NY Times Editorial Board: Feds Should Legalize Marijuana

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Repeal Prohibition, Again

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

It took 13 years for the United States to come to its senses and end Prohibition, 13 years in which people kept drinking, otherwise law-abiding citizens became criminals and crime syndicates arose and flourished. It has been more than 40 years since Congress passed the current ban on marijuana, inflicting great harm on society just to prohibit a substance far less dangerous than alcohol.

The federal government should repeal the ban on marijuana.

We reached that conclusion after a great deal of discussion among the members of The Times’s Editorial Board, inspired by a rapidly growing movement among the states to reform marijuana laws.

There are no perfect answers to people’s legitimate concerns about marijuana use. But neither are there such answers about tobacco or alcohol, and we believe that on every level — health effects, the impact on society and law-and-order issues — the balance falls squarely on the side of national legalization. That will put decisions on whether to allow recreational or medicinal production and use where it belongs — at the state level.

We considered whether it would be best for Washington to hold back while the states continued experimenting with legalizing medicinal uses of marijuana, reducing penalties, or even simply legalizing all use. Nearly three-quarters of the states have done one of these.

But that would leave their citizens vulnerable to the whims of whoever happens to be in the White House and chooses to enforce or not enforce the federal law.

The social costs of the marijuana laws are vast. There were 658,000 arrests for marijuana possession in 2012, according to F.B.I. figures, compared with 256,000 for cocaine, heroin and their derivatives. Even worse, the result is racist, falling disproportionately on young black men, ruining their lives and creating new generations of career criminals.

There is honest debate among scientists about the health effects of marijuana, but we believe that the evidence is overwhelming that addiction and dependence are relatively minor problems, especially compared with alcohol and tobacco. Moderate use of marijuana does not appear to pose a risk for otherwise healthy adults. Claims that marijuana is a gateway to more dangerous drugs are as fanciful as the “Reefer Madness” images of murder, rape and suicide.

There are legitimate concerns about marijuana on the development of adolescent brains. For that reason, we advocate the prohibition of sales to people under 21.

Creating systems for regulating manufacture, sale and marketing will be complex. But those problems are solvable, and would have long been dealt with had we as a nation not clung to the decision to make marijuana production and use a federal crime.

In coming days, we will publish articles by members of the Editorial Board and supplementary material that will examine these questions. We invite readers to offer their ideas, and we will report back on their responses, pro and con.

We recognize that this Congress is as unlikely to take action on marijuana as it has been on other big issues. But it is long past time to repeal this version of Prohibition.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/07/27/opinion/sunday/high-time-marijuana-legalization.html

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Taxpayer-Financed Bigotry

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Taxpayer-Financed Bigotry

New Rules Should Ban Discrimination by Federal Contractors

By THE EDITORIAL BOARD

JULY 11, 2014

President Obama should resist a pressure campaign by some religious groups to weaken a promised executive order that would prohibit federal contractors from discriminating against gay men, lesbians and transgender people in their hiring practices.

Emboldened by the Supreme Court’s addlebrained Hobby Lobby decision, several groups wrote [see below] to Mr. Obama on July 1 asking him to allow federal contractors to fire or refuse to hire workers based on their religious objections to a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

This is not a question of religious freedom. It is a question of whether to allow religion to be used as an excuse to discriminate in employment against a particular group of people. Many states already have laws protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender workers. There is no such federal law, so the presidential order (promised but not yet produced) would extend those rules to companies that receive federal contracts in states without those kinds of anti-bias laws, protecting millions more people.

Mr. Obama’s resolve is being tested. There is no good reason to give religious employers a special privilege to inflict undeserved pain by, for example, refusing to hire someone to work on a government-backed project just because she happens to be a lesbian, or firing a capable employee who marries someone of the same sex.

The July 1 letter came one day after the Supreme Court decided that religious owners of secular, for-profit companies can refuse to comply with a regulation requiring that women be provided contraception coverage in their employer-based health insurance. The order created the danger that intolerant people would feel emboldened to try to justify denying fair treatment in other ways.

