Photo Credit: APWashington state’s marijuana industry is now open for business.
Twenty months after voters legalized recreational marijuana, the first pot stores are licensed and selling the drug. And business was already booming.
Amber McGowan, a manager at Cannabis City in Seattle, said she’s expecting to sell all 10 pounds in the store this first historic day.
“There’s definitely a market out there that would rather go the safe route, because a lot of people don’t like going to their dealer,” McGowan said. “The dealer is usually pretty shady.”
Washington state follows Colorado, which was the first to open pot retail stores on Jan. 1. Voters in both states legalized possession of up to an once of marijuana for recreational use in November 2012. Colorado was able to approve sales earlier because it licensed only medical marijuana shops that were already tightly regulated. Washington’s medical marijuana industry operates with very little government oversight.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2014-07-09 03:22:032016-04-11 11:07:35Open for Business: Legal Marijuana Sales Underway in Washington
Photo Credit: Shutterstock.comA government report shows that 173 people asked for, and received, medication doses high enough to induce death in 2013. It estimated that 119 people died as a result of those medications, though 159 total patients died.
In 2008, voters in Washington supported the patient-assisted suicide law, which went into effect in 2009. The law allows terminally ill patients who are expected to die six months or sooner after the diagnosis to be prescribed medication to end their lives. Two witnesses, including a non-relative, must be present when the medication is used.
According to Margaret Dore of Choice is an Illusion, a group opposed to “death with dignity” laws, “the new report is important for what it doesn’t say.”
“When Washington’s law was passed, it was sold as a completely voluntary act in which ‘only’ the patient would be allowed to take the lethal dose,” Dore told LifeSiteNews. “The act doesn’t actually say that, but that’s how it was sold.”
The government’s report reveals that in only two percent of cases was the prescribing physician present as the patient took the deadly drugs. Dore says because of this there’s a grave risk of abuse by family members.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2014-06-10 03:04:332016-04-11 11:08:50Washington Assisted Suicide Law Leads to Over 100 Deaths in 2013
Washington state lost its waiver from implementing certain parts of the No Child Left Behind education law, an action that could lead to layoffs and program cuts, Gov. Jay Inslee said in a statement Thursday.
In a letter to the state superintendent, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said that he would not renew the waiver because the state had failed to implement promised changes to how it evaluates teachers and principals. The state is the first to lose its waiver.
In February 2012, the state committed to making student learning growth a substantial factor in those reviews. Last August, it was placed on high-risk status for failing to implement that and other changes, giving the state until May 1 to produce a plan. Because that would require a legislative change and Washington’s legislature won’t reconvene until next January, Duncan said the state would be losing its waiver.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2014-04-25 02:45:202014-04-25 02:45:20Washington Becomes First State to Lose its Waiver from No Child Left Behind
Photo Credit: Kathleen Tyler ConklinGov. Jay Inslee said Tuesday he was suspending the use of the death penalty in Washington state, announcing a move that he hopes will enable officials to “join a growing national conversation about capital punishment.”
The Democrat said he came to the decision after months of review, meetings with family members of victims, prosecutors and law enforcement.
“There have been too many doubts raised about capital punishment, there are too many flaws in this system today,” Inslee said at a news conference. “There is too much at stake to accept an imperfect system.”
Inslee said that the use of the death penalty is inconsistent and unequal. The governor’s staff briefed lawmakers about the move on Monday night and Tuesday morning.
Washington, they say, is Hollywood for ugly people. It’s also debate club for the logically impaired. The past year included its share of fallacies, sophistries, oversimplifications and utter absurdities.
But a few prominent arguments committed the worst offenses against rational thought. Below are the three worst arguments made in Washington in 2013. These weren’t illogical brain freezes or odd beliefs spouted by backbenchers. These arguments were deliberately devised, promulgated and repeated by prominent politicians, which makes them all the more embarrassing.
“If we can save only one life…”
The demagoguery started early in 2013, as Democrats tried to push gun-control laws in the wake of the December 2012 school shooting in Newtown, Conn. The White House argued for gun restrictions using a litany of facile talking points, most absurdly this gem by President Obama: “If there’s even one life that can be saved, then we’ve got an obligation to try.”
