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Jeff Sessions

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Trump Is Sick of Jeff Sessions, Who (So Far) Refuses to Quit

Like us, President Donald Trump is through with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and wishes he’d picked someone other than the hard-line drug warrior with the segregationist’s resume to become America’s top law-enforcement officer.

And like every other time Donald Trump stumbles upon a sound idea, the president wishes Sessions would do a solid for America and go away forever for the wrong reasons—in this case, so that there would be an attorney general who would make Trump’s biggest problem go away.

On Wednesday, Trump gave a wide-ranging interview to the New York Times, America’s “failing” “fake news” outlet of record. (When Trump finally exits the Oval Office and is kindly led by the hand to a Trump-branded old-folks home, willfully or no, transcripts of the interview will be entered into the record as justification.)

Among the decipherable takeaways is what the Times soberly described as a “remarkable public break” with the attorney general, one of Trump’s earliest and most loyal supporters. Openly and bitterly, the president complained about Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the ongoing probe into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians last year.

Sessions announced he’d step back from the investigation in March, after it became clear that Sessions had several meetings with the Russian ambassador which he’d failed to disclose, despite being asked directly. (This is also known as “lying under oath.”)

You see, the president put Sessions into the job so that he would be there to finesse such things—not so that independent special counsels could dig around in the swamp around Trump Tower and come up with incriminating evidence.

“Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else,” Trump said.

For the attorney general to do so—after Sessions himself misled the Senate in January, lying during his confirmation hearings about prior contacts with Russian officials—was “very unfair to the president,” Trump said.

“Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president,” the president said. “How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘Thanks, Jeff, but I’m not going to take you.’ It’s extremely unfair—and that’s a mild word—to the president.”

Trump also had a hot take on Sessions’s fibbing during his Senate confirmation hearings in January.

“Jeff Sessions gave some bad answers,” the president said. “He gave some answers that were simple questions and should have been simple answers, but they weren’t.”

It’s been obvious for some time that Donald Trump values blind loyalty above all else from his subordinates, whose buy-in to the mission—bolstering Trump’s brand—must be total.

Sessions’s recusal, the only choice he had given he is a target of the probe, is bad and unacceptable in the president’s (very questionable, quite possibly seriously addled) judgment, because it looks bad—which is because it is bad.

Sessions and Trump both are almost certainly targets of former FBI director Robert Mueller’s probe.

And here we have a sitting president saying that he appointed an attorney general to make sure such bad things—like collusion with a foreign government to influence an American presidential election—were swept under the rug. This is Nixon-level stuff, if Nixon had so little grasp of the moment and himself as to utter the kind of paranoid delusions captured on the White House audio tapes directly to reporters.

If nothing else, this is proof positive that Jeff Sessions was selected to be attorney general for no other reasons than he wasn’t Chris Christie, and Trump had an expectation of total loyalty, even at the expense of such principles as integrity and the values espoused in the Constitution.

Sessions’s Justice Department spokespeople declined to comment to the Times on Wednesday.

On Thursday morning, Sessions addressed the issue with reporters, saying he has “no immediate plans to resign.”

“We love this job, we love this department, and I plan to continue to do so as long as that is appropriate,” Sessions said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “I’m totally confident we can continue to run this office in an effective way.”

Trump’s focus on the “Trump Russia thing,” as he’s called the scandal that has utterly dominated the first six months of his presidency, is total—so total that it is eclipsing Sessions’s announcement that restrictions on civil asset forfeiture, law enforcement’s ability to seize Americans’ property without a criminal conviction, would be lifted.

Lifting such restrictions, a huge setback for civil liberties and police reform, was an early Trump promise. Whether the president remembers or even cares is unlikely.

While not for the same reasons (recusal), no wanting ole' Jefferson as AG is one of the few things that Trump and I agree upon.
 
Baron23 said:
Trump Is Sick of Jeff Sessions, Who (So Far) Refuses to Quit

Like us, President Donald Trump is through with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and wishes he’d picked someone other than the hard-line drug warrior with the segregationist’s resume to become America’s top law-enforcement officer.

And like every other time Donald Trump stumbles upon a sound idea, the president wishes Sessions would do a solid for America and go away forever for the wrong reasons—in this case, so that there would be an attorney general who would make Trump’s biggest problem go away.

On Wednesday, Trump gave a wide-ranging interview to the New York Times, America’s “failing” “fake news” outlet of record. (When Trump finally exits the Oval Office and is kindly led by the hand to a Trump-branded old-folks home, willfully or no, transcripts of the interview will be entered into the record as justification.)

Among the decipherable takeaways is what the Times soberly described as a “remarkable public break” with the attorney general, one of Trump’s earliest and most loyal supporters. Openly and bitterly, the president complained about Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the ongoing probe into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians last year.

Sessions announced he’d step back from the investigation in March, after it became clear that Sessions had several meetings with the Russian ambassador which he’d failed to disclose, despite being asked directly. (This is also known as “lying under oath.”)

You see, the president put Sessions into the job so that he would be there to finesse such things—not so that independent special counsels could dig around in the swamp around Trump Tower and come up with incriminating evidence.

“Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else,” Trump said.

For the attorney general to do so—after Sessions himself misled the Senate in January, lying during his confirmation hearings about prior contacts with Russian officials—was “very unfair to the president,” Trump said.

“Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president,” the president said. “How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘Thanks, Jeff, but I’m not going to take you.’ It’s extremely unfair—and that’s a mild word—to the president.”

Trump also had a hot take on Sessions’s fibbing during his Senate confirmation hearings in January.

“Jeff Sessions gave some bad answers,” the president said. “He gave some answers that were simple questions and should have been simple answers, but they weren’t.”

It’s been obvious for some time that Donald Trump values blind loyalty above all else from his subordinates, whose buy-in to the mission—bolstering Trump’s brand—must be total.

Sessions’s recusal, the only choice he had given he is a target of the probe, is bad and unacceptable in the president’s (very questionable, quite possibly seriously addled) judgment, because it looks bad—which is because it is bad.

Sessions and Trump both are almost certainly targets of former FBI director Robert Mueller’s probe.

And here we have a sitting president saying that he appointed an attorney general to make sure such bad things—like collusion with a foreign government to influence an American presidential election—were swept under the rug. This is Nixon-level stuff, if Nixon had so little grasp of the moment and himself as to utter the kind of paranoid delusions captured on the White House audio tapes directly to reporters.

If nothing else, this is proof positive that Jeff Sessions was selected to be attorney general for no other reasons than he wasn’t Chris Christie, and Trump had an expectation of total loyalty, even at the expense of such principles as integrity and the values espoused in the Constitution.

Sessions’s Justice Department spokespeople declined to comment to the Times on Wednesday.

On Thursday morning, Sessions addressed the issue with reporters, saying he has “no immediate plans to resign.”

