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As we remember fallen soldiers this year, please consider those heroes, who have given their lives for this country, died for freedom and for making this world a better place will have died in vain; if the American dream of self-government free of tyranny and big government oppression dies.

The US Veterans Administration (VA) has adopted a policy prohibiting VA physicians from recommending medical marijuana to their patients, even if marijuana is the safest and most effective medicine to treat Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and other service-related conditions. Harassing the sick and dying is an un-American activity. The people believe in self-government and self-medication.

Rest in peace, Dennis Hopper! The director and intuitive costar of the counterculture film classic "Easy Rider" was a rebel with just cause. How about a heavy dose of reality, Hollywood?

Commenting on the success of "Easy Rider," Hopper said: "Nobody had ever seen themselves portrayed in a movie. At every love-in across
the country people were smoking grass and dropping LSD, while
audiences were still watching Doris Day and Rock Hudson." It was proof to flaunt in the face of the movie moguls that you could get high, express yourself and make money all at the same time.

He was greatly influenced by James Dean. "The most personal tragedy in my life was Dean," Hopper said "I was 19 years old and had such admiration for him."

They met during the filming of "Rebel Without a Cause." More fantasy from big government via Hollywood inferring life in America was just about perfect. It is an all time favorite of mine in spite of the title being a take off on the true definition of an American patriot; a rebel with just cause! All God's children rebel against authoritarian parents and governments!

KopBusters Founder Barry Cooper is a rebel with just cause! Let's make him our Attorney General!

Since 2006 I have awarded two free portraits yearly, each dedicated to the freedom philosophy or the American dream. I call it the, "Rebel with Just Cause Award." It is given to true American patriots; those who stand for freedom against tyranny and injustice. The real visionaries, who laid down America's laws, those who defined what an American patriot would be, were rebels with just cause. It's not just our right it's an American's patriotic duty to rebel against big government corruption.

Since the 1930 Wickersham Report appraisals of police activity have consistently called for civilian review boards of law enforcement performance. Police departments have consistently blocked that from happening. This Atlanta Journal-Constitution report shows why civilian review is needed and how prohibition triggers official lawlessness and more problems.

Civil asset forfeiture refers to property or cash which is seized by law enforcement agents who merely suspect it was used in a crime. “Texas has some of the worst civil forfeiture laws in the country, and what's driving this is the fact that police and prosecutors get to keep the property they seize,” according to Scott Bullock, an attorney with the Institute for Justice, a D.C.-based libertarian law firm studying civil forfeiture laws nationwide. “They can use it to buy better equipment, to buy better automobiles, even to pay salaries, and we feel is an untoward profit incentive.” End asset forfeiture!

Check out the UT Texas Tribune poll and point it out to your Congress critters. Forty-two percent of Texans are open to the idea of legalizing marijuana: 28 percent say possession of small amount should be legal, while 14 percent say any amount should be legal. Twenty-seven percent say it should be legal for medical purposes only, while only 27 twenty-seven say it should be illegal under any circumstances.

Saving lives instead of ruining them appeals to more and more in law enforcement these days. “With time, experience and an open mind,” Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said, “you sit back and study this and you say, ‘What did we do? We just destroyed ourselves thinking we were doing good when we really weren’t.” The waste of resources on policing use instead of on using science based education and rehab to fight nonviolent abuse is becoming blatantly obvious. Drug treatment is at least five times less costly than prison.

Read a compelling argument for accurate, non-fear-based, science based drug education in public schools and for not wasting our resources. Get tough on violent crime! Stop this scandalous, detrimental drug war. Restore Justice, the guardian of liberty.

With addiction..."The problem lies in understanding more about the user than the drug." Jerry Epstein, President, Drug Policy Forum of Texas (DPFT) It's in our genes! Accepting the fact, individual reactions to any drug vary widely, also points us toward a cautious path for any use.

Here is a good document to base a harm reduction framework on since it includes provisions for evidence and science. "Search for alternatives just starting; need has never been greater," says Marcela Sanchez in DMN.

