Infowars: Idaho Seizes Medical Marijuana Activists’ Kids
Phillip Smith
StopTheDrugWar.org
May 7, 2013Idaho is officially not a marijuana-friendly state. Although it is bordered on most sides by medical marijuana states (Washington, Oregon, Nevada, and Montana), it so far refuses to accept the medicinal use of the herb. And even though one of those states (Washington) has legalized marijuana and two others (Nevada and Oregon) have decriminalized it, Idaho remains firmly grounded in 20th Century attitudes toward the plant. The state legislature this year took the time to approve a non-binding resolution noting its opposition to marijuana legalization.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t reformers in the Gem State. There have been sporadic local marijuana legalization efforts in past years, and this year, medical marijuana supporters are in the midst of signature-gathering campaign to put an initiativeon the ballot.
That campaign is led by Compassionate Idaho, some of whose most stalwart and publicly visible members are Lindsey and Josh Rinehart and Sarah Caldwell. But with an incident that began while Caldwell and the Rineharts were away on a retreat, the trio are learning a harsh lesson in hardball pot politics. When they got back home, their kids were gone, and the police and child social services had them.
According to Boise Police, who released a statementon the matter as controversy grew, on April 23, they were contacted by a local school official about a child who had apparently eaten marijuana and fallen ill. Police “learned from witnesses” that the supposed marijuana supposedly came from the Rinehart residence, and, “concerned for the safety of children at the residence,” they went there and found a baby sitter caring for the Rinehart and Caldwell children.
Police persuaded the baby sitter to let them search the residence and “found drug paraphernalia, items commonly used to smoke marijuana, and a quantity of a substance that appeared to be marijuana in locations inside the house accessible to the children.” Police at the scene then contacted both narcotics investigators and the department’s Special Victims Unit.
(Rinehart, a Multiple Sclerosis sufferer, said she indeed had medical marijuana at home, but that she had a small amount and a pipe on a dresser in her bedroom, a larger amount of trim locked away in a freezer, and some marijuana tincture in a bottle in a kitchen cabinet atop her refrigerator.)
“Based on the fact that illegal drugs and drug paraphernalia were located in an area that appeared to be commonly used by the children in the residence and the fact that one child had already become ill from ingesting what he assumed was marijuana, and the inability to contact the children’s parents, detectives made the decision to contact Idaho Health and Welfare officials and place the children in imminent danger, meaning they were placed in the protective custody of the state until it can be determined they are in a safe environment,” the statement said.
At this point, it is unclear whether whatever made the school child sick was marijuana. It is equally unclear that any marijuana came from the Rinehart residence. What is clear is that both the Rineharts and Sarah Campbell are up-front, in-your-face medical marijuana patients and activists, and that their children were being subjected to the tender mercies of the state.
Sarah Caldwell has had her kids returned to her — it was not her child who is suspected of providing the suspected marijuana — but the Rineharts are still fighting to get their kids returned.
“My sons were not involved,” Caldwell said. “They were at the house the police searched, the police decided my kids were in ‘imminent danger,’ and it took three days to get them back.”
While the two boys and the Rinehart kids were held at the same foster home, providing them with the small comfort of being with friends, Caldwell said her younger son was traumatized.
“My six-year-old is autistic,” she explained. “I noticed when he came home, he started packing his favorite toys. I asked him why and he said, ‘In case the police make me go away again.’ He doesn’t understand why,” Caldwell said, her voice breaking.
While Caldwell has her children at home again, both she and the Rineharts are going to have to comply with the requirements of the child welfare system to ensure that their children can return to their old lives. But, Lindsey Rinehart said, Child Protective Services is moving more quickly than usual in her case.
Sarah Caldwell’s boys are back at home now, but the Rineharts are still waiting to get theirs back.
Normally, Child Protective Services requires parents to meet with them at the department three times, then allows them to have three visits with their children in the community, then inspects the home to ensure a safe environment is being provided, and only then considers returning the kids, most likely with the added provision that the parents must undergo parenting and drug education classes. But when the Chronicle last spoke to Rinehart Saturday, she was in the middle of a home visit with her kids — one that ends Sunday morning.
