South Korean Defense Ministry says satellite launch may have succeeded
Reuters file
A soldier stands guard in front of a rocket
sitting on a launch pad at the Sohae Satellite Launch Statio, during a
guided media tour by North Korean authorities in April.
North Korea launched a long-range rocket on Wednesday in
defiance of its critics abroad, and sources said the launch may have
succeeded where earlier attempts had failed.
Initial word of the launch came from media outlets in Seoul and
Tokyo, and a spokesman at South Korea's Defense Ministry confirmed to
NBC News that the launch had taken place.
Later, a Defense Ministry representative told reporters that the
launch "looked successful, but whether it has been really successful
needs more time to determine."
Reuters reported that South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak called an
emergency security meeting in response to the North Korean launch, which
took place at the Sohae Satellite Launch Station on the secretive
country's west coast.
Japan's chief cabinet secretary, Osamu Fujimura, said North Korea's
Unha rocket flew over Okinawa at 10:01 a.m. local time. He could not
confirm whether any debris fell on Japanese territory. "The Japanese
government regards this launch as an act compromising the peace and
stability of the region, including Japan," Fujimura said.
Fujimura said the launch was "completely unacceptable," but he
reassured the public that the Japanese government was doing everything
possible to ensure national security. "Please go about your daily lives
calmly," he said during a briefing.
Japan's NHK television network reported that the rocket's second
stage crashed into the sea off the coast of the Philippines as planned,
minutes after passing over Okinawa. The key question was whether the
third stage successfully reached outer space.
North Korea says the rocket launch is aimed purely at putting its
Kwangmyongsong weather satellite into a pole-to-pole orbit. But critics
fear that the mission's true purpose is to test technologies for sending
a nuclear warhead to targets as far away as the U.S. West Coast.
This month, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said "a
North Korean 'satellite' launch would be a highly provocative act that
threatens peace and security in the region." Nuland said such a launch
would violate U.N. Security Council resolutions.
North Korea is banned from conducting missile and nuclear tests,
under the terms of U.N. sanctions imposed after a series of nuclear
weapons tests in 2006 and 2009.
Wednesday's launch follows up on an attempt in April that ended in failure just minutes after liftoff.
North Korea's space effort is a point of prestige for the country's
29-year-old leader, Kim Jong Un, who assumed power after his father, Kim
Jong Il, died last December. North Korea has claimed that it
successfully launched two previous satellites in 1998 and 2009, but
outside experts say there's no sign that anything was ever put into
orbit.
Suspect 'neutralized' after deadly shooting at Clackamas Town Center
PORTLAND – At least one person was killed in a
shooting inside the Clackamas Town Center mall Tuesday and a suspect
was "neutralized," deputies said. At least one person was killed.
Clackamas County Sheriff's deputies said it was an "active shooting
call" around 3:30 p.m. and urged people to stay away from the area.
Lieutenant James Rhodes said the suspect had been "neutralized" at a
news conference just before 5 p.m.
The Oregonian was reporting that two people were dead and that around
60 shots were fired. Deputies confirmed there were fatalities, but
confirmed no further details.
No information on the suspect's identity was released. Police did not think there were any other suspects.
Deputies were asking for any witnesses to contact police.
At least three people were hit, according to American Medical
Response, after ten to 15 shots were fired by a person in a hockey mask.
One patient was taken to the hospital, AMR said.
Witnesses said the suspect was wearing what looked like body armor
and a white mask. They said he fired a rifle several times until it
jammed and he the dropped a magazine onto the floor, then ran into the
Macy's store.
The mall exit from Interstate 205 was closed by police.
KGW reporter Abbey Gibb said people were crying and shaking as they come out of the mall.
“It’s surreal, even as a reporter, seeing this,” she said. Gibb said officers with guns drawn were outside the Macy's.
Dax McMillan, a former police officer, said a friend of his was right next to one of the victims.
“It was just shot after shot after shot. It was terrible. It was like a massacre,” witness Kira Rowland said.
Witness Benjamin Christensen, who works in the mall, said he was
also there when the shooting began. He heard one shot, then six or seven
more. He then began helping to evacuate others out of the rear exits.
“There were just cops everywhere and sirens and ambulances coming in.