“We love this job, we love this department, and I plan to continue to do so as long as that is appropriate,” Sessions said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “I’m totally confident we can continue to run this office in an effective way.”

Trump’s focus on the “Trump Russia thing,” as he’s called the scandal that has utterly dominated the first six months of his presidency, is total—so total that it is eclipsing Sessions’s announcement that restrictions on civil asset forfeiture, law enforcement’s ability to seize Americans’ property without a criminal conviction, would be lifted.

Lifting such restrictions, a huge setback for civil liberties and police reform, was an early Trump promise. Whether the president remembers or even cares is unlikely.

While not for the same reasons (recusal), no wanting ole' Jefferson as AG is one of the few things that Trump and I agree upon.
Click to expand...
y5KrBEy.jpg

No Way I'm claiming tobe the potical genus of the level you have obtaiined however reading about president's from our past!
I like your post.
The contrast is really black & white?
 
Baron23 said:
Trump Is Sick of Jeff Sessions, Who (So Far) Refuses to Quit

Like us, President Donald Trump is through with Attorney General Jeff Sessions and wishes he’d picked someone other than the hard-line drug warrior with the segregationist’s resume to become America’s top law-enforcement officer.

And like every other time Donald Trump stumbles upon a sound idea, the president wishes Sessions would do a solid for America and go away forever for the wrong reasons—in this case, so that there would be an attorney general who would make Trump’s biggest problem go away.

On Wednesday, Trump gave a wide-ranging interview to the New York Times, America’s “failing” “fake news” outlet of record. (When Trump finally exits the Oval Office and is kindly led by the hand to a Trump-branded old-folks home, willfully or no, transcripts of the interview will be entered into the record as justification.)

Among the decipherable takeaways is what the Times soberly described as a “remarkable public break” with the attorney general, one of Trump’s earliest and most loyal supporters. Openly and bitterly, the president complained about Sessions’s decision to recuse himself from the ongoing probe into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russians last year.

Sessions announced he’d step back from the investigation in March, after it became clear that Sessions had several meetings with the Russian ambassador which he’d failed to disclose, despite being asked directly. (This is also known as “lying under oath.”)

You see, the president put Sessions into the job so that he would be there to finesse such things—not so that independent special counsels could dig around in the swamp around Trump Tower and come up with incriminating evidence.

“Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job, and I would have picked somebody else,” Trump said.

For the attorney general to do so—after Sessions himself misled the Senate in January, lying during his confirmation hearings about prior contacts with Russian officials—was “very unfair to the president,” Trump said.

“Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself, which frankly I think is very unfair to the president,” the president said. “How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, ‘Thanks, Jeff, but I’m not going to take you.’ It’s extremely unfair—and that’s a mild word—to the president.”

Trump also had a hot take on Sessions’s fibbing during his Senate confirmation hearings in January.

“Jeff Sessions gave some bad answers,” the president said. “He gave some answers that were simple questions and should have been simple answers, but they weren’t.”

It’s been obvious for some time that Donald Trump values blind loyalty above all else from his subordinates, whose buy-in to the mission—bolstering Trump’s brand—must be total.

Sessions’s recusal, the only choice he had given he is a target of the probe, is bad and unacceptable in the president’s (very questionable, quite possibly seriously addled) judgment, because it looks bad—which is because it is bad.

Sessions and Trump both are almost certainly targets of former FBI director Robert Mueller’s probe.

And here we have a sitting president saying that he appointed an attorney general to make sure such bad things—like collusion with a foreign government to influence an American presidential election—were swept under the rug. This is Nixon-level stuff, if Nixon had so little grasp of the moment and himself as to utter the kind of paranoid delusions captured on the White House audio tapes directly to reporters.

If nothing else, this is proof positive that Jeff Sessions was selected to be attorney general for no other reasons than he wasn’t Chris Christie, and Trump had an expectation of total loyalty, even at the expense of such principles as integrity and the values espoused in the Constitution.

Sessions’s Justice Department spokespeople declined to comment to the Times on Wednesday.

On Thursday morning, Sessions addressed the issue with reporters, saying he has “no immediate plans to resign.”

“We love this job, we love this department, and I plan to continue to do so as long as that is appropriate,” Sessions said, according to the Los Angeles Times. “I’m totally confident we can continue to run this office in an effective way.”

Trump’s focus on the “Trump Russia thing,” as he’s called the scandal that has utterly dominated the first six months of his presidency, is total—so total that it is eclipsing Sessions’s announcement that restrictions on civil asset forfeiture, law enforcement’s ability to seize Americans’ property without a criminal conviction, would be lifted.

Lifting such restrictions, a huge setback for civil liberties and police reform, was an early Trump promise. Whether the president remembers or even cares is unlikely.

While not for the same reasons (recusal), no wanting ole' Jefferson as AG is one of the few things that Trump and I agree upon.
Click to expand...
Sessions was right to recuse himself IMO, albeit very late. He's obviously still not guiltless due to his prior lying to the Senate. He should have recused himself long before lying to the Senate, the fact that he found himself lying is evidence enough that his conflict of interest should have prevented him from being allowed to deliberate on anything here from the beginning.

It is clear that he was dealing with Russian officials which meant he was caught up in the same conflict of interest ridden mess as Trump himself. Neither of these people would know procedural justice if it bit them in the ass though, so I digress :dog:

Trumps reasons for being upset with Sessions IMO are in many ways just more reasons to oust trump. If it ends up in the government having Sessions removed too, then that's just a bonus :biggrin:
 
Medicaid, Medicare Fraud: More than 400 Charged in Crackdown | Time.com
I would think the President would be happy with Sessions going after Medicare fraud. With his platform against Obamacare, I would think it would be something he would be praising. But that is the shift blaming this administration puts out. One person mentioned that Sessions was the new Spicer.

This week more testimony and perhaps we will find out how many layers are in this onion? :newspaper:It is harder to sift the dry information from the noise that is deliberately being put out in several article from the outlets.

Donald Trump doesn't want to fire Jeff Sessions. He wants Sessions to quit. - CNNPolitics.com
 
Given U.S. history, don’t get too comfortable with your weed

AR-170729775.jpg


Cannabis is, and has been for nearly a century, a central figure in the American culture wars. It started that way with Henry J. Aslinger’s “Reefer Madness”, a nasty blend of racism, misinformation, and propaganda. It ramped up to full pitch with Nixon’s denial of science and willful decision to use it to vilify his opposition. It lurks behind Jeff “I thought the KKK was OK until I learned they smoke pot” Sessions’s plan to renew the abysmal failure known as “The War on Drugs,” which is actually his plan to defend the establishment behind the privatized prison industry.

