by L. Neil Smith
lneil@lneilsmith.org

Attribute to The Libertarian Enterprise

I live in a state where there are fires during hot, dry summers, a bit of flooding here and there, and an occasional calamitous blizzard. Now and again, somebody will go "postal" at work and start shooting the people he's labored beside peacefully for months or years or decades.

Frequently, the authorities—sadly afflicted with a condition I'll call "Wannabenazism"—will come to believe that they have some mandate to exceed the Constitutional limits on their power, in order to "protect" the innocent members of society (whether they wish to be protected or not), and then, in the aftermath of whatever catastrophe they invariably made worse, announce that their victims will now be allowed the illusion, once again, that they are free and sovereign adults.

Some of those fires, and a still-unexplained mass-shooting at a Safeway distribution unit in the supposedly gun-free Utopia of Denver, gave the Wannabenazis-in-blue excuses, recently, to drive individuals living nearby from their homes, and later magnanimously permit them to return.

Meanwhile, the national news was full of federal Wannabenazis spying on folks illegally and resenting the hell out of being caught and exposed by newspapers that have actually started doing their jobs again. (To state the apparently not-so-obvious-anymore, the job of a free press is to be adversarial toward government, not to pimp for it.)

And while all this was going on, it seemed like every other advertising spot on TV was a "public service message" from a private gang of Wannabenazis, rubbing everybody's faces in the successful throat-cramming of a new Prohibition that prevents individuals from smoking in public places, even if those places happen to be private businesses whose owners want customers to be free to smoke if they like.

Trying to keep from yelling at the TV, I began thinking about Wannabenazis.

A government, I realized, that has the power to order you from your own home at gunpoint because the Wannabenazis decide there's an emergency, instead of leaving you to assess and undertake your own risks, has the power to drag you out of your house and haul you off to a concentration camp—although, of course, it may call it something else.

A government that has the power to force a restaurant or bar to forbid its customers to smoke, has the power to drag you out of your house, haul you off to a concentration camp, search you and take away your prescription drugs, personal weapons, or whatever else the Wannabenazis don't approve of (that very atrocity happened in New Orleans)—although they may pretend to be doing it for your own good.

A government that has the power to pry into your bank records and every exchange you make with your credit card or its increasingly worthless lowjacked currency, has the power to drag you out of your house, haul you off to a concentration camp, search you and take away your prescription drugs, your personal weapons, or whatever else the Wannabenazis don't approve of, and then torture and murder you—although they may later claim they had some secret reason why it was necessary.

A government that has the power to listen in on your telephone calls, intercept your e-mail, and make a note of every website you visit, has the power to drag you out of your house, haul you off to a concentration camp, search you and take away your prescription drugs, your personal weapons, or whatever else the Wannabenazis don't approve of, and then torture and murder you, and pry the gold fillings out of your teeth—although by then everybody will be afraid to ask them why.

A government that has the power to track your phone and car by radio, watch you with devices that make your walls transparent, and record every word you say, has the power to drag you out of your house, haul you to a concentration camp, search you and take away your prescription drugs, your personal weapons, or whatever else the Wannabenazis don't approve of, then torture and murder you, pry the gold fillings out of your teeth, and render your body fat down to make soap.

A government that has the power to assign numbers to your body and every other possession you own, and use those numbers to control your life, has the power to drag you out of your house, haul you off to a concentration camp, search you and take away your prescription drugs, personal weapons, or whatever else the Wannabenazis don't approve of, torture and murder you, pry the gold fillings out of your teeth, render your body fat down to make soap, and tan your skin to make lampshades.

They'll grind up the rest of your body to feed their drug-sniffing dogs.

Understand that we are not "close to a police state" any longer. In many ways, it was all over the day the first driver's license was issued, or when "public accommodations" was first used as an excuse to nationalize private businesses in the cause of desegregation, or when federal Wannabenazis murdered innocent individuals in broad daylight at Ruby Ridge, and on national television at Mount Carmel, and not only got away with their crimes, but received commendations and promotions.

We are living in a police state right now, in the early stages of its existence. If the Wannabenazi monster isn't suffocated in its cradle, it will be big and powerful enough tomorrow to suffocate us, instead.

