Free Republic

RICHLAND, WA-- A Richland medical marijuana patient recently applied for a Concealed Pistol License, but was denied by police. Medical marijuana is legal under Washington state law, but the federal government won't make an exception for that when it comes to getting a Concealed Pistol License. Richland police sent the medical marijuana patient a letter stating that federal law prohibits anyone who uses a controlled substance from "shipping, transporting, receiving or possessing firearms or ammunition." And even if marijuana is legal here, it's still illegal at the federal level. When anyone applies for a concealed weapons permit with Richland police,...

How did an 80-year-old man end up shot to death in his own bed by Los Angeles County deputy sheriffs? Reason’s Zach Weissmuller takes an in-depth look at the death of Eugene Mallory, who died in a hail of bullets triggered by supposedly challenging the deputies with a gun in the hallway of his own home during a meth raid. Only Mallory didn’t get shot in the hallway — he got shot in his bedroom, and the bullets came before the deputy warned him to put his gun down. Did Mallory pick up the gun at all? And what were...

The announcement was bold, if somewhat quixotic: Mayor Bill de Blasio, whose campaign was focused on reforming the New York Police Department’s stop-and-frisk tactics, would commit his administration to reducing traffic deaths “literally” to zero. In his administration’s first 40 days, that pledge translated into a series of ticket blitzes against drivers — and, in unusually large numbers, jaywalkers. Jaywalking tickets are up nearly eightfold this year, despite the mayor’s insistence that his plan for safer streets did not include singling out pedestrians. Through Feb. 9, there were 215 jaywalking summonses issued, compared with 27 over the same period last...

Heroin overdose deaths across the country are spiking as a deadly new variant of the drug mixed with a powerful painkiller is spreading from New Hampshire to Washington State. The lethal combination of heroin and fentanyl, an opiate used to soothe the pain of cancer patients, is blamed for about 100 deaths from coast to coast. It is variously labelled as ‘bud ice,’ ‘income tax’ and ‘theraflu,’ authorities say. The hardest hit states in the epidemic are Maryland, with more than three dozen deaths since September, and Pennsylvania, with almost two dozen this month alone, according to reports.

The DEA agents met with members of the cartel in Mexico to obtain information about their rivals and simultaneously built a network of informants who sign drug cooperation agreements, subject to results, to enable them to obtain future benefits, including cancellation of charges in the U.S.," reports El Universal Operation Fast and Furious was part of an agreement to finance and arm the cartel in exchange for information used to take down its rivals. (If true, that re-raises the issue regarding what Attorney General Eric Holder knew about the gun-running arrangements.)

Loris, SC. A Loris woman was given a jail sentence of 20 days and given credit for the time she previously served after she pleaded guilty in connection with her two children being found alone in a hotel room with a dead man and drugs, according to authorities.Belonda Renee Davis, 31, of Loris pleaded guilty to cruelty to children and was sentenced by Circuit Court Judge Steven John to 20 days in jail, according to the Horry County Public Index. Davis was given credit for the time she’s previously served and ordered to comply with all orders from the S.C....

Police in Parker County had been watching Michael Fred Wehrenberg's home for a month when, late in the summer of 2010, they received a tip from a confidential informant that Wehrenberg and several others were "fixing to" cook meth. Hours later, after midnight, officers walked through the front door, rounded up the people inside, and kept them in handcuffs in the front yard for an hour and a half. The only potential problem, at least from a constitutional standpoint, was that the cops didn't have a search warrant. They got one later, before they seized the boxes of pseudoephedrine, stripped...

A Ross County deputy sheriff has been placed on leave after authorities say he accidentally shot and killed a woman before a drug raid on Wednesday. Sgt. Brett McKnight was identified yesterday as the deputy whose gun went off outside a trailer that members of a drug task force were about to raid as part of a heroin bust. The bullet went through the exterior of the trailer before it struck and killed 35-year-old Krystal Barrows, according to a news release. In the release, Ross County Sheriff George Lavender’s office said that members of the U.S. 23 Task Force were...

Government officials regularly leverage their public-sector experience into more lucrative jobs in high finance. One former U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration supervisor is giving that track a new twist. Patrick Moen, a longtime DEA agent, has left a post leading a federal team in Portland, Ore., that combats heroin and methamphetamine trafficking to join a private-equity firm that invests solely in businesses tied to the budding legal marijuana industry.

Drug trafficking, gang wars, political instability, corruption, and poverty have combined to make Latin America by far the most homicidal region of the world. The region has 40% of the world's murders, despite having only 8 percent of the population, according to the U.N. The highest murder rate of all is in San Pedro Sula, Honduras, with 169 homicides per 100,000 people, according to a study published earlier this year by Mexico's Citizens' Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice. The ranking is based on 2012 data, except for San Pedro Sula and Distrito Central in Honduras, where authorities would...