Cannabis and hemp, its lower THC relative, have a history in the United States which goes back to the Colonial Era. For most of the past 400 years, it has been recognized as an incredibly versatile and beneficial crop, used in applications from rope to cloth to medicine. There were even times in American history where it was used to pay taxes and when farmers were fined for not growing it. Think about that for a moment: there was a time (Jamestown Colony, 1619) when the value of hemp was recognized as being so high, that the legislative body mandated each and every farmer grow it or risk being fined or even jailed. This favorable status of hemp in Virginia continued right up until our nation’s founding as the Virginia colony’s lawmakers paid bounties for its production for over two and a half centuries.

Cannabis was added to the official U.S. Pharmacopoeia (the standard government publication cataloging medicines for over-the-counter distribution) in 1850 as an ingredient that was effective in treating over two dozen afflictions including opiate addiction (it might just be me, but something about that sounds timely). This was the status quo for cannabis well into the 20th century.


Then came Aslinger and cannabis prohibition. Putting aside the mountains of evidence that prove cannabis to be an effective medical treatment, Aslinger chose to vilify a plant that had proven its value on these shores for centuries. There is another, more sinister, motive the nation’s first drug czar blended into his crusade and it can be seen in nearly every statute ever passed against one of the oldest plants in human history. The plant is almost always referred to in law books not as “cannabis,” but rather as “marijuana” (or the hilariously dated “marihuana”). This designation is not incidental. The plant was widely known by its proper name as a medical ingredient, but Aslinger, a man who referred to jazz musicians as “neither fish nor fowl,” chose the Spanish language colloquialism to stir racist feelings in support of his cause.

Racism also underlaid Nixon’s decision to continue prohibition. John Erlichman, his former domestic policy chief, admitted in a recent interview that Nixon began the “War on Drugs” (winner: Drugs) as a weapon against those he saw as his political enemies, hippies, and minorities. The statistics bear this out: Between 2001 and 2010, there were over 8 million arrests for marijuana; though the numbers show use between black and white people is roughly equivalent, blacks were 3.73 times more likely to be arrested for possession, indicating a clear racial bias.

Now, despite claims by Trump the Candidate alleging to value states’ rights and the benefits of at least medical cannabis, his appointee for attorney general (when he is not busy ducking and dodging legal issues concerning Russia) has rolled back regulations against privatized prisons, a stain on contemporary American culture and the primary beneficiaries of drug arrests. And, according to The Cannabist, he has sent an investigatory team to Colorado to examine the ins and outs of legalization. I, for one, will not spend a lot if time wondering what his conclusions will be.

The blatant and predatory nature of how those currently in power attack their opponents gives the supporters of cannabis a tremendous tactical advantage – there is no reasonable way that we can be surprised when Sessions & Co. start to pass laws bolstering their position against the progress that has been worked toward for decades and has begun to come to fruition here in the 2010s. That gives us the opportunity to mount our defense and to attack through the only appropriate method: the spread of accurate information in support of our friend Mary Jane and against the dirty games based on race, money, and politics that people like Sessions have been playing for nearly a century. The information is available. The ability to spread it is as easy as typing and posting it or having a conversation. Now is the time to prepare. Soon, it will be time to fight. After that will come the time to kick back, relax, and burn one in celebration of a nationwide victory.

Original article Thank You to Christopher Gallagher @dgomag.com.i have no affiliation.

Link
 
Federal lawsuit against Sessions and DEA says marijuana’s Schedule I status unconstitutional
http://www.thecannabist.co/2017/07/25/marijuana-schedule-i-lawsuit-unconstitutional/84473/
Plaintiffs claim the classification of cannabis as a Schedule I substance is so “irrational” that it violates the U.S. Constitution

Published: Jul 25, 2017, 7:10 am • Updated: about 2 hours ago Comments (12)

By Alex Pasquariello, The Cannabist Staff

A diverse cadre of cannabis advocates filed a federal lawsuit Monday challenging the constitutionality of the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) as it pertains to marijuana.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Drug Enforcement Agency acting administrator Charles Rosenberg were named as defendants in the lawsuit brought by a former NFL player, two children using medical marijuana, an Iraq War vet with post-traumatic stress disorder and a social justice nonprofit organization.

The CSA’s classification of cannabis as a Schedule I substance — a designation reserved for the most dangerous substances including heroin, LSD and mescaline — is so “irrational” that it violates the U.S. Constitution, plaintiffs claim.

The 89-page complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York by attorney Michael S. Hiller, further claims that the federal government does not believe and never has believed that cannabis meets or ever met the three Schedule I requirements: high potential for abuse, no medical use in treatment, and no ability to be used or tested safely, even under medical supervision.

“Indeed, the Federal Government has admitted repeatedly in writing and implemented national policy reflecting that Cannabis does in fact, have medical uses and can be used and tested safely under medical supervision,” the complaint states. “On that basis, the federal government has exploited cannabis economically for more than a decade by securing a medical cannabis patent and entering into license agreements with medical licensees.”

More on Schedule I
New federal bill would reschedule marijuana as Schedule III

American Legion calls on Trump to take cannabis off Schedule I to help vets

How advocates are inspiring members of Congress to champion national CBD oil legalization

‘Something’s going to have to give’: An untenable conflict between feds, legalized states

“The DEA has lost its moral authority”: Rep. Jared Polis pulls no punches in exclusive interview

The lawsuit goes on to state that the 1970 CSA as it pertains to cannabis was enacted and subsequently implemented not to stop the spread of a dangerous drug, but instead to suppress the rights of African Americans and Vietnam War protesters.

“The Nixon Administration ushered the CSA through Congress and insisted that cannabis be included on Schedule I so that African Americans and war protesters could be raided, prosecuted and incarcerated without identifying the actual and unconstitutional basis for the government’s actions,” the complaint states.

The lawsuit seeks a declaration that the CSA is unconstitutional; a ruling in the plaintiff’s favor would not nullify the law, but instead put a permanent injunction against enforcement of the law as it pertains to marijuana.

The five plaintiffs in the case are a diverse group of cannabis advocates from around the country.

Retired NFL defensive end Marvin Washington of Dallas, a long-time cannabis legalization proponent, is suing because the CSA makes him ineligible to obtain grants under the Federal Minority Business Enterprise program to start a medical marijuana business.

Alexis Bortell, 11, uses medical cannabis to treat her intractable epilepsy. Her parents — both military veterans — moved their family from Texas to Larkspur, Colo., so that she could access the medicine that her family says drastically improved her seizure condition. She is suing because the CSA restricts her ability to travel freely with her medicine and also because the federal illegality of cannabis forbids her from fully accessing the benefits due her as the child of a military veteran.

When he was just 1, Jagger Cotte of DeKalb County, Ga., was put in hospice care, diagnosed with deadly Leigh’s Disease. His parents turned to medical cannabis with hopes of relieving his near constant pain and believe it has extended his life. Now 6, Jagger relies on medical cannabis and, like Alexis, is suing because the CSA takes away his right to travel by airplane or travel to or through states in which medical cannabis is illegal.