Baltimore officers, under Police Commissioner Frederick H. Bealefeld III, in one of the nation's most violent cities are no longer being told to beef up arrest statistics with nonviolent drug crimes. The number of arrests has declined the past two years, yet homicides and shootings are down!

"I'm not trying to win the drug war," Bealefeld said. "I'm out to win
the war on violence and deal effectively with violence."

Fox news reports "After 40 years, the United States' war on drugs has cost $1 trillion and hundreds of thousands of lives, and for what? Drug use is rampant and violence even more brutal and widespread. Even US drug czar Gil Kerlikowske concedes the strategy hasn't worked."

"In the grand scheme, it has not been successful," Kerlikowske told The Associated Press. "Forty years later, the concern about drugs and drug problems is, if anything, magnified, intensified."

Law enforcement has recruitment problems because current policy attracts those interested in working in a corrupt system and milking it, thereby creating a pervasive disrespect for the law. Our system could run with the milk of human kindness, if America had the ethical, efficient and constitutionally limited government our founders envisioned.

You can peruse the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Statistical Report 2009. Signaling a policy shift, Texas budget cuts may close prisons.

Marijuana arrests drive the drug ‘Treatment’ boom, almost six out of ten admitted nationwide are referred there by the criminal justice system Seventy percent of marijuana treatment admissions in Texas come from criminal justice referrals, significantly and predictably higher than the national average.

Houston radio host Dean Becker is a member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. He has earned high regard and respect for getting top-tier guests and having intelligent discussions about the war on drugs for his weekly show, Drug Truth Network on KPFT. So much so that the world-renowned James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy at Rice University will keep an archive of Becker's broadcasts and make them available to listeners at any time on its website.

Give the drug dealers nightmares! Join Vigils to End Marijuana Prohibition outside the Texas Republican Party Convention at the Dallas Convention Center on Saturday, June 12th, 10am - 11:30am. Also at the Texas Democratic Convention in Corpus Christi on Saturday, June 26th. RSVP for more info.

Marijuana evangelist, Richard Lee is a Houston native and has become a force behind California’s vote to legalize pot.

US Rep. Mark Souder in his eighth term (R-IN) has announced his resignation after it came to light that he was conducting an affair with a female staffer. The leading drug warrior asked forgiveness for his sins. Reformers are happy to see him go because his self righteous, deeply ignorant and hate-filled views about drug users have influenced almost every bit of official drug policy-making in Washington for over a decade.

Marc Emery's extradition of to the United States is no great travesty. It's certainly not the worst crime committed in the insane, unholy war on drugs. Mark is just another casualty of our morally bankrupt, violence triggering, nightmare policy.

The Ottawa Citizen ask us to consider the criminality of countless innocent people killed in botched raids in the US, Canada and around the globe. "Or the police officers who died in pursuit of the impossible. Or the lives lost to easily preventable overdoses, adulterations, and blood-borne diseases. Or the funding handed on a
silver platter to thugs, terrorists, and guerrillas, like those killing our soldiers in Afghanistan. Or the civil liberties eroded, the corruption fostered, the chaos spread. Or maybe (the criminality of) it belongs to the hundreds of billions of dollars governments have squandered in a mad, futile, and destructive crusade."

Marc's wife, Jodie Emery, said she was stunned and "appalled that the Canadian justice minister would order the extradition. It's the worst option. We didn't even entertain it as an option." She accused Minister of Justice Nicholson of wanting "to silence the most vocal opponent of the drug war." Marc Emery has always maintained that the prosecution was politically motivated. He accepts 5 years as a political prisoner in the land of the free.

Authorities have found between 20 and 25 corpses in an abandoned silver mine in southern Mexico. The body count triggered by drug policy continues to soar.

Recently on HuffingtonPost com Ethan Nadelmann, the executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance criticizes Obamanation's new drug war strategy. " The strategy released today offers nothing that will
reduce the prohibition-related violence in Mexico, Central America
and Colombia, or seriously address the challenges in Afghanistan. It
dares not take on the embarrassment of America's record breaking and world leading rate of incarceration, especially of nonviolent drug
offenders. And it effectively acknowledges that politics will
continue to trump science whenever the latter points toward
politically controversial solutions."

