Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/17/opinion/a-judges-plea-for-medical-marijuana.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=reichbach&st=Search

This op-ed piece was written by a sitting judge of the New York supreme court. In NY the supreme court is a trial court, a court of general jurisdiction. New York's court of last resort is its Court of Appeals. This reversal of roles is as far as I know unique in American jurisprudence.

The judge's op-ed is of interest to me because I too am a cancer patient, having been diagnosed early last year with prostatic adenocarcinoma. Unlike Judge Reichbach my cancer while large, involving some sixty percent of my prostate, was confined to the organ and the six nearby lymphnodes were cancer free. My initial Gleason Score was 7 (3+4) and I elected to have a radical prostatectomy which is the removal of the offending organ, and adjacent tissues including the seminal vesicles and nerves which control sexual function. I had this surgery eight months ago and although it was done robotically through three small abdominal incisions the recovery was slow and not so much painful as it was disturbing and disrupting and even debilitating. As a result of the surgery I am having to re-learn bladder control and my days of being a sexual being are gone and now are only a fading memory.

I too use medical marijuana not specifically because of the cancer diagnosis but to ameliorate another condition for which medical science is unanimous in its recommendation of the plant as a treatment in combination with other medical treatments. While it is prescribed for a medical condition involving my eyes, it was very helpful with the cancer diagnosis, 'cure' and recovery. Every part of the human being is being is linked to every other part of the human being and because of that basic truth it helped me in my ongoing battle to recover from the disease and it's resultant pain, heartache, constipation, appetite loss, sleeplessness, worry and plain old fear.

I too have, along with Judge Reichbach, devoted forty years of my life to the service of the law and am deeply offended that the DEA in particular and the US Government in general are spending my tax dollars in a misguided effort to deprive patients of this medicine that while not curative of various medical conditions that plague Homo Sap definitely ameliorates these conditions and makes the process of medical treatments for those conditions a little easier to withstand, allows us to eat and even to sleep. Bravo to Judge Reichbach for his public coming out both as a cancer patient and a medical marijuana user.

President Obama announced today that his evolution on Marriage Equality is complete and he has announced his support for Marriage Equality. I am not sure what to say but first I must apologize to him or my own nastiness last night when I accused him of political cowardice in not taking a stand on the greatest civil rights issue of our time since the struggles of the last century for full civil and political rights for African-Americans. I can only concur in the remarks of Andrew Sullivan who said in part today:

“But today Obama did more than make that logical step. He let go of fear. He is clearly prepared to let the political chips fall as they may. That's why we elected him. That's the change we believed in. The contrast with a candidate who wants to abolish all rights for gay couples by amending the federal constitution, and who has donated to organizations that seek to "cure" gays, who bowed to pressure from bigots who demanded the head of a spokesman on foreign policy solely because he was gay: how much starker can it get?”

Thank you Mr. President for finally taking a position on this issue so important to me and my gay friends and my gay family. I only wish that my partner who died more than twenty years ago had lived to see this day. Now it is up to us to persevere in this cause and to ensure that all persons are entitled to the equal protection of the law.

Well the North Carolina election results are in. Today an unholy alliance of christianists. anti-liberty people  andjust plain bigots prevailed by twenty-two points, 61% to 39%. This election amended the state's constitution to not only disallow marriage equality but also to forbid the state from enacting any law that recognizes any legal coupling of gay people. This is the second time that the Tarheel State has amended its constitution to limit the right of people to marry the person of their choosing. The first such amendment forbad inter-racial marriage.

This clearly reduces gay and lesbian people to something less than full citizens of North Carolina.. Obama carried North Carolina in the 2008 presidential election and as a result the Democratic National committee awarded that state the Democratic National Convention this year.

There are three things that should happen as a result of the election today. First of all in my view the Democrats in their convention should adopt a platform for the President to run on for reelection that expressly urges the states to adopt marriage equality. The national committee should move the convention out of Charlotte to some other place, almost any place other than North Carolina.

