In 2009, the Justice Department formally announced that it would not direct its limited resources towards medical marijuana dispensaries acting in full compliance with state law. According to a memo from then-Deputy Attorney General David Ogden, federal prosecutors “should not focus federal resources . . . on individuals whose actions are in clear and unambiguous compliance with existing state laws providing for the medical use of marijuana.” Recently, however, U.S. Attorneys in states such as California and Colorado, where medical marijuana use is legal, have began threatening to seize the buildings that house medical marijuana dispensaries unless the dispensaries’ landlords evict their cannabis-providing tenants.

Recently, DOJ set its sights on California’s Harborside Health Center, the largest medical marijuana dispensary in the world, suing to shut down Harborside’s two branches in Oakland and San Jose. Yet it is not at all clear how these suits can be squared with the Department’s 2009 memorandum. Harborside worked closely with Oakland officials to craft a strict regulatory regime to monitor their industry, and city officials agree that Harborside is in full compliance with state and local laws.

On Thursday, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) introduced the States’ Medical Marijuana Property Rights Protection Act, which would stop the DOJ from going after dispensaries’ landlords through asset forfeiture laws. According to Americans for Safe Access, the mere threat of these kinds of lawsuits have been enough to shutter roughly 400 medical marijuana dispensaries in California.

Lee’s bill comes on the heels of the bipartisan Truth In Trials Act, sponsored by Rep. Sam Farr (D-CA), Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA), Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), among others. More extensive than Lee’s measure, the bill would allow state-licensed medical marijuana users to defend against federal prosecutions or lawsuits, by showing that they were in fact in compliance with state law. It also would prevent the government from seizing cannabis plants that are legal under state law.

As recently as June 7 of this year, Holder reiterated in a House Judiciary Committee that DOJ would only take action against dispensaries operating “out of conformity with state law.” Yet there does not appear to be any evidence that Harborside, which tests all its products in a lab for safety and pays $3 million in federal, state and local taxes, is in violation of California law. U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag, who is responsible for the actions against Harborside, could only point to the fact that Harborside is a large operation, and “[t]he larger the operation, the greater the likelihood that there will be abuse of the state’s medical marijuana laws.”

While they gear up for a legal battle, Harborside is also calling for an immediate freeze on the patchwork enforcement actions against dispensaries operating under different state laws until a top-level federal review can determine whether U.S. Attorneys are acting appropriately in targeting these dispensaries. The need for one coherent federal policy will only grow, as 17 states and the District of Columbia currently have medical marijuana laws on the books, and more medical marijuana ballot initiatives are likely to pass this year. An unprecedented majority of Americans favor marijuana legalization, while 3 in 4 believe the federal government should leave marijuana users alone as long as they comply with state law.

It can be hard to keep track of the myriad outside spending groups with similar names that flood the airwaves with negative ads. To help keep them separate, ThinkProgress will be posting regular profiles of right-wing groups that are taking advantage of the Citizens United ruling to flood the airways with independent attack ads. Here is Part 1.

Created in 2010, Crossroads GPS is a tax-exempt 501(c)(4) organization co-founded by former George W. Bush campaign architect Karl Rove and Mitt Romney campaign adviser and former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie. Ironically, Gillespie in 2007 blasted the growing role of similar outside political groups, telling the Center for Public Integrity that independent spenders now “run wild, unfettered, unregulated, not subject to the same rules and regulations as the national parties. And I think that’s been incredibly unhealthy.”

As a 501(c)(4), the group is not legally required to identify its donors — unlike its affiliated Super PAC, American Crossroads. Crossroads GPS notes on its website that its policy is “to not provide the names of its donors to the general public.” It has spent millions of dollars running attack ads against Democrats, including a $25 million blitz against President Obama announced last month.

Sample Crossroads GPS ad:

Affiliates:

• American Crossroads, a Super PAC
• Crossroads Generation, a Super PAC aimed at younger voters

YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/CrossroadsGPSChannel
Twitter feed: https://twitter.com/#!/CrossroadsGPS

Graphics by Adam Peck. Christina Lewis and Ellie Sandmeyer contributed to this report

Private prisons, touted as a cost-efficient alternative to state-run penitentiaries, are not living up to their promises in at least one state. A new study of Arizona’s private prisons finds that the state is actually losing money — $3.5 million a year — by turning their inmates over to for-profit corporations.