I hope everyone is okay,” said a shopper named Isabel, who fled after
the shooting. “It’s so close to a holiday. It’s terrible.”
Another witness told KGW she heard several gunshots near Nordstrom, before people ran for cover.
“A deputy is about 50 yards away from me. He has a shotgun out, he’s
hiding behind a car,” said John Canzano, a well-known local sports
columnist who happened to be at the mall.
Canzano said all the store security cages were immediately closed.
Reporter Pat Dooris described a heavy police and emergency vehicle
presence as well as "a lot of chaos." One witness told him security
forces helped shoppers get down to the ground and out of site after the
shots were fired.
“All of the sudden, I just heard a series of
gunshots… boom, boom, boom, boom, boom… whatever the shooter was
shooting at, they continued to shoot,” said shopper Bill Hoff.
BREAKING NEWS: Multiple shots fired at Portland, Ore.-area shopping mall
Breaking News: Officials: Shooter 'Neutralized'
By Isolde Raftery, NBC News
Shots
were fired Tuesday afternoon at a mall in Portland, Ore., and there
were reports of injuries, according to NBC station KGW.
A woman who answered the phone at Chipotle in the mall told NBC News
that someone ran in and yelled, “It’s a shooting, it’s a shooting.”She said employees shut the restaurant doors. She said the mall is crawling with police.
Witness Amber Tate told KATU that she was standing in the parking lot
when she spotted a man wearing a camouflage shirt and what looked like a
bulletproof vest.
Tate said he looked like a teenager.
Gay student asks Justice Scalia to defend his 'bestiality' comments
Alex Wong / Getty Images file
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, seen in October 2012.
By Elizabeth Chuck, NBC News
Updated at 4:40 p.m. ET -- Just days after the Supreme Court announced it would take its first serious look at gay marriage, Justice Antonin Scalia was asked to defend his legal writings on homosexuality.
The
Supreme Court justice was visiting Princeton University on Monday to
discuss his latest book when a college freshman, who identifies as gay,
asked Scalia about the comparison he has drawn between laws banning
sodomy with those barring bestiality and murder.
“If we cannot
have moral feelings against or objections to homosexuality, can we have
it against anything?” Scalia said in response to the question, according to The Daily Princetonian. “I don’t think it’s necessary, but I think it’s effective.”
Scalia told Princeton student Duncan Hosie that he is not equating
sodomy with bestiality or murder, but drawing parallels between the
bans.
Scalia added dryly, “I’m surprised you weren’t persuaded,” the student newspaper reported.
Hosie's
question -- which received a round of applause -- stemmed from a 2003
case, Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down a Texas anti-sodomy law.
Scalia had dissented in the case; in his dissent, he makes a couple of
comparisons to laws against bestiality and declares, "nowhere does the
Court’s opinion declare that homosexual sodomy is a 'fundamental
right.'"
Scalia, the longest-serving justice on the current
court was at Princeton to promote his new book, “Reading Law: The
Interpretation of Legal Texts,” and to talk about the interpretation of,
the Constitution. It was during a question-and-answer session that
Hosie asked him about Lawrence v. Texas. "It's a form
of argument that I thought you would have known, which is called the
'reduction to the absurd,'" Scalia told Hosie, of San Francisco, The
Associated Press reported.
Reduction to the absurd,
an English translation of the Latin term "reductio ad absurdum," is a
form of logic in which one refutes an argument by showing that its
inevitable consequences would be absurd.
Hosie later told NBC News he didn't feel persuaded by Scalia's response.
"I
was very pleased that Scalia was polite with me. I thought he was
respectful with me, so I appreciate that, however, I disagree with the
substance of his answer," Hosie said.
"If you’re making an
argument to convince people, you don’t want to alienate people, and
that’s what Scalia did with his language. He didn’t just alienate
liberals by comparing laws against gay sex to laws against murder and
bestiality, he has alienated laws conservatives have condemned. It
didn’t make sense to me," he added.
The Supreme Court will be reviewing California's ban on
same-sex marriage and a federal law that defines marriage as only the
legal union of a man and a woman in March, with a decision expected by
late June.