The third thing that should happen is that gay and lesbian people and everyone who supports us should turn off the money tap that flows from our pockets to North Carolina businesses. North Carolina has one of the highest unemployment rates in the nation. We as LGBT people should not contribute our hard earned money to North Carolina's faltering economy.

And as far as President Obama goes, he needs to stop 'evolving' on marriage equality, give up that nonsensical and cowardly non-idea and expressly condemn NC for enacting its constitutional amendment which denies gay and lesbian citizens the fundamental right to marry the persons of their choice. It is time that he followed Joe Biden's lead and support marriage equality.

"Any gay or lesbian person with any self-respect should not be voting for any of the Republicans, including Mitt Romney, who made the degrading comment in one of the recent debates about how he kept Massachusetts from being the Las Vegas of gay marriage, kind of cheapening this very profound thing for us. This is a faker who in 1994, when he was trying to beat Ted Kennedy in a different era, said 'Oh, I’ll be better than him on gay rights,' and of course he’s been outrageous.

"In fact in 2004, when the Massachusetts Supreme Court had ruled in favor of gay rights, there was an effort in the state Legislature to overturn it. Mitt Romney led a fight against a whole lot of legislators who had courageously voted with us to uphold gay marriage, and he tried very hard to defeat them. I think he gave the business I’m in a bad name. He is the most unprincipled, dishonest, intellectually flexible guy I’ve seen. There does not appear to be any public policy to which he’s committed." -Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) in Desert Outlook.

Amen, Brother Barney, Amen.

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/us/9-11-defendants-face-arraignment-in-military-court.html?_r=1&ref=us

“The rocky beginning comes as the United States chases dual goals at the restart of the tribunal: to prosecute, and ultimately execute, the five detainees; and to show the world that the tribunal system is legitimate.”

This quotation comes from the noted article discussing the 'demonstration' at the Guantanamo criminal 'trial' of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and the other four alleged terrorists charged with responsibility for the deaths of the three thousand Americans on September 11 2001 in the attacks on New York and the Pentagon.

I find it really intriguing that the article expresses the duality of purpose of the US Government: in prosecuting the defendants with a prosecute and hang mentality on the one hand and a desire to legitimize the process of doing just that, prosecuting and hanging the defendants on the other. Yet the authors of that article fail to discuss the absurdity of that duality.  In my view of this these twin goals are mutually exclusive.

I am concerned that the command influence and the very structure of the military raises questions about independence of the court, the prosecution and the defense. First of all it is a foregone conclusion that the Government wants the five defendants convicted and executed. The head of government in the US is the President and everyone in that government works for that officer. There is a necessary command structure in the military and at the very top of the structure is the President. The military chain of command wants a 'successful' resolution to this trial, i.e. conviction. That chain of command appoints the trial judge, a colonel in this case. That chain of command appoints, albeit indirectly, the prosecuting attorney, in this case a brigadier general. The military defense lawyers are headed by a colonel. I am certainly not questioning the professionalism of the lawyer participants in the trial and in fact I am very supportive of the lead defense attorney and the others who are trying to do some justice in a system that is not designed with justice in mind. In January of this year the defense lawyer ordered all his lawyers not to comply with an order of the base commander requiring monitoring of attorney-client communications. However all three of these gentlemen are members of the same JAG organization. Surely I am not the first person to raise the issue of command influence infecting the process. We should be on the lookout for not only corruption but the appearance of corruption also.