The July 1 letter did just that, arguing that underwriting bigotry against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people with the public’s money is the best way “to respect diversity of opinion on this issue in a way that respects the dignity of all parties to the best of our ability.” The letter, which followed a similar missive from 150 conservative religious groups, was organized by Michael Wear, an evangelical Christian who worked on the White House faith-based initiative during Mr. Obama’s first term and calls himself a supporter of both the president and gay rights.

The Hobby Lobby ruling does not compel a retreat from the coming order’s goal of fairness for all. Indeed, the flawed majority opinion interpreting the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in the Hobby Lobby case contained assurances that it does not threaten anti-discrimination rules in other spheres. The Civil Rights Act gives religious groups some leeway to favor members of their own faith in hiring. In 2002, President George W. Bush extended that leeway to faith-based service organizations receiving federal money, and Mr. Obama has failed to keep a campaign promise to rescind Mr. Bush’s order.

But longstanding rules forbid discrimination by government contractors based on race, sex or national origin, even on religious grounds. That should apply to sexual orientation and gender identity as well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/12/opinion/new-rules-should-ban-discrimination-by-federal-contractors.html?emc=edit_th_20140712&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=65886944

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Faith Groups Seek Exclusion From Bias Rule

By JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS and ERIK ECKHOLM

JULY 8, 2014

WASHINGTON — After a setback in the Supreme Court in the Hobby Lobby case, President Obama is facing mounting pressure from religious groups demanding to be excluded from his long-promised executive order that would bar discrimination against gay men and lesbians by companies that do government work.

The president has yet to sign the executive order, but last week a group of major faith organizations, including some of Mr. Obama’s allies, said he should consider adding an exemption for groups whose religious beliefs oppose homosexuality. In Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, the court ruledthat family-run corporations with religious objections could be exempted from providing employees with insurance coverage for contraception.

The demands of the faith organizations pose a dilemma for Mr. Obama, who has struggled to preserve freedom of expression among religious groups while supporting the rights of gay men and lesbians. Mr. Obama could unleash a conservative uproar if he is seen as intruding on religious beliefs, but many of his strongest supporters would be bitterly disappointed if he appeared to grant any leeway to anti-gay discrimination.

The White House has given no reason for the executive order’s delay.

In a July 1 letter to Mr. Obama sent the day after the Hobby Lobby case was decided, leaders of religious groups wrote that “we are asking that an extension of protection for one group not come at the expense of faith communities whose religious identity and beliefs motivate them to serve those in need.”

The effort behind the letter was organized by Michael Wear, who worked in the White House faith-based initiative during Mr. Obama’s first term and directed the president’s faith outreach in the 2012 campaign. The letter, which called for a “robust religious exemption” in the planned executive order, was also signed by the Rev. Larry Snyder, the chief executive ofCatholic Charities U.S.A.; Rick Warren, the pastor of Saddleback Church, who delivered the invocation at Mr. Obama’s first inauguration; and Stephan Bauman, president of World Relief, an aid group affiliated with the National Association of Evangelicals.

Mr. Wear, who calls himself an “ardent supporter” of the president and a backer of gay rights, said in an interview on Tuesday that the rationale of the organizations was to maintain the rights they have. “We’re not trying to support crazy claims of religious privilege,” he said.

He described the letter as a request from “friends of the administration” to ensure that the executive order provides “robust” protection of religious service organizations that uphold religious-based moral standards for their staff members, whether Catholic, Jewish or Muslim.

To give an example, faith leaders said a Catholic charity group that believes sex outside heterosexual marriage is a sin should not be denied government funding because it refused to employ a leader who was openly gay. Gay-rights groups countered that it would be unacceptable to allow religious organizations receiving taxpayer money to refuse to hire employees simply because they were gay, and said they did not expect the White House to provide such an exclusion. On Tuesday they stepped up their calls for Mr. Obama to quickly complete and sign the order.

 “Activists have every expectation that this executive order will be issued without any further religious exemption,” Fred Sainz, vice president for communications and marketing at the Human Rights Campaign, said in an interview.

The July 1 letter followed one on June 25 that was signed by more than 150 conservative religious groups and leaders, including many major evangelical associations. That letter warned the president that “any executive order that does not fully protect religious freedom will face widespread opposition and will further fragment our nation.”

