Reversing the Bush Administration’s absurd policy of prosecuting users of medical marijana, regardless of individual state laws, the Obama Administration has announced that it

will not seek to arrest medical marijuana users and suppliers as long as they conform to state laws…

Two Justice Department officials described the new policy to The Associated Press, saying prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state laws.

Score one for states rights.

(Via Instapundit)

The Oregon Daily Emerald‘s multimedia site recently posted a video in which students from the University of Oregon campus were asked what they thought about the possibility of concealed weapons on campus. With a few exceptions, most students responded as expected:

“I think that it shouldn’t be allowed, partly because I wouldn’t feel safe with some of the students who would bring weapons,” said one student (1:42).

Another felt that she didn’t feel guns were necessary, “It’s an environment where people are learning… and it’s supposed to be friendly and, like, a place where everyone can feel safe.” (1:51)

Only one person appearing on the clip addressed the true nature of the question and kudos goes to this girl for throwing her own self-interests to the wind in favor of recognizing the civil liberties of others, “The idea of people having concealed weapons scare me, but at the same time I believe a person’s right to have that weapon.” (1:32)

Apparently students on the campus of the University of Oregon have yet to take any course that gives them any common sense whatsoever, so hear this:

Civil liberties are not based on your own sense of justice, morality or preferences. They are based upon a document that is part of the foundation of these United States. To reason otherwise is against the nature of civil liberties in this country and against the Constitution.

Whatever your opinion on guns is, one must be careful to be mindful of the real issue here. The OUS has effectively taken up creating legislation all on their own, in defiance and violation of the laws of the state of Oregon. We cannot give them the power to do so, lest they expand their power beyond their current scope.

State laws allow the holder of a Concealed Hander’s License to carry anywhere in the state of Oregon except for federal courthouses and a few other areas. University campuses are not part of that list according to the state of Oregon. The ban on concealed handgun carry for holders of CHLs is therefore in direct violation of state law.

Of course, if you wanted to bring suit against the OUS directly you could always open-carry on campus. For those of you who don’t know, Oregon is an open-carry state meaning you are allowed to carry a gun at all times (less the places state or federal law prohibits) as long as it’s displayed externally.

Then again, you could let the OUS stomp all over your civil liberties. Apparently they enjoy it.

(Author’s Note: The Emerald staffer who made the opening panels might want to be careful how they word things next time. The second panel (0:04) said “The group seeks to eliminate the state’s ban on handguns…”. The “state” does not have a ban on handguns, dear Emerald staffer, the OUS does. Making a distinction between those two things is vital when you are trying to inform the masses.)

That pesky little document that seems to be continually thwarting the best laid plans of our political class, the Constitution of the United States of America, was signed 222 years ago today. Let’s hope it keeps pissing people off and frustrating their ambitions for another 222 years.

(H/T: Instapundit)

Reason’s Jesse Walker discusses at length some of the ideas I’ve been trying to get at recently:

When mainstream commentators treat a small group of unconnected crimes as a grand, malevolent movement, they unwittingly echo the very conspiracy theories they denounce. Both brands of connect-the-dots fantasy reflect the tellers’ anxieties much more than any order actually emerging in the world. When such a story is directed at those who oppose the politicians in power, it has an additional effect. The list of dangerous forces that need to be marginalized inevitably expands to include peaceful, legitimate critics.

[…]

The killers, they acknowledge, aren’t taking their marching orders directly from Fox News and AM radio. But by giving serious attention to theories associated with the fringe right—that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is preparing concentration camps, that Barack Obama is not a natural-born U.S. citizen—Glenn Beck and other broadcasters are validating the grievances of potential killers, giving them the impression that they aren’t alone.

[…]

The first is that it ignores the autonomy of people on the fringe. Not just the radicals who commit the crimes, but the radicals who don’t commit crimes. There’s a complex ecology at work here.. Words have influence, but they influence different people in different ways; you can’t reduce media effects to simple push-pull reactions. Accusing Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly of validating right-wing violence isn’t so different from accusing pornography of validating rape, Ozzy Osbourne of validating teen suicide, or Marilyn Manson of validating school massacres.

Think about that. Then go back and read Blue Oregon’s Carla Axtman’s comments on this blog attempting to link mainstream Republicans (and conservatives in general) with “wildly fringe conservative organizations” listening to “eliminationist rhetoric” “within [the] context of guns and stoked-up town halls.”

Axtman (among others) is engaging in the Team-Red vs. Team blue equivalent of blaming Marilyn Manson for Columbine.

"You're the Republican Ernst Röhm!"

"Is it the hat?"

——
Speaking of “have you no shame!?” posturing…

Wait, I wasn’t speaking of that at all. Whatever.