Jose Balen, 34, of Seminole County, Fla., served in the U.S. Army and was deployed to Iraq for 14 months starting in May 2003. Today, he uses medical cannabis to treat PTSD, and is suing for the right to safely enter a military base, travel by airplane, and travel to states where medical cannabis is illegal.

New York’s Cannabis Cultural Association is a 501(c)3 nonprofit helping marginalized and underrepresented communities engage in the legal cannabis industry; fighting for criminal justice reform; improving access to medical cannabis; and advocating for adult use legalization. The group contends that the CSA was enacted and enforced in a discriminatory manner historically targeting populations of color and today prevents them from participating in the legal cannabis industry.

This story is developing and will be updated.

I like this very much for many reasons.....I hope they tear Sessions and Rosenberg a new a-hole in court.
http://www.thecannabist.co/2017/07/25/marijuana-schedule-i-lawsuit-unconstitutional/84473/
 
FBI Data Shows Marijuana Legalization Reduces Violent Crime

The supposed crackdown on marijuana by Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has been the cannabis industry’s on-again, off-again drama for much of 2017.

On February 23, former Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters during a live televised press conference that he expected to see “greater enforcement” of federal marijuana laws as they apply to recreational use. Spicer added that he did not expect the government to crack down on the medical use of marijuana, given the 2014 congressional appropriations rider that prohibits the DOJ from spending money enforcing federal drug laws in states that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.

The day following Spicer’s panic-inducing marijuana responses, the White House canceled the daily press briefings, opting for an off-camera media gagle consisting of handpicked media outlets. The Associated Press boycotted the event.

On March 2, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) informed reporters that Attorney General Jeff Sessions had given private assurances to senators that the DOJ would “have some respect for states’ right on these things.”

A letter Sessions wrote to congressional leadership in May proved otherwise, as the Attorney General requested a reversal of the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, foreshadowing a possible crackdown on states’ medical marijuana laws.

With a new report from a DOJ task force expected to lay at least part of the blame for a supposed rise in violent crimes on expanding marijuana legalization, the congressional rider protecting more than two million medical marijuana patients nationwide has never been more crucial.

But the federal government’s data may hold the key in proving that states with marijuana legalization actually see less violent crime than their prohibitive counterparts.

As reported by Melissa Santos of the News Tribune, violent crime in the state of Washington has been declining since voters legalized recreational marijuana via Initiative 502.

“Since voters approved Initiative 502, FBI crime statistics show lower rates of violent crime in Washington than before legalization. According to the FBI data, in 2011 there were 295.6 violent offenses reported per 100,000 Washington residents. In 2015, the most recent full year of data available, that rate had fallen to 284.4 violent offenses per 100,000 people.”

Even lawmakers in the state of Washington that opposed legalization realize that the end of prohibition has had a positive effect on crime reduction. State Senator Ann Rivers (R-La Center) told Santos, “I did not vote for the initiative, but I will tell you this: That revenue, that’s not coming from people who woke up one day and said, ‘Oh, it’s legal now, I think I’ll go buy some. The bulk of that is from people who were supporting El Chapo or whoever before.”

According to FBI data, violent crime in Washington was 31% below the national average of 372.6 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2015, the most recent year of data available.

Apparently, the Senate Appropriations Committee wouldn’t be swayed by the Attorney General’s claims of weed-induced violent crime, either.

Today, the Senate Appropriations Committee effectively declined the request from Sessions by renewing the rider as part of their DOJ budget for fiscal year 2018.

Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy (D), who offered the amendment up for a vote today before it passed in the Committee, told Tom Angell of Massroots, “It is more humane to regulate medical marijuana than to criminalize it. I don’t want them spending money pursuing medical marijuana patients who are following state law… We have more important things for the Justice Department to do than tracking down doctors or others, epileptics, who are using medical marijuana legally in their state.”

The same Senate panel has also approved a separate amendment that will protect state industrial hemp laws from obstruction.

There has been no indication on whether the House of Representatives will decide to endorse the budget rider this year, though that doesn’t necessarily affect the amendment’s chances of ending up on the final budget. Each year, the House leaves the provision off of their budget and the Senate panel subsequently adds it as an underlying amendment.

Since this goes directly to Sessions ridiculous statements about MJ and rise in crime, I thought to post it here. Please feel free to move it, @momofthegoons if that's the right thing to do.
 
AG Sessions’ Plan for Legal Marijuana Is Still a Mystery

While the cannabis community has been waiting on bended knee for the past several months to learn the results of a federal marijuana review ordered by U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the latest reports seem to indicate that it could still be awhile before we know exactly how the Trump administration intends to proceed with legal marijuana.

Last week, Sessions took to the DOJ website to provide an update on the work of the Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, which was assembled in April to investigate a number of federal policies, including those pertaining to marijuana legalization. The findings of the review were due to land on Sessions’ desk by July 27.

Although the Justice Department’s inquiry has centered mostly on what it could mean for the continued existence of legal weed in the United States, Sessions’ update does not give any indication that the cannabis industry is going to suffer a federal crackdown.

In a statement, Sessions said the task force “has provided me with recommendations on a rolling basis…identifying successful violent crime reduction strategies; and developing recommendations on actions the Department can take to help improve public safety.”

“I have been acting on the Task Force’s recommendations to set the policy of the Department. I will continue to review all of the Task Force’s recommendations, and look forward to taking additional steps towards ensuring safer communities for all Americans,” he added.

Last Wednesday, the Huffington Post’s Matt Ferner learned that the task force likely submitted its recommendations ahead of the due date. A spokesperson for the Department told Ferner that the details of the review had already been gathered, but no changes in policy have been made—at least not yet.

“We’ll make announcements on policy changes when we have announcements to make,” the unidentified spokesperson said, according to a Twitter post.

There is no denying that Sessions has been building a case against legal marijuana since taking over at the Justice Department.

In addition to initiating the federal marijuana review, he petitioned Congress in hopes of eliminating the medical marijuana protections known as the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, as well as made policy changes that will increase prison sentences for drug offenders and ramp up the civil asset forfeiture program.

Yet, the leading hammer for the Justice Department has not announced any definitive agenda to launch a full-blown attack against the cannabis industry.

Fortunately, his hands are tied to some degree. The U.S. Senate recently approved its version of the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment, a signal from the upper chamber that the Hill is not at all buying into his drug war resurrection tactics. If the House does the same, which is expected, the Justice Department will have absolutely no power to impose any kind of crackdown on the medical sector.