Scalia has "not been opaque" about his feelings toward
same-sex marriage in the past, and gay rights advocates do not expect
him to change his mind when the Supreme Court hears the cases in the
spring, said Fred Sainz, vice president of communications at Human
Rights Campaign, the nation's largest gay rights organization.
"It's safe to say he is a vote in the 'no' column," Sainz said. "He
is not a justice that has an open mind towards these issues that are
coming his way.”
Hosie said he hopes the exchange he had with
Scalia, while it may not change the justice's mind, will at least change
the fiery words he uses in the future.
"I feel as if he’s crossed
a line in comparing some of the things he’s compared gay rights to ...
so hopefully this media coverage will encourage Justice Scalia to be
more conscientious and careful in the words he uses," he said.
Scalia
didn't discuss any issues related to specific cases during the
Princeton Q&A, but defended his view that divining the original
meaning of the Constitution is the best way to interpret it. “The Constitution is not an organism; it’s a legal text, for Pete’s sake,” he said, reported The Daily Princetonian. “Unless you give [the laws] the meaning of those who enacted them, you’re destroying democracy.”
I'm
throwing the BS flag on your agenda unless you can point to a specific
place where religion is mentioned either in the article or in Scalia's
written opinion in the case files.
Scalia
has, in his rulings, made it clear that his conservative Catholicism
defines his beliefs. For example, he has made it his life's goal to
gather enough justices to overturn Roe v. Wade. He is more beholding to
the Pope than to the American people!
Scalia
is old and a product of his generation, and that allows him to ignore
changes in public opinion. He will die soon, and then he can be replaced
with someone younger, more in touch with modernity. Scalia is one of
those that only look backward, gritting his teeth that society is not
stuck in the 1950s like him.
"He is not a justice that has an open mind towards these issues that are coming his way.”
An open mind and Antonin Scalia, now that's funny. He is the poster
child for the brain dead right. The SC will function much better once
the likes of Scalia and Thomas have retired.
Whether Scalia has used his personal religious beliefs in law arguments, I leave to others.
I do support the notion that he is more of a partisan hack than a
competent judge. I submit for your review the case of Gonzalez v. Raich,
and then his position on use of the Commerce Clause since, particularly
with reference to the ACA.
Scalia has, in his rulings, made it clear that his conservative Catholicism defines his beliefs.
While it is probably true that Scalia's religious beliefs affect his
rulings, Rick's comment called on him to STFU about those beliefs. My
comment was a call for Rick (or anyone) to show me a specific instance
of Scalia making reference to his beliefs in his legal opinions. In
other words, how do you STFU about something you've never said?
Like
what jake2247 said. Is anybody really surprised that Scalia holds these
opinions when he grew up during a time when segregation and Jim Crow
laws were OK considering it's the same time period in which
homosexuality was demonized and many had to be in closet because of
persecution?
"It's safe to say he is a vote in the 'no' column," Sainz said. "He
is not a justice that has an open mind towards these issues that are
coming his way.”
Just because a person disagrees with you doesn't mean he/she doesn't
have an open mind. One could just as easily say that YOU do not have an
open mind about Justice Scalia even though he hasn't heard the case or
ruled on it yet. Two people can hear the same evidence and reach very
different conclusions, as is very often the case with Supreme Court
justices. Why does it always end up that with a person rules
conservatively, they don't have an open mind?! His argument is that you
have to draw the line SOMEWHERE, because if you don't, then the line
keeps getting pushed further and further (into the absurd). If marriage
can be defined as two men or two women, then why not one man and two
women? Why not a man and a horse? Why not two men and a car? Once you
start moving the goal posts, then how far do you move them?
Scalia
has made no secret about his feelings toward the so called "homosexual
agenda". He has prejudged this case and needs to recuse himself. He's an
arrogant little son of a bitch and surely won't do that so he needs to
be impeached. His conflict of interest and lack of impartiality in the
case involving Dick Cheney's secrecy with our national energy policy
meetings should have gotten him removed then.
He, and his legal lap dog, Clarence Thomas have badly damaged the
Supreme Court and indeed, the entire American judicial system. He needs
to be impeached.
dhines
- "sodomy" - well, not QUITE - while the original reference is to a
supposedly supernaturally destroyed city in the middle east, that
particular connection is MOOT today. As an "act" (a physical act),
"sodomy" is well defined. No biblical connection required.