The groups said many organizations doing vital work for the federal government in overseas relief, prisons and technical aid maintained religious-based “employee moral conduct standards” that could be affected by the order.

Last month, Mr. Obama promised he would soon sign the executive order, which would bar federal contractors from job discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. He said he was acting on his own because a drive in Congress for a national anti-bias law to cover nearly all employers, the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, had stalled.

Many states already have nondiscrimination laws protecting gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender workers, but the presidential order would extend anti-bias rules to companies and service agencies that receive federal contracts in the 29 states that do not have such laws. The order would protect an additional 14 million workers, according to an analysis by the Williams Institute at the School of Law of the University of California, Los Angeles. It would apply to companies that do business with the federal government, including large American employers like Exxon Mobil and Dell, as well as religious universities and charities with federal contracts.

Federal employees already have the protections under an executive order issued in 1998 by President Bill Clinton.

Gay-rights advocates argue that religious groups already enjoy a broad exemption under a 2002 executive order signed by President George W. Bush that allows faith-based organizations to consider religion in hiring decisions without jeopardizing federal grants or contracts.

“There’s no reason to add additional language to further allow discrimination,” said Winnie Stachelberg of the Center for American Progress, a liberal policy group.

In the continuing battle for opinion, on Tuesday 100 liberal faith leaders released a letter to the president urging him to issue the anti-bias order without any new religious exemption.

Also on Tuesday, a group of gay-rights and civil-rights groups withdrew their support for the Employment Nondiscrimination Act, which includes a religious exemption. The groups, which had never liked the religious provision in the proposed legislation but accepted it as a way to attract Republican support, said the Hobby Lobby decision had “made it all the more important that we not accept this inappropriate provision.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/09/us/faith-groups-seek-exclusion-from-bias-rule.html?hp&target=comments

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An Open Letter to Haters

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MON JAN 09, 2012 AT 01:57 PM PST

An open letter to the people who hate Obama more than they love America

By MinistryOfTruth

I meet you all the time. You hate Obama. You hate gay people. You hate black people, immigrants, Muslims, labor unions, women who want the right to make choices concerning their bodies, you hate em all. You hate being called racist. You hate being called a bigot. Maybe if you talked about creating jobs more than you talk about why you hate gay people we wouldn't call you bigots. Maybe if you talked about black people without automatically assuming they are on food stamps while demanding their birth certificates we wouldn't call you racist. You hate socialism and social justice. You hate regulations and taxes and spending and the Government. You hate.

You like war. You like torture. You like Jesus. I don't know how in the hell any of that is compatible, but no one ever accused you haters of being over-committed to ideological consistency. You like people who look like you or at least hate most of the things that you hate. You hate everything else.

Now, I know you profess to love our country and the founding fathers (unless you are reminded that they believed in the separation of church and state), but I need to remind you that America is NOT what Fox News says it is. America is a melting pot, it always has been. We are a multi-cultural amalgamation of all kinds of people, and yet you still demonize everyone who is not a rich, white, heterosexual christian male or his submissive and obedient wife.

You hate liberals, moderates, hell, anyone who disagrees with Conservative dogma as espoused by Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. You hate em.

Well, here are the facts, Jack. If you hate the Government then you are unqualified to manage it. If you hate gay people more than you love America than you should take your own advice and get the hell out. There are several countries that are openly hostile to gay people, but they are full of brown people and you don't like them much either from what I understand. It looks like you are screwed, but that's not what I am here to tell you.

Now that you have thrown everything and the kitchen sink at President Obama and it still hasn't worked you are panicking. Obama's approval ratings are still near 50% despite your best efforts to undermine the economy and America's recovery at every step you can. You tried to hold the American economy hostage to force America into default on its' debts, debts that YOU rang up under Bush, so you could blame it on Obama and it failed. You've used the filibuster more than any other Congress ever, going so far as to vote against providing health care access to 9/11 first responders. You remember 9/11, don't you, it's that thing you used to lie us into a war in Iraq, and then when Obama killed Bin Laden and ended the war in Iraq you told people that he hates America and wants the troops to fail. You monsters. You hate Obama with a passion, despite the fact that he is a tax cutting, deficit reducing war President who undermines civil rights and delivers corporate friendly watered down reforms that benefit special interests just like a Republican. You call him a Kenyan. You call him a socialist. You dance with your hatred singing it proudly in the rain like it was a 1950's musical.

