worldwide epidemic of non-communicable diseases, governments at all levels must make healthy solutions the default social option,” which he described as “government’s highest duty.” On Bloomberg’s to-do list for government, apparently, defending us against our own unhealthy habits ranks above defending us against foreign invaders or marauding criminals.

Public health is not the only area where Bloomberg’s authoritarian tendencies are apparent. There is his enthusiasm for gun control, his illegal crackdown on pot smokers, and his unflagging defense of the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk program, which portrays the Fourth Amendment as a gratuitous barrier to effective policing. But his determination to halt “epidemics” of risky behavior shows him at his most arrogantly ambitious.

Bloomberg has pursued that goal not only by meddling with people’s drink orders but by banning trans fats, pressuring food companies to reduce the salt content of their products, imposing heavy cigarette taxes, severely restricting the locations where people are allowed to smoke (even outdoors), mandating anti-smoking posters in stores that sell cigarettes (a policy that, like his big beverage ban, was rejected by the courts), and proposing a rule that would require merchants to hide tobacco products from people who might want to buy them.

The attitude driving Bloomberg’s crusade to “make healthy solutions the default social option” is reflected in another comment he made after his pint-sized pop prescription ran into legal trouble. “It was not a setback for me,” said the billionaire with degrees from Johns Hopkins and Harvard. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I watch my diet. This is not for me.” No, indeed. It is for those poor, benighted souls who think it is acceptable to drink a 20-ounce soda.

2. Idi Amin

The bombastic Ugandan dictator and self-appointed Conqueror of the British Empire lived in luxury during his 1970s rule while overseeing a unique brand of sadism that included mass killings, forced deportations, and torture.

3. Sheriff Joe Arpaio

Maricopa County, Arizona’s chief law enforcement officer is famous mostly for publicly degrading inmates: forcing them to live in a tent city, work on chain gangs, wear pink underwear. Meanwhile, his more serious transgressions receive far less attention. Arpaio has created citizen posses to track down and arrest illegal immigrants, overseen a jail staff that has violently abused inmates (resulting in the death of three prisoners and the paralysis of a fourth), and used law enforcement resources to harass and intimidate his political opponents.

4. Osama bin Laden

His desire to impose an Islamic caliphate marks the late terrorist as decidedly anti-liberty. But Osama bin Laden’s real crime against freedom was masterminding the murderous 9/11 terror attacks, which not only slaughtered nearly 3,000 people, but also inspired the U.S. government to react with overseas wars, the PATRIOT Act, the Department of Homeland Security, and the Transportation Security Administration. It is thanks in no small part to bin Laden that the United States is far less free.

5. Leonid Brezhnev

Give Brezhnev credit for this much: He made it a lot harder to imagine that communism would be exciting. If Stalin was the supervillain who made the Soviet Union an empire and Khrushchev was the Cold War confrontationist, Brezhnev was the bland figure who enforced a deadly conformity. An adept at bureaucratic warfare, Brezhnev consolidated his power over the course of the ’60s and ’70s as he spread his mixture of economic stagnation and banal totalitarianism throughout the eastern bloc.

6. Fidel Castro

His iron grip over Cuba lasted for more than 50 years of individual, physical, and social ruin. Though Castro formally stepped down as leader in 2008, he passed the reins of the police state to his brother and still serves as an elder statesman of the least free country in the Western Hemisphere.

7. Dick Cheney

Dick Cheney makes the list instead of George W. Bush or Barack Obama because the former vice president provided the intellectual and legal template that both presidents followed to curtail our freedoms. In the wake of 9/11, Cheney, a lifelong defender of executive branch power, pushed the Bush administration to increase secrecy, surveillance, and war. It’s the most lasting legacy in a four-decade career that includes intimate involvement in both Iraq wars, plus the conflicts in Afghanistan, Panama, and Somalia.

8. Hillary Clinton

“It takes a village,” Hillary Clinton famously wrote, and we’ve learned since that her meaning encompassed villages in Iraq and Afghanistan to house American troops, villages of taxpayers to fund her favored programs, and villages of snoops to staff a national security state. Those villages must be prudish, too, given Clinton’s longstanding fear of video-game sex. To Hillary’s credit, she does advocate Internet freedom for villages overseas. Too bad she doesn’t promote the same idea at home.

9. Paul Ehrlich

In 1968’s dystopian bestseller The Population Bomb, this biologist predicted that “hundreds of millions” would die in massive famines in the 1970s. Erlich lamented that it was technically and politically impossible to sterilize people through the water and food supplies, the antidote for which would be rationed by the government. Meanwhile, on a mostly voluntary basis, the global fertility rate has fallen by more than half since the 1960s. Freedom, and the economic growth it generates, turn out to be the best contraceptive.

10. Dianne Feinstein

Say Feinstein’s name in front of anybody who takes the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution seriously and watch that person’s face curdle. The California senator’s federal assault weapons ban, which passed in 1994 and expired in 2004, failed to have any noticeable impact on crime rates. She didn’t allow such facts to keep her from using the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 to unsuccessfully attempt to reinstate the ban. Like the National Rifle Association, she also blames youth violence on video games and has threatened new regulations on that industry as well.

11. Daryl Gates

Inventor of the SWAT team and four-star general in America’s war on drugs, Gates is as responsible as any other law enforcement officer for the blunt, pseudo- military instrument our police forces have become. Thanks to significant incidences of wrong-door raids and dangerous prank calls that send SWAT teams to innocent families’ homes, Americans don’t even have to be doing drugs or breaking any laws to witness the fruits of Gates’ labor.

12. Newt Gingrich

Gingrich rose to fame as a politician, but he’s more like an annoying dinner-party guest: He’ll say anything to get attention. During the 2012 campaign, the former speaker of the House called fellow Republican Paul Ryan’s budget proposal a “radical” form of “right-wing social engineering”—but later said he’d vote for it. In 2005, he declared his support for an individual mandate to purchase health insurance, even going so far as to predict that it could be done in a way to “make most libertarians relatively happy.” By 2012, he was saying the mandate was “fundamentally wrong” and “unconstitutional.” Gingrich never truly stands for anything except himself.

13. Steven Hayne

For 20 years, Mississippi prosecutors looking for a way to put a friendly thumb on the scales of justice turned to Dr. Steven Hayne. A graduate of Brown Medical School, Hayne performed roughly 1,500 autopsies per year at the behest of prosecutors—1,175 more per year than is permitted by the National Association of Medical Examiners. The result? A lot of bad evidence and a lot of faulty convictions. Thanks to Radley Balko’s investigatory work in reason and elsewhere, Hayne is no longer performing autopsies in Mississippi. Sadly, the number of false convictions he contributed to is suspected to be in the hundreds.

14. Eric Hobsbawm

Until his death last year at the age of 95, British historian Eric Hobsbawm enjoyed the dubious honor of being perhaps the world’s most prominent academic apologist for communism. Asked in 1994 if the murder of “15, 20 million people might have been justified” if the result was the establishment of a Marxist society, the lifelong Communist Party member replied, “yes.”

15. J. Edgar Hoover

The FBI’s investigations into militias during the 1990s and Muslims in the 2000s trace their roots to the tenure of James Edgar Hoover. The agency’s longest-serving director, Hoover was famous for investigating groups that challenged the American government and its empire. He spied on and entrapped leftists, and he smeared and undermined civil rights leaders.

16. Jeffrey Immelt

In fairness, anyone who ran General Electric would probably make this list. Not because the blue-chip energy/media/whatever company is particularly evil, but because it’s particularly big, and as such it’s a natural poster boy for modern-day crony capitalism. GE has spent more than $200 million on lobbying already this young century. Immelt, head of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, reacted to the 2008 financial crisis by claiming, “The interaction between government and business will change forever.…The government will be a regulator; and also an industry policy champion, a financier, and a key partner.” That’s exactly the problem.

17. Michael Jacobson

The most zealous of the foodie nanny-staters, Michael Jacobson is the guy who makes Mayor Bloomberg seem like a reasonable moderate. The Ralph Nader protégé co-founded the Center for Science in the Public Interest in 1971 to fight for fat taxes, ominous warning labels, and laws requiring that broadcasters give a minute advertising time to broccoli for each minute of Froot Loops. His group, he once said, “is proud about finding something wrong with practically everything.”

18. Ed Jagels

During the 1980s, Kern County (California) District Attorney Ed Jagels led the nation in prosecuting bogus Satanic child molestation cases. Without any physical evidence, Jagels, his prosecutors, and local police coached and cajoled children into accusing their parents and neighbors of sexual abuse that never actually happened. Years later, when witnesses recanted, Jagels called them liars. Eventually, 25 of his 26 Satanic molestation convictions were overturned.

19. Leon Kass

As the propounder of the idea of “the wisdom of repugnance,” philosopher Leon Kass holds that viscera trump reason. Kass opposed in vitro fertilization on the grounds that it was dehumanizing, but the more than 5 million IVF babies born since then have been quite human. As head of George W. Bush’s Council on Bioethics, Kass sought to ban research on potentially lifesaving technologies such as human embryonic stem cells and cloning. He argues against using human ingenuity to liberate ourselves from the natural horrors of disease, disability, and death.

20. Ruhollah Khomeini

Leader of the Iranian revolution that overthrew the Shah, the ayatollah created the modern blueprint for an atavistic, Islamic revolution. As Iran’s supreme leader, Khomeini ordered the murder of his political opponents, waged a deadly war with Iraq, supported the sacking of the U.S. embassy in Tehran, and offered a bounty on the head of Salman Rushdie.

