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Indybay Feature

Malfeasant Federal Judges In Medical Marijuana Harassment

by Stephen Neitzke (stephen [at] ddleague-usa.net)
This is "judicial activism" at its worst -- using unconstitutional judicial rulings to nullify Constitutional civil liberties. More importantly, the malfeasant, misfeasant, and misfeasant federal judicial rulings against medical marijuana are obviously a part of a criminal conspiracy against the rights of citizens, as defined in federal law at 18 USC Section 241.
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The following is a part of the DDL web site's lead essay, State Of The Republic. This subsection is located near the end of the section, "Attacks On Civil Society". It's a work in progress and future changes to the SOTR text might not be added here.

Medical Marijuana and the War On Drugs, are very closely related. However, there are four powerful factors that keep the two separate -- (1) the irreparable harm -- including unnecessary human anguish, needlessly shortened lives, and wrongful death -- done to seriously and terminally ill persons by denying them state-legal medical marijuana,"Medical (2) the irreparable harm done to children with autism, emotional disorders, and conduct disorders -- by denying them the miraculous medical marijuana that allows them to learn and enjoy life without anger, in settings with normal children instead of in lock-down institutions, (3) the unconstitutional assertion in the "Controlled Substance Act" (CSA) at 21 USC Section 812 -- that federal law can control and coerce state law in medical supervision, doctor to patient, in violation of the 10th Amendment rights of the states and the people to protect the health and well-being of a state's citizens -- a power not given to the federal government in the Constitution, nor prohibited to the states in the Constitution, and (4) the criminal conspiracy against the rights of citizens, as defined in federal law at 18 USC Section 241, violating the 10th Amendment rights already mentioned, as well as the 9th Amendment rights of a person to control what is done to his/her body, and of a person to choose the least harmful of medical therapies, as well as the automatic violation of due process 5th Amendment rights, which arises from any conspiracy against citizens rights, per the US Supreme Court's decision in Blackledge v. Perry, 1974.

Title 18 USC Section 241:

If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same;...
They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.

It's the irreparable harm done nationwide to the seriously and terminally ill, as well as to emotionally disturbed children, that elevates this conspiracy against the rights of citizens to a uniquely high criminality. Every living public official, state or federal, who has taken part in this conspiracy should be hunted down, stripped of government employment and retirement benefits, and prohibited from ever holding another government job.

This criminal conspiracy against the rights of citizens involves (A)individuals in the DOJ/DEA hierarchies -- including AG John Ashcroft, drug czar John Walters, DEA's chief, Karen Tandy, DEA lawyers who have sought to suppress and deny in court actions the 5th, 9th, and 10th Amendment rights of state-legal medical marijuana users, and other executive agency officials, (B) DEA agents who have participated in raids against state-legal medical marijuana facilities and users, (C) state and local law enforcement officers who have participated in the federal raids or raids of their own, and who are also individually liable under 42 USC Section 1983 for civil charges by each individual whose federal constitutional rights were violated, and (D) any federal judge who issued one or more unconstitutional, malfeasant rulings denying state-legal medical marijuana users their 5th, 9th, and 10th Amendment rights.

Public officials in the executive agencies have been personally libable for unconstitutional actions since the 1970 US Supreme Court decision in Biven v. Six Unknown Agents, which decision was reinforced by the 1989 federal circuit court decision in Merriweather v. Coughlin. Every public official in federal service having decisional powers receives notice of, and training in, personal liability in unconstitutional actions.

This conspiracy, public knowledge for at least one year, may also include the President of the United States, who should have stopped the unconstitutional harassment of state-legal medical marijuana users as soon as the DEA "raids" became public knowledge -- in accord with his constitutional oath and duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. No unconstitutional statute law may be executed, faithfully or otherwise. It may also include those members of the current, 108th Senate who voted without roll call and without debate to confirm DEA chief raider, Karen Tandy. Of course, in this case, the Senate's complicity is limited to the presiding officer who determined that the voice vote confirmed conspirator Tandy and her widely published intention to continue "raids" against state-legal medical marijuana facilities and users. The conspiracy may also include those members of the current, 108th House of Representatives who voted on 23 July 2003 to squelch the amendment to the Hinchey-Rohrbacher Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bill, which amendment would have prohibited DOJ/DEA spending on raids and arrests of medical marijuana facilities, providers, and users in the states having eliminated or reduced penalties for medical marijuana, namely Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.

This is a very large conspiracy. The sheer number of federal government officials involved speaks to a conspiracy that does not need specific agreements between concerned individuals in order to be a conspiracy. Additionally, the sheer number of federal government officials involved speaks to the possibility that there were direct bribes made to and accepted by the involved federal judges. Bribery and the federal judiciary are not mutually exclusive. The three federal judges impeached by the House and removed by the Senate in the late 1980s -- Harry Claiborne, Walter Nixon, and Alcee Hastings -- had all accepted bribes. The possibility of judicial bribery in this conspriacy against the rights of citizens, centering on medical marijuana, simply must be investigated thoroughly.