“They seem to be expediting the process because they realize they messed up,” she said. The state taking her kids wasn’t doing them any favors, she added.
“My oldest son now will only talk if you ask him really specific questions, and my younger one is acting out,” she said. “He is upset and argumentative; he has a hard time vocalizing things,” she said of her six-year-old. “I told him I had to go to the store, and he freaked out; he didn’t want me to leave him. He’s reacting like I’ve never seen before. He was a happy kid; now he’s mad and confused. He doesn’t understand what’s going on.”
The older Rinehart son is having issues, too, she said.
“He’s mad. Both of the kids have been educated about my medicine, so they know this is wrong,” the multiple sclerosis sufferer explained. “They’re mad that they were taken away because mommy had her medicine. I’m trying to comfort them as best as I can. They just know that somebody took them away, and now I have to explain that they have to go back to foster care tomorrow,” Rinehart said, her voice trembling.
Both the Rineharts and Sarah Caldwell suspect they were set up.
“I’m the director of Compassionate Idaho. Everybody knows who I am. I’m on the news at least once a month,” said Rinehart. “We had just done the Hemp Fest in Moscow and signature-gathering in five towns. The police knew what they were looking for, and they knew where to look without anyone telling them. Those kids on the playground didn’t know where to look. There were kids from several other families involved in that playground incident, but we think the police got who they wanted.”
“I do think they were targeting us,” Caldwell agreed. “That incident at the school was just an excuse for them to try to get us.”
“This has got me fired up,” Caldwell said. “They took my children to try to keep me focused on getting my kids back so I wouldn’t do my activism, but I’m not going to stop.”
The use of children as pawns in the marijuana culture wars is shocking and distressing, but nothing new, said Keith Stroup, founder and currently counsel for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML).
“We get calls three or four times a week from people who have lost custody of their children because they tested positive at birth or in a situation where parents are feuding over custody,” Stroup said. “One will say ‘My spouse smokes marijuana and is thus not a fit parent,’ and once that child welfare issue is raised, it’s a totally separate matter from the criminal justice system. Even if no one is proposing to arrest the parent, this is far more damaging and destructive to the family.”
That’s at least in part because once child welfare has its clutches on you, it doesn’t want to let go, and it typically has an attitude toward marijuana use that is right out of Reefer Madness, Stroup said.
“They can require that you take parenting and drug education courses right out of the 1950s,” he said. “It’s a worthless routine, but you have to do it, you have to pay hundreds of dollars to do it, and you can’t get your kids back until you do it. It doesn’t matter how nice or good a parent you are or how well-intentioned you are, once you get caught up in this, you are in for a bad time.”
NORML is doing what it can to assist the Idaho activists, Stroup said, adding some words of advice for other marijuana-using parents, especially (but not only) in places where attitudes toward the herb are hide-bound and hardened.
“If you’re in a place like Idaho and you’re a young parent, never smoke in front of your kids, so if that issue ever arises, you can make sure nobody can say you were smoking marijuana and kids were playing in the same room,” he counseled. “You have to be able to demonstrate convincingly that you are providing a safe and secure place for your kids. In places like Idaho, you could lose custody over your kids for something many of us in many parts of the country take for granted.”
Getting the kids back is only part of the problem for the Rineharts. Idaho treats even small-time pot possession seriously — it’s one of those place where people still actually do get jail time for it — and the couple is facing possible felony charges for possessing more than an ounce of trim.
“I’m living in an ongoing panic attack,” said Lindsey Rinehart. “They update their warrants every five hours, so I check in frequently, and first thing in the morning. Because of my illness, I can’t handle physical pressure very well, and I’m afraid they could hurt me when arresting me, so my lawyer has asked that if they do charge me, they just cite me.”
All the stress isn’t helping, and now, Rinehart can’t have her medicine, either.
Lindsey Rinehart tabling at the Moscow Hemp Fest just days before it all went down.