21. Henry Kissinger

As secretary of state and national security advisor under presidents Nixon and Ford, Kissinger embodied a ruthless, amoral vision of America’s place in the world. From the “secret” bombing of Cambodia to the “Christmas” bombing of North Vietnam, from his complicity in the coup that installed a repressive dictatorship in Chile to his green light for Indonesia’s bloody occupation of East Timor, Kissinger may not be the only answer to the question “Why do they hate us?”—but he’s a far larger part of the answer than any one man should be.

22. Naomi Klein

Before her 2007 book Shock Doctrine slandered all of modern libertarian thought as a scam dreamed up by the dictator-loving rich to screw over the poor, Klein had a noisy and altogether self-defeating career as an anti-branding activist. Her “No Logo” campaign and 2000 book, designed to ride the wave of anti-globalization to lead a revolt against advertising, instead became a go-to manual for marketers seeking to exploit the yearning for authenticity. Meanwhile, the anti-globalization movement died a richly deserved death.

23. Paul Krugman

The Nobel-winning economist and New York Times columnist is a reliable advocate of economic intervention and deficit spending, arguing that the problem with failed government stimulus programs to fight the recession of the ’00s was that they didn’t go far enough. Krugman’s low point in 2012 was recommending (only mostly in jest) that it would be a good thing if the government wasted huge sums of taxpayer money preparing for an alien invasion. Keep this man’s hands away from any rocks—he might try to break nearby windows to “stimulate” the economy.

24. Loki

The sneering (fictional) baddie in the 2012 superhero blockbuster, The Avengers, sticks to a familiar supervillain playbook: His aim is world domination, and he’s got a cosmic doohicky and an army of alien invaders to make it happen. But the justification he offers for his global power grab sounds more like a terrestrial dictator: “It’s the unspoken truth of humanity,” he tells a cowering crowd, “that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life’s joy in a mad scramble for power, for identity. You were made to be ruled.” Fortunately, like all supervillains, he was made to be defeated.

25. Jeffrey Loria

A successful New York art dealer (unlike you, he owns an original Picasso), Loria spent years pleading poverty to the taxpayers of Miami-Dade County so that they would pay for a fancy new stadium to house his professional baseball franchise, the Marlins. Locals finally agreed to cover what’s projected to be $2.4 billion in costs, only to discover that Loria had actually been turning large profits while fielding a mediocre, underpaid team. With his stadium safely finished, Loria promptly dismantled his club, which is now the worst in Major League Baseball.

26. Mao Tse-Tung

As the founder and leader of the People’s Republic of China, this Communist despot’s cruelly stupid collectivist policies killed at least 35 million Chinese citizens. He kept the hundreds of millions who managed to survive in impoverished bondage until his death in 1976.

27. John McCain

It is possible to be both an enemy of freedom and a genuine American hero. John McCain endured unbearable punishments and greatly boosted camp morale during his five-year Viet Cong prison stint, for which he deserves our gratitude. He has also been among the most consistently interventionist politicians in the United States Senate, agitating for never-ending “rogue-state rollback” while focusing his war at home on political speech and the healthy American trait he derides as “cynicism.” It’s fitting McCain would close out his career barking sporadic insults (like “wacko bird”) at a new generation of more libertarian legislators.

28. Jenny McCarthy

A second-string actress who has managed to stay in the limelight by promoting the bogus theory that vaccines cause autism, McCarthy traffics in pseudoscience and fear. Partly as a result of her widely publicized yet scientifically ignorant pronouncements, hundreds of thousands of fearful parents have needlessly endangered the health and lives of their children.

29. Robert McNamara

Did anyone fuse the roles of technocrat and destroyer more completely than Robert Strange McNamara? He was a functionary from Ford Motor Company when John F. Kennedy brought him in to run the Pentagon, and in that role he systematically escalated the Vietnam War as though the conflict were an assembly line. When he took over the World Bank in 1968, he continued to couple technocratic planning with mass destruction, sponsoring vast “development projects” whose most notable effect was to evict peasants from their land. Robert McNamara: the Organization Man as monster.

30. Newton Minow

The godfather of boob-tube nannying, Minow was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission from 1961 to 1963. There he was a key advocate for the regulation of television. In a 1961 speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, he famously described the era’s television programming as a “vast wasteland,” railed against the medium’s “mayhem, violence, sadism, murder,” and proposed that TV content should be strictly regulated in the name of the “public interest.”

31. Robert Moses

The most authoritarian city planner in New York history, Moses wielded eminent domain and many other government powers, unleashing his bulldozers and wrecking balls on the homes, businesses, and churches of as many as half a million powerless citizens, many of them black, brown, or poor.

32. Robert Mugabe

The racist, homophobic, and corrupt president of Zimbabwe has overseen record levels of inflation, destroying the purchasing power of citizens in a previously much more prosperous country. Forbidden from exiting the country with any assets, Zimbabweans have had to live under Mugabe’s brutal misrule for decades.

33. Richard Nixon

This American president launched the modern drug war, imposed wage and price controls, kept a pointless war going in Vietnam long after he knew it was hopeless, and imposed massive new bureaucracies on the American economy. Nixon’s vision of government in general had no clear limits, and his view of executive power helped him commit and collude in crimes that he thought were not crimes because he did them. Richard Nixon should be a cautionary tale for all future presidents, but all too often he serves as an example.

34. Henry Paulson

When the nation’s financial markets collapsed in the fall of 2008, Hank Paulson, secretary of the treasury for President George W. Bush, came in with guns blazing. In September of 2008, he proposed the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP), a scheme he falsely advertised as a way to remove “illiquid assets that are weighing down our financial institutions and threatening our economy.” Instead it became a justification for an endless series of bailouts, including of non-banks like General Motors. Even TARP’s biggest proponents acknowledge that the economy has underperformed the past five years.

35. Sean Penn

When not chewing the scenery in overrated Oscar-winning films, the multimillionaire brother of Christopher Penn spends much of his time acting as an apologist for authoritarians like the late Hugo Chavez and the still-breathing Fidel Castro. When Chavez died, Penn said: “the people of the United States lost a friend it never knew it had. And poor people around the world lost a champion.” That’s one way of putting it.

36. Pol Pot

A French school flunkie turned peasant revolutionary, Pol Pot might have been the most efficient murderer in communism’s grisly history. It took the dictator and his Khmer Rouge less than four years to kill and centrally plan to death up to 3 million people—20 percent of the Cambodian population.

37. Vladimir Putin

While many were optimistic that Russia would manage to modernize after almost a century of Marxist misery, the former KGB agent and Russian president has vindicated skeptics of liberal progress while clamping down on free speech, mucking about in Russia’s “near abroad,” and supporting horrid governments such as the Assad regime in Syria.

38. Bruce Ratner

A real estate tycoon and serial beneficiary of eminent domain abuse, Ratner partnered with New York officials in 2001 to forcibly evict some 55 midtown businesses standing in the way of a new headquarters for the New York Times Company. A few years later in Brooklyn, Ratner and his government allies seized and razed dozens of homes and businesses in order to build a basketball arena for a team then owned by Ratner himself.

39. Diane Ravitch

A school reformer turned union flack, this New York University professor did an about-face after four decades as one of the nation’s most prominent charter advocates. Part of the right-wing think tank braintrust that hatched the initial policy proposals for vouchers, she now says “Vouchers are a con, intended to destroy public education.” She has been welcomed with open arms by defenders of the status quo.

40. John Rawls

The philosophical father of 20th century liberalism, Rawls’ seminal Theory of Justice (1971) has dominated moral and political philosophy for decades. His framing of “justice as fairness” and his notion that societies should be arranged to improve the lot of the least advantaged subtly underpin nearly all of our national policy debates, lending a justification to multitudinous extensions of state power. His longtime rival, the libertarian thinker Robert Nozick, offered an alternative based in property rights and personal liberty. Sadly, Rawls has been more influential.

If (bad) conservative screenwriters set out to create a smugly liberal, lens-hungry New York senator, they’d come up with Charles Schumer—and they’d be criticized for creating a strawman. But Schumer is, somehow, real. He crusades sneeringly against guns, drugs, breakfast cereal, cybercurrencies, and caffeinated powders while supporting security-state legislation and cozying up with crony capitalists on Wall Street.

42. Steven Seagal

Starring in 20 of the worst action flicks ever made, all with titles like Above the Law and Executive Decision, Seagal also produced several ludicrous environmental message-movies, including one that ends with his character giving a four-minute speech about how “the internal combustion engine has been obsolete for 50 years.” He has made two truly awful records and been serially accused of sexual harassment, but what separates Seagal from most Hollywood scumbags is that he has also actively participated in gross law enforcement abuse, including a raid in Arizona that damaged a man’s house and killed his puppy.

43. Lamar Smith

The Internet threatened to shut down in protest last year when Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas) introduced the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), a bill that sought to grant movie studios and record labels unprecedented power to police copyright. Under SOPA, studios and labels would’ve had the power to block offending sites from showing up in Google search results, and the authority to tell service providers which sites their customers couldn’t visit. In an Orwellian twist, SOPA also would have empowered “content creators” to prevent Internet users from discussing—on Facebook and other social media sites—how to circumvent SOPA.

