The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATFE) will make sure you lose your Second Amendment rights if you admit to it. From Brian Doherty's piece at Reason:
Merely having a state medical marijuana card, BATFE insists, means that you fall afoul of Sect. 922(g) of the federal criminal code (from the 1968 federal Gun Control Act), which says that anyone “who is an unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” is basically barred from possessing or receiving guns or ammo (with the bogus assertion that such possession implicates interstate commerce, which courts will pretty much always claim it does). While the BATFE has not yet announced any concerted program to go after people who may have had legally purchased weapons before getting a marijuana card, Morgan Fox of the Marijuana Policy Project says that it’s common practice in medical marijuana-related busts that “if weapons are present, there will be gun charges added on as well.”
US Representatives Jared Polis (D-CO) and Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) are bringing a proposal [pdf] to create the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Marijuana and Firearms according to story published in the Denver Post. Gene Johnson of the AP writes:
The bill is based on a legalization measure previously pushed by former Reps. Barney Frank of Massachusetts and Ron Paul of Texas. Blumenauer and Polis are due to release a paper this week urging Congress to make a number of changes, including altering tax codes to let marijuana dispensaries deduct business expenses on federal taxes, and making it easier for marijuana-related businesses to get bank accounts.
Industrial Hemp and Medical Marijuana Industry Hits All-Time High in 2013.
Carbon dioxide emissions fell last year to their lowest point since 1994, according to the Department of Energy. Methane is up to 105 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas on a 20-year timescale.
According to a new report from Navigant Research, global installed biomass power capacity will grow gradually over the remainder of this decade, from 58.6 GW in 2013 to 82 GW in 2020, under a conservative forecast scenario. Under a more aggressive scenario, installed capacity could reach 128.5 GW in 2020, the study concludes.
The electric power grid is an antiquated, vulnerable system and there are hundreds of millions of acres of dead or dying pine. Environmental contaminants from wildfires are circling the globe at increasing rates: how sad the intersection has to result in a collision.
So, BP and their corporate buddies have ruined at least 2000 miles of shoreline and turned the Gulf of Mexico into a massive Dead Zone in part to make polyvinylchloride grocery bags as the lodgepole and ponderosa pine used to make paper infest the Rocky Mountain Complex at the expense of healthy biomes.
A Montana company is part of an Arizona biofuels initiative intended to avert catastrophe:
Loggers, local officials, environmentalists and researchers spent years hammering out a consensus on the need to thin millions of trees smaller than 16 inches in diameter. The loggers and the environmentalists worked out long-standing conflicts when they agreed that commercial logging operations could make a profit even if they left most of the larger trees in place. [Pete Aleshire, Payson Roundup]
From a piece written by Steven Powell describing research being conducted at the University of South Carolina:
Hydrocarbon-rich starting materials, whether from petroleum or tree resin, can be converted into various forms of what are commonly termed “plastics” through polymerization. With petroleum derivatives, scientists have invested more than a hundred years of research into refining the polymer chemistry involved, and their success in that endeavor is evident in the range of plastics now part of common parlance, such as Plexiglas, polycarbonate and PVC.
Callie Carswell writes from The Goat Blog at High Country News:
Dan Williams, a spokesman for New Mexico Game and Fish, expects it will be a tough year for bears, too. "Without water, there are less grasses and forbs that come out in the springtime that bears mostly subsist on until the acorns, nuts and berries come on later," he says. "Last year, we had a pretty good spring and early summer. There was plenty to eat up high. That resulted in a pretty good crop of cubs. This year, they're kind of in trouble. The grasses and forbs are simply not there. So they're having to come down to look for food elsewhere. It's likely to get worse later on."
And:
An unusually stormy April built up the snowpack in most of northern Colorado to just about average. In the southern part of the state, however, snowpack in the Rio Grande, Dolores, Animas, San Miguel and San Juan basins sat just above 40 percent of average at the start of May. [Carswell, The Goat Blog, HCN]
"Three red lights in a triangle ... spotted hovering in the sky" over Lafayette, Colo., on Monday have folks there talking about aliens and UFOs, Boulder's Daily Camera says. Joe Valadez, 47, also posted a video to YouTube of the lights in the sky. Some of the commenters on Valadez's video were skeptical. One user, Lonnie Sexton, 33, wrote: "I want proof as bad as the next guy, but these are just hot air candle balloons folks."
The cause of the Indian Gulch Fire remains under investigation. Maybe they should look here:
This post is live: first uploaded 1 June. Links and comments added as events intersect.
The paper [pdf] lists a number of ways to shift these incentives. Congress could pare back the mortgage-interest deduction for homes built in vulnerable fire zones. Or the federal government could work with states to be more cautious about where they build (or at least tighten building codes in fire-prone areas). Or Congress could flatly require homeowners in these areas to buy federal fire insurance. The broader point is that it doesn’t make sense to encourage people to live in fire zones and then spend billions protecting them.
Colorado Springs is a military town: why would it not look like a soft target?
Wilson is everything Americans despise about politicians, regardless of party. A cursory look at her career reveals profligacy, cronyism, abuse of power, lies, cover-ups and a sex scandal. She’s seldom crossed an earmark she hasn’t liked, including the infamous $398 million Bridge to Nowhere. She is a crony of the first order, landing a cushy state job with a $93,000 base salary for her husband Jay Hone.--conservative activist, Yates Walker, The Daily Caller.
The engineering college is saying nothing about a report calling Wilson's agreements with New Mexico labs unusual, "highly irregular," and that lab operators failed to include or enforce invoicing standards required under federal regulations.
According to an October 16, 2012 Santa Fe Reporter article she has had numerous consulting contracts with defense contractors, including Sandia Labs beginning in 2009 and up to her Senate campaign in 2012. Moreover, in the past her congressional staff has included Sandia Labs personnel.--Jay Coghlan, Nuclear Watch
Barbara Waxer left a comment at a South Dakota-based blog:
Along with many others here in New Mexico, we wish you the best in dealing with Heather the Hack. Heather's insouciant homophobia is well known. You'll also love her non-responses to sexual assault on campus. Amazingly, she knew nothing about incidences of sexual assault and harassment in the military, despite having graduated from the Air Force Academy and served on the Armed Services Cmte.