Also of special note is the untouchable US Supreme Court decision that enabled the continuation beyond 14 May 2001 of this horrendous conspiracy against the rights of citizens. In DDL's opinion, the decision in US v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative -- (00-151) 532 US 483 (2001), which attacked compassion clubs as a source of state-legal distribution of marijuana to the seriously and terminally ill -- was a despicable judicial nonfeasance, in which all eight concurring judges violated their oaths to uphold the Constitution.

There is no place in a rule-of-law society for Supreme Court judges who will (1) look past an issue's massive, irreparable harm to citizens nationwide, (2) say that they're accepting jurisdiction over the issue because it is about national drug laws, (3) decide a narrow procedural question on the issue's federal statute, which question is made moot by the statute's clear, self-evident unconstitutionality with regard to medical marijuana, (4) refuse to rule on whether the statute violates 5th, 9th, and 10th Amendment rights of state-legal medical marijuana users who are suffering irreparable harm because of the statute, and then (5) flatly deny that citizens are being irreparably harmed by enforcement of the unconstitutional statute.

The procedural question covers only whether medical necessity is an exception to the CSA's provision, at 21 USC Section 841, that it is unlawful for any individual to manufacture (grow) and distribute a controlled substance. DDL finds that this provision of the CSA is moot with regard to state-legal medical marijuana. The 10th Amendment bars the federal government from withholding any part of a state's right to protect the health and well-being of its citizens, on pain of criminal conspiracy against the rights of citizens under 18 USC Section 241. Therefore, only a state may determine whether and under what conditions any substance deemed by it to be a useful medication will be manufactured and distributed -- excepting only those substances ruled by the FDA to be unsafe and illegal for human consumption.

The federal government has recourse to seek an FDA ruling that marijuana is unsafe and illegal for human consumption. Short of that ruling, the federal government and the federal courts may not dictate, in any way, that the state give up any part of its 10th Amendment right to protect the health and well-being of its citizens.

Determining that care-givers, cooperatives, and compassion clubs are a part of the growing and distribution needs of medical marijuana for the seriously ill, terminally ill, and emotionally disturbed children who are qualified through medical supervision to receive the medical marijuana that helps protect their health and well-being is a 10th Amendment right of the states and their citizens. Federal government intrusion into that right is a violation of the 10th Amendment, arbitrarily denying a part of the states' and people's right to protect the health and well-being of citizens. Whatever portion of any federal statute law conflicts with that 10th Amendment right is flatly, purely unconstitutional.

Get it? We should have had medical marijuana available for treating our seriously ill, terminally ill, and autistic children decades ago. The quantity of unnecessary human anguish here is horrendous.

It is DDL's considered opinion that, for this arrogant, contemptuous disregard of human suffering due to unconstitutional statute law, and their giving of an unconstitutional ruling that continues that unnecessary human suffering, all eight concurring Supreme Court judges should be stripped of their judicial positions and retirement benefits and prohibited from ever holding another government job.

Yes, our convictions here are a legal "so what?". It is of little or no concern to any authority that a DDL workgroup is critical of the federal judiciary, or that we dare interpret constitutional law. However, many share our convictions. We wish it were otherwise, but those shared convictions represent another instance in the long-term decline in public confidence in the federal judiciary, another instance of the public conviction that there is an increasing moral bankruptcy in the federal judiciary. On the vaguely positive upside, such political convictions have sweeping reform potential.

With their arbitrary, unconstitutional decision in US v. OCBC, the Supremes signaled the US District Court judges willing to be a part of the conspiracy that the accepted tactic in this issue is arbitrary, nonfeasant, dereliction of duty. Marbury v. Madison has been selectively set aside by Supreme Clowns' fiat. The federal judiciary is not required to recognize a duty to say what the law is with regard to the 10th Amendment right of states to protect the health and well-being of their citizens. Federal judges may now unconstitutionally assert that the "Supremacy Clause" for federal statute law overrules state medical marijuana laws -- without noticing that (1) the "Supremacy Clause" applies only to the "constitution and the laws made in pursuance thereof", (2) that the 10th Amendment is a part of the Constitution, and (3) that no federal statute law violating the 10th Amendment can be a law made in pursuance of the Constitution.

This is one of the ways in which the elitist channels of discourse work to alert other elitists to the received tactics for handling any one issue in the securing of more social, economic, and political power for the favored few. Unconstitutional judicial rulings are very big in the elitist channels of discourse, and have been since US new nation times under the Articles of Confederation.

Tips the cap to William Greider for naming the "elitist channels of discourse" in his 1992 book, Who Will Tell The People?

In comparison with the Supremes' despicable judicial nonfeasance in US v. OCBC on 14 May 2001, the DDL workgroup finds that the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision reversed by the Supremes -- USA v. Cannabis, 98-16950 (190 F .3d 1109), decided 13 September 1999 -- is legally astute, lucid, and cogent.