But, that does not mean that Sessions (or his successor) won’t eventually rescind or revise an Obama-era memo that gives states the freedom to experiment with recreational marijuana. After all, the Trump administration has not exactly been keen on keeping any of the Obama administration’s directives in place. But just how the Justice Department will move on the issue remains a mystery.

Ah...ole Jeffey is having a very bad few weeks....Trump beating up on him in public almost makes me sympathetic to him....key word: almost.
 
Why Jeff Sessions is going to lose his war against cannabis

Attorney General Jeff Sessions will soon receive a report he has been waiting for. The document, from the President’s Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, is expected to clarify the federal government’s position on marijuana — and the conflicts that exist between state and federal laws. It clear what Sessions wants to do: Over the past month, he has asked Congress for permission to prosecute medical cannabis suppliers who are acting in accordance with their state’s laws, reauthorized civil asset forfeiture (a highly controversial practice used in drug cases), and announced his desire to start a new “war on drugs.”

On at least one front, however, Sessions’s new war on drugs is likely to fail. In taking on cannabis — particularly the medical uses of cannabis — he is staking out a position that is at odds with powerful interests and an overwhelming majority of Americans from nearly all walks of life. This tide is too strong to swim against.

The first obstacle is that the medical community has largely resolved the question of whether cannabis is clinically useful. In January, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NAS) reported that there is “conclusive evidence” that cannabis (both whole plant and extracts) is clinically effective at treating some diseases, including chronic pain. Cannabis may prove to be a pain management strategy that could substitute for opioids for many desperate patients, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) acknowledges that cannabis may be an effective tool to combat the opioid crisis. Researchers studying the relationship between medical cannabis laws and opioid use have found that states with such laws have nearly a 25 percent reduction in opioid-related deaths. The contrast between opioids — which killed more than 33,000 Americans in 2015 — and cannabis could not be more striking. As NIDA states on its DrugFacts — Marijuana Web page: “There are no reports of teens or adults fatally overdosing (dying) on marijuana alone.”

[Pot is increasingly legal. Employers need to stop screening for it.]

Further, medical cannabis may also save lives in unexpected ways. Data published in the American Journal of Public Health in February suggests that laws allowing it were associated with fewer traffic fatalities. While we always have to be careful about making claims that a policy caused an outcome, evidence from multiple studies, with careful statistical analyses, is building a case that medical cannabis has real, beneficial, spillover effects.

State governments are a second major hurdle for Sessions. States are sharply opposed to his moves to crack down on their cannabis policies. Eight states (with nearly one-fifth of the U.S. population) have legalized recreational cannabis use by adults. Even more striking, 29 states and the District of Columbia have approved the medical use of botanical cannabis, with 17 more having cannabis extract laws in place. This doesn’t just save lives; it also saves money.

In two studies, we find substantial reductions in a broad array of prescription spending for both Medicare and Medicaid in states that have medical cannabis laws in effect. Medicare and Medicaid don’t cover cannabis, but it nevertheless appears to substitute for many prescription drugs that the programs do cover. Nationally, the savings could be in the billions of dollars across the two programs if all states would adopt medical cannabis laws.

States benefit directly. Our work on Medicaid spending shows that they saved money — as much as $98 million in the case of California in 2014 — when they implemented medical cannabis laws in an environment in which the federal government took a hands-off attitude.

[Yes, pot should be legal. But it shouldn’t be sold for a profit.]

And it’s not just about savings: Cannabis generates substantial economic benefits as well. In 2016, Colorado saw the cannabis industry grow to about $1.3 billion in sales. Colorado levies substantial taxes on cannabis; as a consequence, it generated almost $200 million in tax revenue. Recent estimates suggest that states will collect nearly $655 million in tax revenue from cannabis sales nationwide. Not only are those direct contributions to stressed state budgets, but those taxes represent tens of thousands of jobs and the associated economic activity. At least four state governors recently wrote Sessions to ask him to let states pursue their own policies without federal interference.

Because state budgets would suffer if Sessions reversed the current federal position, state attorneys general would have standing to sue the Justice Department to force Sessions to actually implement the 1970 Controlled Substances Act, which insists that a drug can be listed as Schedule I only if there is “no currently accepted medical use.” The January NAS report, recent revisions to the NIDA position, and literally hundreds of peer-reviewed clinical research articles make clear that cannabis has many medical uses. This, finally, could end conflicts between state medical cannabis laws and federal law: Physicians could legally prescribe cannabis and patients could get medical supervision for their care. (Of course, states would still be free to restrict access to medical cannabis if they chose to do so.)

If Sessions does target cannabis as part of his new war on drugs, there is one final reason to believe the states would win and he would lose. The American people want access to medical cannabis. The most recent Quinnipiac Poll found that 94 percent of Americans support medical access when directed by a physician (including 96 percent of Democrats and 90 percent of Republicans). That poll found 73 percent of respondents oppose enforcing federal cannabis laws against state laws.

Nearly three-quarters of the U.S. population lives in states that have legalized medical cannabis, and states have powerful incentives to preserve their laws. There is almost universal popular opinion in favor of the availability of medical cannabis. The tide has already turned.
 
Ole' Jeffe yet again...ole' Jeffe' yesterday, today, and tomorrow....tired of reading about this guy LOL

Senate Democrat Ron Wyden demands Justice Dept release new crime reduction policies

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A leading Senate Democrat on Tuesday accused U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions of concealing policy recommendations that could change how the Justice Department enforces laws on illegal immigration, drug trafficking and violent crime.

In a letter to Sessions, Oregon Democrat Ron Wyden said the Justice Department should release recommendations made by the Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, noting that the policy changes could end up hurting Americans.

"These [Justice Department] decisions could have dramatic and wide-ranging consequences for Americans' daily lives," Wyden wrote, noting that the task force's work could impact everything from marijuana and asset forfeiture policies to hate crimes, immigration and human trafficking.

"Yet Americans remain in the dark about the content of the task force's recommendations."

The Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety was established through an executive order by President Donald Trump in February. Names of those serving on the task force have not been published, and the group was supposed to deliver its recommendations by July 27.

In a public statement last week, Sessions said he had received recommendations "on a rolling basis" and he had already "been acting on the task force's recommendations to set the policy of the department."

A Justice Department spokesman referred to Sessions' prior statement when asked for comment, saying the department will "make announcements on policy changes as appropriate."

The department has already announced a few policy changes that stem from the task force's work.

Earlier this month, for instance, the department said it plans to reinstate a controversial civil asset forfeiture program that lets local police departments seize cash from people without first charging them with a crime, even if their states do not condone such a policy.

The policy had been rolled back during the Obama administration amid concerns it was allowing the government to take away peoples' property without due process.

In May, the department also undid another Obama-era policy to allow for tougher charges and longer prison sentences.

Wyden, whose state voted to legalize the use of recreational marijuana, said he was particularly concerned about the "secrecy shrouding" recommendations related to the drug.