“I have prescribed meds to suppress my immune system, but those make me really sick. With cannabis, I only had to take it every other day,” she explained. “Now, I have to take it every day, and it’s so dangerous we have to regularly check my heart, liver, kidney, and eye function. And if I have pain, I’ll have to go back to hydrocodone. I’ll be going back on those meds I had been able to taper down from with cannabis.”
But despite the trials and tribulations, neither the Rineharts nor Sarah Caldwell have been cowed, and their travails have energized supporters as well.
“People are really mad about this and are getting involved,” said Rinehart. “We even have people reaching out to help fund Compassionate Idaho.
“People are coming out of the woodwork after hearing our kids got taken because of our activism,” said Caldwell. “People are saying they want to help. Education is key here — a lot of people here believe the Reefer Madness, but this is a non-toxic plant; it can’t hurt you.”
“The bigger picture is that we don’t want this to happen to more families,” said Rinehart.
“We’re getting more calls than we ever did about child custody,” Stroup reiterated. “There are still people being seriously damaged from what’s left of marijuana prohibition. Few go to jail for marijuana anymore, but many lose custody of their kids. These repercussions may be more subtle, but they are not insignificant.”
The Rineharts and Sarah Caldwell still have to deal with Child Protective Services, and the Rineharts are still waiting to see if they will face criminal marijuana and child endangerment charges. But in the meantime, there are 55,000 signatures to be gathered to get medical marijuana on the ballot and start changing Idaho’s reactionary response to marijuana.
Las Vegas senator lays out plan to authorize medical marijuana dispensaries
Sen. Tick Segerblom, D-Las Vegas, wants Nevada to authorize medical marijuana dispensaries.
The dispensaries would provide an easy avenue for the approximately 3,600 current medical marijuana permit holders to purchase medical marijuana in a transparent and legal manner, he said.
“We’re going to have places you can go with a card where you can legally purchase marijuana,” Segerblom said. “It’ll be a for-profit. It won’t be a co-op. It won’t be run by the government … It’ll be taxed and the revenue will be used to do something good. Those are the details we haven’t gotten to yet.”
His bill would strictly regulate for-profit dispensaries and would instruct the Gaming Control Board to regulate dispensaries as strictly as they monitor casino cages.
The senator announced his proposal after a two-hour Senate Judiciary hearing during which senators learned about the legal ambiguity surrounding the state’s constitutional provision allowing for medical marijuana.
The state’s current marijuana laws are winding their way through the state’s legal system, and the Nevada Supreme Court is considering the law in an ongoing case.
iggy mogo: US nuclear test condemned by Iran, Japan
On Dec. 5, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), part of the U.S. Department of Energy, carried out a “subcritical experiment” code-named Pollux that used non-nuclear explosives to test the ongoing “safety and effectiveness of the nation’s nuclear weapons,” according to the agency.
NNSA conducted Pollux, its 27th subcritical explosion test, at its Nevada National Security Site near Las Vegas, Nevada. The most recent, previous subcritical test in this series, code-named Bartolo B, took place Feb. 2, 2011, said an NNSA press release, further explaining that:
“Subcritical experiments examine the behavior of plutonium as it is strongly shocked by forces produced by chemical high explosives. Subcritical experiments produce essential scientific data and technical information used to help maintain the safety and effectiveness of the nuclear weapons stockpile. The experiments are subcritical; that is, no critical mass is formed and no self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction can occur; thus, there is no nuclear explosion.”
However, a formal objection to the NNSA nuclear weapons test came from the Japan Council Against A & H Bombs (Gensuikyo), which sent a note of protest directly to President Obama, saying:
“Whether it involves an explosion or not, nuclear testing runs counter to the spirit of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the agreement of achieving the “peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons” reached by the 2010 NPT [Nuclear Proliferation Treaty] Review Conference.
“Your administration seeks non-proliferation of nuclear weapons. But your position of urging most others to renounce nuclear weapons, while continuing your own nuclear tests, does not stand by reason nor is it supported by the world public.
