By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com Over the past week, federal prosecutors filed four asset forfeiture lawsuits against buildings housing “marijuana stores” in Los Angeles and Orange counties, the Department of Justice announced in a statement on Wednesday. The owners of the buildings and operators of the stores have been sent warning letters as well. The charges…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com The Feds have been busy in Detroit, where a major drug bust ended with 15 people indicted for peddling a “massive amount” of cocaine and marijuana across the metro Detroit area, reports the Detroit Free Press. All were charged with running the operation from 2008 to 2011, while three were also…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com Barbara Grohl, head of the Colorado Department of Revenue, has written a letter asking the DEA to loosen federal controls on marijuana and recognize its “potential medicinal value,” the Denver Post reports. The letter, written on Dec. 22, is the result of a law passed last year; that legislation required the…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com It is a fundamentally American right to criticize one’s government, to speak out against wrongful policies–a patriotic act, some would say. But how much dissent is possible if one’s job is to enforce existing laws, whether one agrees with them or not? Legislative change is reserved for political channels, after all–not…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com The Amish beard-cutting saga grows stranger and stranger. Talking Points Memo now reports that, along with scissors and clippers, federal agents also found evidence of marijuana and cocaine during a raid on the compound of the beard-cutting suspects. As previously reported, the FBI investigated possible hate crimes among the Amish community…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com Adding their voices to legions of other public and law enforcement officials, the governors of Washington and Rhode Island have filed a petition with the DEA seeking to reclassify the legal standing of marijuana. The petition, filed by Washington Gov. Chris Gregoire and Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, seeks to change…
By Danny Fenster ticklethewire.com Retired FBI agent Charles Mandigo has quite the resume. Over the 27-year span at the agency, he did a lot of things including head up the Seattle office, investigate the “Millenium Bomber” and drug cases, and serve a stint as congressional liaison to former FBI Director Louis Freeh. So when he endorsed an…
By Allan Lengel ticklethewire.com The son of a former Los Angeles fire chief and a Transportation Security Administration officer find themselves in big trouble. Authorities on Monday charged Millage Peaks IV with bribing TSA officer Dianne Perez to smuggle marijuana past security at Los International Airport on nine separate trips, the Los Angeles Times reported….