Bruce - the easiest thing would be to get the gummint of the business
(and it IS a BUSINESS) of sanctioning "marriage" and have them issue
"certificates of civil unions". you want to get "married" go to a
church (temple, whatever). I KNOW (factual "know") that it is possible
to get "married" in a Buddhist Wat in Thailand but not register the
"marriage"; ergo, you wouldn't be "married" outside Thailand. A few
years ago there was an interesting marriage where a guy married TWINS
(in the Wat, of course) and was quite happy. no word on how it has
worked out, though.
You
really aren't serious asking where religion is mentioned, right?
Seriously? What argument against gay rights, including gay marriage, can
anyone make that doesn't involve religion??? If you look at the
subject from a purely legal perspective and leave all the religious
views out of things, what are you left with? It isn't legal to treat
one group of people who aren't harming anyone in a way that is only
wrong, bad, or should be prevented in any different way than anyone
else. If you aren't judging the behavior logically, but instead are
adding religious beliefs into it you get what we have had for years in
this country...discrimination. If you look at it legally and rationally
there is no bias and you see that you don't have to want to do
something or even like it for it to be legal and fair. There are things
I don't agree with that are legal, so I just don't do them. Case
closed...oh wait...it isn't closed.
And that is because this is ALL about religion whether a person
states it explicitly or not if we are honest about it. Just because a
person doesn't come out and announce that his/her statement is based on
religious beliefs it is pretty obvious if it is based on a personal
belief that comes from what is taught in various churches. This is a
legal case and shouldn't be judged on anyone's religious beliefs. That
would be totally wrong to do and anyone who can't judge the legality and
not the beliefs should not be judging the case.
Hosie said later that Scalia's answer didn't persuade him, and that
he believes Scalia's writings tend to "dehumanize" gays, according to
The AP.
Well Hosie, that's your opinion. Now quit whining. So many people crying about anything in this day and age.
My American born mother was not allowed to play in her high school
band because of her Mexican heritage. Her dream was to play in a high
school band and march on a football field. She wasn't even allowed in
movie theaters.
Did she feel dehumanize? Yes. Did she whine about it? No. Even
to this day she still doesn't complain about it or have an ill will
towards anyone. What's done is done and I've admired her more because
she did not complain because it shows her strength.
Michigan
has officially become the 24th "right to work" state, outlawing forced
union membership in both the public and private sectors. NBC's Ron Mott
reports.
By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News
Updated at 7:30 p.m. ET: Michigan
Gov. Rick Snyder signed into law two bills Tuesday sharply limiting
labor rights, which the House passed over the objections of thousands of
people packing the Capitol in protest, some of whom chanted "Shame on
you!" from the gallery.
"This isn't about us versus them. This is about
Michiganders," Snyder said at news conference in the state capital,
Lansing, where he announced that he had signed the legislation.
By
a 58-51 vote, the Republican-led House passed a bill that would ban
workplace rules that make union membership a condition of employment for
government workers. It then approved a second bill, covering
private-sector workers, by a vote of 58-52.
When the new rules take effect, probably in late March, Michigan —
one of the most union-friendly states in the country —will become the
24th "right to work" state, making payment of union dues voluntary even
though the union negotiates on a worker's behalf.
Snyder told NBC News' Andrea Mitchell that he was "pro-collective
bargaining," but he said right-to-work laws denied workers freedom of
choice.
"I think it's a good thing," he said of the legislation. "I think it's pro-worker."
Michigan
has long been considered the heart of organized labor. But now it may
draw new manufacturing plants that had been drawn to "right to work"
states in the South. CNBC's Phil LeBeau reports.
As the
vote was taking place, as many as 10,000 people descended on the
Capitol, State Police estimated, prompting authorities to restrict
access to the building because it was at its capacity of 2,000. The
overflow filled the lawn and stretched down East Michigan Avenue to the
Lansing Center across the river several blocks away.
About 200
onlookers filled the gallery overlooking the House floor Tuesday. As
debate resumed on one of the bills, the session was interrupted with
protesters yelling, "Shame on you," NBC News' Nadine Comerford reported.