44. Aaron Sorkin

A virtual assembly line for fictional authority-worship, Sorkin is the dramatist of choice for progressive technocrats. In the worlds detailed in West Wing and The Newsroom, all of America’s problems could be solved if those dumb, undereducated conservatives and independents would listen to their incorruptible Ivy League betters. Sorkin longs for an imaginary golden age of American government that never existed. Bonus points for being just as misogynist as any of the archconservatives he loathes.

45. Elizabeth Warren

One of the left’s foremost academic activists, Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat recently elected to the Senate, is a Harvard professor with a history of using shoddy scholarship to promote dubious public policies. She has exaggerated the prevalence of medical bankruptcy, argued that student loan rates should be set equal to bank loan rates, and pushed for controls on everything from credit cards to home loans. Warren’s life project amounts to an argument that most people are too stupid to know what to do with their money unless the government steps in to help.

Files show NSA cracks, weakens Internet encryption

1) I have always suspected that the NSA can use it's supercomputers to crack PGP and other public key encrypted messages. But I suspected it took some effort to decrypt the messages. Is that still true??? Or it is now a trivial inexpensive task for NSA to read messages that are encrypted with PGP and other public key??

2) Just what are these "secret portals" or "hooks" that the NSA has created??? I suspect they are hooks that tell the encryption software used by HTTPS encryption to create encrypted data that is easily decrypted by NSA and other government agencies.

3) This shows that it is really not safe to put ANYTHING that you would like to keep secret from anybody, especially the government on the internet. Same goes for putting the data on telephone lines, radio waves or any public communication method.

Files show NSA cracks, weakens Internet encryption

By Michael Winter USA Today Thu Sep 5, 2013 4:51 PM

U.S. and British intelligence agencies have cracked the encryption designed to provide online privacy and security, documents leaked by Edward Snowden show.

In their clandestine, decade-long effort to defeat digital scrambling, the National Security Agency, along with its British counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), have used supercomputers to crack encryption codes and have inserted secret portals into software with the help of technology companies, the Guardian, the New York Times and ProPublica reported Thursday.

The NSA has also maintained control over international encryption standards.

As the Times points out, encryption "guards global commerce and banking systems, protects sensitive data like trade secrets and medical records, and automatically secures the e-mails, Web searches, Internet chats and phone calls of Americans and others around the world."

The NSA calls its decryption efforts the "price of admission for the U.S. to maintain unrestricted access to and use of cyberspace."

A 2010 memo describing an NSA briefing to British agents about the secret hacking said, "For the past decade, N.S.A. has led an aggressive, multipronged effort to break widely used Internet encryption technologies. Cryptanalytic capabilities are now coming online. Vast amounts of encrypted Internet data which have up till now been discarded are now exploitable."

The GCHQ is working to penetrate encrypted traffic on what it called the "big four" service providers ---Hotmail, Google, Yahoo and Facebook, the Guardian said.

Who needs back up files when you have the NSA????

Don't think of it as the government flushing the Bill of Rights down the toilet!!!

Think of it as a free file backup service run by government goons!!!!

N.S.A. Able to Foil Basic Safeguards of Privacy on Web

The article says the NSA has been getting makers of ICs or integrated circuits to put back doors into their products so the NSA can read or listen to your data before the chip encrypts it.

The article says the NSA is also working with software vendors like Microsoft getting them to put back doors in their software products, again so the NSA can grab the data before the software encrypts it.

Has Kyrsten Sinema sold out to the military industrial complex????

According to this article Kyrsten Sinema is undecided on if she will vote for the American Empire to bomb Syria.

While Kyrsten Sinema always has been a gun grabbing, tax and spend socialist she used to be on our side and against war.

I suspect Kyrsten Sinema has sold her soul to the military industrial complex and will vote to allow Emperor Obama to bomb Syria.

And for those of you who don't remember Kyrsten Sinema when she was a member of the Arizona Legislator tried to kill Arizona's medical marijuana law by passing a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana.

Source

Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, District 9: Undecided

In a statement last week, Sinema said, “I’m deeply troubled by reports concerning the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons against the Syrian people. ... I intend to evaluate whether any proposed action will protect and advance American goals and interests once I have been briefed by national-security officials.” To contact Sinema, call her Washington, D.C., office at 202-225-9888 or her district office in Phoenix at 602-956-2285.

Sen. John McCain, a Republican, voted in support of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s resolution authorizing the use of military force in Syria after it was amended to emphasize priority of changing the momentum in the Syrian civil war.

“That strategy must degrade the military capabilities of the Assad regime while upgrading the military capabilities of moderate Syrian opposition forces,” McCain said in a written statement. “These amendments would put the Congress on the record that this is the policy of the United States, as President Obama has assured me it is.”

To contact McCain, call his Washington, D.C., office at 202-224-2235.

Sen. Jeff Flake, a Republican, voted in support of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s resolution authorizing the use of military force in Syria.

"As commander in chief, President Obama already has the authority to conduct a limited strike such as the one he has asked Congress to authorize. This president's reasons for coming to Congress in this instance were political, not constitutional,” Flake said. "I believe in a strong commander in chief who takes actions as warranted and stands by them, which is why I voted in favor of the resolution in committee. After reviewing both the classified and unclassified evidence, I am convinced that the Syrian regime did launch a chemical-weapons attack, and it is in our national interest that it faces the consequences."

To contact Flake, call his Washington, D.C., office at 202-224-4521.

Rep. Ann Kirkpatrick, a Democrat, is undecided on U.S. military action in Syria.

"I'm very disturbed by the reports coming out of Syria about chemical weapons being used to kill civilians," she said. "But being on the Veterans Affairs Committee, I have seen what war has done to our soldiers coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Military action does not come without consequences."

To contact Kirkpatrick, call her Washington, D.C., office at 202-225-3361 or her district offices in Flagstaff and Casa Grande at 928-213-9977 and 520-316-0839.

Rep. Ron Barber, a Democrat, is undecided. Spokesman Mark Kimble said Barber will decide after Congress reconvenes next week, and there is debate on the House floor.

To contact Barber, call his Washington, D.C., office at 202-225-2542 or his district offices in Tucson and Sierra Vista at 520-881-3588 and 520-459-3115.

Rep. Raul Grijalva, a Democrat, is against U.S. military action in Syria. Grijalva wrote in a recent opinion piece that he believes diplomatic solutions should be pursued first.

To contact Grijalva, call his Washington, D.C., office at 202-225-2435 or his district offices in Avondale and Somerton and Tucson at 623-536-3388 and 928-343-7933 and 520-622-6788.

Rep. Paul Gosar, a Republican, is leaning against U.S. military action in Syria. "Unless something really changes my direction and information, I'm a no. Getting involved in a sectarian war is a lose-lose situation."

To contact Gosar, call his Washington, D.C., office at 202-225-2315 or his district offices in Prescott and San Tan Valley at 928-445-1683 and 480-882-2697.

Rep. Matt Salmon, a Republican, is against U.S. military action in Syria. "I know what my vote is going to be - and it's no. They haven't made a compelling case at all why this is in our national interest."

To contact Salmon, call his Washington, D.C., office at 202-225-2635 or his district offices in Gilbert at 480-699-8239.

Rep. David Schweikert, a Republican, leans toward no. His spokeswoman Rachel Semmel said Schweikert "isn't convinced there is a US interest yet. If we become engaged with little direction from the President, what is our exit strategy?"

To contact Schweikert, call his Washington, D.C., office at 202-225-2190 or his district office in Scottsdale at 480-946-2411.

Rep. Ed Pastor, a Democrat, is undecided. "I've received some calls and briefings but I haven't made up my mind yet. ... We're working on a decision and we'll have it by next week."

To contact Pastor, call his Washington, D.C., office at 202-225-4065 or his district office in Phoenix at 602-256-0551.

Rep. Trent Franks, a Republican, did not return calls seeking comment. To contact Franks, call his Washington, D.C., office at 202-225-4576 or his district office in Glendale at 623-776-7911.

Source

Poll: Congress opposing Syria strike

By Susan Page and John Kelly USA Today Mon Sep 9, 2013 7:29 AM

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama faces a daunting and uphill battle to win congressional authorization for a military strike on Syria, a USA Today Network survey of senators and representatives has found.

The comprehensive poll of Congress says that only a small fraction of the 533 lawmakers — 22 senators and 22 House members — are willing to say they will support the use of force in response to the reported use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime. Far more overall — 19 senators and 130 House members — say they will oppose a resolution that would authorize military strikes. Two seats in the 435-member House are vacant.

The largest group of lawmakers remains undecided, including a majority of the Senate and the House. That could create an opportunity for the president to persuade them in a string of six interviews with TV network anchors today and a televised address to the nation Tuesday. The Senate could vote as early as Wednesday.

“We cannot turn a blind eye to images like the ones we’ve seen out of Syria,” Obama said in his weekly radio address Saturday. “Failing to respond to this outrageous attack would increase the risk that chemical weapons could be used again; that they would fall into the hands of terrorists who might use them against us; and it would send a horrible signal to other nations that there would be no consequences for their use of these weapons. All of which would pose a serious threat to our national security.”

Congress isn’t convinced. In the survey:

Democrats haven’t fallen in line behind the president, at least not yet. Congressional Democrats are as likely to oppose the measure as support it, although most say they are undecided. At the moment, 28 Democrats support action; 28 oppose it.

Republicans who have made a decision overwhelmingly oppose Obama, by nearly 8-1. Sixteen Republicans support action; 121 oppose it.