Reading this column back to myself, I realize that to the average Wannabenazi liberal (I'm told that they prefer to be referred to as "progressives" these days, which demonstrates precisely how out of touch with reality they are—"liberal" was already a misonomer), it's going to sound like some kind of right-wing rant, especially if I criticize any aspect of the so-called Civil Rights Movement, which I lived through as a young adult, remember well, and generally approve of. (Before the government sent troops to Little Rock, it enforced segregation.)

There's a reason for that, but not the reason any Wannabenazi liberal might think. The consequences—both unexpected and all too well expected—of their policies over the decades have been fully as damaging to civilization as any of George Bush's excesses. Liberals, in fact, laid the groundwork for them. It was a liberal who first sneered at me and told me that the Constitution is "just a piece of paper".

What's more, I've never seen any indication that liberals are capable of learning from experience, their own or anybody else's. So if you're interested in individual liberty, expect no help from the Democrats.

Happily, in a Wannabenazi dictatorship compelled to survive, from failure to failure, by pretending to be a democracy, nothing is ever really decided finally. Nothing is ever over and done with. True, we are long past a time when the ballot box could be employed to change things directly. Elections have been carefully engineered, over many decades, to produce the results desired by those in power. Although there are still some sophisticated strategies that can be pursued with elections indirectly (which is one reason I have so little patience with the libertarian movement's rampant electoral pacifism), the active focus of those who would be free must be social rather than political.

It is time to fight back against the Wannabenazis; it is time to make everyday living impossible for them, just as they have tried to do to us. It is time to find out exactly who the Wannabenazis are, both in government and the private sector—although that generally isn't very hard—and it is time to find out where the Wannabenazis live. It is time to ferret out the Wannabenazis' telephone numbers and their e-mail addresses and put that personal information on websites everywhere.

Once we know who the Wannabenazis are, don't sell them groceries or clothing or liquor or medicine or gas. Don't serve the Wannabenazis meals in restaurants. No local or network news anchor, for example, should ever be waited on by the owners or employees of any private business.

Wannabenazis often have "private" business enterprises of their own. Remember Tom Brokaw's federally subsidized mohair goat farm? Most legislators, commissioners, and city council members have businesses, and if they don't, then members of their immediate families certainly do. Those "private" businesses must be boycotted until they've gone belly-up.

Wherever Wannabenazis happen to be elected officials, they must be voted out of office. One good reason to keep on voting is so that you can refuse to vote for any incumbent. That's possibly the most important and effective political tactic friends of individual liberty possess.

Where the Wannabenazis are appointed officials, file grievances and lawsuits—for anything you can think of, anytime you think of it—against them on any excuse that's handy. Make sure their names are always in the media in a negative way. Right or wrong, innocent or guilty, other officials will dump any employee who represents costly trouble.

The object is to make each and every moment of their lives so unbearably uncomfortable for the Wannabenazis—the fireworks Nazis, the porno Nazis, the car Nazis, the meat Nazis, the fat Nazis, the fast food Nazis, the booze Nazis, the victim disarmament Nazis, the womb Nazis, the fur Nazis, the globular warming, ozone depletioning, assed raining Nazis, all of the Wannabenazis who are sure they know how to live your life better than you do—that they'll change, give up, or go away. I'd like to see them tumbling comically over the border into Canada, where they all belong anyway, and will be much happier.

Tragically, all of this may require far more determination and grit than most of the sad, graying advocates of individual liberty seem to have left these days. (Maybe it's time to get some new advocates of individual liberty—like the button says, "Ask Me How".) Just remember, nobody can do everything. Just do whatever you can.

I don't know how it's all going to turn out—if those of us who still give a rat's ass about individual liberty can currycomb all of the contradictions out of our intellectual hair and (okay, mixing my metaphors thoroughly) get our ethical ducks in a row—but it should at least be interesting to stick around for another few decades and see.

