Eideard

An Ontario Superior Court judge has ruled that the federal medical marijuana program is unconstitutional, giving the government three months to fix the problem before pot is effectively legalized.

In an April 11 ruling, Justice Donald Taliano found that doctors across the country have “massively boycotted” the medical marijuana program and largely refuse to sign off on forms giving sick people access to necessary medication. As a result, legitimately sick people cannot access medical marijuana through appropriate means and must resort to illegal actions…

The judge’s decision comes in a criminal case involving Matthew Mernagh, 37, of St. Catharines who suffers from fibromyalgia, scoliosis, seizures and depression.

Marijuana is the most effective treatment of Mernagh’s pain. But despite years of effort, he has been unable to find a doctor to support his application for a medical marijuana licence. Mernagh resorted to growing his own cannabis and was charged with producing the drug.

Taliano found doctors essentially act as gatekeepers to the medical marijuana program but lack the necessary knowledge to adequately give advice or recommend the drug. He also found that Health Canada has made “no real attempt to deal with this lack of knowledge…”

“The body of evidence from Mr. Mernagh and the other patient witnesses is troubling,” Taliano wrote. “The evidence of the patient witnesses, which I accept, showed that patients have to go to extraordinary lengths to acquire the marijuana they need.”

Lawyer Alan Young, a longtime advocate of marijuana legalization, said the ruling is a step in the right direction.

“It’s significant because it’s a Superior Court ruling which has binding effect across the province,” Young said.

“By enacting a dysfunctional medical program the government now has to pay the high cost of losing the constitutional authority to criminalize marijuana.”

Surprising to me that there isn’t even a significant minority of physicians in Canada with the gumption to support medical marijuana programs. Silly statements about insufficient evidence means they’re only reading their own studies. In the United States, in Europe, there are beaucoup studies from reputable peer-reviewed sources that support a range of symptoms and syndromes that are ameliorated by cannabis.

Meanwhile, as Alan Young said, the ruling has put the government in the situation of having no Plan B to deal with rejection of their outdated laws.

Gay rights activists are celebrating another step forward after the Obama administration announced it would no longer defend legislation that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.

The decision opens the way for the federal government to recognise same-sex marriages. It comes only three months after the White House said it would end legislation discriminating against gay men and lesbians in the military.

Eight US states permit same-sex marriages but these are not recognised by the federal government, which does afford these couples the same treatment as heterosexual couples in terms of taxation, health benefits and in other areas.

The Obama administration said on Wednesday it would no longer ask the justice department to defend the 1996 Defence of Marriage Act in court.

The decision will spark another row with social conservatives, who are almost certain to challenge it in court.

The White House press spokesman, Jay Carney…said the president did not believe the law was constitutional, though his personal view on gay marriage was still evolving. “He’s grappling with the issue,” Carney. “But I want to make a distinction between his personal views” and the legal decision not to defend the law…

A federal judge in Massachusetts last year ruled the act unconstitutional.

Only a fool would expect the entire course of United States history to be reversed for long on issues of civil rights. What will be achieved by Republicans and their assorted flunkies is further polarization of those who vote – and more important – revitalization of those who don’t often vote.

Questions of principle, especially principles of democracy and equal opportunity serve best to activate fence-sitters and those suffering political ennui for whatever reason. Certainly better than rote recitation of 14th Century ideology by squads of disaffected bumpkins – already recognized as backwards enough to be the butt of TV comedy.

A federal appeals court ruled Tuesday that a cross displayed on public property for nearly a century is unconstitutional.

Three versions of the Christian symbol have been erected atop 822-foot Mount Soledad in the posh La Jolla neighborhood of San Diego, California, since 1913.

The current 43-foot cross was erected in 1954 in honor of Korean War veterans and has been the subject of near constant judicial back and forth since 1989, when two Vietnam War veterans filed suit against the city, saying it violated the California Constitution’s “No Preference” clause.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the notion that the cross — since the late 1990s surrounded by plaques and paving stones honoring veterans and war dead — was solely a memorial…

The court also noted that the site had, for most of history, been used for Easter services — marked on maps until the late 1980s as the “Mount Soledad Easter Cross” — and was designated a war memorial with a plaque “only after the legal controversy began in the late 1980s.”…

“Contrary to any popular notion, war memorials in the United States have not traditionally included or centered on the cross and, according to the parties’ evidence, there is no comparable memorial on public land in which the cross holds such a pivotal and imposing stature, dwarfing by every measure the secular plaques and other symbols commemorating veterans.”…

It never ends. The U.S. Supreme Court will eventually take this one up, presumably.

Criminalizing speech is a tricky business, but Congress seemed to think it had found the right balance in 2006 when it overwhelmingly enacted the Stolen Valor Act, which made it a crime simply to lie about having received a military medal or service badge.

But the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit begs to differ. In a decision released on Tuesday, the three-judge panel, based in San Francisco, declared the law unconstitutional because it infringed on the defendant’s freedom of speech, even if it was false. That defendant, Xavier Alvarez, had claimed to be a Marine and a winner of the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award. He was neither.

In a 2-to-1 ruling, the appellate court said that if the law were held constitutional, many everyday lies could become criminal acts. “There would be no constitutional bar to criminalizing lying about one’s height, weight, age, or financial status on Match.com or Facebook, or falsely representing to one’s mother that one does not smoke, drink alcoholic beverages, is a virgin, or has not exceeded the speed limit while driving on the freeway,” Judge Milan D. Smith, Jr., wrote for the majority. “The sad fact is, most people lie about some aspects of their lives from time to time…”

“We have no doubt that society would be better off if Mr. Alvarez would stop spreading worthless, ridiculous and offensive untruths,” the ruling said. “But, given our historical skepticism of permitting the government to police the line between truth and falsity, and between valuable speech and drivel, we presumptively protect all speech, including false statements.”

If we made all liars into criminals, we wouldn’t have a standing politician left to run for re-election.

In a victory for gay rights in the United States, a U.S. district court judge in Massachusetts has ruled that a federal ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.

Judge Joseph Tauro in Boston ruled in favor of gay couples’ rights in two separate challenges to the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA, arguing that the law interferes with the right of states to define marriage.

Massachusetts had argued DOMA denied benefits to same-sex couples in the state, where such unions have been legal since 2004. Four other states — Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Iowa — also allow same-sex marriage, as does Washington, D.C.

Tauro agreed with the state’s argument and said DOMA forces Massachusetts to discriminate against its own citizens.

“The federal government, by enacting and enforcing DOMA, plainly encroaches upon the firmly entrenched province of the state, and in doing so, offends the Tenth Amendment,” Tauro said. “For that reason, the statute is invalid.”

The Tenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution says: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

The Justice Department argued the federal government can determine eligibility requirements for federal benefits, including requiring that those benefits go only to couples in marriages between a man and a woman…

In a second case, filed by civil rights group Gays & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), Tauro ruled that DOMA violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause.

Under the ruling, the plaintiffs — seven married same-sex couples and three widowers from Massachusetts — would be entitled to the same federal spousal benefits and protections as opposite-sex married couples…

Congress enacted DOMA when it seemed that Hawaii was on the verge of legalizing gay marriage, and opponents feared that the movement would become a nationwide trend. States allowing same sex marriage are still a small minority.

A flock of not-very-brave politicians in Congress. Today as in the past.

They haven’t the perception to challenge the past or the courage to lead the way to the future.