In a majority of states, not a single member of Congress has gone on record endorsing the president’s request for authorization of a military strike. That includes a dozen states that Obama carried in both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections: Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Iowa, Massachusetts, Maine, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

“I think it’s an uphill slog from here,” Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and one of the handful of Republicans who support the president, said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday.

He said the White House has “done an awful job” in explaining the reason for a strike and added, “It’s a confusing mess.”

On “Fox News Sunday,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said he was horrified by images of the alleged chemical-weapons attack in Syria but warned that the strikes could destabilize the country or even increase the odds that opposition forces obtain chemical weapons.

“I don’t think we’re going to do anything to (Syrian President Bashar) Assad,” he said.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., said he has heard overwhelming opposition from his constituents. “And keep in mind, my district voted 77 percent for the president,” he said on CBS. “I think the president has work to do, but I think he can possibly get the votes. But he’s got to come before the Congress and the nation.”

On this issue, Obama hasn’t been able to count on the classic partisan divide that has defined the capital’s politics through his tenure. Some liberal Democrats have aligned with Republican libertarians to oppose a military strike. Some GOP hawks who typically oppose him (including Arizona Sen. John McCain, whom Obama beat in the race for the White House in 2008) argue for action.

Even African-Americans in Congress, who have been among Obama’s most reliable supporters on other issues, are resistant. Of 42 Black lawmakers, two are committed to voting “yes.”

A separate Washington Post count of congressional support Sunday reported different specific numbers but also found a tough road ahead for the president. In the Senate, the Post found 25 in favor, 17 opposed, 10 leaning no and 50 undecided; in the House, 25 in favor, 111 against, 116 leaning no and 181 undecided.

In the USA Today Network survey, journalists from USA Today and nearly 40 other Gannett-owned newspapers and television stations across the country reported on the views expressed by every senator and all but four members of the House, who couldn’t be reached.

Obama Tests Limits of Power in Syrian Conflict

The proposed strike is unlike anything that has come before — an attack inside the territory of a sovereign country, without its consent, without a self-defense rationale and without the authorization of the United Nations Security Council or even the participation of a multilateral treaty alliance like NATO, and for the purpose of punishing an alleged war crime that has already occurred rather than preventing an imminent disaster.

Obama Tests Limits of Power in Syrian Conflict

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

Published: September 8, 2013 254 Comments

WASHINGTON — In asking Congress to authorize an attack on Syria over claims it used chemical weapons, President Obama has chosen to involve lawmakers in deciding whether to undertake a military intervention that in some respects resembles the limited types that many presidents — Ronald Reagan in Grenada, Bill Clinton in Kosovo and even Mr. Obama in Libya — have launched on their own.

President Obama’s strategy ensures that no matter what happens, the crisis is likely to create an important precedent.

On another level, the proposed strike is unlike anything that has come before — an attack inside the territory of a sovereign country, without its consent, without a self-defense rationale and without the authorization of the United Nations Security Council or even the participation of a multilateral treaty alliance like NATO, and for the purpose of punishing an alleged war crime that has already occurred rather than preventing an imminent disaster.

The contrasting moves, ceding more of a political role to Congress domestically while expanding national war powers on the international stage, underscore the complexity of Mr. Obama’s approach to the Syrian crisis. His administration pressed its case on Sunday, saying it had won Saudi backing for a strike, even as the Syrian president warned he would retaliate.

Mr. Obama’s strategy ensures that no matter what happens, the crisis is likely to create an important precedent in the often murky legal question of when presidents or nations may lawfully use military force.

Kathryn Ruemmler, the White House counsel, said the president believed a strike would be lawful, both in international law and domestic law, even if neither the Security Council nor Congress approved it. But the novel circumstances, she said, led Mr. Obama to seek Congressional concurrence to bolster its legitimacy.

The move is right, said Walter Dellinger, who led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel in the Clinton administration, because the proposed attack is not “covered by any of the previous precedents for the unilateral use of executive power.”

“That doesn’t mean it couldn’t become another precedent,” Mr. Dellinger added. “But when the president is going beyond where any previous president has gone, it seems appropriate to determine whether Congress concurs.”

Disputes about whether and when a president or nation may launch an act of war can be hazy because courts generally do not issue definitive answers about such matters. Instead presidents, and countries, create precedents that over time can become generally accepted as a gloss on what written domestic laws and international treaties permit. Against that backdrop, many legal scholars say Mr. Obama is proposing to violate international law. But others contend that the question is ambiguous, and some suggest that the United States could establish a precedent creating new international law if it strikes.

The United States has used its armed forces abroad dozens of times without Security Council approval, but typically has invoked self-defense; when Mr. Reagan invaded Grenada in 1983, for example, he cited a need to protect Americans on the island along with the request of neighboring countries. The most notable precedent for the Syria crisis was Mr. Clinton’s 1999 bombing of Kosovo, but that was undertaken as part of NATO and in response to a time-urgent problem: stopping a massacre of civilians.

By contrast, the United States would carry out strikes on Syria largely alone, and to punish an offense that has already occurred. That crime, moreover, is defined by two treaties banning chemical weapons, only one of which Syria signed, that contain no enforcement provisions. Such a strike has never happened before.

Attempts to deal with the novelty of the crisis in international law have become entangled in the separate domestic law question of whether the president could order strikes on Syria without Congressional permission.

Seeking the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Mr. Obama embraced a limited view of a president’s power to initiate war without Congress, telling The Boston Globe that “the president does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.”

But by the 2011 conflict in Libya he abandoned his campaign view of presidential war powers as too limited. While the NATO intervention was authorized for international law purposes by the Security Council, in domestic law Congress did not authorize Mr. Obama to participate. But Mr. Obama’s Office of Legal Counsel argued that it was lawful for him to unilaterally order American forces to bomb Libya because of national interests in preserving regional stability and in supporting the “credibility and effectiveness” of the Security Council.

In recent weeks, administration lawyers decided that it was within Mr. Obama’s constitutional authority to carry out a strike on Syria as well, even without permission from Congress or the Security Council, because of the “important national interests” of limiting regional instability and of enforcing the norm against using chemical weapons, Ms. Ruemmler said.

But even if he could act alone, that left the question of whether he should. The lack of a historical analogue and traditional factors that have justified such operations, she said, contributed to his decision to go to Congress.

“The president believed that it was important to enhance the legitimacy of any action that would be taken by the executive,” Ms. Ruemmler said, “to seek Congressional approval of that action and have it be seen, again as a matter of legitimacy both domestically and internationally, that there was a unified American response to the horrendous violation of the international norm against chemical weapons use.”

At a news conference last week, Mr. Obama argued that the United States should “get out of the habit” of having the president “stretch the boundaries of his authority as far as he can” while lawmakers “snipe” from the sidelines. But he also explained his decision in terms of very special circumstances: humanitarian interventions where there is no immediate pressure to act and the United Nations is blocked.

Jack Goldsmith, a head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush administration, said the limited criteria cited by Mr. Obama mean his move might not apply to more traditional future interventions. The more important precedent, he said, may concern international law and what he portrayed as Mr. Obama’s dismissive attitude toward whether or not having permission from the Security Council should stop humanitarian interventions.

Mr. Obama has in recent days repeatedly portrayed the Security Council system as incapable of performing its function of “enforcing international norms and international law,” and as so paralyzed by the veto power wielded by Russia that it is instead acting as a “barrier” to that goal.

Mr. Goldsmith said that in the Kosovo campaign, the Clinton administration shied away from arguing that it was consistent with international law to carry out a military attack not authorized by the Security Council purely for humanitarian reasons. Its fear was that such a doctrine could be misused by other nations, loosening constraints on war.

In his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, Mr. Obama said all nations “must adhere to standards that govern the use of force.” But he also argued that humanitarian grounds justified military force and cited “the Balkans,” leaving ambiguous whether he meant Bosnia, which had some Security Council approval; Kosovo, which did not; or both.

Ms. Ruemmler said that while an attack on Syria “may not fit under a traditionally recognized legal basis under international law,” the administration believed that given the novel factors and circumstances, such an action would nevertheless be “justified and legitimate under international law” and so not prohibited.

Still, she acknowledged that it was “more controversial for the president to act alone in these circumstances” than for him to do so with Congressional backing.

Steven G. Bradbury, a head of the Office of Legal Counsel in the Bush administration, said it would be “politically difficult” to order strikes if Congress refused to approve them. But he predicted future presidents would not feel legally constrained to echo Mr. Obama’s request. “Every overseas situation, every set of exigent circumstances, is a little different, so I don’t really buy that it’s going to tie future presidents’ hands very much,” he said.

But Harold H. Bruff, a University of Colorado law professor who is one of the authors of a casebook on the separation of powers, argued that the episode would have enduring political ramifications. “I’m sure that Obama or some later president will argue later that they can still choose whether or not to go to Congress,” he said. “But it does raise the political cost of a future president not going to Congress because the precedent will be cited against him or her.”

Journalist Facing Prison Over a Link

Placing a "link" or an "A tag" to a document is a Federal crime???

"By trying to criminalize linking, the federal authorities ... are suggesting that to share information online is the same as possessing it or even stealing it"

I guess that is just a cockamamie, convoluted, lame excuse to flush the First Amendment down the toilet by Obama's federal goons.

Source

A Journalist-Agitator Facing Prison Over a Link

By DAVID CARR

Published: September 8, 2013

Barrett Brown makes for a pretty complicated victim. A Dallas-based journalist obsessed with the government’s ties to private security firms, Mr. Brown has been in jail for a year, facing charges that carry a combined penalty of more than 100 years in prison.