What we will find, as we examine subsequent federal District Court rulings in the medical marijuana issues, is a combination of unconstitutional malfeasance and misfeasance pinned to specious arguments and vacuous precedents, as well as unconstitutional nonfeasance pinned to the Supreme Clowns' decision of 14 May 2001.

This is not only about a conspiracy against the rights of citizens, it's also about a conspiracy for money-power. Those unconstitutional judicial rulings maintain arbitrary Congressional power that can now be pushed to some new horizon in the future, arbitrary bureaucratic power that can now be pushed to some new horizon in the future, huge prison populations that cut corporate costs and increase taxpayer expenses, and gouge prices for prescription medications that directly benefit the medical industries, as well as indirectly benefiting the powerful individuals in Congress who go on farming the medical industries for campaign contributions and perks.

In the present legal environment for medical marijuana, putting its provisions into state statute law is a waste of time and human anguish. There are too many powerful state legislators willing to wreck any citizen-made law that is offensive to money-power. Once medical marijuana law is on the statute books, it is fair game for legislative overhaul, as well as federal coercion. Citizens in those states that have the constitutional initiative should be organizing to force their federal constitutional rights into their state constitutions. The malfeasant federal judiciary has made it clear that citizens must resort to that redundancy in all crucial issues. All medical marijuana law should be in its state's constitution, where its 10th Amendment rights can be openly asserted, and where its details have the maximum of protection against the wealth-driven and class-driven corruptions that dominate all representative government at the state and federal levels.

As with all conspiracies, this one against state-legal medical marijuana users can be unraveled from just a few key points. We can start with the 10th Amendment violation of the "Controlled Substances Act" through its 21 USC Section 812. It's a federal statute law passed by the Congress in 1970 and signed into law by President Richard Milhous "Tricky Dick, The Crook" Nixon -- the only US president ever to resign, in flight from certain impeachment and removal, after being the central mover and shaker in the criminal actions and eventual convictions of more administration and political party officials, as well as corporate predators, than occurred in, or as a result of, any other US presidency. That does not include, of course, the criminal actions of his vice president once removed, Spiro Agnew, who didn't need any help from Nixon. That the unconstitutional 21 USC Section 812 was made law by the most criminal presidency known to US history is very fitting.

21 USC Section 812, defines Schedule I drugs -- which include marijuana -- to have "a lack of accepted safety ... under medical supervision". Who will determine accepted safety under medical supervision? Not the states, the doctors, or the patients, whose 10th Amendment rights include a state's and it's people's right to protect the health and well-being of its citizens. This federal statute law says that Congress will determine what is acceptably safe under medical supervision, despite (1) the 10th Amendment fact that the Constitution does not give Congress the power to govern the protection of the health and well-being of citizens in the states, nor does the Constitution bar the states from protecting the health and well-being of their citizens, and (2) the legal facts of state laws traditionally protecting the health and well-being their citizens throughout US history.

It gets worse. Not only does Congress get to usurp this states right, the bureaucratic lowlifes at the DEA get to add to the usurpation. Yes, the same bureaucratic lowlifes who go around thundering that "there is no such term as 'medical marijuana', except as created by the marijuana lobby", and that they are in the business of stopping drugs, not distributing them.

Everyone cringe at the contempt for state law, and then laugh sardonically. Thirty years of DEA operations have failed to even dent the distribution of illegal drugs. The only real DEA successes are in (1) spending hundreds of billions of dollars, (2) creating huge US prison populations of non-violent drug offenders who provide cheap labor to corporations and needless expenses to the taxpayers, and (3) the stopping of most of the tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of seriously ill persons across the US from being able to grow and use effective and relatively inexpensive medical marijuana -- instead, being forced to buy and use less effective and more expensive prescription drugs. The War On Drugs has been very sweet for elitist corporate predators and other money-power mongerers -- Congress, the state and federal judiciary, the DOJ, and the DEA included. It has been very sour for the taxpayers, non-violent drug offenders, and the seriously ill.

One of the US Supreme Court's currently dominate precedents in states rights is Printz/Mack v. US -- 521 US 98 (1997). Among its statements: "It is an essential attribute of the States' retained authority that they remain independent and autonomous within their proper sphere of authority."

Medical supervision is a part of the state's traditional rights to protect the health and well-being of its citizens. Medical supervision is within a state's proper sphere of authority. A state cannot remain independent and autonomous in medical supervision with the DEA attacking, and the DOJ prosecuting, state-legal medical marijuana facilities and users -- while malfeasant federal judges use specious arguments and vacuous precedents to uphold the unconstitutional CSA, 21 USC Section 812.

Contrary to DEA mouthpiece and malfeasant federal judges' claims, 21 USC Section 812 is NOT on a legal parallel with the FDA's widely accepted "federal government police powers", prohibiting the USE of a substance not found to be legal for human consumption.