Sessions has previously made critical comments about marijuana use.

"It is not the role of the Attorney General to unilaterally undermine the will of Oregon voters," he wrote.

Well, at least he understands our form of government. sigh
 
Legal-Weed States Tell Jeff Sessions Their Programs Are Working. He Might Crack Down Anyway.
The attorney general personally opposes marijuana, and seems willing to ignore evidence. Bummer.

Marijuana legalization is going smoothly in Colorado and Oregon, state officials recently told the Justice Department as it prepares for a shift in federal law enforcement priorities that could include changes to marijuana policy.

But Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a staunch drug opponent, nevertheless is considering reversing the Obama administration’s relaxed approach to state legalization, and may resume strictly enforcing federal laws, which still regard all marijuana use as illegal.

Sessions in February named a task force to review U.S. enforcement of laws surrounding immigration, drug trafficking and violent crime. Colorado and Oregon, among the first states to legalize recreational marijuana, submitted lengthy reports to Justice Department officials, detailing well-regulated legal marijuana industries that generate vast tax revenue and no measurable increase in crime or health problems.

The task force forwarded its proposals last week, Sessions said, but the Justice Department wouldn’t disclose what they are.

“Those recommendations went to the AG,” spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said. “We’ll make announcements on policy changes when we have announcements to make.”

Colorado and Oregon ― among eight legal-weed states that know the issues best ― produced detailed reports on their experiences, officials said.

A 140-page report from Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper’s (D) office contains data and analysis from six state agencies, showing that the state’s 2012 marijuana legalization didn’t significantly increase youth drug abuse, school dropouts or juvenile arrests.

Statistics do show a rise in car crashes and fatalities involving motorists testing positive for cannabinoids. But Colorado’s report notes the statistics may not prove more drivers are intoxicated, because inactive marijuana compounds can be detected for more than a month in some individuals. Marijuana DUIs have declined 21 percent in the first six months of 2017 from the same period a year earlier.

Colorado reported collecting $459.5 million in marijuana taxes as of May, and used the money for school construction, regulation and enforcement of marijuana laws, youth prevention programs, substance-abuse treatment programs, and public education campaigns.

Legalization has “facilitated the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars into the Federal Reserve System that would otherwise exist outside of the nation’s banking system,” the report says. Even though federal banking regulations continue to force the industry to rely on cash, the report says, legalization helps ensure the money is “not diverted to criminal enterprises.”

A 19-page report prepared by Oregon Gov. Kate Brown’s (D) office gives a positive view of legalization that safeguards public safety, and describes the state’s robust system tracking weed from seed to sale. The document was first made public in June following a records request by Oregonian reporter Noelle Crombie.

Oregon’s report acknowledges the continued existence of a marijuana black market. It also notes legalization’s hiccups, including “overproduction” and new laws it needed to place limits on growers and to increase penalties for marijuana-related crimes.

Oregon reported collecting more than $60 million in marijuana taxes in 2016.

“We passed legislation to tighten down seed-to-sale tracking in the medical arena,” Brown told HuffPost in an interview late last month. “My staffers on this are working very closely with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.”

Brown said Sessions’ Justice Department hadn’t yet done anything to undermine the state’s laws.

“It is just making everyone nervous,” Brown said. “I haven’t seen anything ― it’s just different.”

Oregon and Colorado are among eight states that have legalized recreational marijuana. Twenty-nine states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. territories of Guam and Puerto Rico have medical marijuana laws (17 other states have laws allowing limited use of cannabidiol, or CBD, the non-psychoactive ingredient in pot that some say has therapeutic properties).

It’s unclear whether other states submitted reports to Sessions’ office or met with task force members.

Washington state, which also began selling legalized recreational marijuana in 2014, has sent Sessions’ office three letters defending the state’s legalization scheme under current federal policy, and requested a meeting with Sessions, a representative from Gov. Jay Inslee’s (D) office told HuffPost.

Inslee’s office received a reply from Sessions on Wednesday expressing skepticism of the state’s marijuana legalization. Sessions’ letter cites a 2016 law enforcement report that he says “raises serious questions about the efficacy of marijuana ‘regulatory structures’ in your state.”

States have pressed forward with legalization under Obama administration guidance urging federal prosecutors to refrain from targeting state-legal marijuana operations. But that guidance could be reversed or altered by Sessions in ways that could doom thriving industries many states now consider legal.

National support for marijuana legalization has risen dramatically in recent years, reaching historic highs. A Quinnipiac poll from earlier this year found that 94 percent of Americans support allowing adults to use marijuana for medical purposes if their doctor prescribes it.

Advocates said the Colorado and Oregon reports confirm the success of state laws.

“This huge compilation of data shows that legalization is working very well,” said Tom Angell, chairman of drug policy reform group Marijuana Majority. “Legalizing marijuana is not only overwhelmingly supported by a growing majority of voters, it also protects public health and safety in the ways we always said it would.”

Mason Tvert, vice president of public relations and communications with VS Strategies, a Denver-based communications and government relations firm focused on marijuana policy, who was also instrumental in the passage of Colorado’s recreational marijuana ballot measure, said that if the Justice Department goal is to promote public health and safety, “it would be entirely counterproductive to dismantle the thoughtful state and local regulatory frameworks that have been established in states like Colorado.”

“The DOJ can either support state and local officials and work with them to control cannabis, or they can support criminals and cartels by forcing cannabis back into the illegal market,” Tvert said.

If ole' Jeffe actually goes down the path he has threatened, then Trump ought to fire his ass and the rest of the Republican party should support that (Russian probe or not) as it will kill them in any legal states, won't even play well to Trump's state's rights, and will be in court for a decade. Any justification (like the fucking over stretched Commerce Clause) for the Fed's intererring in program wholly within a state's border will indeed end up at the SCOTUS. Hey Jeff....fuck you, mate.
 
Congress Is Heading for a Confrontation With Sessions Over Marijuana
By
Nathan Howard
August 3, 2017, 11:09 AM EDT August 3, 2017, 1:41 PM EDT

Congress is heading for a confrontation with Attorney General Jeff Sessions over pot.

Sessions is seeking to crack down on marijuana use while lawmakers from both parties are pushing legislation that would do the opposite.

Measures have been attached to must-pass bills in the Senate that would allow Veterans Affairs doctors to counsel patients on the use of medical marijuana, and to continue blocking the Justice Department from pursuing cases against people who use medical marijuana in states that have legalized it.

Some lawmakers are pushing to go even further. Senator Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, this week unveiled legislation that would legalize marijuana at the federal level. In the House, Republican Matt Gaetz of Florida proposed legislation that would change the federal classification of marijuana to allow research and a range of medical uses.

Booker said the law needs to be changed because minorities and the poor are disproportionately arrested for what amounts to a minor offense.