“In the name of the A-bomb survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and on behalf of the people of Japan, the only A-bombed country, we call on you to cancel all plans of nuclear testing and make a sincere effort to achieve a total ban on nuclear weapons and a world without nuclear weapons.”
read more at http://consortiumnews.com/2012/12/10/us-nuke-test-draws-few-protests/
further readings and links:
- NNSA press release: http://nnsa.energy.gov/mediaroom/pressreleases/pollux120612
- http://rt.com/news/us-nuclear-test-nevada-criticism-582/
- NNSA on tumblr! -> http://nnsanews.tumblr.com/
Ron Paul’s Republican Legacy Growing In Caucus States Like Iowa And Nevada - http://bit.ly/UUt6fx
Checkpoints As A Revenue Source (by LibertyPen)
California, a leader in innovative ways to fleece its citizens, finds the deployment of revenue collectors with badges to be a lucrative practice.
More news on liberty issues at http://www.LibertyPen.com
Mayor Bloomberg’s War on Sugar (Walter Olson) (by catoinstitutevideo)
http://www.cato.org/people/walter-olson
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has a long history of getting into the diets - and even bloodwork - of New York residents. Cato Institute senior fellow Walter Olson comments.
Video produced by Caleb O. Brown and Austin Bragg.
CON Job: How A VA Law Enriches Established Businesses by Limiting Your Medical Options - Press Conf. (by InstituteForJustice)
http://www.ij.org/vacon
Ordinarily, if you want to start a new business or offer a new service there is a simple test to find out whether your new business is needed: You open the doors and tell the world. If people need your business, you will have customers. If they don’t, you won’t. That experience—of learning what people need and how new types of services can fit in—is familiar to anyone who has ever been an entrepreneur. Indeed, it is familiar to anyone who has ever been a customer.
It is also an experience that the state of Virginia turns entirely on its head for people who want to offer new healthcare services. If you want to offer new healthcare services, even something as routine as opening a private clinic, you have to obtain special permission from the state government. And permission is not easy to come by: Would-be service providers have to persuade state officials that their new service is “necessary”—and they have to do so in a process that verges on full-blown litigation in which existing businesses (their would-be competitors) are allowed to oppose them. Not surprisingly, this process can be incredibly expensive, and it frequently results in new services being forbidden to operate at all.
To be clear, this requirement (called a certificate-of-need or CON program) has nothing to do with public health or safety. Separate state and federal laws govern who is allowed to practice medicine and what kind of medical procedures are or are not permitted. Virginia’s CON program only regulates whether someone is allowed to open a new office or purchase new equipment; it is explicitly designed to make sure new services are not allowed to take customers away from established healthcare services.
In short, Virginia’s CON program is nothing but a government permission slip to compete. It ensures that more money flows into the pockets of established, politically connected businesses, and it accomplishes this by trampling entrepreneurs’ economic liberty and reducing Virginians’ choices for medical care.
But patients and doctors—not state officials—are in the best position to decide what healthcare services are needed. That is why Colon Health Centers of America, headed by Dr. Mark Baumel, MD, and Washington Imaging Associates Maryland, LLC, headed by Dr. Mark Monteferrante, MD, have joined forces with the Institute for Justice to challenge Virginia’s protectionist CON program. The Constitution protects individuals’ right to earn an honest living free from unreasonable government interference, and it prevents states from putting up unnecessary barriers to interstate commerce. The Virginia CON program does both, and that is why the federal courts should strike it down.
Its rigged.
I have come to the conclusion. This election is rigged. Every time Ron Paul gets high in the caucuses and primaries. They recount the vote to were someone like Newt gets more votes.They do it until Ron Paul is marginalized.
It has happen in every state so far. There is no hope Ron Paul will get the party nomination. As the media and the people will not fight the crimes being put upon us. Most people don’t care how their person gets the nomination, even if it means there is illegal activity involved. Were the ends justify the means.
Our party nomination will most likely in my opinion will be Newt Gingridge. Romney will not get if, for some reason only. He is Mormon. Ron Paul of course will not get it because the system is gamed. Then you have a large amount of Evangelicals who are supporting Newt. Who are most likely backed by the National counsel of Churches.