Vice President Joe Biden echoed the line: “As the president said, if your actions result in only saving one life, they’re worth taking.” White House spokesman Jay Carney repeated the mantra: “If even one child’s life can be saved by the actions we take here in Washington, we must take those actions.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-12-31 01:53:592013-12-31 01:53:59Washington’s Three Most Irrational Arguments in 2013
Texas Senator Ted Cruz (R) told Glenn Beck during a radio interview Thursday that conservatives are “winning” the battle in Washington over Obamacare and the “government shutdown.”
“We’re winning the debate,” the senator remarked. “That’s why they are scared and they are attacking us. The more shrill it gets, the more scared they are.”
Cruz — one of the lawmakers who led the effort to defund Obamacare, and brought the issue to the forefront during a 21-hour speech on the Senate floor last week — referenced a Shakespeare quote that the lady “doth protest too much.”
“Why are they screaming so loudly? Why are they so personal? Why are they so filled with hate and fear? It’s because the American people are mobilized, are passionate and energized,” he said. “And even worse, [they] understand that Obamacare is hurting millions of Americans, and that has the left terrified out of their minds.”
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-10-04 01:10:462013-10-04 01:10:46‘We’re Winning’: Ted Cruz on the Latest in Washington Amid the ‘Government Shutdown’
Photo Credit: APFederal agents have raided a number of medical marijuana dispensaries in the Puget Sound region.
Drug Enforcement Administration spokeswoman Jodie Underwood said Wednesday afternoon the operation ended Wednesday evening, but she declined to provide any specifics of the operation.
Washington state legalized adult possession of up to an ounce of marijuana last fall, but marijuana remains illegal under federal law.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00newseditorhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngnewseditor2013-07-25 00:20:402016-04-11 11:18:25Federal Agents Raid Marijuana Dispensaries in Washington
Photo Credit: Blue Rider PressBy Erick Erickson. Mark Leibovich of the New York Times has written a pretty scathing book about Washington, DC, called This Town: Two Parties and a Funeral-Plus, Plenty of Valet Parking!-in America’s Gilded Capital. It is a pretty accurate portrayal of the Washington, DC more and more Americans have come to hold in contempt. There exists in Washington a new aristocracy where, for example, a poor boxer from Searchlight, NV, can get elected to the United States Senate, become wealthy enough to live at the Ritz, and see his family profit from K Street.
It is a city where the new aristocrats move and do not want to leave. It is a town in need of an enema. Read more from this story HERE.
By Luis Romano. Washington is a town that shuns wannabes and impostors to ensure no one as unsavory as the gate-crashing Salahis makes it into the inner sanctum. So, it’s no small irony that a guy who was embraced by the A-list soirees of D.C. ends up toppling the hors d’oeuvres trays.
Indeed, the nation’s capital is in full spasm over Mark Leibovich’s cutting takedown of the city’s cozy culture in his new book, “This Town.” The fear: That it will send a chill through the elite after-hours social circuit — where the real business of this town often gets done between reporters and sources. What has rattled many is that Leibovich did a chunk of his reporting at parties and funerals at which he was considered a guest — or, at least, not a working journalist taking detailed notes…
For his part, Leibovich says that he is “always working as a journalist.” And furthermore, he adds, it’s a real circus out there…
One of his prime targets in the book is Tammy Haddad, a former television producer who has hosted a lot of parties at which Leibovich was a regular. He portrays her as a social-climber and access-peddler, writing, “… perhaps a bit of a cartoon.”
And Leibovich clearly had a front-row seat to observe her. By his own count, he’s attended about 10 of Haddad’s parties over the years, including one or two of her famous annual garden brunches before the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. (He was dropped this year after Haddad got wind of what he was writing.) Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-07-19 04:05:562016-04-11 11:18:57‘This Town’ Needs an Enema (+video)
Photo Credit: Reuters An Army official apologized Friday for conducting an unannounced training mission around the small city of Port Angeles, Wash., using special operations helicopters that the mayor said “terrorized” his city.
Dozens of alarmed residents called police to ask what was going on and said the noise and light from the mystery helicopters buzzing around the city panicked horses and other livestock, The Peninsula Daily News reported.
