Trump Administration To Release Obama-Era Fast And Furious Documents

We may finally get some answers to the high-level Obama administration’s gun-running scandal dubbed “Fast and Furious.”  The Trump administration is promising to release the documents pertaining to that scandal that were withheld by former Attorney General, Eric Holder.

Operation Fast and Furious was the Obama-era operation in coordination with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) in which the federal government allowed criminals to buy guns in Phoenix-area shops with the intention of tracking them as they were transported into Mexico. But the agency lost track of more than 1,400 of the 2,000 guns they allowed smugglers to buy.

“For over six years, the House Oversight Committee has fought for additional documents related to Operation Fast and Furious. Today, the Committee finally reached a conditional settlement with the Department of Justice,” Amanda Gonzalez, spokeswoman for the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement to Fox News. “The Committee seeks all relevant facts so we can learn from the mistakes made by the Justice Department. We have a responsibility to uncover why they worked so hard to hide this information from the Committee, the family of [slain border patrol agent] Brian Terry, and the American people.”

Brian Terry was killed in 2010 by an illegal immigrant with a weapon used in the botched Operation Fast and Furious. Terry died in a gunfight between Border Patrol agents and members of a six-man cartel “rip crew,” which patrolled the desert along the U.S.-Mexico border looking for drug dealers to rob. The cartel member suspected of killing Terry was apprehended in 2017.

Terry’s brother, Kent Terry also wants the scandal investigated.

#FastAndFurious @realDonaldTrump Sir it"s been 7 yrs .my family ask you reopen Obama"s gun scandal that cost my brother his life..I talk to you back on the campaign trail here in Michigan and you offered to reopen the books into this senseless scandal .thank you.God bless

— Kent terry (@terry_superman) March 3, 2018

“We need to find out the truth, exactly what happened, how it happened, why it happened,” Kent Terry said on Fox & Friends Tuesday. “We need Mr. Trump, President Trump, to unseal the documents, reverse executive privilege so that we know what happened, and that we can hold the people accountable that are responsible.”

According to Fox News, the Justice Department entered into a conditional settlement agreement with the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. The settlement agreement was filed in federal court in Washington D.C. and ends six years of litigation arising out of the previous administration’s refusal to produce records requested by the committee.

“The Department of Justice under my watch is committed to transparency and the rule of law,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a statement Wednesday. “This settlement agreement is an important step to make sure that the public finally receives all the facts related to Operation Fast and Furious.”

The White House has yet to release an official statement on the Justice Department’s settlement.

Jeff Sessions to Revive D.A.R.E. to Hook More Kids on Drugs and Bolster Prison Profits

In his sanctimonious quest to revive the laughably inept war on drugs, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions now champions this stellar plan: resuscitate the interventionist prevention program — proven wholly worthless by the government, itself — known as D.A.R.E.

Yep — believe it or not — you heard right: D.A.R.E.

Apparently deaf — or, perhaps, oblivious — to all evidence the Drug Abuse Resistance Education program should better be called an hilarious exercise in how not to convince kids to keep away from substances the State deems illegal, Sessions touted its myriad imaginary successes recently, asserting,

“I believe that DARE was instrumental to our success by educating children on the dangers of drug use. I firmly believe that you have saved lives. And I want to say thank you for that. Whenever I ask adults around age 30 about prevention, they always mention the DARE program. Your efforts work. Lives and futures are saved.”

“We know it worked before and we can make it work again,” the feckless anti-drug crusader and avid authoritarian added.

However, in case it wasn’t obvious in context, D.A.R.E. doesn’t work — it never has — and resurrecting this badly beaten dead horse won’t change that its corpse should have been entombed decades ago.

“I firmly believe that your work saved lives,” Sessions glowingly bloviated to D.A.R.E.’s 30th anniversary training conference in Dallas on Tuesday.

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Sessions’ opinion aside, the U.S. surgeon general declared in 2001 — which, should be noted, came long after its 1993 revamping — the putative drug education program had “little or no deterrent effects on substance use.”