After the votes, protesters then moved to the building housing Snyder's office, chanting, "Governor Snyder, just say no!"
Law
enforcement officials said they wouldn't let Michigan become another
Wisconsin, where demonstrators occupied the state Capitol around the
clock for nearly three weeks last year to protest similar legislation.
Armed with tear gas canisters, pepper spray and batons, State
Police officers guarded the Capitol as protesters shouted "No justice,
no peace!" and "Shut it down!" NBC station WILX of Lansing reported.
State Police officials confirmed
that one of their troopers used pepper spray on one protester. Police
spokesmen said the man was sprayed when he grabbed a trooper and tried
to pull her into the crowd.
The man wasn't arrested, but two other
people were arrested after they tried to force their way into another
building on the grounds where Snyder has offices, police said.
A
tent set up by supporters of the measures also collapsed amid what
authorities described as "pushing and shoving" among protesters. No one
was hurt, police said.
Dale G. Young / AP
Governor
Rick Snyder presents his views on Michigan's future energy plans and
how they merge with environmental and resource management issues at
MSU's WK Kellogg Biological Station, Wednesday, Nov. 28, 2012 near
Hickory Corners, Mich.
Elsewhere on the lawn, four large
inflatable rats were set up to mock Snyder, House Speaker Jase Bolger,
Senate Republican leader Randy Richardville, and Dick DeVos, a prominent
conservative businessman who union leaders say is behind the bills.
Schools in at least three districts were closed because so many teachers and other staff were at the rally.
NBC's
Ron Mott reports on the latest from the labor protests in Lansing,
Mich., and then, Msnbc's Tamron Hall talks with Rep. Sander Levin,
D-Mich.
Valerie Constance, a developmental reading
instructor for the Wayne County Community College District and a member
of the American Federation of Teachers, sat on the Capitol steps with a
sign shaped like a tombstone. It read: "Here lies democracy."
Scott
Hagerstrom, director of the Michigan affiliate of the activist group
Americans for Prosperity, said the new laws would be "a win-win for
Michigan's economy, for individual freedom."
"What a lot of these
protesters may not realize is that after this bill passes, they can
still belong to a union. It'll just be their choice. They just can't
force their co-workers to give their hard-earned money to a private
organization," he said.
But Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the Ways and Means Committee, called it "a terrible result."
"Workers
want a voice and ... they want to be sure when conditions are set that
they're part of the process," he said in an interview on msnbc.
Valerie
Constance, a developmental reading instructor for the Wayne County
Community College District and a member of the American Federation of
Teachers, sat on the Capitol steps with a sign shaped like a tombstone.
It read: "Here lies democracy."
But Mark Mix, president of the National Right to Work Committee,
hailed the votes, saying the made for "a great day for Michigan's
workers and taxpayers,"
"I would like to congratulate Michigan's
workers for their newly protected freedom to work without union
affiliation as a condition of their employment," Mix said.
Mich. labor fight puts 'tough nerd' Snyder under partisan spotlight
By Michael O'Brien, NBC News
Updated at 6:05 p.m. ET --
Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder called himself "one tough nerd" in his 2010
gubernatorial campaign, fashioning himself as a pragmatic problem-solver
who wouldn't delve into the divisive partisanship that had come to
define some of his fellow Republicans.
But
now that Snyder has signed historic legislation making Michigan the
nation's 24th right-to-work state, detractors will likely lump the
governor with those firebrand Republicans, a distinction that he had
long sought to avoid.
Gov.
Rick Snyder, R-Mich., tells NBC's Andrea Mitchell that the
right-to-work legislation will bring more work to his state and may be a
"positive" to unions over time.
“I didn’t do this to get into the politics of it,” Snyder said on
MSNBC Tuesday afternoon of the fight. He said the issue reached a
“critical mass” after organized labor unsuccessfully pushed a ballot
initiative this November that would have established a right to
collective bargaining in the Michigan constitution.
Snyder had
previously said that pursuing this legislation was not on his agenda.
But Republicans in the statehouse, whose majorities in the House and
Senate will be narrower next year due to the 2012 elections, revived the
long-dormant proposal with Snyder's eventual blessing.