That's my plan, anyway.


www.ncc-1776.org/index.html#toc

Another Fourth of July is upon us, the 230th. By rights, and to paraphrase an inscription on the sideplate of one of my Ruger sixguns, manufactured in 1976, it should have been 'the 230th year of American liberty.' Sad to say, it is far from that. We have now reached a point -- I suspect the Brits reached it in the 19th century, and the Romans well before the birth of Christ -- where the political process selects only the most crooked, dullwitted and demented among us, a point where decent, intelligent and rational individuals have no place in public life and are winnowed out by the system. A point where commemorating a Revolution is seen as a dire threat. In a moral sense, America has reverted to the Stone Age. It has become a dark cave where the light of the Bill of Rights never shines. The White House is occupied by a stumbing cretin with the ethical outlook of a piranha, carefully isolated by handlers and flacks -- as he has been most of his life, long before he became a politician -- so that he doesn't have the merest clue what's going on in the real world." (07/02/06)


www.ncc-1776.org/tle2006/t...02-02.html

by Ed Brayton

The Senate Judiciary Committee has begun holding hearings on the issue of presidential signing statements. PSS are statements that the President signs along with a piece of legislation that gives his interpretation of certain provisions of the act. Such statements are not new, but Bush has used them more often than any other President in history, by a wide margin, and for increasingly deceptive intent. In principle there is nothing wrong with such statements, but if they essentially say that the President reserves the right to ignore those provisions he doesn’t like, that’s pretty obviously a major problem. And that’s pretty much what has been happening:

Sen. John McCain thought he had a deal when President Bush, faced with a veto-proof margin in Congress, agreed to sign a bill banning the torture of detainees. Not quite. While Bush signed the new law, he also quietly approved another document: a signing statement reserving his right to ignore the law. McCain was furious, and so were other lawmakers…

Bush’s signing statement in March on Congress’s renewal of the Patriot Act particularly riled Specter and others who labored for months to craft a compromise between Senate and House versions, and what the White House wanted. Reluctantly, the administration gave in on its objections to new congressional oversight of the way the
FBI searches for terrorists.

Bush signed the bill with much flag-waving fanfare. Then he issued a signing statement asserting his right to bypass the oversight provisions in certain circumstances.

This website provides an annoated list of every presidential signing statement Bush has issued since taking office in 2001. As you go through them, you might notice a recurring phrase: “The executive branch shall implement these provisions in a manner consistent with the President’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch and to recommend for the consideration of the Congress such measures as the President judges necessary and expedient.” In other words, “If I think any of the provisions here are a bad idea, I reserve the right to ignore them.”

Testifying at the hearings, conservative legal scholar Bruce Fein sought to distinguish between those signing statements that “elaborate on the President’s understanding of ambiguous legislative language for consideration by the judiciary in deciding cases and controversies” and those that “usurp legislative prerogatives and evade accountability.” The former are clearly permissable. The executive branch must enforce legislative acts and must issue administrative rules to do so. in cases where the language is ambiguous, some interpretation is absolutely necesarry. If challenged, the Federal courts will determine which reading is closest to the meaning of the statutory language. The latter, on the other hand, appear to be pretty much unique to President Bush. Fein gets it exactly right:

The Founding Fathers intended the veto power of the President to be employed primarily to thwart laws he believed were unconstitutional, whether because they encroached on executive branch powers or otherwise. As Alexander Hamilton amplified in Federalist 73, without a veto the President “might gradually be stripped of his authorities by successive resolutions, or annihilated by a single vote.” Indeed, the presidential oath enshrined in Article II requires the President to veto any law he believes is unconstitutional in whole or in part because it obligates him to defend the Constitution, not participate in its sabotage. The President does not enjoy a constitutional option of unilaterally pronouncing a provision he has signed into law as unconstitutional and refuse to enforce it on that count. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Lear Siegler v. Lehman, 842 F.2d 1102 (1988) explained: “Art. I, section 7 is explicit that the President must either sign or veto a bill presented to him. Once signed by the President,…the bill becomes part of the law of the land and the President must ‘take care that [it] be faithfully executed.’ Art. I, section 7 does not empower the President to employ a so-called ‘line item veto’ and excise or sever provisions of a bill with which he disagrees. The only constitutionally prescribed means for the President to effectuate his objections to a bill is to veto it and state those objections upon returning the bill to Congress. The ‘line item veto’ does not exist in the federal Constitution, and the executive branch cannot bring a de facto ‘line item veto’ into existence by promulgating orders to suspend parts of statutes which the President has signed into law.”