“DARE is the most widely implemented youth drug prevention program in the United States,” the surgeon general’s report stated. “It receives substantial support from parents, teachers, police, and government funding agencies, and its popularity persists despite numerous well-designed evaluations and meta-analyses that consistently show little or no deterrent effects on substance use. Overall, evidence on the effects of the traditional DARE curriculum, which is implemented in grades 5 and 6, shows that children who participate are as likely to use drugs as those who do not participate.”

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A report from Scientific American at the beginning of 2014 reiterated the government’s findings, calling D.A.R.E. “ineffective — and may even heighten the use of some substances among teens.”

Indeed, D.A.R.E.’s sole efficacy arguably rests in its manipulation of elementary, middle, and high school students as Orwellian child Spies — encouraging them to snitch on drug-ingesting family members and friends — an aspect resoundingly clear in its original police officer-teachers.

Considering D.A.R.E. was the brainchild of former Los Angeles Police Department Chief Daryl Gates — Sessions’ imperious law-and-order doppelgänger, noted for the ignominious belief recreational drug users “ought to be taken out and shot” — perhaps the propagandic assertion ‘drugs are evil’ matters more to the State than actual results.

“We’re going to condemn those people who casually use drugs in this nation,” Gates once sermonized.

Sessions’ championing of D.A.R.E. further neglects its established vapid wasting of billions of taxpayer dollars — as if pleading with kids to just not try illicit substances would abruptly resonate more in 2017 than it did in the Just Say No 80s.

Revisions to the program did little to inject life, given its wholesome ignorance of youth and of the driving factors behind drug use — not to mention brazen or purposeful obliviousness to the radically misguided war on drugs, itself. Vacuous anti-drug propaganda, after all, is little more than governmental hot air.

“D.A.R.E. does not work to reduce substance use,” the National Criminal Justice Reference Service asserted in a 1998 report to Congress. “The program’s content, teaching methods, and use of uniformed police officers rather than teachers might each explain its weak evaluations.”

Since the State repeatedly inveighed its own drug-resistance program as worthless, perhaps the impetus for Sessions’ inexplicable cheerleading of this otherwise dead-in-the-water proposal can be found where it counts — in Washingtonian pols’ wallets.

In February, the attorney general garnered resounding applause from the for-profit prison industry by nullifying President Obama’s plan to pull federal funding — a seeming punitive measure for despicable conditions in the nation’s myriad private facilities — announcing the Trump administration’s full support.

That announcement, however, didn’t exactly emanate from nowhere.

Two former Senate aides of Sessions, David Stewart and Ryan Robichaux, took career paths evincing a muddied, if inextricable, link to the very industry standing to profit obscenely from a renewal of the war on drugs: they became lobbyists for the contemptible Geo Group — a direct competitor of CoreCivic — a development of which the Nation noted at the time,

“Geo had already positioned itself with Trump during the campaign. A subsidiary of Geo gave $225,000 to a pro-Trump Super PAC, in violation of restrictions on federal contractors from political donations. Needless to say, the Federal Election Commission has done nothing with this information. And the return on investment could prove to be enormous […]

“The prominence of Sessions aides’ lobbying for Geo should be enough to push them past CoreCivic, expanding their share of federal contracts even more. This is simple pay-to-play favoritism.”

Without a continual flux of nonviolent drug offenders, private prisons wouldn’t have a financial leg to stand on — and what better way to ensure full capacity than by moralizing drug use and rolling out ineffective drug prevention programs.

In that context, Sessions’ ardor for decimating the planet’s drug supply — a literal impossibility — and his quest to arouse the empty golem of D.A.R.E. suddenly jive, when factoring in the money trail.

While the United States insists against mounds of evidence to the contrary the Drug War sacrosanct, those actually interested in combating substance abuse and dependence would be better served looking to the revolutionary experiment undertaken over a decade ago by Portugal.

Indeed, Portugal’s earth-shattering 2001 move to decriminalize all drugs — from cannabis to heroin, to crack, cocaine, MDMA, psilocybin, and, well, all others — was found by the U.S.’ Drug Policy Alliance ‘significantly effective in improving public safety and health.’

Decriminalization may seem counterproductive to the average American, having been inculcated with stigmatizing anti-drug propaganda since childhood, but Portugal has cleared overcrowded prisons, reduced crime by orders of magnitude, and given hope to those addicted, as the nation opts for treatment over time in a cage for violators who request it.

