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I should have mentioned last week that the hugely popular blog FireDogLake has launched a legalization campaign due to interest from their readers. It's great to see more voices join the debate and we should support them.

It you click over there now you can help out by voting for the name of the their campaign. They've got a bunch of user-submitted ideas to choose from. Many are ridiculous, but there are some good ones too. Check it out.

Via MPP, here's another completely horrible reminder of the plight faced by medical marijuana patients in most parts of the country:

John Haring, 45, is a quadriplegic who suffers daily from chronic pain, arthritis, spasm attacks, and depression. He uses marijuana to treat his condition, and after two marijuana arrests in two years, he’s now heading to jail for 90 days, after which he’ll be forced to undergo three years of probation and drug testing. If he tests positive for marijuana in just one of those tests, he could face up to five years in jail.

Haring and his relatives say legal prescription painkillers left him "drugged, depressed and in an angry stupor." Using marijuana, on the other hand, "allowed him to live his life," according to the St. Petersburg Times.

Opponents of medical marijuana will be the first to tell you that no one actually gets in trouble for it, but you can bet those people will never come to the aid of someone like John Haring. They don't care about his health and they don’t want to know his story. Meanwhile, the President has called for an end to federal medical marijuana raids because he says they're a bad use of resources. In other words, the reason you shouldn’t treat people like this is because it wastes money, not because it's evil.

Clearly, our work isn't done yet. We have no choice but to fight for medical marijuana in every state until there remains no place in America where patients are criminalized and abused. To those who say voters shouldn't be making medical decisions, I say neither should police.

Sensible Washington and I-1068 deserve and need your active support. The initiative text is readable on the site and this is a clean civil liberties initiative with

I'm requesting people who can point me to information that might be persuasive Alzheimer's, chronic renal failure or neuropathic pain are conditions for which medical marijuana would be beneficial poi

Reed College is known for being really awesome. Unfortunately, having a simultaneous reputation for both rigorous academics and a druggy social scene is enough to make the drug warriors' heads explode. Federal and state prosecutors are now working together to flood the Reed campus with undercover narcs, and the madness doesn’t stop there:

Law enforcement officials raised an unusual theory of liability. Under a federal law intended to close crack houses, anyone who knowingly operates premises where drugs are used may be subject to serious criminal and civil penalties.

Education lawyers, however, said they were unaware of that law’s ever being contemplated, let alone used, in the context of higher education. [NYT]

No kidding. That's because they'd have to shut down every institution of higher learning in the country. I seriously dare these morons to try something like that. Just go ahead and do it, you f@#king cowboys, and we'll see how it plays in the press when you prosecute a prestigious university because some of the students took drugs.

Better yet, why don't you prosecute yourselves the next time someone gets high in one of your prisons.