He further points out that Bush’s tactic of using statements to avoid enforcing the provisions of laws as written diminishes political accountability. If he vetoes a bill, he takes full responsibility for it, and quite publicly so. If Congress chooses to override that veto, they likewise take full responsibility for the outcome. But using signing statements to make vague pronouncements of one’s right to ignore provisions he believes to be problematic avoids such responsibility because any decisions on what to do or not do takes place in private, not in public view. And he uses the example of the torture provision as a textbook example of this:

The President Bush was harshly criticized by Members of Congress and others over allegations of torture or cruel, degrading, or inhuman treatment of detainees in the war against Afghanistan and international terrorism. The President’s lawyers had fashioned legal theories that would justify torture as an inherent Article II power. But Mr. Bush ultimately capitulated to public opinion and Congress and negotiated the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 as part of a larger Defense Department Supplemental Appropriations. The Act prohibits the Executive in all its branches and agencies from torture or cruel, inhumane, or degrading interrogations whether to obtain foreign intelligence or otherwise. After taking political credit for signing the bill, President Bush issued a statement declaring in substance that he would ignore it when he saw fit as an unconstitutional encroachment on his power to protect “the American people from further terrorist attacks.” According to the signing statement, “The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks.” While to the layman, the language of the signing statement may seem both Delphic and innocuous, to the initiated the words referring to a unitary executive and Commander in Chief powers clearly signify that President Bush is asserting that he is constitutionally entitle to commit torture if he believes it would assist the gathering of foreign intelligence. President Bush was nullified a provision of statute that he had signed into law and which he was then obliged to faithfully execute.

The Act did not create any private right to action for enforcement. Thus, the nullification will circumvent judicial review because Supreme Court decisions make dubious the standing of Members of Congress or congressional committees to challenge allegedly unconstitutional non-enforcement by the White House. President Bush’s signing statement was tantamount to a constitutionally impermissible line item veto.

What will come of these hearings? Probably nothing. The chairman of the judiciary committee, Arlen Specter, has rattled his sword at the administration over their constant constitutional overreaching time and time again and ended up doing absolutely nothing of substance to stop it. How many times have we seen Specter go on TV and announce that he’s extra super duper upset with the administration about something, then melt like cheap margarine when he actually has to do something about it? But Fein has two recommendations that I like:

I would recommend that Congress enact a generic law that prohibits the expenditure of any funds of the United States to enforce a bill that the President has signed into law but which he has declared in a signing statement that he will refuse to enforce in whole or in part because of its alleged unconstitutionality. That use of the power of the purse would transform such signing statements into the equivalent of a constitutional veto. It would force the President to accept either all of a bill or none, as the Founding Fathers intended.

I would further recommend that Congress enact a statute seeking to confer Article III standing on the House and Senate collectively to sue the President over signing statements that nullify their handiwork, at least in circumstances where there is no other plausible plaintiff who would enjoy standing.

And what does he recommend if those don’t work? He recommends that Bush be impeached. And remember, this is coming from one of the most conservative legal scholars in the nation, and one of the top officers in Reagan’s justice department. This isn’t some liberal out there suffering from Bush Derangement Syndrome.


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THOUGHTS FROM THE INTERFACE OF SCIENCE, RELIGION, LAW, AND CULTURE

www.languageofliberty.com/ The web's most complete collection of quotations on freedom & liberty

Clyde Wayne Crews, Jr is Vice President for Policy and Director of Technology Studies at the Competitive Enterprise Institute

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In the Fiscal Year 2006 federal budget, President Bush proposed $2.77 trillion in discretionary, entitlement, and interest spending. Although those costs fully express the on-budget scope of the federal government, there is considerably more to the government's reach than the sum of the taxes sent to Washington. Federal environmental, safety and health, and economic regulations cost hundreds of billions of dollars every year—on top of official federal outlays.

The exact cost of federal regulations can never be fully known. Firms generally pass along to consumers some of the costs of the taxes they are required to pay. Similarly, some regulatory costs, although generally imposed on businesses, get passed on to consumers. Governmental and private data exist on scores of regulations and the agencies that issue them, as well as on regulatory costs and benefits. Some of this data can be compiled in a way that makes the regulatory state more comprehensible to the public. That is the purpose of the annual Ten Thousand Commandments report, some highlights from which appear below.

• Extrapolating from an assessment of the federal regulatory enterprise by economist Mark Crain, regulatory costs hit an estimated $1.13 trillion in 2005.

• Given that 2005 government spending was $2.47 trillion, the hidden tax of regulation now approaches half the size on federal spending itself.

• Regulatory costs are more than triple the $318 billion budget deficit.