Professionally, his career embodies many of the conflicts and contradictions of journalism in the digital era. He has written for The Guardian, Vanity Fair and The Huffington Post, but as with so many of his peers, the line between his journalism and his activism is nonexistent. He has served in the past as a spokesman of sorts for Anonymous, the hacker collective, although some members of the group did not always appreciate his work on its behalf.

In 2007, he co-wrote a well-received book, “Flock of Dodos: Behind Modern Creationism, Intelligent Design and the Easter Bunny,” and over time, he has developed an expertise in the growing alliance between large security firms and the government, arguing that the relationship came at a high cost to privacy.

From all accounts, including his own, Mr. Brown, now 32, is a real piece of work. He was known to call some of his subjects on the phone and harass them. He has been public about his struggles with heroin and tends to see conspiracies everywhere he turns. Oh, and he also threatened an F.B.I. agent and his family by name, on a video, and put it on YouTube, so there’s that.

But that’s not the primary reason Mr. Brown is facing the rest of his life in prison. In 2010, he formed an online collective named Project PM with a mission of investigating documents unearthed by Anonymous and others. If Anonymous and groups like it were the wrecking crew, Mr. Brown and his allies were the people who assembled the pieces of the rubble into meaningful insights.

Project PM first looked at the documents spilled by the hack of HBGary Federal, a security firm, in February 2011 and uncovered a remarkable campaign of coordinated disinformation against advocacy groups, which Mr. Brown wrote about in The Guardian, among other places.

Peter Ludlow, a professor of philosophy at Northwestern and a fan of Mr. Brown’s work, wrote in The Huffington Post that, “Project PM under Brown’s leadership began to slowly untangle the web of connections between the U.S. government, corporations, lobbyists and a shadowy group of private military and infosecurity consultants.”

In December 2011, approximately five million e-mails from Stratfor Global Intelligence, an intelligence contractor, were hacked by Anonymous and posted on WikiLeaks. The files contained revelations about close and perhaps inappropriate ties between government security agencies and private contractors. In a chat room for Project PM, Mr. Brown posted a link to it.

Among the millions of Stratfor files were data containing credit cards and security codes, part of the vast trove of internal company documents. The credit card data was of no interest or use to Mr. Brown, but it was of great interest to the government. In December 2012 he was charged with 12 counts related to identity theft. Over all he faces 17 charges — including three related to the purported threat of the F.B.I. officer and two obstruction of justice counts — that carry a possible sentence of 105 years, and he awaits trial in a jail in Mansfield, Tex.

According to one of the indictments, by linking to the files, Mr. Brown “provided access to data stolen from company Stratfor Global Intelligence to include in excess of 5,000 credit card account numbers, the card holders’ identification information, and the authentication features for the credit cards.”

Because Mr. Brown has been closely aligned with Anonymous and various other online groups, some of whom view sowing mayhem as very much a part of their work, his version of journalism is tougher to pin down and, sometimes, tougher to defend.

But keep in mind that no one has accused Mr. Brown of playing a role in the actual stealing of the data, only of posting a link to the trove of documents.

Journalists from other news organizations link to stolen information frequently. Just last week, The New York Times, The Guardian and ProPublica collaborated on a significant article about the National Security Agency’s effort to defeat encryption technologies. The article was based on, and linked to, documents that were stolen by Edward J. Snowden, a private contractor working for the government who this summer leaked millions of pages of documents to the reporter Glenn Greenwald and The Guardian along with Barton Gellman of The Washington Post.

By trying to criminalize linking, the federal authorities in the Northern District of Texas — Mr. Brown lives in Dallas — are suggesting that to share information online is the same as possessing it or even stealing it. In the news release announcing the indictment, the United States attorney’s office explained, “By transferring and posting the hyperlink, Brown caused the data to be made available to other persons online, without the knowledge and authorization of Stratfor and the card holders.”

And the magnitude of the charges is confounding. Jeremy Hammond, a Chicago man who pleaded guilty to participating in the actual hacking of Stratfor in the first place, is facing a sentence of 10 years.

Last week, Mr. Brown and his lawyers agreed to an order that allows him to continue to work on articles, but not say anything about his case that is not in the public record.

Speaking by phone on Thursday, Charles Swift, one of his lawyers, spoke carefully.

“Mr. Brown is presumed innocent of the charges against him and in support of the presumption, the defense anticipates challenging both the legal assumptions and the facts that underlie the charges against him,” he said.

Others who are not subject to the order say the aggressive set of charges suggests the government is trying to send a message beyond the specifics of the case.

“The big reason this matters is that he transferred a link, something all of us do every single day, and ended up being charged for it,” said Jennifer Lynch, a staff lawyer at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, an advocacy group that presses for Internet freedom and privacy. “I think that this administration is trying to prosecute the release of information in any way it can.”

There are other wrinkles in the case. When the F.B.I. tried to serve a warrant on Mr. Brown in March 2012, he was at his mother’s house. The F.B.I. said that his mother tried to conceal his laptop and it charged her with obstruction of justice. (She pleaded guilty in March of this year and is awaiting sentencing.)

The action against his mother enraged Mr. Brown and in September 2012 he made a rambling series of posts to YouTube in which he said he was in withdrawal from heroin addiction. He proceeded to threaten an F.B.I. agent involved in the arrest, saying, “I don’t say I’m going to kill him, but I am going to ruin his life and look into his (expletive) kids ... How do you like them apples?”

The feds did not like them apples. After he was arrested, a judge ruled he was “a danger to the safety of the community and a risk of flight.” In the video, Mr. Brown looks more like a strung-out heroin addict than a threat to anyone, but threats are threats, especially when made against the F.B.I.

“The YouTube video was a mistake, a big one,” said Gregg Housh, a friend of Mr. Brown’s who first introduced him to the activities of Anonymous. “But it is important to remember that the majority of the 105 years he faces are the result of linking to a file. He did not and has not hacked anything, and the link he posted has been posted by many, many other news organizations.”

At a time of high government secrecy with increasing amounts of information deemed classified, other routes to the truth have emerged, many of them digital. News organizations in receipt of leaked documents are increasingly confronting tough decisions about what to publish, and are defending their practices in court and in the court of public opinion, not to mention before an administration determined to aggressively prosecute leakers.

In public statements since his arrest, Mr. Brown has acknowledged that he made some bad choices. But punishment needs to fit the crime and in this instance, much of what has Mr. Brown staring at a century behind bars seems on the right side of the law, beginning with the First Amendment of the Constitution.

E-mail: carr@nytimes.com;

Twitter: @carr2n

The Reinvention of an Anti-War Activist

Kyrsten Sinema isn't an Anti-War Activist???

Kyrsten Sinema is also a gun grabber and wants to flush the Second Amendment down the toilet.

Source

The Reinvention of an Anti-War Activist

Alana Goodman | @alanagoodman 07.23.2012 - 10:00 AM

You wouldn’t normally expect Washington Democrats to spend much time fretting over a congressional primary in Arizona. But the three-way Democratic race between Kyrsten Sinema, Andrei Cherny, and David Schapira is getting a surprising amount of attention from national Democrats, the pro-Israel community and the political media.

Ten years ago, Sinema was one of those radical left-wing activists who donned pink tutus at anti-war rallies and organized with anti-Israel groups. Today, the 36-year-old is running for Congress as an AIPAC-supporting moderate who would have voted in favor of the Afghanistan intervention.

The problem? Some Democrats say her evolution doesn’t add up. For one, Sinema’s been involved with anti-Israel and anti-war groups much more recently than her campaign has acknowledged. And while she recently released a strongly-worded pro-Israel position paper [hmmm... an atheist, anti-war activist that supports war mongering Israel??], her latest comments on foreign policy issues have been dodgy and confusing. [I suspect that is very intentional, so she won't lose any votes from fence sitters who don't know if she is for or against something]

“Is she for or against killing bin Laden?” asked former AIPAC spokesman Josh Block. “Based on her record, you don’t know. You would think when you’re considering a member of Congress, you would know their positions on these issues.”

One Democratic Arizona state representative who has worked with Sinema said her views are impossible to decipher. [Again I suspect that is very intentional, so she won't lose any votes from fence sitters who don't know if she is for or against something]

“When she wanted to be an activist, she was anti-war, all these kinds of things that now she says she never was,” he said. “I don’t think she actually has a foreign policy core, I think she has a political core.” [hmmm so Kyrsten Sinema is now denying being an anti-war activist????]

According to the Washington Free Beacon’s Adam Kredo, Sinema didn’t just dabble in radical circles; she helped organize and lead extreme anti-war groups that took anti-Israel positions on issues like the right of return and Israel’s self defense. Townhall’s Guy Benson reported that she was involved in anarchist riots that encouraged property destruction. [To be honest Sinema always has been a socialist like Drew Sullivan's Phoenix Anarchists, but I don't ever remember hearing about her at a Phoenix Anarchist event. ]

Sinema’s campaign disputed the claim that she was involved with anti-Israel activism, calling it a smear tactic by opponents.

“These weren’t anti-Israel groups. These were ‘Let’s not go to war with Iraq and Afghanistan groups,’” Sinema’s spokesman Rodd McLeod told me. He acknowledged that there may have been anti-Israel elements at some of the rallies she attended, but that this never represented her own view. “Frankly it’s sexist. She has to agree with the people she marches with, when she’s a 25-year-old grad student?”