First, prohibiting the USE of a substance does not require a federal statute law defining and controlling the limitations of medical supervision, that is, the doctor-patient relationship. Second, any federal statute law which attempts to define and control the limitations of medical supervision, or, the doctor-patient relationship, is unconstitutional with regard to the 10th Amendment, no matter what its objective. Third, 21 USC Section 812 prohibits medical supervision of Schedule I substances, not the USE of those substances in humans.

Prohibition of a substance's USE and defining and controlling the doctor-patient relationship are two very different things.

To illustrate the absurdity of a federal government policy defining the limits of the doctor-patient relationship with regard to marijuana, we only have to look at insulin-using diabetics.

The use of insulin to treat diabetes predates the FDA, is so common, and is so necessary in the stopping of irreparable harm, that no prescription is required to obtain insulin. And, yet, as most diabetics know, insulin is a very effective "final exit" drug. Insulin depletes sugar, and the brain cannot live without sugar. As long as an insulin-dependent diabetic is capable of self-injection, suicide is just one easy option away.

A single small vial of insulin is 1000 units. Ten 100-unit syringes would be required to inject the entire amount. Using five effective injection points on each side of the body, one after another, is easily possible and could be easily done within four minutes by a practicing diabetic with pre-loaded syringes (less experienced, non-diabetic individuals might not be successful, for a variety of reasons). 1000 units of insulin is certainly a massive overdose and would fry the brain in ten to fifteen minutes. Except for some few minutes of "insulin shock" discomfort prior to unconsciousness, there would be no pain to the patient. In the day-to-day business of the insulin roller coaster, all we insulin-dependent diabetics have been on the near edge of insulin shock many times. There's no terror in what is familiar.

Does insulin have an "acceptable safety" in medical supervision? Of course not. It's potentially a death-causing medication that must be used with care and without the gross mistakes easily available in the confusion of low or high blood sugar, shared by seriously ill diabetics. Suicide aside, throwing in an extra injection of insulin when one thinks the shakes and visual signals are indicating high blood sugar, when, in fact, they're indicating low blood sugar, is potentially lethal. Insulin-dependent diabetics who live alone -- who have no quickly available helpers -- tend to routinely err on the side of slightly high blood sugar, building in a safety margin despite the relentless neurological and other complications brought on by high blood sugar. This slightly high safety margin is especially useful for "brittle" diabetics, whose other conditions can cause the blood sugar to suddenly rise or fall dramatically, without apparent reason, while the individual is within his/her usual food/insulin regimen.

Bringing suicide back into the picture, no doctor-patient relationship has the inherent capability of preventing suicide. And diabetes frequently combines with other conditions to quickly and terminally grind away one's sense of "self", providing substantial rationale for rational suicide.

Will the DEA suddenly put insulin on the Schedule I list of controlled substances? Of course not. As with medical marijuana, there is no good replacement for what insulin does to stop irreparable harm to some patients.

Does marijuana have the same ability to directly cause death as does insulin? Of course not. Marijuana is one of the safest medications known to man.

Marijuana has a huge safety in medical supervison relative to insulin.

Do the other two parts -- (A) and (B) -- of 21 USC Section 812 have any relevance in distinuishing marijuana from insulin?. Of course not. With respect to (A), Insulin has a huge potential for abuse -- and is widely abused by teenage girls and others who want to be thin-thin-thin. With respect to (B), both marijuana and insulin are widely accepted in medical treatment in the United States.

Can any individual expect to obtain some therapeutic medications free from federal government regulation? Absolutely. Insulin, garlic (for many blood-related and kidney problems), vitamin E (to reduce the chance of heart attacks and strokes), milk thistle (to rebuild the liver), bilberry (for reversing night blindness) and many other "tissue specific" therapeutic medications used by medical practitioners since long before the existence of the FDA, can be grown or obtained without federal government regulation. Because the FDA approval process is horrendously expensive and defrayed only by future profits to the pharmaceutical industry, those traditional medications, including marijuana, will probably never face the FDA approval process.

The FDA was set up to test new drugs only. The seven individuals legally receiving marijuana from a federal program do so without an FDA approval for the USE of marijuana in humans.

And, as a point of fact contrary to the claims of DEA mouthpieces and malfeasant federal judges, there is no FDA determination that marijuana is unsafe and illegal for USE in humans. US District Judge Jeremy Fogel, in his 28 August 2003 ruling, heavily implies that such an FDA determination exists. Another specious argument from the federal bench.

If money-power did force the FDA testing and approval process onto marijuana, there's an excellent chance that it would be found safe and legal. No reason for money-power to chance that. Legal marijuana would cut prescription medication profits and reduce prison populations, increasing corporate costs and cutting kickbacks to the predator majority of Congress from a wide spectrum of industries.

