Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger opposes Proposition 19, which would legalize the recreational use of marijuana, but he offered a consolation Thursday by signing a bill that would downgrade possession of an ounce or less from a misdemeanor to an infraction.
SB 1449 was written by state Sen. Mark Leno (D-San Francisco), who said it will keep marijuana-related cases from going to court-clogging jury trials, although the penalty would remain a fine of up to $100 but no jail time.
Schwarzenegger signs bill reducing offense for marijuana possession
Anger as a Private Company Takes Over Libraries
A private company in Maryland has taken over public libraries in ailing cities in California, Oregon, Tennessee and Texas, growing into the country’s fifth-largest library system. Now the company, Library Systems & Services, has been hired for the first time to run a system in a relatively healthy city, setting off an intense and often acrimonious debate about the role of outsourcing in a ravaged economy.
A $4 million deal to run the three libraries here is a chance for the company to demonstrate that a dose of private management can be good for communities, whatever their financial situation.
'Pulpit Freedom Sunday' to Defy IRS
Nearly 100 pastors across the country planned to take part in Pulpit Freedom Sunday, an in-your-face challenge Sunday to what the government says can and cannot be said in church.
The pastors, along with the Scottsdale, Ariz.-based nonprofit Alliance Defense Fund, are reacting to a law stating that churches are not allowed to support politicians from the pulpit, according to the ADF.
FBI raids war protesters' homes
The FBI raided the homes of five political activists and an office Friday in Minneapolis as part of an investigation into possible links between local anti-war activists and terrorist groups in Colombia and the Middle East.
An FBI spokesman said agents were "seeking evidence related to an ongoing Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation into activities concerning the material support of terrorism."
Florida ban on gay adoption is illegal: court
There is no rational reason to prohibit all homosexuals from adopting children, a Florida appeals court said on Wednesday in a ruling that upheld a gay man's adoption of two young boys. Florida is the only remaining U.S. state to expressly ban adoption by gay men and women without exception, the ruling noted.
A lower court found in 2008 that the ban violated the state constitution's guarantee of equal treatment. It allowed the plaintiff, a gay man named Frank Martin Gill, to adopt two boys -- half-brothers he had been raising as foster children since 2004.
FBI probes were improper, Justice says
The FBI improperly opened and extended investigations of some U.S. activist groups and put members of an environmental advocacy organization on a terrorist watch list, even though they were planning nonviolent civil disobedience, the Justice Department said Monday.
A report by Inspector General Glenn A. Fine absolved the FBI of the most serious allegation against it: that agents targeted domestic groups based on their exercise of First Amendment rights. Civil liberties groups and congressional Democrats had suggested that the FBI employed such tactics during the George W. Bush administration, which triggered Fine's review.
CAUGHT! MOSSAD PAID BY U.S. TO SPY ON “DISSIDENTS,” TEA PARTY, ENVIRONMENTALISTS
Never has a nation funded a foreign spy organization’s efforts to catalog potential intelligence assets, operatives and, at the same time, take over the job of watching themselves. This is one of the greatest intelligence coups in history. Combine this with control of America’s airport security and total control of America’s communications networks, everything, mobile, internet, even landlines….we might as well pull down the flag and roll over.
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