According to the Tucson Citizen’s analysis of Arizona’s three oldest private prison contracts, the rate to hold one prisoner for one night has increased 13.9% since the contracts were awarded. Compared to the cost of state-run prisons, Arizona overpaid for its private prison beds by $10 million between 2008 and 2010.

The cost of these private prison contracts was no surprise to the legislators who awarded them. In an earlier investigation, the Citizen discovered the Legislature was well aware how expensive the private prisons were and simply circumvented a law requiring corporations to show cost savings before receiving a contract. In 2012, the Legislature repealed the requirement entirely — as well as a requirement that the state conduct a review comparing the quality of private and public prisons.

After removing any incentive to maintain facilities, the Legislature made things even easier for these corporations by guaranteeing their prisons will always be 100 percent occupied:

The documents refer to a “dispute” between the Department of Corrections and for-profit operator MTC as to whether or not the 5-year contract renewal was done in a timely manner (ADC says yes, MTC apparently said no). The negotiated settlement of this dispute consolidates 450 rated beds with 50 emergency beds into a total of 500 rated beds. These 500 beds will carry a guaranteed occupancy of 100% at a rate of $49.03 per prisoner, per day.

What’s more, this agreement was applied retroactively to October 6, 2010, effectively erasing all but three months of the reduced emergency bed per diem in the previous amendment (from July 2010). It also guaranteed that Arizona would continue to pay about three times as much for the emergency beds. In essence, ADC is handing over four years’ worth of extra money to keep MTC happy.

How much money? In the July 2010 contract amendment for the facility, the state had bargained the emergency beds down to a $12.60 per diem. Now they will be paying $49.03 per diem for the same beds. Which means that MTC is raking in an extra $36.43 per prisoner, per day. Multiply by 50 such beds, and MTC will make additional profits of $664,847.50 per year– a total of $2,659,390 through the remainder of the contract, which expires in October of 2013.

MTC made headlines in Arizona in 2010 after 2 prisoners escaped from their poorly maintained facility and allegedly killed a vacationing couple. The corporation has a long history of understaffing facilities, punctuated by inmate riots all over the country. Arizona now plans to buy back one of the MTC-managed prisons for $150,000.

In spite of the monetary and human costs, state and federal officials all over the country have embraced private prisons, perhaps because of the millions of dollars these corporations have lavished on politicians.

On March 7, 1965, six hundred civil rights marchers began what was supposed to be a fifty mile march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in order to demand the right to vote. Six blocks later, they reached the crest of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and discovered that their path was blocked by what march leader and future Congressman John Lewis (D-GA) describes as a “sea of blue” — row after row of Alabama state troopers on foot and on horseback, armed with billy clubs, bull whips and tear gas. Within minutes, the troopers set upon the marchers, choking the marchers with gas, trampling them with horses and beating them with their weapons. Lewis still bears the scar from a blow that fractured his skull, and seventeen marchers were hospitalized for the crime of demanding something already guaranteed to them by the Fifteenth Amendment of to the Constitution.

Footage of the police’s cold and systematic brutality soon led national newscasts, some of which can be viewed here:

Within a week, national outrage reached such a crescendo that President Lyndon Johnson, a Southerner with a very mixed record on race, could no longer remain silent. On March 15, 1965, a president who voted against every single civil rights bill during his first 20 years in Congress — including bills aimed at ending lynching — entered the House Chamber to speak to a joint session of Congress. In the half hour that followed, a clearly reformed President Johnson laid out the framework for what became the Voting Rights Act of 1964, and he twice uttered the rallying cry of the Civil Rights Movement — “We Shall Overcome.”

Lyndon Johnson signed that law 47 years ago today, and with it dealt one of the final and most penetrating blows to American apartheid. Yet it is also true that Jim Crow had many executioners. One was a law Johnson signed just a year earlier banning discrimination in workplaces, public facilities and many places of business. Another was the growing determination of the Civil Rights movement, buttressed by a national sense of outrage, as Americans repeatedly watched peaceful protesters willingly submit themselves to brutality.