Another reason I feel that the twin goals of the US Government are mutually exclusive is the fact that traditionally criminal trials in the US have been conducted by what are known 'in the trade' as Article III judges, those who are appointed by a president and confirmed by the senate and who serve potentially lifetime appointments (“on good behaviour”as the Constitution says) and whose salary may not be reduced during their tenure. This is to guarantee a judiciary independent of 'command influence” and political pressure exerted either by politicians or by citizens. Military courts and tribunals are not Article III courts. They are simply Article I courts created by congress for a limited purpose defined by congress and without appointment by the president, confirmation by the senate, life tenure or salary protection. Congress has created tax courts, courts martial, claims courts, bankruptcy courts and the like as Article I courts. Courts martial are limited in their jurisdiction to members of the military and civilians are generally excluded from their jurisdiction. Nowhere have I seen a credible claim that the defendants in these proceedings in Guantanamo are members of any organized military unit. Why then are they subject to this military tribunal?

Remember Eric Holder once ordered that the trials be conducted in an Article III court, the US District Court that sits in Manhattan. Holder when faced with the outrage (most of it faux I suspect) and demands of politicians and some citizens reversed his position and vacated his order and the entire matter handed over to the military. The lack of confidence in the constitutionally prescribed process by politicians is shameful. The lack of confidence in the constitutionally prescribed process by our citizens is also shameful but tempered in part by the fact politicians for decades have been attacking Article III courts with shameful regularity for their own political purposes.

Our Constitution reserves the judicial power to Article III courts as it defines them. It also says that the judicial power shall extend, inter alii, to all cases in which the 'United States” shall be a party. This case is brought and captioned “United States of America v Khalid Shaikh Mohammed,” The United States is a party to this criminal prosecution. All criminal prosecutions must be tried as the Constitution requires, in an Article III court before a jury “of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed....”

Legitimacy can only clothe these proceedings if they are conducted according to constitutional precepts and mandates. Anything else sullies the image of he US as a civilized and law abiding nation no matter what the outcome of this trial is. It is a constitutional shame in its present form.

Link: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/05/us/new-fracking-rule-is-issued-by-obama-administration.html?_r=1&ref=us

Well now I will be damned if I can recall a bigger knucklehead (to use Mr. Obama's phrase) condescension to Big Oil than in the Government acquiescence in a proposed rule governing the harvesting of oil and gas on public lands by the practice of hydraulic fracturing or more commonly called fracking. Perhaps the most egregious concession to Big Oil is the part of the rule that requires disclosure of what chemicals were used in the fracking not before the well is operated but after the well is in production. The DoI says the notification will allow them to trace the source of the pollution and poisoning of the ground water after the earth is re-poisoned and that the “when” of the disclosure is not important. This sounds more like a comedy routine from the recently concluded WHCA dinner than a serious policy statement by a responsible government official and industry regulator and good steward of the public lands of this nation.

The more that I consider and think about the disclosure part of the rule the more ridiculous it is. Rather than preventing pollution of ground water and the generation of earthquakes the DoI would rather deal with the sickness,death and destruction that it believes will follow fracking much like night follows day and trace the chemicals back to a source instead of acting to prevent the sickness, death and destruction in the first place. ExxonMobil (which pays no US income taxes on its profits) along with its lobbyists went crying to the White House recently along with other industry leaders and trade groups (lobbyists) begging for some relief from regulations they claim unfairly limit the tax-free obscene profits it has earned from an ultra hazardous activity. They claim, among other things, that the cost of compliance with a rule that requires earlier rather than later disclosure of the chemicals used in the fracking operation in a particular well or well field outweighs the interest of the people of the country in maintaining a scarce resource, clean water. That is so patently nonsensical that I find it hard to believe that they advanced it or that DoI bought off on it.

This rule is a limited rule and will not govern the industry worldwide or even nationwide but only governs fracking on lands owned by the United States. You know lands such as our national parks, national wilderness areas, and national forests. The other day Rachel Maddow did a show in which a large segment was dedicated to the effect that ExxonMobil has on national policy and how firms such as that regard themselves as entities to themselves and not subject to the wants,needs, desires or rules of any country. The corporations that make up Big Oil are essentially their own countries with resources that rival the US Government's. ExxonMobil itself has assets that exceed the GDPs of more than 150 nations. Is there any doubt that it runs “our” Government?