Washington D.C. Legalizes Medical Marijuana

By Steve Elliott
From: http://www.tokeofthetown.com/

Photo: Dave's blog of random shit

Federal medical marijuana patient Irv Rosenfeld smokes a joint in front of the Capitol Building

​The D.C. Council on Tuesday approved amendments to a medical marijuana law first passed in 1998 by 69 percent of District voters. Congress had blocked implementation of Initiative 59 for more than a decade, until it lifted its ban last year.

With Tuesday's vote, the District of Columbia joins the 14 states across the country which already allow qualified patients to use medical marijuana without fear of arrest.

"Today marks a long overdue victory for D.C. voters and potentially thousands of chronically ill residents who will benefit from legal access to medical marijuana," said Karen O'Keefe, director of state policies for the Marijuana Policy Project.

Photo: MPP

Karen O'Keefe, MPP: "The District will at last have a law that recognizes... marijuana can be safe and effective medicine"

​ "It has taken nearly 12 years, but the District will at last have a law that recognizes the mounting scientific consensus that, for many conditions, marijuana can be safe and effective medicine," O'Keefe said.

"A well-working medical marijuana program in the nation's capital will also provide members of Congress who have never seen such programs up close with a unique opportunity to do so," O'Keefe said. "Once they see for themselves that these laws do nothing but provide compassionate care for seriously ill patients, hopefully they will understand the need to create a federal policy that no longer criminalizes patients in any state who could benefit from this legitimate treatment option."

Under the District's law, physicians will be able to give medical marijuana recommendations to patients suffering from HIV/AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis, glaucoma, and other serious conditions that can be alleviated through marijuana.

Qualified patients will have access to their medicine through a limited number of dispensaries within the District.

Unfortunately the District followed the bad example of New Jersey, the most recent state to allow medical use of marijuana, by prohibiting patients from cultivating their own medicine.

Currently, 14 states have effective medical marijuana laws and more than a dozen others are considering them.

In November, South Dakotans will vote for the second time on a medical marijuana ballot initiative, and Arizona is expected to have one on the ballot as well.

Eighty-one percent of Americans support medical marijuana laws, according to a January ABC News/Washington Post poll.

Near Washington, D.C., construction crews watch for mystery 'black' wire

A Metrorail extension risks hitting communications lines, including some used for top-secret government intelligence operations.

By Amy Gardner
June 07, 2009

Reporting from Washington — This part happens all the time: A construction crew putting up an office building in the heart of congested Tysons Corner in McLean, Va., hit a fiber-optic cable no one knew was there.

This part doesn't: Within moments, three black SUVs drove up, half a dozen men in suits jumped out, and one said, "You just hit our line."

Whose line, you may ask? The guys in suits didn't say, recalled Aaron Georgelas, whose company, the Georgelas Group, was developing the Greensboro Corporate Center. Georgelas assumed that he was dealing with the federal government and that the cable in question was "black" wire -- a secure communications line used for some of the nation's most secretive intelligence-gathering operations.

"The construction manager was shocked," Georgelas recalled about the incident in 2000. "He had never seen a line get cut and people show up within seconds. Usually you've got to figure out whose line it is. To garner that kind of response that quickly was amazing."

Black wire is one of the risks of the construction that has come to Tysons, where miles and miles of secure lines are thought to serve such nearby agencies as the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the National Counterterrorism Center and, a few miles away, the CIA. With work underway on a Metrorail extension, crews are stirring up tons of dirt where the black lines are located.

"Yeah, we heard about the black SUVs," said Paul Goguen, the engineer in charge of relocating electric, gas, water, sewer, cable, telephone and other communications lines to make way for Metro.

"We were warned that if they were hit, the company responsible would show up before you even had a chance to make a phone call."

So far, so good, Goguen added. But the peril remains for a project that will spend $150 million moving more than 75 miles of conduit along a three-mile stretch.

The Tysons corridor is also home to part of MAE-East, one of the nation's primary Internet pipelines installed years ago by the government and private companies. Most major telecommunications carriers link to the pipeline, meaning there's a jumble of fiber-optic wire under the new rail route.

Moving utilities quickly and cheaply is a big part of any construction work. But the $5.2-billion rail project, which will extend service to Dulles International Airport, is particularly complex.

Construction crews have been digging for more than a year to shift the wires of more than 21 private utilities out of the path of the rail line -- and they have another year to go.

And they have snapped, accidentally, dozens of those carriers' lines, because even not-so-secret commercial lines sometimes don't show up on utility maps. Goguen, the utility manager, estimates that the rail project has already hit three dozen lines.

Such issues are likely to resurface this summer, when tunnel construction is scheduled to begin. Above the tunnel's path is a giant microwave communications tower operated by the U.S. Army. And if you want to know what the 280-foot tower is for, too bad. "The specific uses of the system to which this particular antenna is attached" are classified, Army spokesman Dave Foster said.

Other government agencies near Tysons also had little to say. A CIA spokeswoman would not comment. And Mike Birmingham, a spokesman for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, would say only that if a communications line used by the agency was cut, the nation's intelligence-gathering would carry on uninterrupted.

"No particular project puts us at risk -- highway construction, building construction," Birmingham said. "We don't have a single point of failure. Our systems are redundant."

Georgelas, the developer whose company was overseeing the work when the Chevy Suburbans drove up, said he figured the government was involved when an AT&T crew arrived the same day to fix the line, rather than waiting days. His opinion didn't change when AT&T tried to bill his company for the work -- and immediately backed down when his company balked.

"These lines are not cheap to move," Georgelas said. "They said, 'You owe us $300,000.' We said, 'Are you nuts?' "

The charges just disappeared.

Gardner writes for the Washington Post.

Tunnel with 40,000 LEDs Is the Closest You'll Ever Get to Light Speed

By Adam Frucci

I've never traveled through space at light speed, but I imagine that standing in this LED tunnel is pretty close to the dizzying experience. The video is just plain awesome.

The name of the installation is Multiverse, and it was installed by artist Leo Villareal in a 200-foot-long tunnel in the National Gallery of Art in Washingtong DC. The entire thing features 41,000 LEDs that animate and move on their own, using randomness to ensure that no one will see the same configurations twice. Multiverse will be on display throughout 2009. [PSFK]