http://lawfuel.com/show-release.asp?ID=19970

The Colorado National Guard, for the first time ever, received an asset forfeiture sharing check this afternoon at a ceremony that took place inside the State Capitol. The check was a result of a Western Slope marijuana investigation, involving the Guard as well as a number of federal agencies. Agencies participating in the ceremony included the United States Attorney, and representatives from the Bureau of Land Management Enforcement Division, the IRS-Criminal Investigation, and the Colorado National Guard.

Major General H. Michael Edwards, the Adjutant General of Colorado, was presented a $93,701 check for the National Guard’s role in the “Topliss” marijuana investigation, which included asset forfeiture. Beth and Alfred Topliss were arrested for growing marijuana on their property in rural Mesa County. A search warrant executed on the property resulted in a bizarre stand-off, where Mr. Topliss put a gun to his head and said, “I’ll kill the hostage if you don’t back-off.” The hostage was Mr. Topliss himself. The subject was disarmed, and ultimately he and his wife were convicted on state felony charges of possession of marijuana.

Under federal law, property involved in various crimes, including drug cultivation, may be seized and forfeited. In this case, the IRS was the seizing agency, at the request of the Mesa County Drug Task Force. The United States Attorney’s Office filed a forfeiture action against the Topliss’ property in U.S. District Court in Denver. As a result of the case, a court order was issued, forfeiting $375,000, which was the property’s value. Under federal law, the funds go to agencies involved in the investigation, for programs that aid law enforcement in apprehending criminals as well as to youth drug prevention programs. The Mesa County Drug Task Force also received a check during the event for $112,441.

A new Colorado law, Colorado Revised Statutes (CRS) 16-13-601 and 28-3-1303 (2) designate the Colorado National Guard as a law enforcement agency for the limited purpose of participating in the Federal Asset Forfeiture Program. This new law allows the Guard to receive forfeiture sharing monies from cases in which they play a direct role in investigating. The statutes do not expand the law enforcement authority in relation to other types of operations.

“No one should profit from crime,” said United States Attorney Troy Eid. “Besides facing prison and fines, drug-traffickers risk forfeiting their ill-gotten gains.”

No one should profit from crime… except those in government apparently. Asset forfeiture is bad enough already… this is only going to make it worse.

And really… “ill-gotten gains?” Providing customers with products and services you don’t like are ill-gotten? Well I guess when you have the guns and the aura of legitimacy with regard to violence… I suppose it’s whatever Troy says.

http://news.cnet.com/…

IRS undercover operations: Privacy invasion?
The bailout bill also gives the Internal Revenue Service new authority to conduct undercover operations. It would immunize the IRS from a passel of federal laws, including permitting IRS agents to run businesses for an extended sting operation, to open their own personal bank accounts with U.S. tax dollars, and so on. (Think IRS agents posing as accountants or tax preparers and saying, “I’m not sure if that deduction is entirely legal, but it’ll save you $1,000. Want to take it?”) That section had expired as of January 1, 2008, and would now be renewed.

Starting with the so-called Anti-Drug Abuse Act in 1988, the IRS has possessed this authority temporarily, with occasional multiple-year lapses. A 1999 internal report said the IRS had 126 “trained undercover agents” working in field offices at the time. This is the first time that such undercover authority would be made permanent.

Sens. Max Baucus (D) and Chuck Grassley (R) have been pushing to make it permanent for a while, claiming (PDF) in April that: “Undercover operations are an integral part of IRS efforts to detect and prove noncompliance. The temporary status of this provision creates uncertainty, as the IRS plans its undercover efforts from year to year.”

There’s another section of the bailout bill worth noting. It lets the IRS give information from individual tax returns to any federal law enforcement agency investigating suspected “terrorist” activity, which can, in turn, share it with local and state police. Intelligence agencies such as the CIA and the National Security Agency can also receive that information.

The information that can be shared includes “a taxpayer’s identity, the nature, source, or amount of his income, payments, receipts, deductions, exemptions, credits, assets, liabilities, net worth, tax liability, tax withheld, deficiencies, overassessments, or tax payments, whether the taxpayer’s return was, is being, or will be examined or subject to other investigation or processing, or any other data received by, recorded by, prepared by, furnished to, or collected by the Secretary with respect to a return.”

That provision had already existed in federal law and automatically expired on January 1, 2008.