And, yet, DEA mouthpieces -- and the malfeasant federal judges ruling in favor of 21 USC Section 812, and against medical marijuana -- frequently use the specious argument that marijuana is justly under "government police powers" because all medications fall under "government police powers".

Using this obviously specious argument suggests a high degree of contempt for the rule of law, and for the people. Those reality-twisting, elitist individuals have proven themselves willing to unconstitutionally coverup, stonewall, and whitewash (CSW) pasttime irreparable harm to the seriously ill. There is huge elitist profit in the CSW of harming hundreds, thousands, or millions of seriously ill persons -- and huge elitist loss in the truth. This is one of the key reasons for this conspiracy.

Perhaps the CSW elitists believe that no non-elitist in civil society has the willingness and capacity to identify, to analyze, and then to speak truth to, the sophistries and lies of power. Perhaps they believe that their power is so great, and the fallacies of reasoning underpinning their conspiracy are so sophisticated, that there is no chance that they will ever be prosecuted for their crimes.

After years of involvement in the medical marijuana issue -- including their key roles in California's successful 1996 medical marijuana initiative, Proposition 215 -- Valerie and Mike Corral were made to suffer a DEA punitive punishment raid. The cooperative marijuana garden on their property in rural Santa Cruz Country was raided by DEA agents, 05 September 2002. Raiders chainsawed over one hundred sixty plants. Not arrested, the Corrals were nonetheless handcuffed and removed from their property.

Valerie Corral is seriously ill, requiring medical marijuana. Her husband, Mike, is her care-giver. The garden had provided state-legal medical marijuana to the seriously and terminally ill membership of WAMM (Wo/Mens Alliance for Medical Marijuana)."WAMMfest The garden and WAMM's operations had been continually reviewed by state and county authorities, who held it up as a national model for medical marijuana "compassion clubs". WAMM members had cared for the garden and distributed its product free of charge to the membership.

With the garden destroyed, several plaintiffs entered into litigation against John Ashcroft and his nazified DOJ. Santa Cruz County, which gave WAMM and the Corrals much support in the post-raid ordeal of obtaining and distributing medical marijuana, took the lead in the litigation. The legal team took the cases pro bono. The plaintiffs wanted the marijuana plants or dollar value back under the 5th Amendment, and they wanted an injunction against future raids under the 5th, 9th, and 10th Amendments, so that they could re-plant.

Judge Jeremy Fogel, US District, Northern California, 9th Circuit, rejected plaintiffs' arguments in both cases. His nonsensical opinions are loaded with specious arguments and vacuous precedents. The opinions are obviously appealable. On 17 September 2003, 9th Circuit Court of appeals heard oral arguments on the rejected request for return of property seized in violation of the 5th Amendment. However, it is DDL's conviction that the falsehoods and fallacies of Judge Fogel's preposterous opinions go far beyond the need for appeals. In our opinion, they unpack to show him as a prime actor in this criminal conspiracy against the rights of citizens, richly deserving of impeachment and removal from the federal bench.

One of the key conclusions in Judge Fogel's 28 August 2003 ruling, dismissing the request for an injunction against future DEA raids, is a conditional propositon.

In logic and reasoning, a conditional proposition takes the form of "if this, then that". In logic's frame of reference, the wide world of conditional propositions includes many uses and analyses. Thankfully, we can exclude almost all of them when we find one used in a judicial ruling.

Without strong language indicating otherwise, the judicial use of a conditional proposition poses that conditional as an "argument" -- a premise entailing a conclusion -- not as a non-argument, testing logical connections between certain propositions, or any of the other logic/reasoning uses for conditionals. And because the conditional used in a judicial ruling is obviously intended to represent an argument, we can rightfully evaluate it as an argument, whether or not it is an argument in strict logical terms.

Conditionals are a complicated business for logic, far too complicated to have a rightful place in judicial rulings. The reader of a judicial ruling, finding a conditional argument, can rightfully respond with something like -- "What the hell is this? A conditional argument in a judicial ruling? What's going on here? Why is this judge relying on an argument form that has so many possible qualifications and confusions built into it? Why did he not simply use a direct argument form of premise(s) entailing a conclusion? Is he trying to hide something? Is he trying to confuse me into agreeing with him?"

But, not to worry. We're going to treat Judge Fogel's conditional proposition as a straightforward conditional argument and test it for truth, as we would any argument. If even one counter-argument demonstrates the falsehood of Judge Fogel's conditional argument, then his conditional argument fails.

The truth of the conclusion in a conditional argument is dependent upon the truth of the premise. Assuming adherence to the rules governing premises and conclusions, the premise cannot be true, and the conclusion false. If the premise is false, then the conclusion is also false.

(Breaking the rules of premises and conclusions can be done in error, or in great fun. Some thinkers apparently need that sort of fun. Ambrose Bierce gave a classic example in his 1911 Devil's Dictionary under "Logic". "One man can dig a posthole in sixty seconds, therefore sixty men can dig a posthole in one second." Mind's eye sight gag.)