"Once we
had the support that we had, the next step was convincing the governor
that this was a good thing," said state Republican Rep. Marty
Knollenberg, a primary sponsor of the bill in the House. "It certainly
started from the legislature, and then it was presented to the governor …
I think he was sort of taking a wait-and-see attitude. It wasn’t on his
priority list, as he indicated."
But Snyder did ultimately
embrace the law, and signed it into law on Tuesday evening. Whether he
would be able to preserve his reputation as a non-ideologue is an open
question.
The Washington Post's Ruth Marcus talks about the protests in Lansing, Michigan over the right-to-work legislation.
"I
think he kind of decided he couldn’t string this out any longer. The
idea that he had some sort of moment where he was converted in a
blinding flash of light – I don’t think that’s the case," said Bill
Ballenger, editor of the "Inside Michigan Politics" newsletter. "Here
you’ve got Michigan looking, all of a sudden, far more extreme and
aggressive that Scott Walker. Isn’t that ironic?"
Snyder enjoyed a
51 percent approval rating for Snyder in an early December EPIC-MRA
poll; 48 percent of Michiganders said they had a negative impression of
Snyder's performance as governor. The same poll found that Snyder had an
edge over a generic Democratic challenger in 2014.
But
the state was much more divided on the question of whether the
legislature should pursue right-to-work laws. While the EPIC-MRA poll
found that Michiganders were generally supportive of the concept
of those laws, they were evenly divided – 47 percent in favor, 46
percent against – on the question of whether Michigan should adopt such a
law.
Indeed, Snyder's decision to
move forward with this proposal will inevitably invite parallels with
GOP Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's work to push legislation that stripped
public employees of their collective bargaining rights in early 2011.
Like Michigan, Wisconsin is an industrial Midwestern state with a long
tradition of unionism. And as with Wisconsin, Democrats and labor
activists stormed the state capitol with unmet hopes of halting the
changes to labor law.
“I think it’s important to make a distinction with Wisconsin and
Ohio,” Snyder said on MSNBC. “That was about collective bargaining. That
was about the relationship between employers and unions. This has
nothing to do with that. Right-to-work has to do with the relationship
between unions and workers.”
The bigger distinction might be the
extent to which Michigan's fight was relatively bloodless. The fight in
Wisconsin dragged out for days as Democrats in the state Senate went
into hiding in Illinois to try to prevent a vote. And labor fought for
months to recall Walker, an election which the Wisconsin governor
survived this past June.
The right-to-work law moved much more
quickly through Michigan's state government, giving opponents of the law
barely any time to stop the bill. Even President Barack Obama's
criticism of the law during a stop Monday in Detroit did little to halt
the legislation's progress.
That sort of criticism could threaten
to erode the reputation Snyder had built for himself during two years in
office. Snyder, a former CEO of Gateway Computers, emerged from
relative obscurity in 2010 to beat two well-known Republican
challengers, Rep. Pete Hoekstra and Attorney General Mike Cox, in the
primary on the strengths of his plain-spoken, jobs-oriented message.
Bob
King, president of the United Auto Workers and Rev. Jesse Jackson share
their reactions to the right-to-work legislation and the protests
occurring because of it.
Snyder tried to burnish his
bipartisan bona fides upon taking office by appointing former State
House Speaker Andy Dillon, a Democrat who'd unsuccessfully sought his
party's gubernatorial nomination in 2010, as his state treasurer. He had
sought to build a new bridge between Detroit and Canada over the
opposition of some Republicans, and resisted a GOP initiative to ban
domestic partnership benefits for gay and lesbian couples before
relenting.
Democrats and their allies in organized labor are sure
now to redouble their efforts to beat Snyder in 2014, despite a
relatively thin bench of challengers. More voters (40 percent) said they
would be less likely to give Snyder a second term if he pursued
right-to-work than those who said they would be more likely to re-elect
the Republican.
Washington
State's new law makes it legal for adults to possess up to an ounce of
marijuana, but some speculate the federal government will prosecute
those who use marijuana on federal land because federal law prohibits
marijuana use. NBC's Kristen Dahlgren reports.
By M. Alex Johnson, NBC News
Washington and Colorado say you can legally smoke marijuana for fun now, but here's the catch: You can't legally buy it.