It’s been awhile since I’ve regularly checked Blue Oregon. Once Obama moved into the Oval Office, got rid of some dusty old bust of Winston Churchill, and made himself comfortable, the wind kind of left their sails. The zeal for victory that had seemingly been the trademark of all Democrats before January 20th faded and what replaced it was so much sore-winner chest-pounding and a sudden disdain for that “highest form of patriotism” which they’d long championed through those long, dark years of incipient fascism between 2000 and 2008.

(more…)

Vincent linked to this piece of drivel over at the Eugene Weekly blog, titled “One Big Way to Honor Ted Kennedy,” in his post below, but in case you were too lazy to click on it:

Racism. It’s at the heart of every disagreement with “progressive” policy reforms. Meet Diane DeVillers of Eugene, who lays it all out in today’s issue of the Eugene Weekly:

There is not as much confusion about the health care issue as we are led to believe. Much of the resistance is all about not wanting President Obama to succeed. The town hall haters, gun-toting radical right wingers, have been steaming since our President was elected. It has taken them this long to finally have the nerve to tell America how much they hate the fact that a black man won the election. It is all about being racist.

While the sane people in America try to get health care reform, the minority is trying to mislead and ruin any attempt for this bill to pass. This includes the whole Republican party… Their loyalties are only to themselves. The majority of people elected this president, so they need to get used to it.

…

The majority of Americans want health care reform, so the Democrats should just do it, any way they can…

Everyone in the room should yell back for them to be silent and let the discussion continue.

(more…)

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared in the Guardian UK. Its Author, Simon Singh, was sued by the British Chiropractic Association and ruled against due to the UK’s stunningly illiberal libel laws. This has been making the rounds today, it’s presented here so that you might read and enjoy. Also, the BCA is kindly invited to fuck right off.

Some practitioners claim it is a cure-all, but the research suggests chiropractic therapy has mixed results – and can even be lethal, says Simon Singh.

You might be surprised to know that the founder of chiropractic therapy, Daniel David Palmer, wrote that “99% of all diseases are caused by displaced vertebrae”. In the 1860s, Palmer began to develop his theory that the spine was involved in almost every illness because the spinal cord connects the brain to the rest of the body. Therefore any misalignment could cause a problem in distant parts of the body.

In fact, Palmer’s first chiropractic intervention supposedly cured a man who had been profoundly deaf for 17 years. His second treatment was equally strange, because he claimed that he treated a patient with heart trouble by correcting a displaced vertebra.

You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact some still possess quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything, including helping treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying – even though there is not a jot of evidence.

I can confidently label these assertions as utter nonsense because I have co-authored a book about alternative medicine with the world’s first professor of complementary medicine, Edzard Ernst. He learned chiropractic techniques himself and used them as a doctor. This is when he began to see the need for some critical evaluation. Among other projects, he examined the evidence from 70 trials exploring the benefits of chiropractic therapy in conditions unrelated to the back. He found no evidence to suggest that chiropractors could treat any such conditions.

But what about chiropractic in the context of treating back problems? Manipulating the spine can cure some problems, but results are mixed. To be fair, conventional approaches, such as physiotherapy, also struggle to treat back problems with any consistency. Nevertheless, conventional therapy is still preferable because of the serious dangers associated with chiropractic.

In 2001, a systematic review of five studies revealed that roughly half of all chiropractic patients experience temporary adverse effects, such as pain, numbness, stiffness, dizziness and headaches. These are relatively minor effects, but the frequency is very high, and this has to be weighed against the limited benefit offered by chiropractors.

More worryingly, the hallmark technique of the chiropractor, known as high-velocity, low-amplitude thrust, carries much more significant risks. This involves pushing joints beyond their natural range of motion by applying a short, sharp force. Although this is a safe procedure for most patients, others can suffer dislocations and fractures.

Worse still, manipulation of the neck can damage the vertebral arteries, which supply blood to the brain. So-called vertebral dissection can ultimately cut off the blood supply, which in turn can lead to a stroke and even death. Because there is usually a delay between the vertebral dissection and the blockage of blood to the brain, the link between chiropractic and strokes went unnoticed for many years. Recently, however, it has been possible to identify cases where spinal manipulation has certainly been the cause of vertebral dissection.

Laurie Mathiason was a 20-year-old Canadian waitress who visited a chiropractor 21 times between 1997 and 1998 to relieve her low-back pain. On her penultimate visit she complained of stiffness in her neck. That evening she began dropping plates at the restaurant, so she returned to the chiropractor. As the chiropractor manipulated her neck, Mathiason began to cry, her eyes started to roll, she foamed at the mouth and her body began to convulse. She was rushed to hospital, slipped into a coma and died three days later. At the inquest, the coroner declared: “Laurie died of a ruptured vertebral artery, which occurred in association with a chiropractic manipulation of the neck.”

This case is not unique. In Canada alone there have been several other women who have died after receiving chiropractic therapy, and Edzard Ernst has identified about 700 cases of serious complications among the medical literature. This should be a major concern for health officials, particularly as under-reporting will mean that the actual number of cases is much higher.