Judge Fogel's conditional argument is not satirical fun. It is, in fact, a vacuous precedent that he adopted from an earlier 9th Circuit, District Court ruling, written by Judge Martin Jenkins in Raich v. Ashcroft, 04 March 2003, which is also a part of the conspiracy against the rights of state-legal medical marijuana users.

Judge Fogel uses the vacuous conditional as his conclusion to discussion of whether there is a fundamental right of patients to follow the recommendations of their physicians. He writes, "The Court is unaware of any authority that recognizes a fundamental right of patients ... to obtain and use physician-recommended medications in situations where the use of such medications is prohibited by law. Indeed, '... if one does not have the right to obtain medication free from government regulation, [then] there is no reason why one would have that right upon a physician's recommendation'." (US v. Cannabis Cultivators Club, 98-00086 CRB, 1999.)

First, the assertion preceeding the conditional argument strongly implies that the USE of medical marijuana is prohibited by law. This cannot be the case. There are seven persons legally receiving and using medical marijuana under a federal program. In earlier discussion, Fogel admitts to the awkward facts of the federal program and those seven recipients. In fact, those seven are an immediate counter-arugment, contradicting Fogel's claim that the USE of medical marijuana is prohibited by law. Additionally, we can hold Judge Fogel responsible for knowing that there is no FDA ruling that finds marijuana unsafe and illegal for use in humans. The only law prohibiting some use of marijuana is the CSA at 21 USC Section 812, which is unconstitutional with regard to medical marijuana prescribed by physicians in the doctor-patient relationship that is guarded from federal government control by the traditional 10th Amendment right of states and their citizens to protect the health and well-being of their citizens.

There is nothing amusing about a federal judge misrepresenting the law. It is a straightforward matter of power employing power arbitrarily. It is judicial misfeasance.

Second, in the conditional argument itself, Judge Fogel's intentions are obvious. With the conditional argument, he is asserting that, if all medications are regulated by the federal government, as he insists they are, then patients do not have a right to obtain any medication based solely on a doctor's recommendation, that all medication acquisition is based on federal government regulation within medical supervision.

The insulin counter-argument defeats and makes vacuous Judge Fogel's conditional argument. We can hold Judge Fogel responsible for knowing that the premise's assertion -- "all medications are regulated by the federal government" -- has no truth on this planet. The false premise automatically makes the conditional argument's conclusion a falsehood. Further we can hold him responsible for knowing that the conclusion's assertion -- "all medication acquisition is based on federal government regulation within medical supervision" -- has, in or out of this vacuous conditional argument, no truth on this planet. (Maybe on Fogel's planet. Will somebody please ask Fogel what color the sky is on his planet?)

Is Judge Fogel arguing that federal regulation is present in the doctor-patient relationship at all times, regardless of whether a particular medication is regulated? Sorry, no matter how he tries, Judge Fogel cannot make the absence of federal regulation equal to federal regulation. If federal regulation is absent for some medications, then there is no federal regulation for those medications. As we've shown, there is an absence of federal regulation concerning insulin and many other medications.

Judge Fogel obviously intends this adopted vacuous precedent to help make 21 USC Section 812 a constitutionally legitimate, federal statute law. The reality is that his vacuous conditional argument is no help at all. 21 USC Section 812 still violates the 10th Amendment right of states and the people to protect the health and well-being of citizens through medical supervision, and it still violates the 9th Amendment rights of an individual to control what is done to his/her body as well as of an individual to choose the least harmful therapy.

We can, after all, hold Judge Fogel responsible for knowing that an individual's right to choose the least harmful therapy is established by the California Supreme Court's decision in Cobbs v. Grant (8 Cal 3rd 229, 27 October 1972) and upheld in many subsequent rulings. The constant argument of the anti-rights conspirators, that medical marijuana cannot be chosen because it is an illegal medication is simply wrong-headed and unconstitutional -- as cannot be overemphasized. The 10th Amendment bars the federal government from withholding a state's right to protect the health and well-being of its citizens, on pain of criminal conspiracy against the rights of citizens under 18 USC Section 241. Cobbs v. Grant bars a doctor or hospital from withholding a less dangerous therapy from a patient, on pain of malpractice findings. And, in most cases of state-legal medical marijuana use, the user's least dangerous available therapy is natural, whole-herb marijuana -- safely inhaled by way of a vaporizer or water pipe, or, for autistic children, safely consumed in tinctures, elixirs, baked goods, cannabutter, cannaoil, or homemade Happy Caps.

Cobbs v. Grant, by the way, also affirms the patient's fundamental right to determine his/her own course of treatment in the exercise of control over his/her own body. This fundamental right set includes the sub-set of the patient's fundamental right to follow the recommendations of his/her physician. The constant argument of the anti-rights conspirators, including the federal judges, that no authority recognizes the patient's fundamental right to follow a physician's recommendation is simply wrong-headed, a lie, and unconstitutional -- as cannot be overemphasized.