By espousing D.A.R.E. and a continued crusade of eradication and authoritarianism in U.S. drug policy, Sessions has chosen fealty to the inept, incarceration-for-profit stalwarts, militarized police, crime, black markets, ignorance of fact, and the inevitable detriment to the collective public health over proven and theoretical solutions.

Sessions isn’t daring anyone to ‘keep off drugs’ — he’s daring Americans to continue buying the fabrication, so the drug war can verify the need for its own existence.

My the pithy among us dare, instead, to declare the war on drugs the deadest horse.

Landmark Bill Introduced in Congress Would Legalize Cannabis on Federal Level

Washington, D.C. – In an effort to push back against repressive federal control of marijuana policy, bipartisan legislation was introduced in Congress by representatives Tom Garrett (R-VA) and Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) to exclude cannabis from the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA), which absurdly lists marijuana as a Schedule 1 substance — a classification that denotes a substance being dangerous and having no known medicinal value.

Passage of this legislation would provide states with the exclusive authority to regulate marijuana how they see fit – without the ominous threat of federal criminalization. In a prepared statement, Rep. Garrett explained that states are “more than capable” of deciding what policies best benefit their own citizens – without the need for federal oversight. If passed, this bill would take marijuana off the federal controlled substances list – joining other industries such as alcohol and tobacco.

Passage of the “Ending Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2017” would remove cannabis from the CSA so that it would no longer be listed as a substance regulated by federal law. This bipartisan legislation would empower states to establish their own marijuana regulations, which would allow for more flexibility in creating policy.

This piece of legislation comes at an important time, as the Trump administration is walking back his campaign promise of leaving marijuana policy up to the states, which he strongly noted on the campaign trail as shown below.

Although President Trump ran on a state’s rights policy during the election regarding marijuana policy, recent comments by militant marijuana prohibitionist, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, have warned of a coming crackdown on states that have legalized recreational use of marijuana. Ironically, Sessions has attempted to absurdly equate legalization with increased violence – the opposite of the truth – as a substance being illegal is what actually creates a black market where criminal elements can thrive.

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The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) noted that when speaking yesterday, before the National Association of Attorney Generals, Session’s doubled-down on his drug warrior rhetoric — denying scientific facts that legalizing cannabis access is associated with lower rates of opioid abuse (“Give me a break,” he responded) and urging state AGs, “[W]e don’t need to be legalizing marijuana.”

Contrary to Sessions sentiments, recent polling shows strong support across the United States for legalization of marijuana for both recreational and medical purposes. Just last week, a poll released by Quinnipiac University revealed that 59 percent of Americans endorse legalizing the recreational use of cannabis for adults.

Incredibly, a full 71 percent of voters — including a majority of Republican, Democrats and Independents, believe that state governments – and not the federal government — should ultimately decide marijuana policy.

Upon introduction of this legislation, Rep. Garrett released the following statement:

“I have long believed justice that isn’t blind, isn’t justice. Statistics indicate that minor narcotics crimes disproportionately hurt areas of lower socio-economic status and what I find most troubling is that we continue to keep laws on the books that we do not enforce. Virginia is more than capable of handling its own marijuana policy, as are states such as Colorado or California.”

Garrett went on to say, “this step allows states to determine appropriate medicinal use and allows for industrial hemp growth, something that will provide a major economic boost to agricultural development in Southside Virginia. In the coming weeks, I anticipate introducing legislation aimed at growing the hemp industry in Virginia, something that is long overdue.”

Since the U.S. Department of Justice refuses to adhere to the will of the people, after Trump’s bait and switch on marijuana policy, then we must take this issue out of the hands of the Washington, D.C. elite and empower the states.

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With the DOJ moving to blatantly disregard the will of the people, the time is now to pass the “Ending Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2017” to ensure that states have the right to create policies that best benefit their residents and are protected from being criminalized by an out of control federal bureaucracy beholden to special interests.

This is a call to action!

Please take the time to contact your federal elected officials and urge them to act on passage of the “Ending Marijuana Prohibition Act of 2017.”

Please help get the word out and share this information with your fellow Americans!

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