Progress Now Action

Striking another blow for what is right and just, Aaron Houston of MPP has helped move the issue of medical marijuana further into the mainstream. Later today, the federal House consider an amendment to the FY08 Commerce-Justice-Science spending bill by Maurice Hinchley (D-NY) that would prevent the Justice Department from using funds to block marijuana use for medical purposes in the 12 states that have laws allowing it. Hinchley's amendment last year attracted 163 votes and Mr. Houston predicts that support will increase to 183. He has been working very diligently so that patients suffering from the symptoms caused by cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis and other diseases can safely receive effective and inexpensive relief.

Opponents assert that substitutes, such as Marinol, are effective and even "better" than what they call "smoked marijuana," but they are never physicians, are they?  The Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiencies published a persuasive study on June 21st that demonstrates the emptiness of their arguments (click on the link to read the abstract).

Ave to our own Aaron! 

The excerpt below is from You Have No Rights: Stories of America in an Age of Repression (The New Press, 2007), a new book by the editor of The Progressive.  My second post (which was removed) regarded my profound disappointment with our governor (if you disagree, fine; I don’t care) and this regards my profound disappointment with my party’s elected national leadership.  To be sure the dictatorship under which we now live began under Republican control of the House and Senate, but it required and received support, however complaicent, of Democrats.  Whom to blame?  Both parties and ourselves.  Of course, there is hope: Diana DeGette nobly voted for the people, and she is powerful in the House.  But we must pressure every elected official to disavow and vote against our march to fascism.

But here’s the deal: the current state of the nation cannot be blamed on Bush alone. It’s Dubya, and it’s Hillary, and it’s Biden, and it’s Obama, and it’s you and it’s me, because we are blind.  Yes our Crusade against Islam is wrong – but it is a smokescreen.  Why are we in Iraq?  Anyone have an answer that is persuasive (as opposed to paranoid, psychosexual, etc.)?  Iraq serves to distract us from the imperialization of the presidency.  Do you hear any candidates addressing this issue at all?  And are we willing to ask them, for example: if elected will you rescind the special powers granted by the PATRIOT Act? 

I have only learned today about two apparently “common-knowledge” conspiracy “theories” -- one regards the North American Union, created after the signing of a study accord called the Security and Prosperity Partnership on 3/23/2005, and the other regards a document adopted by the Chicano Liberation Youth Conference in 1969 entitled, Plan Espiritual de Aztlan.  Neither is properly a theory, of course, any more than is Creationism or Intelligent Design -- a theory explains facts, ID, Creationism, and conspiracy “theories” are in actuality hypotheses.  Mencken once wrote that “you’ll never go broke underestimating the ignorance of the American electorate,” so I oughtn’t, I suppose, to be surprised at what we can convince ourselves of, but I always am.  Have you got any more?