Our nation is lost.
Troubles abound at special Las Vegas caucus
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Angry Ron Paul supporters overtook a special caucus Saturday night for religious voters who honor the Sabbath, prompting long lines, frantic GOP officials and voter fraud complaints.
The Las Vegas caucus was supposed to start hours after the rest of the state concluded its Republican presidential caucuses. But party officials were still frantically trying to sign in voters an hour after it was scheduled to start, further delaying election results from Nevada’s most populous county.
Part of the trouble was some Paul supporters told voters they could show up for the late-night caucus at a suburban Jewish private school for whatever reason. But voters could only participate if they signed a declaration affirming that they couldn’t vote during the regular morning caucuses because of their faith.
Most supporters signed the declaration without hesitation, after confirming to an Associated Press reporter that they had missed the earlier caucuses for other reasons.
Stay-at-home mother Cindy Koogler, 33, said she tried to vote in the morning, but was turned away after arriving an hour late because she was caring for her young son. A Paul supporter told her about the Saturday night caucus.
“When you have a kid and he’s in the middle of potty-training, you can’t take him with you,” she said of the morning vote.
Koogler said she signed the declaration saying she was a religious voter and was not questioned.
But one Paul supporter refused to go along with the ruse, saying Republican leaders were encouraging voters to perjure themselves and refusing to move from the head of the line as Jewish rabbis, families with young children and elderly voters patiently waited in line behind him to be allowed into the caucus location.
“People are lying as they are walking in,” the protester, high school teacher Stephen McLancon, yelled at organizers. “You are setting them up to lie.”
Clark County GOP chair David Gibbs said he wasn’t sure how officials would address the voters who weren’t actually there because of the Sabbath, adding that it was up to each person to tell the truth.
“They have to make that decision for themselves when they sign it,” Gibbs said.
The Paul surge paid off. He won the special caucus with 183 votes. Romney came in second with 61, Gingrich had 57 and Santorum had 16 votes.
The unprecedented contest for religious voters who observe Saturday as a holy day was intended as a sign of inclusivity as Republicans court Jewish voters ahead of the November general election. But it also added to various delays in the release of the election results in Clark County, where most Nevada Republicans live, because local GOP officials refused to provide vote tallies until all ballots had been cast.
Adding to the intrigue was the fact that the school was founded by and named after casino titan and Jewish activist Sheldon Adelson, who has prolonged Newt Gingrich’s struggling campaign by pumping $10 million into a pro-Gingrich super PAC. GOP officials said Adelson came up with the idea for the special caucus last month, but he denied it.
Adelson, who is not an orthodox Jew, sat at the front of the school auditorium where the vote was held with his wife, only days after his spokesman told reporters they would not attend the caucus because the couple could vote in the morning.
To fight off accusations of foul play, party officials asked voters to sign the declaration and essentially promise there would be no funny business. Campaign operatives for Mitt Romney and Paul had expressed concern in recent weeks that the alternative caucus would allow people to manipulate the election results by voting twice.
After the ballots were turned in, about hundred voters stayed and watched as Gibbs counted and added up the results. Many of them were Paul supporters, and they cheered each time his name was called indicating that he had won a vote.
A separate vote for religious voters is largely unheard of, but that’s likely because many states provide alternative ballots for voters who can’t make it on the official Election Day. For example, South Carolina also held its presidential nominating contest last month on a Saturday, but the state-run primary election allowed for absentee voting.
In Nevada, the caucuses are organized and overseen by party officials, not the government. Saturday morning was the only opportunity most Republicans had to cast ballots. Democrats in Nevada held their caucuses Jan. 21.
There are roughly 74,000 Nevadans who identify as Jewish, or 2.8 percent of the state, according to 2010 Census data. It’s unclear how many of those people identify as Republican or observe the Sabbath.