It's Time to Mend the "Crack" in Justice. So-called "crack babies" — children exposed to crack cocaine in utero, twenty years later, many of the children who were perceived to be "at-risk" are proving the predictions wrong as young adults. Mary Barr, an reform activist who is vocal about her own drug abuse during pregnancy, and Nisa Beceriklisoy, her daughter were interviewed recently on NPR. Meanwhile, damage from fetal alcohol syndrome fills our prisons with folks who can not comprehend the consequences for their actions.

Drug test results are often flawed. Drug test benefit the manufacturer of the test kits and that is all they are good for. They continue to ruin lives with false positives.

Oregon advocates for medical marijuana have submitted more than the amount of required signatures, for a ballot measure to
allow state-licensed pot dispensaries. Don't let your government RUN FROM THE CURE for cancer!

The marijuana culinary culture results in great times with really good food that makes you feel groovy!

Californian, James Stacy is facing federal drug charges for running a medical marijuana storefront and has asked a judge to let him argue to the jury that, essentially, President Barack Obama and his administration said it was OK to do so.

In Colorado 49% say marijuana should be legal, taxed, yet wearing a"Yes We Cannabis" T-shirt leads to 1-year ban from Aurora mall! "And if wearing a T-shirt espousing a political view that's shared by half the state's population is too offensive to wear, then none of us are safe." It seems Aurora authorities don't see marijuana advocacy as representing family values. "That's wrong!" firmly states Jessica Corry and fellow attorney Rob Corry, for Gailey the terrible T-shirt wearer, "because it represents the values of their family."

Americans believe in "SAFETY First," a most important family value! Morally bankrupt policy creates a violent nightmare! Paramilitary drug raids increase the chances for violence to occur in American homes and streets. History repeats its self! Remember the political and official lawlessness, the bloody massacres of the roaring twenties? Not learning from past mistakes is a serious flaw in reasoning, unwanted in leaders. "Save the Children, from Prohibition!" was the slogan used to repeal the ban on alcohol sales.

Snipers, killers and violent sexual and other hate-filled predators roam
free, while we use up limited resources policing nonviolent medicinal,
social and religious drug use. Look up botched raids at Cato.org/raidmap/

Marijuana or cannabis is one of the most benign chemicals know to man. Safer than alcohol or tobacco, patients swear marijuana is a safe, effective replacement for expensive,dangerous pharmaceuticals. Folks who make a safer choice, are rebels with just cause, the very description of true American patriots.

The HealthCare Bill and the Controlled Substances Act are bad laws like the Fugitive Slave Act and the Volstead Act. When more juries refuse to convict on "drug or healthcare crime," warriors for those causes will be politically dead bodies. Jury nullification is a constitutional power tool we the people pack!

There is a problem: if you disagree with the drug war or healthcare on moral grounds, you will not be chosen for jury duty.

The solution is to keep an open mind and insist that you will listen fairly to all the evidence presented, tell them honestly that you care passionately about the law, and that you'll withhold decision until you've heard the entire case. Getting on that jury is the first step. After closing arguments are through and the judge has instructed you on the law, you have earned the opportunity to refuse to convict on these nonviolent crimes.

The Spirit of '76 was the Holy Spirit and is our true North!

We are rebels with just cause,
when we exercise our right to nullify bad laws
like those brave jurors who refused to convict
during the hard times of the Fugitive Slave Act, way back
and until FDR said the Volstead Act was licked!
Jury nullification, a constitutional power tool we the people pack.

Track your Senators' and Representative's votes by e-mail

Changing who's in charge will not affect much. The real cause of this huge quagmire of failed policy is the beast, big government, that money hungry beast, Uncle Sam! Ma Freedom tells it like it is! The beauty of it is when we focus on down-sizing our government we regain our roots of self-government and secure the blessings of liberty for future generations and ourselves.

Compiled and written by Colleen McCool