That phrasing is slightly misleading, since Sinema’s involvement with radical and anti-Israel causes continued well beyond her mid-20s. Two years ago, Sinema was a featured speaker at an anti-war rally sponsored by Code Pink, the End the War Coalition, and Women in Black. She also sat on the board of the Progressive Democrats of America in 2006 and 2007, when she was entering her second term as an Arizona state representative. During that time, PDA issued a statement condemning the pro-Israel lobby and equating it with Palestinian terrorism.

“PDA opposes the powerful and dangerous lobbies that distort US foreign policy in the Middle East, much as we condemn those Palestinians guilty of waging and supporting terrorist war against Israeli civilians,” read the statement.

The organization also blamed Israeli policy for Palestinian terror attacks.

“[W]hile we condemn such terrorism, it remains our belief that the root cause of violence in Israel and Palestine is the Israeli occupation and intransigence, despite Israel’s trumpeted withdrawal from Gaza.”

When I raised this with McLeod, he said he wasn’t aware Sinema was ever a PDA board member and that the statement didn’t reflect her views. “She does not believe Israeli intransigence is the root cause of the conflict,” he said. “To conflate terrorism…with political activity is just absurd. She would never support that.”

Some of Sinema’s positions on national security are also unclear. In a May questionnaire requesting an endorsement from the PDA, Sinema wrote that she “led efforts opposing these wars [in Iraq and Afghanistan] before they even started.” [So was Sinema always been a war monger, who hangs out with anti-war folks????]

That same month, she told The Hill newspaper that she would have voted to authorize the 2001 Afghanistan intervention if she had been in Congress at the time — and added that she also supports military intervention in Sudan and Somalia.

The campaign doesn’t believe this is a contradiction. “She makes a distinction between an invasion and occupation, and the use of military force,” McLeod explained.

Sinema also seems unfamiliar with some of the content in her staunchly pro-Israel position paper. The Jewish Journal’s Shmuel Rosner obtained private email conversations in which Sinema contradicted portions of the paper and seemed perplexed by what a “demilitarized” Palestinian state meant.

When I asked McLeod how much involvement Sinema had with the paper, he said she had done much of the work herself. “I did one edit on it, but she worked with members of the community on it.”

But in one of the emails cited by the Jewish Journal, Sinema claimed that her staff had written the paper, not her. [Yea, a typical lying politician. Blame your STAFF for any statements that make you look bad!!!!]

“You are right, staff writes position papers,” she wrote. “I will ask staff to edit and get an updated and accurate position uploaded to the website this week.”

Sinema refused to answer questions about her history when I called her on the phone. Instead, she said I would have to request an interview through her office.

“I assume you got this [cell phone] number from my opponents, and I’m sure they’re trying to spread some horrible stories about me,” she said,

When I got in touch with her spokesperson, McLeod, he said Sinema was busy and wouldn’t have time to talk to me directly.

Kyrsten Sinema isn't an atheist?????

Even though Sinema does not claim the atheist mantle, nontheist groups consider her one of their own.

It sure sounds like Kyrsten Sinema will say ANYTHING to get elected.

While Sinema's campaign was initially unavailable for comment after Tuesday's election, spokesman Justin Unga said Friday that Sinema does not consider herself a nonbeliever, adding that she prefers a "secular approach.''

Kyrsten Sinema, Arizona Democrat, To Replace Pete Stark As Sole Atheist In Congress

Religion News Service | By Kimberly Winston Posted: 11/08/2012 7:35 am EST Updated: 11/09/2012 4:46 pm EST

(RNS) Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif., the only openly atheist member of Congress, lost his race for another term on Tuesday (Nov. 6).

But secularists will not remain unrepresented in the Capitol. Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, a former Arizona state senator who was raised Mormon and is a bisexual, has narrowly won her pitch for a House seat by 2,000 votes.

"We are sad to see Pete Stark go," said Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association, which gave Stark its Humanist of the Year award in 2008.

"He was a pioneer for us, and by being open about his lack of a belief in God we hope that he has opened the door for people like Kyrsten Sinema and others that will come after her."

While Sinema's campaign was initially unavailable for comment after Tuesday's election, spokesman Justin Unga said Friday that Sinema does not consider herself a nonbeliever, adding that she prefers a "secular approach.''

"Kyrsten believes the terms non-theist, atheist or nonbeliever are not befitting of her life's work or personal character,'' Unga said in email. "She does not identify as any of the above.''

Stark, who turns 80 this year, is the dean of the California congressional delegation and has served Fremont, a religiously diverse community near San Jose, since 1972. He "came out" as a nonbeliever in 2007, and went on to win two re-election bids. But this time he faced recent redistricting and a fellow Democratic challenger, Eric Salwell, almost 50 years his junior.

"I don't think his lack of belief in a god had anything to do with the results of this election," Speckhardt said. "The numbers were close."

But during the campaign, Salwell raised Stark's 2011 vote against reaffirming "In God We Trust" as the national motto, a vote in which he was joined by just eight other lawmakers. The outspoken Stark accused Salwell of taking bribes, an accusation which he eventually had to apologize for.

Still, Speckhardt said Stark's achievements for nontheists include his opposition to the war in Iraq and his support of health care reform and civil rights. He also worked for congressional recognition of Darwin Day and the National Day of Reason, which nontheists observe to promote science education and critical thinking.

"Humanism is not just a lack of belief in God, it is a positive, progressive philosophy," Speckhardt said. "So for us, he has done things every day."

Sinema, 36, has much in common with Stark ideologically. Having previously served as both an Arizona state senator and representative, she has a long record of supporting women's rights, marriage equality, gay rights and science education.

Even though Sinema does not claim the atheist mantle, nontheist groups consider her one of their own.

"This is a step forward in that she was able to run openly as a nontheist and it didn't seem to be an issue," said Lauren Anderson Youngblood, communications manager for the Secular Coalition for America, whose Arizona branch supported Sinema's election. "That is a great thing for the community, especially because with the loss of Pete Stark, we are left with a big hole."

Editor's note: The post has been updated to reflect input from the Sinema campaign about Sinema's beliefs. [And of course that probably seems to change on who she wants to vote for her. ]

PLEA endorses Sinema's congressional bid

Police officers LOVE Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema

Phoenix Law Enforcement Association endorses Sinema's congressional bid

I suspect the reason Kyrsten Sinema tried to flush Arizona's medical marijuana act down the toilet by interdicting a bill that would have slapped a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana was to keep her cop friends who give her lots of money happy.

Source

PLEA endorses Sinema's congressional bid

Posted: Jan 05, 2012 4:14 PM Updated: Jan 17, 2013 4:14 PM

By Phil Benson - email

The Phoenix Law Enforcement Association on Thursday endorsed Democrat Kyrsten Sinema's run for Congress.

Sinema, of Phoenix, declared her candidacy Tuesday and resigned from the Arizona Senate to run for the U.S. House seat from Arizona's 9th Congressional District.

"As a state legislator, Kyrsten did more than just give lip service in support of law enforcement and police officers," said Levi Bolton, spokesperson for PLEA. "She stood by those words and voted on numerous occasions to support us." [See the police will tell you themselves that Kyrsten Sinema supports the police state. Her attempt to slap a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana is the best example of that I can give you]

"Kyrsten's proven commitment to protecting those who protect our community will make her a strong and effective advocate for police and first responders in Congress," Bolton added.

The newly drawn 9th District includes much of central Maricopa County, taking in Tempe and parts of Phoenix and Mesa.

At least one other prominent Democrat may run for the seat. State Sen. David Schapira of Tempe has said he may run.

Republican U.S. Rep. Ben Quayle also lives in the district, but he may run instead in an adjacent district.

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors will pick a replacement to serve the rest of Sinema's Senate term.

Copyright 2012 KPHO. All rights reserved. The Associated Press contributed to this story.

Liar - Kerry’s claim that he opposed Bush’s invasion of Iraq

Source

Kerry’s claim that he opposed Bush’s invasion of Iraq

Posted by Glenn Kessler at 06:02 AM ET, 09/10/2013

“You know, Senator Chuck Hagel, when he was senator, Senator Chuck Hagel, now secretary of defense, and when I was a senator, we opposed the president’s decision to go into Iraq, but we know full well how that evidence was used to persuade all of us that authority ought to be given.”

— Secretary of State John F. Kerry, in an interview with MSNBC, Sept. 5, 2013

This is at least the second time since becoming secretary that Kerry has asserted that he opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq while serving as a Democratic senator from Massachusetts. The first time the Kerry made this claim, during a student forum in Ethiopia, his statement mysteriously disappeared from the official State Department transcript.

But then he said it again, on television, also dragging Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel into the mix. So let’s take a trip back in time and see what Kerry actually said in 2003.

The Facts

When it comes to war, Kerry often takes a highly nuanced position. He voted against the congressional resolution authorizing force in the 1991 Gulf War, but voted for the 2002 resolution that supported military action against Iraq. Both votes turned out to be bad political bets.

When Kerry opposed the 1991 resolution, he complained that the George H.W. Bush administration had done too little to involve the rest of the world in its campaign to oust Iraq from Kuwait. But in 2002, he praised the coalition that had been formed for the first Gulf War, in part to complain that George W. Bush had thus far failed to secure the same level of cooperation.