If spinal manipulation were a drug with such serious adverse effects and so little demonstrable benefit, then it would almost certainly have been taken off the market.

Simon Singh is a science writer in London and the co-author, with Edzard Ernst, of Trick or Treatment? Alternative Medicine on Trial. This is an edited version of an article published in The Guardian for which Singh is being personally sued for libel by the British Chiropractic Association.

In a stunt that seems more fit for “investigative” television programs like “Dateline,” the British government’s “Ethnic Minority Employment Task Force” has wasted £168,700 (or $270,931) of taxpayer money sending out fake resumes to employers to root out racists.

While $270,000 is, of course, a paltry sum by government standards, the thought of governments trying to expose “racists” with these tactics is more than a little unsettling. One wonders if they targeted specific “suspects”, or if they just sent the phony resumes to random employers to see what turned up.

In any case, Joe McCarthy is probably dancing a little jig down in hell right now.

“First, they came for the smokers…”

“Next, they came for the Earth-killers…”

“Then, they came for the greedy, fat-cat kulaks…”

Right-wing rhetoric incites domestic terrorism!

Our friends at The Liberty, the conservative student publication at Oregon State, are currently in a kerfuffle with the administration over their right to distribute issues. The OSU administration told The Liberty that, since it’s not an officially recognized OSU publication (whatever that means), it can’t have distribution boxes around campus. The Liberty says this is little more than de facto censorship. From a guest opinion in the Daily Barometer:

To censor, as a transitive verb, means “to keep from being published or transmitted: ban, black out, hush (up), stifle, [or] suppress.” Todd Simmons, OSU’s spokesperson, said in an interview with KEZI regarding the University’s treatment of The Liberty’s distribution, “I have never seen an instance that they haven’t been readily available at multiple locations around campus. So if that qualifies as censorship, I’d have to be educated as to what the thinking is there.” If we don’t count the term (winter ’09) that OSU officials ordered the removal every single Liberty bin from the OSU campus and tossed them by a dumpster at 35th and Washington, then the multiple locations that Mr. Simmons is referring to are The Memorial Union and Snell Hall. In other words, the only locations that the university is allowing The Liberty to place its bins are in and around the buildings that are owned and run by the student body (ASOSU). By restricting our publication to a single block, if even that, of campus, OSU officials are stifling and therefore censoring The Liberty.

The OSU administration also claims the Daily Barometer’s long history and association with the university give it special rights to distribution. Sorry, but the First Amendment doesn’t work on the merit system. OSU needs to give all of its student publications equal access to campus, regardless of their history or how much the administration likes them.

I’ll confess: until a few days ago, I’d never heard of Dr. George Tiller. I’m basically pro-choice, but the abortion issue is just not one that I follow particularly closely. While I’ve heard of (and very much dislike) some of the more notorious anti-abortion groups like “Operation Rescue”, my general sense is that most people on the pro-life side of the debate are fundamentally good people who simply have different values (on this question, at least), than I do.

But my intent is not for this post to muse over whether abortion is right or wrong — so please keep your comments on that issue to yourself; no one here cares what you think about it, so I’ll just delete those that try to turn the comments section into an abortion screaming match.

What I want to talk about instead is identity politics, the flawed notion of collective responsibility, and attempts to shape the narrative by seizing on events like the murder of George Tiller and using them for political gain.

(more…)

Speaking of The Gay, New Hampshire just became the sixth state in the U.S. to legalize gay marriage. Congratulations to NH and all its residents. For being so “forward-thinking” and “progressive,” Oregon is starting to look a little sad.

FIRE reports on yet another case of a student being harassed by school administrators for advocating for concealed carry of handguns on campus. The Community College of Allegheny County in Pennsylvania has threatened disciplinary action against one of its students, Christine Brashier, for handing out pamphlets and trying to start a campus chapter of Students for Concealed Carry on Campus.

The school deans said Brashier was prohibited from “soliciting” her materials or even discussing concealed carry on campus. They even went so far as to order her to destroy all of her pamphlets. Brashier was then grilled by school officials, who demanded to know whether she owned firearms or carried a concealed weapon.

Perhaps the CCAC deans need a refresher course in Constitutional law. It just so happens that pamphleteering is explicitly protected by the First Amendment. In the 1938 Supreme Court case Lovell v. City of Griffin, the Court ruled that such activity fell under freedom of the press, writing:

The liberty of the press is not confined to newspapers and periodicals. It necessarily embraces pamphlets and leaflets. These indeed have been historic weapons in the defense of liberty, as the pamphlets of Thomas Paine and others in our own history abundantly attest. The press in its connotation comprehends every sort of publication which affords a vehicle of information and opinion.

I previously wrote about another student who was harassed by school officials and campus police after advocating for concealed carry in a speech class.