The Army said the helicopters involved included both twin-engine Chinooks and Blackhawk attack helicopters.
“No one had any warning about the helicopters, no one said anything afterward, and today city officials had to spend hours just trying to find out what had happened — who had invaded Port Angeles,” said Cherie Kidd, mayor of the Olympic Peninsula city about 60 miles west of Seattle.
The training exercise involved part of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, which is based at Fort Campbell, Ky., but has individual units in various locations, said Sgt. Jimmy Norris, an I Corps spokesman at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Wash. Part of the 160th is based at Lewis-McChord, he said.
By Robert Fisk. Washington’s decision to arm Syria’s Sunni Muslim rebels has plunged America into the great Sunni-Shia conflict of the Islamic Middle East, entering a struggle that now dwarfs the Arab revolutions which overthrew dictatorships across the region.
For the first time, all of America’s ‘friends’ in the region are Sunni Muslims and all of its enemies are Shiites. Breaking all President Barack Obama’s rules of disengagement, the US is now fully engaged on the side of armed groups which include the most extreme Sunni Islamist movements in the Middle East.
The Independent on Sunday has learned that a military decision has been taken in Iran – even before last week’s presidential election – to send a first contingent of 4,000 Iranian Revolutionary Guards to Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad’s forces against the largely Sunni rebellion that has cost almost 100,000 lives in just over two years. Iran is now fully committed to preserving Assad’s regime, according to pro-Iranian sources which have been deeply involved in the Islamic Republic’s security, even to the extent of proposing to open up a new ‘Syrian’ front on the Golan Heights against Israel.
In years to come, historians will ask how America – after its defeat in Iraq and its humiliating withdrawal from Afghanistan scheduled for 2014 – could have so blithely aligned itself with one side in a titanic Islamic struggle stretching back to the seventh century death of the Prophet Mohamed. The profound effects of this great schism, between Sunnis who believe that the father of Mohamed’s wife was the new caliph of the Muslim world and Shias who regard his son in law Ali as his rightful successor – a seventh century battle swamped in blood around the present-day Iraqi cities of Najaf and Kerbala – continue across the region to this day. A 17th century Archbishop of Canterbury, George Abbott, compared this Muslim conflict to that between “Papists and Protestants”.
America’s alliance now includes the wealthiest states of the Arab Gulf, the vast Sunni territories between Egypt and Morocco, as well as Turkey and the fragile British-created monarchy in Jordan. King Abdullah of Jordan – flooded, like so many neighbouring nations, by hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees – may also now find himself at the fulcrum of the Syrian battle. Up to 3,000 American ‘advisers’ are now believed to be in Jordan, and the creation of a southern Syria ‘no-fly zone’ – opposed by Syrian-controlled anti-aircraft batteries – will turn a crisis into a ‘hot’ war. So much for America’s ‘friends’. Read more from this story HERE.
Lawmakers press Obama to implement no-fly zone over Syria
By Fox News. Capitol Hill lawmakers pressed President Obama on Sunday to go beyond supplying Syrian rebels with small arms and to consider imposing a no-fly zone over the war-torn country.
South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said supplying rebels with automatic weapons and ammunition is not enough to stop the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“We need to create a no-fly zone,” Graham told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “We cannot take air power out of the equation.”
However, such a decision is not without peril.
Obama has not ruled out imposing a no-fly zone in Syria. Read more from this story HERE.
By Aaron Klein. Thousands of Syrians are currently training in Iran to serve as a force ready to storm Israel’s northern Golan Heights, according to informed Middle Eastern security officials.
The officials said between 3,000 and 5,000 Syrian men were being trained in the event Syrian President Bashar al-Assad decides to open a front against the Golan Heights, which borders Syria.
The training is being overseen by the Al Quds Force, the elite unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard responsible for the country’s extraterritorial operations, the sources said.
The Syrian forces are slated to return to their country next month, the sources added.
This is not the first report of Iran aiding Syria in preparations for ground attacks against Israel. Read more from this story HERE.
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.png00Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2013-06-17 03:42:452013-06-17 03:42:45Syrian Powder Keg Getting Ready to Blow: Iran Sends Thousands of Troops, Assad Preps to Hit Israel, and Lawmakers Call for Greater US Involvement (+video)