TEPALCATEPEC, Mexico – For lime grower Hipolito Mora, it was time to organize and pick up arms when a packing company controlled by a brutal drug cartel refused to buy his fruit. For Bishop Miguel Patino Velazquez, it was seeing civilians forced to fight back with their own guns that made him speak out. For Leticia, a lime picker too afraid of retribution to give her last name, it was the day she saw a taxi driver kidnapped in front of his two young children that convinced her to join those taking the law into their own hands.

MERCER COUNTY — Irresponsibility and drug addiction, not poverty, is the driving force behind most local crimes, according to District Judges Ron Antos, Dennis Songer and Brian Arthur, who spoke to a United Way committee searching for the best way to spend its donated dollars.

Here’s a new edition of my “you be the judge” series. These are posts designed to explore some of the more challenging aspects of a pro-libertarian philosophy. Today’s example comes from Colorado, which had displayed a libertarian streak on issues ranging from school choice to drug legalization. But the latter issue is the source of today’s quandary. Should marijuana be legal if it means more tax revenue that will be used by the political elite to expand the burden of government spending? Here are the details from the Denver CBS station.A draft bill floating around the Capitol late this week...

John "Big Man" Venizelos wears horn-rimmed glasses and fancies Ralph Lauren Polo but the prepster is just a doper, and the reputed Bonanno associate will plead guilty for his role in an alleged $1 billion drug ring which brought hydroponic bud into New York and sent powder cocaine into Canada as reported by Mitchel Maddux for the New York Post: "prosecutors also say they seized letters written by an unnamed colleague of Venizelos that discussed the Bonanno associate's ties to organized crime - including references to sit-downs with captains in various New York La Cosa Nostra families." Drug trafficking always...

DENVER (AP/CBS4) — Marijuana legalization could be going back to the ballot in Colorado — a prospect that infuriated pot legalization activists Friday. The proposal for a marijuana ballot measure came as the House started debate Friday evening on bills to regulate and tax pot. One bill would state how pot should be grown and sold, and the other would tax recreational marijuana more than 30 percent. A draft bill floating around the Capitol late this week suggests that a new ballot question on pot taxes should repeal recreational pot in the state constitution if voters don’t approve 15 percent...

My thought is certain recreational drugs, such as marijuana, should remain off legal limits for the under 18 year olds, but become legally available when used in the proper environment. In many ways, pot is quite similar to alcohol, in that they should be used responsibly. My thought is to make the sale of marijuana less profitable by making it legal for home use. Personally, I don't smoke anything now, and do not want the smell of tobacco or pot on my clothes should I visit a public place, such as a shopping mall or bus stop. I know this...

<p>Police in Tacoma could soon be in real trouble over pot.</p> <p>The department could be found in contempt if they continue to refuse to return a small amount of marijuana seized from a man after a traffic stop. Municipal Court Judge Jack Emery repeated an order to police Thursday to return the drug to Joseph L. Robertson within seven days or they could be found in contempt.</p>

New York's proposal to ban purchases by those under 21 is off-base.As thoroughly awful as everyone knows cigarettes to be — still the No. 1 cause of premature death in this country — public officials walk a blurry line when they try to reduce smoking's terrible toll. As long as they lack the will to ban tobacco altogether, they face all sorts of ethical, legal and political problems in regulating a product that is, after all, perfectly legal. High tobacco taxes, critics say, unfairly punish smokers, who are disproportionately low income. Banning advertising of a legal product raises free-speech issues....

A 61-year-old man was shot to death by police while his wife was handcuffed in another room during a drug raid on the wrong house. Police admitted their mistake, saying faulty information from a drug informant contributed to the death of John Adams Wednesday night. They intended to raid the home next door. The two officers, 25-year-old Kyle Shedran and 24-year-old Greg Day, were placed on administrative leave with pay. “They need to get rid of those men, boys with toys,” said Adams’ 70-year-old widow, Loraine. John Adams was watching television when his wife heard pounding on the door. Police...

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl1908.aspx Treasury Identifies Kassem Rmeiti & Co. for Exchange and Halawi Exchange Co. as Financial Institutions of “Primary Money Laundering Concern” 4/23/2013 In First Use of Section 311 Against a Non-Bank Financial Institution, Treasury Acts to Protect the U.S. Financial System from Foreign Exchange Houses Tied to Global Narcotics and Money Laundering Networks and Hizballah WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury today named two Lebanese exchange houses, Kassem Rmeiti & Co. For Exchange (Rmeiti Exchange) and Halawi Exchange Co. (Halawi Exchange), as foreign financial institutions of primary money laundering concern under...