And many of Jim Crow’s executioners wore black robes.
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Several reports out this morning indicate that Wade Michael Page, the army veteran who is suspected of killing six and injuring three at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek, WI, over the weekend, was a white supremacist and a “skinhead.” According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Page — who was killed in a firefight with police — even played in a white-power band that had ties to neo-Nazis.

Though police have not yet named a motive in the attack, all but one of those shot were Sikh adherents. The other was a police officer.

Should law enforcement confirm Page’s ties to white supremacy, and if that proves to be the motive of the attack, it will fit with a growing trend in this country. Hate groups — groups that expressly advocate against a religion, race, or sexual orientation — have been on the rise in the United States, rising steadily since 2000.

And the targeting of Sikhs is not new either. Often, the hate crimes against Sikhs originate out of misdirected Islamophobia: Sikh men can most easily be identified by their long beards and turbans, which they wear according to religious doctrine. Assailants will mistake these men for Muslims. According to a report by Reuters, Sikh groups have seen huge spikes in hate crimes since September 11th, 2001, right at the same time when anti-Muslim sentiment in the country began to grow rapidly.

In April of this year, over 90 members of Congress signed onto a letter (PDF) asking Attorney General Eric Holder and FBI Director Robert Mueller to closely monitor what they called a “growing concern” of hate crimes against Sikh people:

“Numerous reports have documented how those practicing the Sikh religion are often targeted for hate violence because of their religiously-mandated turbans — i.e. because of their Sikh identity, regardless of whether the attacker understands the victim to be Sikh or not,” the said lawmakers, led by U.S. Representative Joseph Crowley, a New York Democrat.

Though it is the fifth largest religion in the world, Sikhism is a small religious minority in the United States — there are roughly 500,000 observers of the religion, which originated in the Punjab area of South Asia, in the US. There has only been one Sikh member of Congress — Dalip Singh Saund, who represented Southern California in the late 1950s and early 60s.

In a column last week, conservative pundit and global warming denier made an uncharacteristic display of compassion for professional football players, explaining how the changing nature of the sport endangers players’ long term health:

Football is bigger than ever, in several senses. Bear Bryant’s 1966 undefeated Alabama team had only 19 players who weighed more than 200 pounds. The heaviest weighed 223. The linemen averaged 194. The quarterback weighed 177. Today, many high school teams are much bigger. In 1980, only three NFL players weighed 300 or more pounds. In 2011, according to pro-football-reference.com, there were 352, including three 350-pounders. Thirty-one of the NFL’s 32 offensive lines averaged more than 300.

Various unsurprising studies indicate high early mortality rates among linemen resulting from cardiovascular disease. For all players who play five or more years, life expectancy is less than 60; for linemen it is much less. . . . [A]ccumulating evidence about new understandings of the human body — the brain, especially, but not exclusively — compel the conclusion that football is a mistake because the body is not built to absorb, and cannot be adequately modified by training or protected by equipment to absorb, the game’s kinetic energies.

Will is right to raise these concerns as all workers have a right to a safe working environment. The fact that NFL players are both well-compensated and often national celebrities does not deprive them of this basic human right.

It’s just too bad Will doesn’t recognize this basic right with respect to nearly any other worker.

Last year, Will published a column calling the Supreme Court’s 1905 anti-worker decision in Lochner v. New York “correctly decided.” Lochner is widely viewed, along with Supreme Court decisions upholding segregation or Japanese detention camps, as one of the worst court decisions in American history. Even Robert Bork, the failed Reagan Supreme Court nominee who once described the federal ban on whites-only lunch counters as “unsurpassed ugliness,” accepts that Lochner is an abomination.

The crux of the Lochner opinion is that elected officials cannot be trusted to enact laws protecting the health, safety or general well-being of workers, and so any law directed at improving working conditions must be viewed with a very skeptical eye by judges. Lochner struck down a New York law preventing bakeries from overworking their employees, but the decision placed any pro-worker law at the mercy of one of the most conservative Supreme Courts in American history.

So Will’s compassion for NFL players rings more than a little hollow in light of his willingness to declare most laws protecting workers from exploitation — likely including overtime laws, minimum wage laws and many workplace safety laws — unconstitutional.