What’s a little odd is that there’s been little to no discussion of the IRS sections of the bailout bill, even though they raise privacy concerns. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said this week: “I will continue to work with congressional leaders to find a way forward to pass a comprehensive plan to stabilize our financial system and protect the American people by limiting the prospects of further deterioration in our economy.” He never mentioned the necessity of additional IRS undercover operations.

While everything is going on and the abolition of the Fed is on many people’s minds… lets not forget the terrible things the IRS does and that it too needs to be abolished.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/…

Posted by Kathryn Muratore at September 14, 2008 01:23 PM

Since the big story broke last spring about prescription medicine showing up in municipal water, more and more tests have been run in different areas of the country, and all show the same general trend. Previously, I implicated the Drug War in being one of the culprits in this problem.

But I underestimated the depth of the guilt of the DEA. It turns out that the Drug War regulations make it prohibitively expensive to dispose of unused controlled substances in any other way, so medical facilities are dumping them down the drain.

From the AP article:

In a frustrating quirk in government policy, the most tightly controlled drugs — like painkilling narcotics prone to abuse — are the ones that most often elude environmental regulation when they become waste.

Federal narcotics regulators impose strict rules meant to keep controlled pharmaceuticals out of the wrong hands. Yet those rules also make these drugs nearly impossible to handle safely as waste, say hospital environmental administrators.

Though a leader in incinerating drug waste, this hospital still puts four gallons of controlled substances down the drain each year, says hazardous waste manager Steven Waderich.

It would be very expensive to do otherwise. “Managing controlled substances, the cost goes up just through the roof,” he says.

In nearby Robbinsdale, North Memorial Medical Center pours 50 gallons of controlled substances into its drains annually rather than pay $25,000 to handle and haul it away for safer disposal, says regulated waste coordinator Jerry Fink.

Part of the cost is due to federal rules that state anyone who handles controlled substances, other than a user, must be certified as a police officer or registered with the DEA. That goes for pharmacists, distributors, even waste handlers.

State waste regulators take their cue from federal law and regulations.

Thus, typical assisted-living centers, which are not registered with the DEA, cannot collect unused controlled drugs of residents for offsite disposal.

Even the destruction of controlled drugs must be meticulously documented, so they aren’t diverted to addicts. Medical facilities typically send a second staffer to bear witness when controlled substances are poured into sinks or toilets.

The result of ingesting these minute amounts of drug coctails is unknown and maybe harmless. However, this shouldn’t be a scare in the first place. The regulation of drugs, both of those legal and not, harm far more people than they ever help. From unintended conciquences such as this to increased crime and the rise in the police state to the creation of drugs like crack cocaine which may never had occured if not for the high costs of other drugs due to prohibition.

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Should medical marijuana be kept from minors at all costs? Why is it that pharmacists can dispense amphetamines without getting busted, but legal operators who dispense medical marijuana face prison time? Why do armed federal agents persist in raiding California?

With its sun, surf and small town atmosphere, California’s San Louis Obispo County is a good place to grow up. Seventeen-year-old Owen Beck played football and soccer for a local high school, but one day his thoughts abruptly turned away from sports and school. Doctors told Owen he had bone cancer, and would have to begin chemotherapy right away.

The young athlete suffered another blow—doctors would have to amputate his leg to try to keep the cancer from spreading. Chemotherapy attacked Owen’s cancer and his body, leaving him bald, gaunt, and vomiting the food he needed to recover. The amputation introduced Owen to a bizarre, new agony called phantom pain, and although doctors gave him powerful medication, nothing helped.

But might a new kind of pharmacy offer new hope? A medical marijuana dispensary had recently opened in the nearby city of Morro Bay. More than a decade earlier, California voters legalized medical marijuana and Morro Bay’s mayor and Chamber of Commerce held a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the dispensary, and its owner Charlie Lynch.

Owen’s parents knew the idea of giving medical marijuana to a 17-year-old strikes many people as scandalous. Local Sheriff Pat Hedges even asserts that allowing medical marijuana is “not in the best interest of a community that prides itself on providing a healthy, family environment.”

But the Becks weren’t concerned about what other people thought; they were focused on helping their son. So with a written doctor recommendation in hand, they purchased medical marijuana for their teenage son. The new medication eased Owen’s pain and nausea like nothing else had, and the Becks grew fond of Charlie Lynch, who would sometimes refuse payment because, says Steve Beck, “He was just a compassionate kind of a guy.”

