April 6, 2010

VIA HAND DELIVERY
The Honorable Sandy Sheedy
Chair, Law and Legislation Committee
Sacramento City Council
915 “I” Street
Sacramento, CA 95814

Dear Council Member Sheedy:

On behalf of the Board of Directors of the American Civil Liberties Union of Sacramento County, I am writing to express our deep concerns with many of the “key components” of the proposed draft ordinance forwarded at the “Medical Marijuana Stakeholders Meeting” on March 11, 2010.

Generally speaking, the proposed proximity restrictions and the cap on the number of dispensaries will frustrate the existing needs of those Californians who are currently exercising their established legal right to obtain medical marijuana to promote their health and well-being.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Contact: Nikos Leverenz (916) 248-0338.

ACLU of Sacramento expresses ‘deep concerns’
over plans by Sacramento City Council to restrict
medical marijuana dispensaries; call opposition ‘myopic’

SACRAMENTO – The ACLU of Sacramento County expressed “deep concerns” about plans by the Sacramento City Council – its Law and Legislation is meeting today about a new ordinance – to severely limit the number of registered medical marijuana dispensaries and strictly limit their operations within the city of Sacramento.

In a letter to Law and Legislation Committee members of the City Council, the ACLU said the restrictions will “frustrate the existing needs of those Californians who are currently exercising their established legal right to obtain medical marijuana to promote their health and well-being.”

“(P)rospective cannabis dispensary regulations must give due consideration to the compelling needs of both patients and care providers, who regrettably still face a great deal of hardship—including potential arrest, prosecution and imprisonment—in facilitating access to needed medication in a safe, secure, and dignified fashion,” the letter continued.

I had first read a version of this essay at Black Agenda Report, and planned to post it here, but then Tomgram picked it up and gave an introduction that relates to the California prison crisis that I thought personalizes the issue for those of us here in California. Please click the header and read the entire essay. Also click the picture for a youtube of a British quiz show talking about the U.S. prison system

Tomgram: Michelle Alexander, The Age of Obama as a Racial Nightmare

California is, as the time-worn adage has it, our nation's bellwether, and nowhere is that truer than in the Golden State’s prison crisis. California’s inmate population is among the highest in the nation. Its complex of prisons spills over with tens of thousands of inmates housed in every available inch of space and sleep-stacked three-high. So overcrowded are California’s prisons that the state penal system has been successfully sued for violating the constitutional rights of inmates -- essentially by subjecting them to a public-health crisis. That its inmates consistently resort to violence in prison should come as no surprise.

The dire state of California’s prisons can, in part, be traced to its draconian “three-strikes law,” which throws three-time felons behind bars for a mandatory 25 years. Overflowing prison populations have, in turn, contributed to that state’s bleak economic future, helping consign California to a perpetual budget deficit, annual financial crises, and repeated deep cuts in education and social funding. The state currently spends a staggering 10% of its annual operating budget, or $10.8 billion, on its prison system and its nearly 170,000 prisoners -- more than it spends on the University of California system, once the jewel in the crown of American public higher education.

Reinhardt Stands Alone on 9th Circuit's Pledge of Allegiance 'Under God' Ruling

Stephen Reinhardt and Dorothy Nelson have been simpatico on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for 30 years. One former Reinhardt clerk says they have a good personal relationship.

But Nelson handed Reinhardt a bitter defeat by siding with conservative Judge Carlos Bea in an opinion upholding the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance. The ruling, handed down Thursday, is the latest episode in a case that has brought scorn on the 9th Circuit from across the country, and has highlighted Reinhardt as an unapologetic -- yet increasingly solitary -- iconoclast.

In a 132-page dissent, Reinhardt said he doubts the constitutional protections at stake will evoke much concern in the political world.

"Instead, to the joy or relief, as the case may be, of the two members of the majority, this court's willingness to abandon its constitutional responsibilities will be praised as patriotic,"

Click for video

'Terrorist Intent' Detector Set for Demo Next Year

(Feb. 25) -- New security technology at airports around the country is creating a furor over concerns that the screening devices can "see" beneath people's clothes. Now, the Department of Homeland Security is set to take technology one step further with a screening system that would, in a sense, peek inside your head.

The Future Attribute Screening Technology, or FAST, is designed to spot terrorists, or more specifically, people who are thinking about carrying out terrorist acts.

"The theory we're looking at here is [whether] there's a way to look at you, and only you, in a specific situation, and based on your presentation, make an assessment that you're showing indicators of what we call malintent," Robert Burns, the deputy director of the Homeland Security Advanced Research Projects Agency, told AOL News. "Malintent, as defined by the problem, is the intention or desire to cause harm."

[...]

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/homeland-security-set-to-demonstra...

There are just a few problems with this, for instance ...

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, March 5, 2010
Contact: Nikos Leverenz 916/248-0338 or ACLU-Sac public affairs 916/996-9170

ACLU warns that attacks on ‘disfavored groups’
at universities one more challenge for students
already hit hard by drastically-rising costs

SACRAMENTO – The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Sacramento County today said recent “bias-related incidents” at California schools – including one at the University of California Davis where a Jewish student had a swastika carved into her door – ought to result “in a heightened commitment to student safety.”

The ACLU said the attacks are just one more challenge for California students, who have faced drastically increased student fees and tuition costs, which were protested throughout the state Thursday.

Chief Judge Alex Kozinski writes scathing dissent in Fourth Amendment case

When a judge called for United States v. Lemus to be reheard en banc, the majority of judges in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals did not vote to rehear the case. Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote an absolutely blistering dissent to that denial. With Judge Paez joining in the dissent, he wrote:
.
This is an extraordinary case: Our court approves, without blinking, a police sweep of a person’s home without a warrant, without probable cause, without reasonable suspicion and without exigency—in other words, with nothing at all to support the entry except the curiosity police always have about what they might find if they go rummaging around a suspect’s home. Once inside, the police managed to turn up a gun “in plain view”—stuck between two cushions of the living room couch—and we reward them by upholding the search.

Did I mention that this was an entry into somebody’s home, the place where the protections of the Fourth Amendment are supposedly at their zenith? The place where the “government bears a heavy burden of demonstrating that exceptional circumstances justif[y] departure from the warrant requirement.” United States v. Licata, 761 F.2d 537, 543 (9th Cir. 1985). The place where warrantless searches are deemed “presumptively unreasonable.” Payton v. New York, 445 U.S. 573, 586 (1980).