Obviously, it is not possible for Judge Fogel to overrule Cobbs v. Grant with the false conclusion of a vacuous conditional argument. The 9th Amendment rights established in Cobbs v. Grant still stand, as Fogel admits in his discussion by citing some of the subsequent, supporting rulings.

Judge Fogel's vacuous conditional argument is power speaking lies. It's power using sophistry. It's power employing power arbitrarily. It's judicial misfeasance.

As with many other parts of Fogel's ruling, his use of this cheap-shot, vacuous conditional precedent provides all three of the central reasons that the Constitution's authors opted for judicial impeachment -- (1) the employment of arbitrary power (in this case, insisting that an obvious falsehood is true), (2) the usurpation of legislative power (in this case, "judicial activism" dictating that no medication is free from federal government regulation), and (3) issuing an unconstitutional opinion (in this case, denying the individual's 9th Amendment right to control his/her own body, the individual's 9th Amendment right to choose the least harmful effective therapy, and the individual's 10th Amendment right to medical supervision under state law).

For the framers' intentions in judicial impeachment, see especially, David Barton, Impeachment: Restraining An Overactive Judiciary. Aledo, TX: Wallbuilder Press, 1996.

The central unconstitutionality in Judge Fogel's 28 August 2003 ruling is his denial that the CSA violates the 10th Amendment. And, in the federal judiciary, Judge Fogel is not alone in this unconstitutional denial. None of the federal judicial rulings asserting the constitutionality of the CSA deals directly with the states' rights to protect the health and well-being of their citizens. The fact that they don't is simply a straightforward dereliction of duty under Marbury v. Madison and in accord with the despicable judicial nonfeasance of the Supreme Court on 14 May 2001, in US v. OCBC.

Judge Fogel continues to misrepresent and misstate the facts when he writes of the Supreme Court decision of 14 May 2001. "... However, the Supreme Court, exhibiting great deference to the Congressional judgement that marijuana appropriately is assigned to Schedule I of the CSA, rejected essentially the same argument that Plaintiffs advance here -- that marijuana can be deemed medically necessary despite its inclusion on Schedule I -- in Oakland Canabis Buyers' Cooperative, 532 U.S. at 493".

In fact, the narrow procedural question and answer in the Supreme Court decision -- made moot by the unconstitutionality of 21 USC Section 812 -- and the plaintiffs' argument in Judge Fogel's case, County of Santa Cruz v. Ashcroft, are like night and day. There is nothing essentially the same in the two. The Supremes misrepresent the Court of Appeals arguments, compressing those arguments into a narrow necessity defense. Judge Fogel misrepresents his plaintiffs' arguments, compressing them into the same narrow necessity defense. This misrepresentation of Judge Fogel's is more power speaking lies, more power using sophistry, more power employing power arbitrarily.

In the conclusion of his 28 August opinion, Judge Fogel wrote -- "... The voters of California and the governing bodies of the City and County of Santa Cruz have made a clear legislative judgment that seriously ill patients should be permitted to use marijuana for medicinal purposes in compliance with the Compassionate Use Act of 1996. However, the legislative and executive branches of the federal government have a different view, and in a federal system that view is controlling unless the federal government is acting in excess of its constitutional powers. ..."

Bingo. Supremacy Clause rules in a burst of nonfeasance. The Supreme Clowns have show the nonfeasant way to another malfeasant and misfeasant judge. And, Judge Fogel drops right into the unconstitutional party line of the anti-rights conspirators. But, contrary to this mass of federal judiciary unconstitutionality, 21 USC Section 812 is purely the federal government acting in excess of its constitutional powers. Judge Fogel's refusal to acknowledge the unconstitutionality of 21 USC Section 812 and consequent federal government excesses makes him a key part of this conspiracy against the rights of citizens.

This conspiracy is not a figment of an over-active imagination or a "maybe". It's a self-evident legal situation that is causing irreparable harm to the seriously ill, terminally ill, and autistic children -- nationwide. It's a dramatic demonstration of the wealth-driven and class-driven corruptions that twist our nation-identifying rule of law into insignificance. It's something that we are generally powerless to correct, except by sheer volume of outrage and sheer numbers of voters threatening to throw the rascals out. Without the outrage and the delivered threat to diselect serious numbers of Congressmen and Senators, we don't stand a chance against money-power's contempt for the people. We've got to pick some few tactics of outrage -- and lean into them collectively.

DDL thinks that the legal spear can be driven deepest, figuratively speaking. Outrage driving demands for more litigation and the impeachment of complicit federal judges.

As of mid September 2003, DDL is preparing complaints against two 9th Circuit District Court judges -- Martin Jenkins and Jeremey Fogel -- to be sent to the US House of Representatives, requesting that the two judges be impeached for conspiring with executive branch officials to injure, oppress, threaten, and intimidate California citizens "in the free exercise or enjoyment" of rights and privileges secured "by the Constitution or laws of the United States". We will also request that the two judges be investigated for the possibility that they accepted bribes, and that they falsified income tax records to cover up those bribes. Other judges might be added later.