• Regulatory costs also exceed all corporate pre-tax profits, which were $874 billion in 2003.

• Regulatory costs exceed estimated 2005 individual income taxes of $894 billion, and are far greater than corporate income taxes of $226 billion.

• Regulatory costs of $1.127 billion are equivalent to 9 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, which was $12.293 billion for 2005.

• Federal regulatory costs of $1.127 billion combined with outlays of $2.472 billion bring the federal government's share of the economy to 29 percent, compared to 27 percent a year ago.

• On the basis of estimates from the Weidenbaum Center and the Mercatus Center, agencies spent $38.3 billion merely to administer and police the regulatory state in 2005. Counting the $1.127 billion in off-budget costs, that brings the total regulatory burden to $1.165 billion.

• The 2005 Federal Register, the daily depository of all proposed and final federal rules and regulations, contained 73,870 pages. This is a 2.4 percent decrease from 2004's 75,675 pages, which had been an all-time record.

• In 2005, 3,943 final rules were issued by agencies. This is a 3.8 percent decline from 2004's 4,101 rules.

• Whereas regulatory agencies issued 3,943 final rules, Congress passed and the President signed into law a comparatively low 161 bills in 2005.

• In the 2005 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, which details rules recently completed as well as those anticipated within the upcoming 12 months, agencies reported on 4,062 regulations that were at various stages of implementation throughout the 50-plus federal departments, agencies, and commissions.

• Of the 4,062 regulations now in the regulatory pipeline, 137 are “economically significant” rules that will have at least $100 million in economic impact. Those rules will impose at least $13.7 billion yearly in future offbudget costs.

• Economically significant rules in the works increased slightly between 2004 and 2005, from 135 to 137.

• The fi ve most active rule-producing agencies—the departments of Treasury, Interior, Commerce, and Homeland Security and the Environmental Protection Agency—with 1,808 rules among them, account for 44 percent of all rules in the Agenda pipeline.

• Of the 4,062 regulations now in the works, 788 affect small business.

The U.S. government has conclusively ended its recent short-lived string of budgetary surpluses—the first since 1969. But if regaining and maintaining a true surplus remains a priority, policy makers must control regulatory costs. Think of it this way: The maximum surplus projected by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) over the coming decade is a minimal and highly speculative $38 billion in 2012. Regulatory costs of more than $1.13 trillion clearly dwarf that amount. Moreover, regulations and taxes can substitute for one another; a new government program requires increasing spending—or imposing new rules and regulations, thus passing the costs on to businesses and individuals. Thus, without better regulatory monitoring, deficit control may invite congressional adoption of new off-budget private-sector regulations rather than new spending that would increase the deficit. If regulatory costs remain largely hidden from public view, regulating will remain an attractive alternative to taxing and spending.

Regulations should be treated like federal spending: Whenever possible, Congress should be held accountable for the compliance costs—as well as the benefits—of federal regulations. Cost/benefit analysis of rules is the typical remedy proposed to police excess regulation. The problem with cost/benefit analysis, however, is that it is largely a form of agency self-policing; agencies would perform “audits” of their own rules, but would rarely admit that the benefits of a rule do not justify the costs involved. At the least, some third-party review would be needed.

A way to maximize congressional accountability is to require Congress to vote on agency rules—in an expedited fashion—before they become binding. Vital for true accountability, this step would fulfill citizens' expectation of “no regulation without representation.” Disclosing costs of rules would remain important, however, even if Congress approved rules. Openness about regulatory facts and figures is critical, just as disclosure of program costs is critical in the federal budget. Simple “regulatory report cards,” similar to the presentation in Ten Thousand Commandments, can be issued officially each year by the federal government to distill regulatory data.

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Advancing Liberty – From the Economy to Ecology

Thursday, June 22, 2006


The General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, USA (PCUSA) voted Wednesday to support access to medical marijuana for people who have a doctor's recommendation.

The resolution was passed at the PCUSA's 217th General Assembly meeting in Birmingham, Alabama. DPA-affiliated Alabama Compassionate Care Campaign members, who include a Presbyterian minister, worked with the Interfaith Drug Policy Initiative to bring the message of compassion for seriously ill people to the General Assembly members for a full vote. The resolution was passed by consensus.

The Homestead Presbytery in Nebraska, who introduced the resolution, said, "When we see the suffering of others, we are called to stand up and take a look."