The caucus served somewhat as a welcome party to Jewish voters ahead of the November general election. In recent months, Republicans have stressed that Jewish voters are unhappy with President Barack Obama’s stance on Israel and the Middle East, and the GOP is eager to use that dissonance to attract new voters to their ticket.
Jewish voters, long considered a safe Democratic voting bloc, are increasingly leaning Republican, according to an analysis released this week by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. It found that Jewish voters favored Democrats by a 36-point margin in 2011, compared with a 52-point margin in 2008.
Copyright © 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
Mormons for…Ron Paul?! (by ReasonTV)
“I think it’s definitely possible to be a libertarian and a Mormon,” says Dustin Peterson, BYU-Idaho student and board member of Latter-Day Saints for Ron Paul.
Peterson, who spent time volunteering for the Paul campaign in Iowa, spoke with Reason.tv while in Spokane, WA about why Ron Paul might take Mormon votes away from the only Mormon in the race.
While many political analysts believe Mitt Romney has a near-monopoly on the Mormon vote, Ron Paul has spent considerable time courting LDS members living in Western caucus states like Nevada and Idaho (which happen to be the states where he performed best in 2008).
While he expects most Mormons to fall into line behind Romney, Peterson says Mormons have many reasons to support Ron Paul, including theological ones.
“Within our faith, there’s a concept called ‘agency,’ and that’s close to liberty,” says Peterson. “We’re taught to make choices and to decide based on our agency.”
While Peterson believes that Mitt Romney will still win most of the Mormon vote, he’s hopeful about the future.
“About half the students at BYU-Idaho are Ron Paul supporters, and the other half support Mitt Romney,” Peterson says. “There’s a battle going on right now on the campuses about the future of the Republican Party.”
About 1:40 minutes. Interview by Zach Weissmueller. Shot by Sharif Matar. Edited by Weissmueller.
Latinos will play larger role in upcoming GOP primaries
GOP candidates will be put to the test to appeal to Latino voters in states like Florida and Nevada. (Photo: Buschap,Flickr)By MATTHEW JAFFE
Channel: PoliticsMANCHESTER, N.H. –- For months now, the Republican presidential candidates, save one, have for the most part ignored Latino voters. But that may all be about to change as the campaign now heads south and west.
Peter Schiff Speech at FreedomFest 2009 Las Vegas, NV (July 10, 2009)
Re-uploaded b/c it’s more relevant in 2012 than ever. This is Peter Schiff’s best speech in my opinion, a 40 minute talk on July 10 at FreedomFest 2009 in Las Vegas, NV.
Schiff covers all the bases of why the U.S. economy is structurally damaged, how it got that way, and what government continues to do to prevent the free market from restructuring and reallocating decades of malinvested land labor and capital to more productive and market-directed uses.
Schiff contends that only when government releases its grip on the economy and the free market is allowed to set interest rates, consumers decide which companies succeed and fail, and investors, creditors and politicians are forced to deal with the consequences of their decisions will our country ever stand a chance of regaining the level of prosperity which made America the richest and most productive nation on earth.
The only planning should be “planning for freedom”, and as the last chapter of the Ludwig Von Mises book of the same name implores; “Let the Market Work”!
Via - PenguinProseMedia
Ron Paul Will Not Contest Florida
POLITICO’s James Hohmann reports:
Campaign Chairman Jesse Benton said Sunday that the Texas congressman will focus his efforts on states with February caucuses after South Carolina.
He specifically cited Louisiana, Nevada and Maine as places where they are bulking up their operations.
“We’re focusing there to win those caucuses,” Benton said in the spin room after Sunday’s debate.
Benton guessed it would cost about $9 million to run a comprehensive program in the Sunshine State. He said they will not run television ads there, send mailers or do phone banking.
Because the state moved up its primary in violation of Republican National Committee rules, Florida lost half its delegates.
“It’s such an expensive state, and with their delegates cut in half, the math just doesn’t make any sense,” he added. “We’re a delegate-focused campaign. We’re focused on winning the 1,150 delegates to secure the nomination. And the amount of resources and time it would take to compete for those 50 delegates just didn’t make sense to us.”