Judges Jenkins and Fogel are with the US District Court for Northern California. The web site is at http://www.cand.uscourts.gov. Judge Fogel's ruling is there under "Recent Orders". The final URL is prohibitively long. Judge Fogel ruled 28 August 2003 in 03-1802 JF, "County of Santa Cruz v. Ashcroft." Judge Jenkins ruled 04 Mar 2003 in 02-4872 MJJ, "Raich v. Ashcroft" (at http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/drugs/raichash111902dopp.pdf).

The impeachment process, of course, is just an extension of elitist "stability" (read: vaguely stated constitutional provisions ensuring arbitrary control by powerful elitists) in the governance of our half-republic. After the four hundred years of sovereign citizen lawmaking and citizen-voted exile limiting strong representative government and lifting the ancient Roman Republic to greatness -- no citizen lawmaking, no republic. US constitutional impeachment is, and has always been, a pseudo-legal process of, by, and for the elites. It's a way to block and diffuse democratic challenges to elitist behavior -- to lessen accountability with regard to the crime, not to match accountability to the crime.

DDL believes that the judiciary should be relatively independent of the other two branches of government, but dependent on the people. We believe that constitutional renewal to give ourselves the political-party-reducing dynamic of traditional republican governance (sovereign citizen lawmaking and the recall limiting still strong but more regulated and more accountable representative government) should include the present appointment of federal judges for however long their period of good behavior, but should also make them more accountable with both the possibility of impeachment by the government and recall by the people.

The coming recall election of California's governor has been given much bad press by the elitist propaganda machine, whose first mantra is that any democracy is excessive democracy. The recall, however, is a democratic challenge to elitist behavior that civil society simply must have available. See especially the massive recall effort to remove Arizona's criminal governor, Evan Mecham, in 1987-1988 -- derailed by state government's impeachment, conviction, and removal of Mecham as soon as it was obvious that the people would throw the rascal out on their own. The recall's California use in 2003 by political party organizations is a direct result of nearly one hundred years of unconstitutional and arbitrary state government interference in citizen-proposed law, resulting in the power of political parties being strengthened rather than diminished. See above, "Violating The Constitutions". Ultimately, the people will decide -- as it should be -- whether the recall was misused in the Gray Davis case.

Despite the weakness of accountability in the impeachment process, DDL is convinced that complaints against the involved federal judges should proceed. Even the minimal effect of educating the federal bench that the people will not tolerate such unconstitutional treatment will yield substantial improvement, both on the federal bench and in Congress.

This conspiracy could not have gone as far as it has without the unconstitutional rulings from some members of the federal judiciary.

DDL is requesting help from legal professionals to establish and analyze applicable precedent law that will help impeach the target federal judges. We also need help in developing a way in which to prosecute the involved executive branch officials under 18 USC Section 241.

Yes, Congress needs to reverse its complicity in this unconscionable situation by specifically making state-legal medical marijuana a federally recognized legality. However, such federal legislation will not alter the unconstitutional irreparable harm done to citizens.

Not only must we demand justice for those who have been irreparably harmed, but we must also break down and wholly discredit the judicial precedents established to support this conspiracy against the rights of citizens. If we don't, those bad-law precedents will simply be ressurected for the next scam down the pike to increase the social, economic, and political power of some favored few.

We will not waste our time making our complaints against the federal judges to the 9th Circuit or to the Judicial Conference of the United States. The unconstitutional irreparable human harm caused by Judges Jenkins and Fogel -- and others -- demands justice, not an opportunity for the federal judiciary to close ranks to protect their own. And while the morally bankrupt majority of Congress is certainly capable of closing ranks and protecting the federal judges who allow predator Members and Senators to go on farming industries and corporations for money-power, we believe that there is a better chance of Congress wanting to put some limits on the employment of unconstitutional and arbitrary judicial power than there is of the federal judiciary stopping it.

As the complaint process goes forward, we will be asking for petition help from concerned organizations. The legal issues can be made more important to the US House of Representatives if they have direct evidence of the political mass in this issue. If your organization can help with organizing and executing a petition drive once the complaints are up, please email DDL's founder, Stephen Neitzke, stephen@ddleague-usa.net.

The complaints will be posted to separate pages on the DDL web site when they're completed. If you are a legal professional who wants to contribute counter-arguments and supporting precedents against the Jenkins and Fogel rulings, feel free.

Just this one legal issue alone requires a new Watergate-era-lookalike Special Prosecutor for Bush administration and judicial violations of the Constitution, the laws, and the public trust. Write your Congressmen. Demand a Special Prosecutor.

--Stephen Neitzke
Direct Democracy League
http://www.ddleague-usa.net

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