Voters in those states passed initiatives last month to
legalize recreational use of marijuana. As of last Thursday, it's legal
under Washington law for anyone 21 and over to possess up to 1 ounce of
marijuana, 16 ounces of "solid marijuana-infused product" (in other
words, a pound of pot brownies) or 72 ounces of "marijuana-infused
liquid."
In Colorado, Gov. John Hickenlooper signed Amendment 64
to the state Constitution on Monday, legalizing not only recreational
use but also home growing, unlike in Washington.
Entrepreneurs are already planning stores to get more buck for the bhang.
"Part
of the mission of our company is to transform marijuana from a
back-alley drug being sold by criminals into a premium product being
enjoyed by responsible adults," said Jamen Shively, chief executive of
Diego Pellicer Inc., a new company that hopes to open a chain of stores
in Washington and Colorado as soon as the legal issues are cleared up.
The company is named for Shively's great-grandfather, who grew hemp
in the Philippines. It eventually became the biggest hemp supplier in
the world around the turn of the 20th century. ("It's a family
business," said Alan Valdes, a veteran securities trader who recently
joined the company as chairman.)
"We're creating the category of
premium marijuana," said Shively, who worked as a corporate strategy
manager for Microsoft Corp. from 2003 to 2009 before leaving for a
specialty food startup. "If you are producing or intending to produce
premium-grade product that's in line with our ethos, we're interested in
talking to you."
But Diego Pellicer and its customers may be in for a long wait.
The
federal government still insists that marijuana is a Schedule I
controlled substance and that buying and selling it for any purpose
remains a federal crime. Federal authorities officially even frown on
the pot that patients get at medical marijuana dispensaries, although
their policy is to look the other way in those cases.
For recreational users, well, "you're a felon," said Mark A.R.
Kleiman, editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis. "Period. End of
paragraph."
And so is your retailer.
"Regardless of any
changes in state law ... growing, selling or possessing any amount of
marijuana remains illegal under federal law," said Jenny Durkan, the
U.S. attorney in Seattle. She said the Justice Department is reviewing
its options in Washington and Colorado.
Shively said that under no circumstances would his company violate federal law.
"Let's
suppose tomorrow that Washington state issued licenses and said, 'Go
ahead, guys, have at it.' We would say to the state of Washington
respectfully, 'Thanks, but no thanks, because we haven't heard from the
federal government.'"
Until then, Diego Pellicer is rounding up
funding and private shareholders to be ready if and when the Justice
Department changes course.
"I think it's going to be hard for the
Obama administration to slap this down," Valdes said. "Washington is a
liberal Democratic state that helped (President Barack Obama) get
elected. The people voted for him — it would be a slap in the face."
Dan
Satterberg, the prosecuting attorney in King County, Wash., which is
home to a thriving marijuana scene in and around Seattle, thinks the
Justice Department will try anyway.
The Washington and Colorado
laws require state agencies to facilitate something the federal
government considers an illegal act — the sale and distribution of
marijuana. That raises an important states' rights question that only
the courts can sort out, he said.
Satterberg told NBC station KING
of Seattle that he expects the states and the Justice Department to
wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court within the next couple of years to
argue the issue.
Overlooked
in the immediate reaction to passage of the initiatives, both pro and
con, is an important public health question, said Kleiman, who is a
professor of public policy at the University of California-Los Angeles
and co-author of "Drugs and Drug Policy: What Everyone Needs to Know."
It's not the question you might expect — how much does legalization
increase marijuana use? — but "how much does legalization increase
abuse?" he told NBC News.
Assuming marijuana use follows the
pattern of alcohol use, most of the marijuana consumed in the U.S. is
used by the 20 percent minority of people who abuse it, he said. Most
pot users use it now for light recreational purposes, but if it's legal,
how big will that 20 percent grow?
"Nobody knows," he said.
Questions
like that are why it might, in fact, be wise for the federal government
to step back and let Washington and Colorado serve as laboratories, so
policy makers can "find out what happens."
If it does, Shively and Valdes will be ready.
"We
are building our entire business on the premise it will be sufficiently
legal in the next few months or a year," Shively said — a business that
will include merchandising beyond simple sales of premium pot.
"Be looking out for really beautiful vaporizing products," he said. "That will be really hot."
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