“It disturbs me right now that Attorney General Jeff Sessions is not moving as the states are -- moving as public opinion is -- but actually saying that we should be doubling down and enforcing federal marijuana laws even in states that have made marijuana legal,” he said in a video posted Tuesday on Facebook.

Eight states have fully legalized marijuana for adult use and 21 more have legalized it for medical use only. Federal law continues to ban the use and sale of cannabis. During the Obama administration, the Justice Department didn’t actively prosecute marijuana offenders, an approach Sessions has said needs to change.

Read more: Trump Casts Cloud Over Cannabis, But Money Keeps Pouring In

“I’m not sure we’re going to be a better, healthier nation," he said in February, "if we have marijuana being sold at every corner grocery store.” He later added, “My best view is that we don’t need to be legalizing marijuana.”

In April, Sessions put out a memo to U.S. attorneys about his crime-reduction efforts and said one of his subcommittees will "undertake a review of existing policies in the areas of charging, sentencing, and marijuana to ensure consistency with the department’s overall strategy on reducing violent crime and with administration goals and priorities."

Sarah Flores, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to comment on the matter.

The president has repeatedly expressed his dissatisfaction with Sessions, a former senator from Alabama, for recusing himself from a federal investigation into whether there was collusion between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia. The new White House chief of staff, John Kelly, told Sessions in a phone call over the weekend that Trump doesn’t intend to fire him, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

The Veterans Administration measure, sponsored by Republican Senator Steve Daines of Montana and Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, was added to a bill approved by the Appropriations Committee on July 13. The measure preventing funds from being used to crack down on medical marijuana was sponsored by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, and was approved by the Appropriations Committee on July 27.

The Republican-controlled Congress is already on record supporting medical marijuana. Since 2014, the Justice Department spending bill has included language that blocks funds from being used to enforce federal law relating to medical marijuana in states where the drug is legal.

Gaetz, the Florida lawmaker who introduced his marijuana legislation in April, said at the time that pot shouldn’t be classified by the federal government the same way as heroin or LSD.

“We do not need to continue with a policy that turns thousands of young people into felons every year,” he said in a statement. “Nor do we need to punish the millions of people who are sick and seeking medical help -- from pain, from muscle wasting, from chemotherapy-induced nausea.”

Republican Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado said Sessions told him before being confirmed as attorney general earlier this year that he planned to take a hands-off approach toward states that legalize marijuana. Gardner, whose state is among them, said he’ll hold Sessions to his comments.

“The founders of our country intended states to be laboratories of democracy and Colorado is now deep in the heart of laboratory, along with many other states now," Gardner said in an interview.
 
Baron23 said:
Congress Is Heading for a Confrontation With Sessions Over Marijuana
By
Nathan Howard
August 3, 2017, 11:09 AM EDT August 3, 2017, 1:41 PM EDT

Congress is heading for a confrontation with Attorney General Jeff Sessions over pot.

Sessions is seeking to crack down on marijuana use while lawmakers from both parties are pushing legislation that would do the opposite.

Measures have been attached to must-pass bills in the Senate that would allow Veterans Affairs doctors to counsel patients on the use of medical marijuana, and to continue blocking the Justice Department from pursuing cases against people who use medical marijuana in states that have legalized it.

Some lawmakers are pushing to go even further. Senator Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, this week unveiled legislation that would legalize marijuana at the federal level. In the House, Republican Matt Gaetz of Florida proposed legislation that would change the federal classification of marijuana to allow research and a range of medical uses.

Booker said the law needs to be changed because minorities and the poor are disproportionately arrested for what amounts to a minor offense.

“It disturbs me right now that Attorney General Jeff Sessions is not moving as the states are -- moving as public opinion is -- but actually saying that we should be doubling down and enforcing federal marijuana laws even in states that have made marijuana legal,” he said in a video posted Tuesday on Facebook.

Eight states have fully legalized marijuana for adult use and 21 more have legalized it for medical use only. Federal law continues to ban the use and sale of cannabis. During the Obama administration, the Justice Department didn’t actively prosecute marijuana offenders, an approach Sessions has said needs to change.

Read more: Trump Casts Cloud Over Cannabis, But Money Keeps Pouring In

“I’m not sure we’re going to be a better, healthier nation," he said in February, "if we have marijuana being sold at every corner grocery store.” He later added, “My best view is that we don’t need to be legalizing marijuana.”

In April, Sessions put out a memo to U.S. attorneys about his crime-reduction efforts and said one of his subcommittees will "undertake a review of existing policies in the areas of charging, sentencing, and marijuana to ensure consistency with the department’s overall strategy on reducing violent crime and with administration goals and priorities."

Sarah Flores, a Justice Department spokeswoman, declined to comment on the matter.

The president has repeatedly expressed his dissatisfaction with Sessions, a former senator from Alabama, for recusing himself from a federal investigation into whether there was collusion between Trump’s presidential campaign and Russia. The new White House chief of staff, John Kelly, told Sessions in a phone call over the weekend that Trump doesn’t intend to fire him, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

The Veterans Administration measure, sponsored by Republican Senator Steve Daines of Montana and Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon, was added to a bill approved by the Appropriations Committee on July 13. The measure preventing funds from being used to crack down on medical marijuana was sponsored by Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, and was approved by the Appropriations Committee on July 27.

The Republican-controlled Congress is already on record supporting medical marijuana. Since 2014, the Justice Department spending bill has included language that blocks funds from being used to enforce federal law relating to medical marijuana in states where the drug is legal.

Gaetz, the Florida lawmaker who introduced his marijuana legislation in April, said at the time that pot shouldn’t be classified by the federal government the same way as heroin or LSD.

“We do not need to continue with a policy that turns thousands of young people into felons every year,” he said in a statement. “Nor do we need to punish the millions of people who are sick and seeking medical help -- from pain, from muscle wasting, from chemotherapy-induced nausea.”

Republican Senator Cory Gardner of Colorado said Sessions told him before being confirmed as attorney general earlier this year that he planned to take a hands-off approach toward states that legalize marijuana. Gardner, whose state is among them, said he’ll hold Sessions to his comments.

“The founders of our country intended states to be laboratories of democracy and Colorado is now deep in the heart of laboratory, along with many other states now," Gardner said in an interview.
Click to expand...
It will get fixed!
Push back is expected.

He's live's in a ALERNATE UNIVERSE!
 
Task force on marijuana law offers little on new policies

By Sadie Gurman | AP August 5 at 6:23 AM
WASHINGTON — The betting was that law-and-order Attorney General Jeff Sessions would come out against the legalized marijuana industry with guns blazing. But the task force Sessions assembled to find the best legal strategy is giving him no ammunition, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.

The Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, a group of prosecutors and federal law enforcement officials, has come up with no new policy recommendations to advance the attorney general’s aggressively anti-marijuana views. The group’s report largely reiterates the current Justice Department policy on marijuana.

