Here is this week’s poetry podcast.
Author: hankkalet
Hank Kalet is a poet and freelance journalist. He is the economic needs reporter for NJ Spotlight, teaches journalism at Rutgers University and writing at Middlesex County College and Brookdale Community College. He writes a semi-monthly column for the Progressive Populist. He is a lifelong fan of the New York Mets and New York Knicks, drinks too much coffee and attends as many Bruce Springsteen concerts as his meager finances will allow. He lives in South Brunswick with his wife Annie.
A wing and a prayer
I hope this puts the prayer issue to bed. There is no place in a public school setting for coaches to encourage prayer. Do that at home, not on the football field.
Another step toward sane pot laws
The stars may be aligning on the issue of medical marijuana. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced today (I first saw this on OpenLeft) that enforcement of the nation’s drug laws would be state matters, opening up the possibility that New Jersey’s medical marijuana law — should it get through the Senate and be signed by the governor — will have the real force of law.
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is sending strong signals that President Obama – who as a candidate said states should be allowed to make their own rules on medical marijuana – will end raids on pot dispensaries in California.
Asked at a Washington news conference Wednesday about Drug Enforcement Administration raids in California since Obama took office last month, Holder said the administration has changed its policy.
“What the president said during the campaign, you’ll be surprised to know, will be consistent with what we’ll be doing here in law enforcement,” he said. “What he said during the campaign is now American policy.”
Under the Clinton and Bush administrations, state medical marijuana laws were rendered meaningless.
The federal government has fought state medicinal pot laws since Californians voted in 1996 to repeal criminal penalties for medical use of marijuana.
President Bill Clinton’s administration won a Supreme Court case, originating in Oakland, that allowed federal authorities to shut down nonprofit organizations that supplied medical marijuana to their members. Clinton’s Justice Department was thwarted by federal courts in an attempt to punish California doctors who recommended marijuana to their patients.
President George W. Bush’s administration went further, raiding medical marijuana growers and clinics, prosecuting suppliers under federal drug laws after winning another Supreme Court case and pressuring commercial property owners to evict marijuana dispensaries by threatening legal action.
This policy never made much sense — neither from a medical nor from a law-enforcement point of view.
Doggie diary: The ballad of Rosie and Sophie Long night’s journey into a day
It's cold and the snow is just beginning to fall and I'm standing outside with two puppies who just want to eat sticks and stones.
I do this every night, but something about tonight is a bit creepy — random sounds of creeking trees and a scared squirrel scuramming across the shed roof.
I can see the snow move across the light from the deck and all I can think is, “I hope the weathermen are wrong about a foot of snow.”
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Tastes great at a good price
Not only are the cold cuts of a higher quality at the Pennsylvania Dutch Market, but they're cheaper than at the supermarkets — less tha $7 for two half pounds of turkey and chicken, compared with about $9 or so at the food store deli counter.
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