ABC -October 14, 2003

WASHINGTON (Oct. 14) - The Supreme Court cleared the way Tuesday for state laws allowing ill patients to smoke marijuana if a doctor recommends it. Justices turned down the Bush administration's request to consider whether the federal government can punish doctors for recommending or perhaps just talking about the benefits of the drug to sick patients. An appeals court said the government cannot.

Nine states have laws legalizing marijuana for people with physician recommendations or prescriptions: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington. And 35 states have passed legislation recognizing marijuana's medicinal value.

( Read More... | 1720 bytes in body | Print | Email )

New FCC rule blocked

posted by ewing2001 on Wednesday July 23, @05:07PM

F.C.C. Media Rule Blocked in House in a 400-to-21 Vote

NY Times -July 24, 2003

WASHINGTON, July 23 — The House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation today to block a new rule supported by the Bush administration that would permit the nation's largest television networks to grow bigger by owning more stations.

( Read More... | 1923 bytes in body | Print | Email )

Chairman Calls Capitol Police to Restore Order

posted by NYC on Friday July 18, @12:37PM

House Democrats Storm Out of Ways and Means Committee

Photo: Rep. Bill Thomas

Washington Post -July 18

Months of political tension in the House of Representatives erupted into open warfare today when Democrats stormed out of a Ways and Means Committee session and the panel's chairman called in the Capitol Police.

The day began with a fairly ordinary procedural fight over an otherwise-innocuous pension bill. Committee Democrats complained that the Republican majority had not given them enough time to review a substitute bill that they had received shortly before midnight Thursday. Most of the Democrats then moved to a nearby library to plot strategy after they demanded that Republicans read the legislation line by line.

Infuriated, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Bill Thomas (R-Calif.) instructed the Capitol Police to remove the Democrats from the ornate library. Republicans said Democrats were being disorderly and did not have the right to occupy the libary.

Continued.

( Read More... | 771 bytes in body | Print | Email )

Constitution translated into plain English

posted by fortype2 on Tuesday July 15, @06:49PM

Photo: Cathy Travis

Sioux City Journal -WASHINGTON (July 15)

For students stumped by ''ex post facto'' and put off by ''thereofs'' and ''hereins,'' a congressional staffer has translated the Constitution into modern, plain language.

Cathy Travis, who has worked on Capitol Hill for two decades, took on the delicate task of rephrasing the hallowed document, whose meaning still is debated and reinterpreted by Congress and the courts.

( Read More... | 3024 bytes in body | Print | Email )

Byrd: 'False Premises' Prompted Iraq War

posted by admin on Thursday May 22, @07:33AM

Wed May 21, 7:42 PM

By KEN GUGGENHEIM, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Sen. Robert Byrd (news, bio, voting record) accused the Bush administration of using "false premises" to get Americans to accept what he said was an illegal and unprovoked attack on Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s government.

His remarks on the Senate floor Wednesday made for some of the toughest criticism of the Iraq (news - web sites) war from Congress.

Referring to turmoil in postwar Iraq, Byrd, D-W.Va., said: "If the situation in Iraq is the result of liberation, we may have set the cause of freedom back 200 years."

The White House dismissed his comments.

More ...

http://story.news.yahoo.com

( Read More... | Print | Email )

Robert Byrd (D-WV): "this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall"

posted by admin on Wednesday May 21, @11:11AM

http://byrd.senate.gov

Senate Remarks: "The Truth Will Emerge"

"Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again, - - The eternal years of God are hers; But Error, wounded, writhes in pain, And dies among his worshippers."

Truth has a way of asserting itself despite all attempts to obscure it. Distortion only serves to derail it for a time. No matter to what lengths we humans may go to obfuscate facts or delude our fellows, truth has a way of squeezing out through the cracks, eventually.

But the danger is that at some point it may no longer matter. The danger is that damage is done before the truth is widely realized. The reality is that, sometimes, it is easier to ignore uncomfortable facts and go along with whatever distortion is currently in vogue. We see a lot of this today in politics. I see a lot of it -- more than I would ever have believed -- right on this Senate Floor.

Regarding the situation in Iraq, it appears to this Senator that the American people may have been lured into accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation, in violation of long-standing International law, under false premises. There is ample evidence that the horrific events of September 11 have been carefully manipulated to switch public focus from Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda who masterminded the September 11th attacks, to Saddam Hussein who did not. The run up to our invasion of Iraq featured the President and members of his cabinet invoking every frightening image they could conjure, from mushroom clouds, to buried caches of germ warfare, to drones poised to deliver germ laden death in our major cities. We were treated to a heavy dose of overstatement concerning Saddam Hussein's direct threat to our freedoms. The tactic was guaranteed to provoke a sure reaction from a nation still suffering from a combination of post traumatic stress and justifiable anger after the attacks of 911. It was the exploitation of fear. It was a placebo for the anger.

( Read More... | 8385 bytes in body | 2 comments | Print | Email )

- MORE -