When Kerry voted for the 2002 resolution, he warned he would not support war if Bush failed to win the support of the international community in the absence of an imminent threat. “Let me be clear, the vote I will give to the president is for one reason and one reason only: To disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections in joint concert with our allies,” Kerry said.

But Kerry also said that the burden to avoid war was on the Iraqi leader: “Saddam Hussein has a choice: He can continue to defy the international community, or he can fulfill his longstanding obligations to disarm. He is the person who has brought the world to this brink of confrontation.”

Thus, as the war approached in early 2003, Kerry appeared generally supportive, though critical of the administration’s diplomatic efforts. He was listed in news reports as one of the Democratic presidential aspirants who backed an invasion, though some reporters noted the Hamlet quality of his remarks.

As the Los Angeles Times headlined one article in January of that year, “On Iraq, Kerry Appears Either Torn or Shrewd.” The newspaper noted that “virtually all of Kerry’s rivals for the 2004 Democratic nomination believe he is trying to straddle the issue by shifting his emphasis at different times and for different audiences.”

By the time of the March invasion, after Secretary of State Colin L. Powell’s United Nations presentation on Iraq’s alleged weapons, Kerry backed the attack, according to articles that appeared in the Boston Globe (and which were written by one of his current aides at the State Department).

“It appears that with the deadline for exile come and gone, Saddam Hussein has chosen to make military force the ultimate weapons inspections enforcement mechanism,” Kerry said. “If so, the only exit strategy is victory. This is our common mission and the world’s cause. We’re in this together. We want to complete the mission while safeguarding our troops, avoiding innocent civilian casualties, disarming Saddam Hussein, and engaging the community of nations to rebuild Iraq,” he said.

Kerry criticized what he called “a failure of diplomacy of a massive order” but told gthe Globe that if he were president, he may not have been able to avoid war.

Similarly, Hagel — who later also emerged as a harsh critic of the administration’s handling of the war — voted for the 2002 resolution and also supported the invasion.

“This war is bigger than just killing Saddam Hussein,” Hagel told CBS News on March 21, 2003. “The fact is, as we have stated for 12 years, his regime has been in violation of the United Nations resolutions. His regime has possessed, or probably still does possess, weapons of mass destruction. So we shouldn’t personalize it. We should dismantle his regime, disarm his regime and work with the people of Iraq and in that region to give that country a new start, and hopefully that will be a start with democratic institutions and freedom for all people.”

A Kerry aide sent The Fact Checker a few clips of comments that Kerry made in 2004, as he was challenging Bush for the presidency, that that if he had been president and had access to the same intelligence that Bush had, he would not have gone to war in Iraq. But that’s not the same as claiming he opposed the decision to attack Iraq in 2003.

The Pinocchio Test

Many politicians have a tendency to look back at their past statements with rose-colored glasses. But given that Kerry has now twice in recent months made the claim that he opposed the war in Iraq, this is clearly not a case of a momentary slip-up.

For Kerry, the uncomfortable fact remains that he voted to authorize the use of force against Iraq, he believed the intelligence that Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and he said there was little choice but to launch an invasion to disarm him. Kerry may have been highly critical of Bush’s diplomatic efforts in advance of the invasion, but that is not the same thing as opposing the war when it started.

It’s time for the secretary to stop making this claim. In trying to make a distinction between his vote to authorize the war and his later dismay at how it turned out, Kerry earns Four Pinocchios.

Four Pinocchios

Arizona Conference of Police and Sheriffs Endorses Kyrsten Sinema

The Arizona Conference of Police and Sheriffs Endorses Kyrsten Sinema

March 29th, 2012

PHOENIX, ARIZ. – Saturday, the Arizona Conference of Police and Sheriffs (AZCOPS) endorsed Kyrsten Sinema for Congress. AZCOPS represents over 4,800 uniformed deputy sheriffs, police, juvenile corrections and probation officers around Arizona. AZCOPS joins the Arizona Highway Patrol Association, Arizona Police Association and Phoenix Law Enforcement Association representing the most law enforcement endorsements for any of the Congressional District 9 candidates in the race, showing Sinema as the strongest candidate on law enforcement issues.

“Kyrsten Sinema has stood up for law enforcement and we are proud to stand with her,” said Ed Neidkowski, President of AZCOPS. “Her record in the Arizona legislature shows she knows what law enforcement officers and their families need and that’s why we want to send her to Congress.”

“Our law enforcement officers stand for us every day,” Sinema said. “I’m proud to stand up for them.”

Kyrsten Sinema is running for Congress in Arizona’s new Congressional District 9, based in Phoenix, Tempe and the East Valley. In 2011, Kyrsten was lauded by the Arizona Republic for her “remarkable” ability to “partner with Republicans in both the House and Senate” to pass legislation while remaining “a staunch defender of key Democratic priorities.”

ARIZONA FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE LOVES KYRSTEN SINEMA

ARIZONA FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE STAND WITH KYRSTEN SINEMA

July 12th, 2012

Phoenix, AZ – Today, the Arizona Fraternal Order of Police announced their endorsement of Kyrsten Sinema in her race for Arizona’s Ninth Congressional District. The F.O.P. is one of Arizona’s largest organizations of sworn law enforcement officers. They are committed to improving the working conditions of law enforcement officers and the safety of those who serve and protect our communities. Many of the benefits and rights afforded to Arizona law enforcement officers are the result of efforts by the Arizona F.O.P.

“Sinema will be the right kind of leader in Congress,” said John Ortolano, President of the Arizona Fraternal Order of Police. “To get the job done at the Arizona legislature she reached across the aisle and put families first. Her strong support for public safety and working standards make her the right choice for Congress.”

“The Fraternal Order of Police stand with our campaign as I’ve been honored to stand with them over the years,” said Sinema. “I’m humbled to have their support. The work that they to do protect our keep our neighborhoods and families safe is vital the communities in CD9 and in our state.”

National Association of Police Organizations backs Sinema

National Association of Police Organizations back Sinema for Congress

Posted: Tuesday, August 7, 2012 10:37 am

Updated: 12:43 pm, Tue Sep 11, 2012.

Send submissions to Beverly Stidham, Ahwatukee Foothills News

The National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO) announced Friday its support for Kyrsten Sinema’s campaign for Congress. NAPO is a coalition of police unions and associations from across the United States that serves to advance the interests of America’s law enforcement through legislative and legal advocacy, political action and education.

They join the Fraternal Order of Police, Phoenix Law Enforcement Association, Arizona Police Association, Arizona Highway Patrol Association and the Professional Fire Fighters Association in their support of Sinema’s campaign.

Sinema was born and raised in Arizona, the child of an educator and homemaker. She grew up poor; when she was a child, her family lived in an abandoned gas station for two years while her stepfather tried to find a job.

In order to help kids who had some of the same disadvantages she did, Sinema became a school social worker.

For more information, visit www.KyrstenSinema.com.

Kyrsten Sinema thinks you are guilty till proven innocent???

Source

Thursday, February 25, 2010

Sinema bill to crack down on human trafficking passes committee unanimously

By Arizona House Democrats at 2:26 PM

STATE CAPITOL, PHOENIX – A bill that gives police more tools to arrest criminals who traffic people for sex or labor slavery passed the House Judiciary Committee today.

House Bill 2673, sponsored by Assistant House Democratic Leader Kyrsten Sinema, eliminates a clause in Arizona law that requires police to prove that the trafficked individual be obtained “for transport” to qualify as being trafficked for sex or labor. The bill also aids prosecutors to convict traffickers.

“This bill gives law enforcement a greater ability to fight heinous crimes like human trafficking for sex or slave labor,” Sinema said. “It’s a simple fix that makes a huge difference for public safety in our neighborhoods.”

HB 2673 eliminates the requirement that a person be enticed, recruited, harbored, provided or otherwise obtained for transport for an offense to qualify as sex trafficking or trafficking of persons for forced labor or services.

The bill passed committee unanimously with bipartisan support.

Kyrsten Sinema picks up AFL-CIO police union support

Mar 22, 2012, 10:58am MST

Kyrsten Sinema picks up AFL-CIO support in 9th District race

Mike Sunnucks

Kyrsten Sinema has picked up a big organized labor endorsement in the crowed race for Arizona's new 9th Congressional District.

The Arizona AFL-CIO is backing Sinema in the Democratic primary against Arizona Senate Minority Leader David Schapria and former state party Chairman Andrei Cherny.

Cherny has the backing the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), real estate developer and Democratic Party financier Jim Pederson and former state Attorney General Terry Goddard.

Police unions and some other labor groups are also backing Sinema, who is an attorney and former state lawmaker.

The 9th District is new for this year’s elections. It include South Scottsdale, Tempe, Ahwatukee, Paradise Valley and western edges of the East Valley.

There are a number of Republicans also running in the GOP primary for the new open seat.

Mike Sunnucks writes about politics, law, airlines, sports business and the economy.

Arizona Conference of Police and Sheriffs Endorses Sinema

The Arizona Conference of Police and Sheriffs Endorses Kyrsten Sinema

March 29th, 2012

PHOENIX, ARIZ. – Saturday, the Arizona Conference of Police and Sheriffs (AZCOPS) endorsed Kyrsten Sinema for Congress. AZCOPS represents over 4,800 uniformed deputy sheriffs, police, juvenile corrections and probation officers around Arizona. AZCOPS joins the Arizona Highway Patrol Association, Arizona Police Association and Phoenix Law Enforcement Association representing the most law enforcement endorsements for any of the Congressional District 9 candidates in the race, showing Sinema as the strongest candidate on law enforcement issues.