But one day, Owen’s life took another abrupt turn. Federal agents and local sheriff deputies raided Charlie Lynch’s dispensary, and seized nearly everything inside, including Owen’s medicine. “He had a prescription from a doctor at Stanford, and they took his stuff!” says Debbie Beck. Federal agents cuffed Lynch, and put him behind bars. Even though state and local laws allow for it, medical marijuana is still illegal under federal law. And because he had clients like Owen who were under age 21, Charlie Lynch faces heightened penalties. In California the average first-degree murder serves 20 years behind bars; Charlie Lynch could face a sentence as long as 100 years in prison.

The trial of Charlie Lynch begins this July.

http://www.breitbart.com/…

Americans are the world’s top consumers of cannabis and cocaine despite punitive US drug laws, according to an international study published in the online scientific magazine PLoS Medicine.

The study, released Monday, revealed that 16.2 percent of Americans had tried cocaine at least once, and 42.4 percent had used marijuana.

In second-place New Zealand, just 4.3 percent of study participants had used cocaine, and 41.9 percent marijuana.

The research was conducted at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, based on World Health Organization data from 54,068 people in 17 countries.

Rates of participation differed from country to country, and researchers noted uncertainty over how honestly people report their own drug use.

“Nevertheless, the findings present comprehensive data on the patterns of drug use from national samples representing all regions of the world,” a PLoS statement said.

A vast majority of survey participants from the United States, Europe, Japan and New Zealand had consumed alcohol, compared to smaller percentages from the Middle East, Africa and China.

The data also revealed socioeconomic patterns in drug use. Single young adult men with high income had the greatest tendency to regularly use drugs.

Drug use “does not appear to be simply related to drug policy,” the researchers wrote, “since countries with more stringent policies toward illegal drug use did not have lower levels of such drug use than countries with more liberal policies.”

In the Netherlands, where drug policy is more liberal than the United States, 1.9 percent of survey participants said they had used cocaine and 19.8 percent marijuana.

Twelve US 12 states including California permit medical use of marijuana, but possession and use remains prohibited under federal law.

And despite the US government’s massive anti-drug efforts, the United States remains the world’s top drug market, one amply supplied by South American cartels.

The US Drug Enforcement Agency has observed ever larger quantities of illegal drugs pouring into the country.

“We are seizing greater quantities of illegal drugs than ever before,” said a DEA statement last week.

In 2007, agents seized 41 metric tons of cocaine in just two raids, and denied drug traffickers record-breaking revenue of 3.5 billion dollars for the year, it said.

That war on drugs is working real well, huh?

http://consumerist.com/…

David becomes our first reader to fly under the TSA’s new ID policy. Formerly, if you refused or were unable to show ID you could still fly — but were required to undergo secondary screening by the TSA. Now they’ve altered their position slightly— fliers who willingly refuse to show ID are now barred from flying. The new rule went into effect over the weekend, and David says that in order to board the plane after forgetting his driver’s license he had to answer questions about his political party affiliation and previous addresses.

The new regulation doesn’t apply to those passengers who claim to have forgotten their ID— so essentially you are barred from claiming that you have a constitutional right to refuse to show ID to get on a plane. Here’s how the TSA explains it:

Beginning Saturday, June 21, 2008 passengers that willfully refuse to provide identification at security checkpoint will be denied access to the secure area of airports. This change will apply exclusively to individuals that simply refuse to provide any identification or assist transportation security officers in ascertaining their identity.”

This new procedure will not affect passengers that may have misplaced, lost or otherwise do not have ID but are cooperative with officers. Cooperative passengers without ID may be subjected to additional screening protocols, including enhanced physical screening, enhanced carry-on and/or checked baggage screening, interviews with behavior detection or law enforcement officers and other measures.

It turns out that “and other measures” include questions about political party affiliation and other questionable invasions of privacy, according to David:

Finally satisfied that I didn’t have ID, Laurie took my boarding pass and went away. She came back a few minutes later having photocopied it, and also had an affidavit that she requested I sign. It asked for my name and address, and stated in small print at the bottom that I did not have to fill it out, but if I didn’t I couldn’t fly. It also said that if I choose to fill it out and then provided false info, I would be in violation of federal law.

After filling out the affidavit, Laurie called a service to verify my address. The service needed me to then correctly answer three questions about myself, which Laurie relayed to me. The first was my date of birth, the second was a previous address (which I only got right on my second try), and the third was “You are registered to vote. Which political party have you registered with?” I got all three right, and only then did Laurie clear me to go through security.

Your party affiliation is public information isn’t it? At least in most states? What good does that do in confirming who you are? If it wasn’t shouldn’t that data not be used for identification purposes like this?