It encourages officials to keep studying whether to change or rescind the Obama administration’s more hands-off approach to enforcement — a stance that has allowed the nation’s experiment with legal pot to flourish. The report was not slated to be released publicly, but portions were obtained by the AP.

Sessions, who has assailed marijuana as comparable to heroin and blamed it for spikes in violence, has been promising to reconsider existing pot policy since he took office six months ago. His statements have sparked both support and worry across the political spectrum as a growing number of states have worked to legalize the drug.

Threats of a federal crackdown have united liberals, who object to the human costs of a war on pot, and some conservatives, who see it as a states’ rights issue. Some advocates and members of Congress had feared the task force’s recommendations would give Sessions the green light to begin dismantling what has become a sophisticated, multimillion-dollar pot industry that helps fund schools, educational programs and law enforcement.

But the tepid nature of the recommendations signals just how difficult it would be to change course on pot.

Some in law enforcement support a tougher approach, but a bipartisan group of senators in March urged Sessions to uphold existing marijuana policy. Others in Congress are seeking ways to protect and promote pot businesses.

The vague recommendations may be intentional, reflecting an understanding that shutting down the entire industry is neither palatable nor possible, said John Hudak, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who studies marijuana law and was interviewed by members of the task force.

“If they come out with a more progressive, liberal policy, the attorney general is just going to reject it. They need to convince the attorney general that the recommendations are the best they can do without embarrassing the entire department by implementing a policy that fails,” he said.

The task force suggestions are not final, and Sessions is in no way bound by them. The government still has plenty of ways it can punish weed-tolerant states, including raiding pot businesses and suing states where the drug is legal, a rare but quick path to compliance. The only one who could override a drastic move by Sessions is President Donald Trump, whose personal views on marijuana remain mostly unknown.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Rather than urging federal agents to shut down dispensaries and make mass arrests, the task force puts forth a more familiar approach.

Its report says officials should continue to oppose rules that block the Justice Department from interfering with medical marijuana programs in states where it is allowed. Sessions wrote to members of Congress in May asking them — unsuccessfully so far — to undo those protections. The Obama administration also unsuccessfully opposed those rules.

The report suggests teaming the Justice Department with Treasury officials to offer guidance to financial institutions, telling them to implement robust anti-money laundering programs and report suspicious transactions involving businesses in states where pot is legal. That is already required by federal law.

And it tells officials to develop “centralized guidance, tools and data related to marijuana enforcement,” two years after the Government Accountability Office told the Justice Department it needs to better document how it’s tracking the effect of marijuana legalization in the states.

Most critically, and without offering direction, it says officials “should evaluate whether to maintain, revise or rescind” a set of Obama-era memos that allowed states to legalize marijuana on the condition that officials act to keep it from migrating to places where it is still outlawed and out of the hands of criminal cartels and children. Any changes to the policy could impact the way pot-legal states operate.

The recommendations are not surprising because “there’s as much evidence that Sessions intends to maintain the system and help improve upon it as there is that he intends to roll it back,” said Mason Tvert, who ran Colorado’s legalization campaign. He pointed to Sessions’ comment during his Senate confirmation hearing that while he opposed legalization, he understood the scarcity of federal resources and “echoed” the position of his Democratic predecessors.

But in July, he sent letters to Colorado and Washington that stirred concern, asking how they would address reports they were not adequately regulating the drug.

It remains unclear how much weight Sessions might give the recommendations. He said he has been relying on them to enact policy in other areas. Apart from pot, the task force is studying a list of criminal justice issues. The overall report’s executive summary says its work continues and its recommendations “do not comprehensively address every effort that the Department is planning or currently undertaking to reduce violent crime.”

Oh boy, ain't nothing going ole' Jeff's way these days.....couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Bet he wishes he stayed in the Senate...actually, I wish he stayed in the Senate.
 
Ok, calling out the board.....it seems to me that we have a lot of 'likes' we give to each other but very little in the way of new content posted. HEY YOU, comment, will ya? LOL
 
Editorial: Pot-fearing AG should meet with state officials
When Attorney General Jeff Sessions was being tortured by the president’s tweets, he must’ve wondered why the two of them couldn’t have a face-to-face meeting instead. That’s generally how adults handle such things.

Gov. Jay Inslee and Attorney General Bob Ferguson wonder the same in dealing with Sessions on marijuana. They’ve asked multiple times for an in-person conversation, just as they had with Attorney General Eric Holder, but no such luck.

However, Sessions did send a letter, dated July 24, that talked past the state’s concerns and reiterated his power to intervene. In the letter, he asks how the state is dealing with various issues. What better way to get those answers than a sit-down session, where a give-and-take can take place?

For instance, Sessions’ letter wonders about the lack of regulations for medical marijuana. Apparently, he isn’t aware that the state Legislature addressed that longstanding problem last year with legislation that harmonized medical marijuana and recreational marijuana regulations. It’s a remarkable oversight given the bevy of headlines the bill created.

“Honestly, it’s hard to take him seriously if he relies on such outdated information,” Ferguson said in a Seattle Times article.

A meeting also would allow state leaders to ask questions. For instance, Sessions convened a task force in an apparent search for ammunition to shut down legalized pot.

But, the Associated Press reports: “The Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, a group of prosecutors and federal law enforcement officials, has come up with no new policy recommendations to advance the attorney general’s aggressively anti-marijuana views. The group’s report largely reiterates the current Justice Department policy on marijuana.”

AP notes that it obtained portions of the report and there was no plan to release it publicly.

Why not? Why is the attorney general ignoring his own task force, cherry-picking data, using outdated information and raising the specter of a federal shutdown? Possibly because he holds the outdated view that pot is as harmful as heroin and has no medicinal value.

Sessions’ letter points to a 2014 Spokane Valley report that 64 percent of DUIs issued for pot use went to minors. That reflects a single jurisdiction during a particular time. Also, minors use marijuana in states where it hasn’t been legalized. What do the numbers show there?

Is Sessions aware of the American Public Health study showing no statistical difference in automobile crash fatalities in Washington and Colorado when compared with similar states where pot remains illegal? Is he aware of the state Department of Health surveys of thousands of youths showing no increase in marijuana use?

If he would agree to a sit-down, he could learn a lot. He certainly knows the downside of being left in limbo.

To respond to this editorial online, go to www.spokesman.com and click on “Opinion.”

The Spokesman-Review Editorial Board

So many battles to face in this administration why would Sessions create more havoc and more problems for himself? Hopefully he is bluffing with all this BS to make himself appear as a tough guy. I didn't realize Sessions is only 5'4". There's nothing wrong with that being a short person but some men get what's called "little man syndrome." Maybe this is part of his tough guy persona?
CK
 
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