“Kyrsten Sinema has stood up for law enforcement and we are proud to stand with her,” said Ed Neidkowski, President of AZCOPS. “Her record in the Arizona legislature shows she knows what law enforcement officers and their families need and that’s why we want to send her to Congress.”

“Our law enforcement officers stand for us every day,” Sinema said. “I’m proud to stand up for them.”

Kyrsten Sinema is running for Congress in Arizona’s new Congressional District 9, based in Phoenix, Tempe and the East Valley. In 2011, Kyrsten was lauded by the Arizona Republic for her “remarkable” ability to “partner with Republicans in both the House and Senate” to pass legislation while remaining “a staunch defender of key Democratic priorities.”

Police unions that support Kyrsten Sinema

These are some of the police unions and police organizations that love Kyrsten Sinema.

This list came from Kyrsten Sinema's web page

Note, I removed all the non police endorsements

Source

Endorsements

• AFL-CIO (i.e. police unions)
• American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
• Arizona Conference of Police and Sheriffs (AZCOPS)
• Arizona Fraternal Order of Police
• Arizona Highway Patrol Association
• Arizona Police Association
• Arizona Probation Officers Association (AZPOA)
• National Association of Police Organizations (NAPO)
• Phoenix Law Enforcement Association
• Phoenix Police Sergeants and Lieutenants Association (PPSLA)

Arizona Fraternal Order of Police endorses Sinema

Sinema wins endorsements, raises $626,187

July 20, 2012 by ADI News Services

The Arizona Fraternal Order of Police has announced their endorsement of Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona’s Ninth Congressional District. The F.O.P. is one of Arizona’s largest organizations of sworn law enforcement officers.

“Sinema will be the right kind of leader in Congress,” said John Ortolano, President of the Arizona Fraternal Order of Police.

Sinema reported that her campaign raised $367,453 in April, May and June. Overall, her campaign has raised $626,187 this year, with donations coming from 3,882 individuals. The average donation to Sinema’s campaign in the second quarter report was $125.15. The campaign reported having over $358,000 on hand going into the summer primary season.

The fundraising report comes on the heels of Sinema’s endorsements from labor unions, elected officials including: AFL-CIO, Building Trades Council, and unions representing Teamsters, Firefighters, Painters, Electricians, Transportation Workers, Sheet Metal Workers, Police Officers, Sheriffs, Steel workers, Machinists, and Food Service workers.

Check out Zander Welton's webpage

Source

Zander Welton is a 5 year old child who suffers from cortical dysplasia. This illnesses causes him to have seizures.

Zander Welton is one of the youngest, if not youngest holder of a medical marijuana card in Arizona. The CBD in marijuana helps prevent these seizures.

Zander Welton's medical marijuana is hash oil, or hashish oil which is placed under his tongue so his body can absorb the CBD.

But that cold, cruel, uncaring bastard Will Humble who is the director of the Arizona Department of Health Services says hash oil is a crime, not a medicine and is doing the best he can to prevent Zander Welton from getting his medical marijuana.

Currently the medical marijuana dispensary Harvest of Tempe is donating the $300 a week in medical marijuana Zander needs, because his parents can't afford it.

Of course if Arizona Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema had her way she would have slapped a 300 percent, yes, that's a three hundred percent tax on medical marijuana which would bring the cost of Zanders treatment up to $1,200 a week with the state of Arizona keeping $900 of that in taxes.

Arizona Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema want's you to think that she will help you get low cost medical care. But the when you see the bills that she introduces and the taxes she proposes it is pretty obvious that Arizona Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema isn't going to help you get low cost medical care.

Will Humble shovels the BS on why hashish isn't marijuana

Here's Arizona Department of Health Services Director Will Humble's convoluted cockamamie definition on why hashish and hash oil are not medical marijuana.

I think it is 100 percent BS!!!!

Please don't shoot me for Will Humble being a jerk. I am just the messenger and giving you the nonsense Will Humble produces.

Let's face it Will Humble and his boss Arizona Governor Jan Brewer are just tyrants who don't want Arizona's medical marijuana laws to get in the way of their "War on Drugs" which is just a jobs program for cops, prosecutors, public defenders, probation officers, judges and prison guards along with being a government welfare program for prison construction companies.

Now if you ask me I think that "medical marijuana" was in Prop 203 includes any part of the marijuana plant which helps a patient. That should include concentrated forms for marijuana like hashish and hash oil.

Source

AZ Dept. of Health Services Director's Blog

Will Humble
ADHS Director

Marijuana v. Cannabis

August 30th, 2013 by Will Humble

Are Marijuana and Cannabis the same thing when it comes to Arizona Law? The short answer is no- and the distinction may be an important one for Qualified Patients.

The Arizona Medical Marijuana Act provides registry identification card holders and dispensaries a number of legal protections for their medical use of Marijuana pursuant to the Act. Interestingly, the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act definition of “Marijuana” in A.R.S. § 36-2801(8) differs from the Arizona Criminal Code’s (“Criminal Code”) definition of “Marijuana” in A.R.S. § 13-3401(19). In addition, the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act makes a distinction between “Marijuana” and “Usable Marijuana.” A.R.S. § 36-2801(8) and (15).

The definition of “Marijuana” in the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act is “… all parts of any plant of the genus cannabis whether growing or not, and the seeds of such plant.” The definition of “Usable Marijuana” is “… the dried flowers of the marijuana plant, and any mixture or preparation thereof, but does not include the seeds, stalks and roots of the plant and does not include the weight of any non-marijuana ingredients combined with marijuana and prepared for consumption as food or drink.” The “allowable amount of marijuana” for a qualifying patient and a designated caregiver includes “two-and-one half ounces of usable marijuana.” A.R.S. § 36-2801(1).

The definition of “Marijuana” in the Criminal Code is “… all parts of any plant of the genus cannabis, from which the resin has not been extracted, whether growing or not, and the seeds of such plant.” “Cannabis” (a narcotic drug under the Criminal Code) is defined as: “… the following substances under whatever names they may be designated: (a) The resin extracted from any part of a plant of the genus cannabis, and every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture or preparation of such plant, its seeds or its resin. Cannabis does not include oil or cake made from the seeds of such plant, any fiber, compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture or preparation of the mature stalks of such plant except the resin extracted from the stalks or any fiber, oil or cake or the sterilized seed of such plant which is incapable of germination; and (b) Every compound, manufacture, salt, derivative, mixture or preparation of such resin or tetrahydrocannabinol.” A.R.S. § 13-3401(4) and (20)(w).

An issue the Department has been wrestling with for some time is how the definition of “Marijuana” and “Usable Marijuana” in the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act and the definition of “Cannabis” and “Marijuana” in the Criminal Code fit together. This confusion, which appears to be shared by dispensaries and registered identification card holders alike, is not easy to clear up and has resulted in the Department receiving numerous questions regarding the interplay between the protections in A.R.S. § 36-2811 and the Criminal Code. While we can’t provide legal advice as to whether a certain conduct is punishable under the Criminal Code (only an individual’s or entity’s legal counsel can do this), “Cannabis” is defined as the “resin extracted from any part of a plant of the genus cannabis” and “Cannabis” is listed as a narcotic drug according to the Criminal Code in A.R.S. § 13-3401(4) and (20)(w).

In other words, registered identification card holders and dispensaries may be exposed to criminal prosecution under the Criminal Code for possessing a narcotic drug if the card holder or dispensary possesses resin extracted from any part of a plant of the genus Cannabis or an edible containing resin extracted from any part of a plant of the genus Cannabis. If you’re concerned that your conduct may expose you to criminal prosecution, you may wish to consult an attorney. We’ll be providing some specific guidance for dispensaries licensed by the ADHS next week.

Brazilian president, at United Nations, blasts spying by Washington

Brazilian president, at United Nations, blasts spying by Washington

By Carol J. Williams and Vincent Bevins

September 24, 2013, 7:59 a.m.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff used her lead-off speech at the annual United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday to blast the United States for operating a worldwide spying network that she said violates the sovereignty of other countries and the civil liberties of their citizens.

Rousseff had already signaled her nation's outrage over reports of National Security Agency data interceptions in Brazil by canceling a summit and state dinner with President Obama that had been set for late October.

"What we have before us is a serious case of violation of human rights and civil liberties," Rousseff told the assembly immediately after opening pleasantries.

She described arguments that the technological surveillance of individuals, businesses and diplomatic missions is necessary in the global fight against terrorism as "untenable" and an affront to the sovereignty of nations.

"Brazil can protect itself," Rousseff declared. "Brazil doesn’t provide shelter to terrorist groups."

Rousseff never mentioned Obama or the NSA by name but said her nation's dismay over "this case of disrespect" had been communicated to Washington, along with its insistence that Brazil "cannot possibly allow recurring and illegal actions to go on as if normal practice."

Since July, Brazilian news organization Globo has published three reports based on documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, which alleged that the United States had spied on Brazilian citizens, Rousseff herself, as well as important state-run oil company, Petrobras.

Rousseff has strongly denounced the alleged eavesdropping and asked Obama for a public apology and concrete actions to curb it. The decision to cancel the Washington trip, a rare diplomatic snub of the United States, was well received in many parts of Brazil, especially in the base of her left-of-center Workers Party, many of whose members have memories of a U.S.-backed military dictatorship that spied on dissidents.

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