Frankly, you disgust me. Your hatred nauseates me. Your bigotry offends me. Your racism revolts me.

Dear haters, I am openly questioning your patriotism.

I think you hate gays, Obama, black people, poor people, all of us, women, atheists and agnostics, Latinos, Muslims, Liberals, all of us, I think you hate every one who isn't exactly like you, and I think you hate us more than you love your country.

I think you hate gay soldiers more than you want America to win its wars.

I don't even think you want America to win wars, you just want America to have wars, never ending wars and the war profiteering it generates. You love that kind of spending, you love spending on faith based initiatives and abstinence based sex education (George Carlin would have loved that one), you love spending on subsidies for profitable oil corporations, you spend like drunken sailors when you are in the White House, but if it is a Democrat then suddenly you cheer when America doesn't get the Olympics because it might make the black President look bad. But oooh you love your country, you say, and you want it back. Well listen here skippy, it isn't your country, you don't own it, it is our country, and America is NOT the religiously extremist Foxbots who hate science, elitist professors and having a vibrant and meaningful sex life with someone we love if Rick Santorum doesn't approve of it. Rick Santorum isn't running for America's fucking high school dance chaperone, he should probably just shut the hell up about sex, but he can't because he has nothing else to run on.

Republicans can NOT win on the issues. They've got NOTHING. All they have is a divide and conquer class war that pits ignorant racist and bigoted people against the rest of us in a meaningless battle of wedge issues and the already proven to fail George W. Bush agenda again of tax cuts for the rich, deregulation, privatization and war profiteering and nothing else, so all they can do is blame black people, gays the government, anybody and everyone else for their own failings. The party of personal responsibility, my ass.

But they love multi-national corporations, just ask a gay hating and racist religious extremist if they think Corporations are people and they will gladly agree, but if you ask them if gay people are people they aren't so sure.

Dear haters, you are the cruel, heartless misinformed assholes who would sell America out to Haliburton in a heartbeat, you would rather pay ZERO taxes than you would see a newly born baby get access to quality health care, you cheer when we discuss denying health care to young people with preventable diseases, and you boo when we discuss the First Ladies plan to cut back on childhood obesity. You are a cross to carry and a flag to wrap yourself in away from being the people who Sinclair Lewis warned us about, but I guarantee that if Fox News told you to dress that way you would, because you are the same blind, ignorant and closed minded dunces who drove this country into a civil war years ago because you are bound to the notion that some men are more equal than others. In short, the reason I proudly wear my union army hat is because of seditious sell outs like you who constantly fuck over working class Americans so a foreign entrepreneur like Rupert Murdoch can get a bigger tax break. If corporations are people, they are neither American patriots nor capable of love. Just like you.

So stop wearing your hate with pride. Stop celebrating your anti-science, anti-math ignorance. Stop using code words to mask your bigotry like "family values", especially when you hate my family and when you stand on the same stage as a guy who has had three marriages or if you share a seat in the Senate with a guy who cheated on his wife with hookers while wearing diapers. You should be ashamed. I know that you are just doing this to motivate your misinformed hate cult base because if they actually knew that your ideas will make them poorer than they are now, they would never vote for you. You are doing your best to impoverish your countrymen so rich people can get bigger tax breaks and you can keep on delivering corporate welfare to the special interests who have bribed you, and I am disgusted by the way you gleefully parade your hatred with aplomb. I don't think you do love America. At least, not as much as you hate everyone in America who isn't exactly like you.

You should think about that, and maybe get some help.

And for the record, I do not hate you. I am embarrassed by you and nauseated by your cruel and thoughtless behavior and your all consuming greed, but I do not hate you. I forgive you and I hope you can change someday, but I don't hate you. You have enough hate in you for the rest of us as it is.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/09/1053088/-An-open-letter-to-the-people-who-hate-Obama-more-than-they-love-America?detail=email#

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