"Medical marijuana is an issue of mercy," said Rev. Lynn Bledsoe, a Presbyterian minister from Alabama who works as a hospice chaplain. "As people of faith, we are called to stand up for humans who are suffering needlessly. It is unconscionable that seriously ill patients can be arrested for making an earnest attempt at healing by using medical marijuana with their doctors' approval."

The resolution affirms "the use of cannabis sativa or marijuana for legitimate medical purposes as recommended by a physician," and calls for "federal legislation that allows for its use and that provides for the production and distribution of the plant for those purposes."

The Presbyterian Church, USA, is the seventh major denomination to take a position in support of medical marijuana. The others are the United Methodist Church, Episcopal Church, United Church of Christ, Union for Reform Judaism, Progressive National Baptist Convention and Unitarian Universalist Association. No denomination has come out officially against medical marijuana.

Thursday, June 22, 2006


DPA worked with Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL) on landmark legislation introduced today to help states prevent drug overdose deaths. Overdose prevention has been thrust into the national spotlight by a spate of overdose deaths in the last several months caused by a mixture of fentanyl, a powerful narcotic, and heroin.

The legislation would create a federal grant program to provide states with funding to reduce drug overdoses. Currently, there is no federal funding for overdose prevention, despite the fact that overdoses are largely preventable and existing prevention strategies have had proven success.

Cities around the country, including Albuquerque, Baltimore, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Salt Lake City, and San Francisco, have successfully employed a variety of public health measures that have significantly reduced overdoses and saved people's lives. These measures range from increasing the availability of naloxone, a drug that can stop opiate overdose, to targeting overdose prevention education to high-risk populations.

At the state level, there are few comprehensive overdose prevention programs, largely due to fiscal constraints. Sen. Durbin's bill, known as the Drug Overdose Reduction Act, would not only make federal money available for state programs, but would also require the Center for Disease Control to develop a comprehensive plan for reducing overdose deaths. This plan would include an assessment of the obstacles faced by states and federal public health officials seeking to implement effective overdose prevention strategies.

DPA applauds Sen. Durbin for his attention to this urgent public health need. "Many policymakers have been sitting on their hands while people lose their loved ones to drug overdose, but Sen. Durbin has taken decisive action to save lives," said Bill Piper, DPA's director of national affairs. "Congress has the responsibility to pass legislation that will empower local communities to reduce overdose deaths and save thousands of lives."

Washington, DC: The White House Office of National Drug Policy (ONDCP) has wasted billions of taxpayers' dollars since its formation in 1988 on ineffective and counter-productive policies that fail to meet the agency's core objectives, according to a report released this week by the non-partisan Washington, DC think-tank Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW).

"The federal government and the ONDCP have chosen to ignore evidence suggesting that the methods being used in the war on drugs are not effective," the report says. "[T]he federal government has become so obsessed with marijuana use that it is spending money unwisely."

The report cites the ONDCP's National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign and the Justice Department's decision to prosecute medicinal cannabis patients and their caregivers as examples of two particularly wasteful and counterproductive programs.

"The government has thrown more than $1 billion at a campaign that has only succeeded in increasing the number of teenage marijuana users," the report states, noting that reviews of the media campaign have found that it often encourages - rather than discourages - cannabis use among viewers.

Regarding the Justice Department's prosecution of state authorized medicinal cannabis patients, the report determines: "It is useless to throw millions of dollars into attacking patients that are simply trying to find the most effectual medicine possible. ... [S]tates must be given the right to create and enforce these [medical marijuana] laws within their jurisdiction."

Congress voted 259 to 163 this week to continue enforcing federal penalties upon state-authorized patients.

The CAGW report also rebukes government claims that marijuana serves as a "gateway" to harder drug use, finding that ONDCP policies aimed at reducing marijuana availability are unlikely to make a dent in the use and availability of harder drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine, or heroin.

Citizens Against Government Waste issued a similar critique of the ONDCP last year, calling the agency a "federal wasteland" that fails to show objective results.

For more information, please contact Allen St. Pierre, NORML Executive Director, at (202) 483-5500. Full text of the CAGW report, "Wasted in the War on Drugs: Office of National Drug Control Policy's Wasted Efforts,' is available online at: www.cagw.org/site/DocSer...g_Report.pdf