vs. the Drug Enforcement Agency …

Over the religious use of Marijuana.

The Church of Reality just received a scheduling order from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals challenging the final decision of the DEA denying the Church of Reality, a religion based on believing in everything that is real, its application to get a religious exemption for use of Marijuana by church members.

In 2006 the Supreme Court decided a landmark case allowing a religion to use a hallucinogenic tea for religious purposes that contain DMT, a schedule 1 drug, under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. A few weeks later the Church of Reality applied for a religious exemption based on a similar set of facts to the diversion control division of DEA. DEA took the application seriously and did an evaluation and finally on October 1st, 2008 denied the application. Federal law specifies that the Federal Court of Appeals has original jurisdiction over final decisions of the DEA and Church of Reality founder Marc Perkel (yep – that’s me) filed a petition for review.

The Church of Reality is the first case that the DEA processes under the new rules set out by the Supreme Court in 2006. Unlike other religious use of marijuana cases the Church of Reality is a real religion that wasn’t concocted for the purposes of getting around marijuana laws. The connection between the church of Reality and Pot is that the founder was stoned when he came up with the idea and is often stoned when writing the Church of Reality doctrine. Other than that – the Church of Reality is about reality and is dedicated to the evangelizing of the importance of making reality part of your life.

The Church of Reality is currently looking for assistance and ideas for those who are versed in first amendment law and paralegals to help do research to prepare briefs. People with such skills should contact Marc Perkel. This is also under reported news so spread the word.

Here’s the Document.

Back in 1992 I was involved in a number of interesting projects. I had a software company called Computer Tyme Software and I was looking hard for undocumented API calls to that I could control more aspects of the operating system through the ment language I had developed. I had also met with Novell’s Ray Noorda and had written a proposal that Novell get into the desktop operating system market with a 32 bit Unix like DOS and I wrote a partial specification for this operating system and sent it to Novell.

Here’s the story on that.

Novell however, instead of working with me to develop this idea decided to screw me and went off and bought out Digital Research and bought Unix from AT&T and Wordperfect and managed to screw it all up and started Novell’s decline. Had Novell worked with me and taken a different course history would have been significantly different.

Little then I know then that my name appeared on secret confidential Microsoft documents as a person who should be denied information about DOS and Windows beta programs. I think this could turn out to be interesting. Love to find out more about this.

http://www.legalreader.com/archives/001590.html

Having been through the family court system myself there is a real issue with corrupt judges and how to stop them. In many cases the only way to remove a corrupt judge from the bench is with bullet. I’m not advocationg that, but if you don’t look into this judge’s history you aren’t seeing half of the story. If what all these people are saying about this judge is true it reflects an issue with society that needs to be addressed in order to protect future judges from the same thing.

From what I read here it looks like there were a lot of people who were ready to shoot this judge.

San Francisco – The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) this week filed the legal briefs and evidence supporting its motion for a preliminary injunction in its class-action lawsuit against AT&T. After asking EFF to hold back the documents so that it could review them, the Department of Justice consented to EFF’s filing them under seal — a well- established procedure that prohibits public access and permits only the judge and the litigants to see the evidence. While not a party to the case, the government was concerned that even this procedure would not provide sufficient security and has represented to the Court that it is “presently considering whether and, if so, how it will participate in this case.”

“The evidence that we are filing supports our claim that AT&T is diverting Internet traffic into the hands of the NSA wholesale, in violation of federal wiretapping laws and the Fourth Amendment,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. “More than just threatening individuals’ privacy, AT&T’s apparent choice to give the government secret, direct access to millions of ordinary Americans’ Internet communications is a threat to the Constitution itself. We are asking the Court to put a stop to it now.”

EFF’s evidence regarding AT&T’s dragnet surveillance of its networks includes a declaration by Mark Klein, a retired AT&T telecommunications technician, and several internal AT&T documents. This evidence was bolstered and explained by the expert opinion of J. Scott Marcus, who served as Senior Technical Advisor for Internet Technology to the Federal Communications Commission from July 2001 until July 2005.

The internal AT&T documents and portions of the supporting declarations have been submitted to the Court under a tentative seal, a procedure that allows AT&T five court days to explain to the Court why the information should be kept from the public.

“The public deserves to know about AT&T’s illegal program,” said EFF Legal Director Cindy Cohn. “In an abundance of caution, we are providing AT&T with an opportunity to explain itself before this material goes on the public docket, but we believe that justice will ultimately require full disclosure.”

The NSA program came to light in December, when the New York Times reported that the President had authorized the agency to intercept telephone and Internet communications inside the United States without the authorization of any court. Over the ensuing weeks, it became clear that the NSA program has been intercepting and analyzing millions of Americans’ communications, with the help of the country’s largest phone and Internet companies, including AT&T.

“Mark Klein is a true American hero,” said EFF Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl. “He has bravely come forward with information critical for proving AT&T’s involvement with the government’s invasive surveillance program.”

In the lawsuit, EFF is representing the class of all AT&T residential customers nationwide. Working with EFF in the lawsuit are the law firms Traber & Voorhees, Lerach Coughlin Stoia Geller Rudman & Robbins LLP and the Law Office of Richard R. Wiebe.

CDs with the XCP rootkit copy protection technology include:

A Static Lullaby (Faso Latido) CK92772
Acceptance (Phantoms) CK89016
Amerie (Touch) CK90763
Art Blakey (Drum Suit) CK93637
The Bad Plus (Suspicious Activity?) CK94740
Bette Midler (Sings the Peggy Lee Songbook) CK95107,CK74815
Billy Holiday (The Great American Songbook) CK94294,
Bob Brookmeyer (Bob Brookmeyer & Friends) CK94292,
Buddy Jewell (Times Like These) CK92873
Burt Bacharach (At This Time) CK97734
Celine Dion (On Ne Change Pas) E2K97736
Chayanne (Cautivo) LAK96819 LAK96818,LAK95886
Chris Botti (To Love Again) CK94823
The Coral (The Invisible Invasion) CK94747
Cyndi Lauper (The Body Acoustic) EK94569
The Dead 60′s (The Dead 60′s) EK94453
Deniece Williams (This Is Niecy) CK93814
Dextor Gordon (Manhattan Symphonie) CK93581
Dion (The Essential Dion) CK92670
Earl Scruggs (I Saw The Light With Some Help From My Friends) CK92793
Elkland (Golden) CK92036
Emma Roberts (Unfabulous And More: Emma Roberts) CK93950, CK97684
Flatt & Scruggs (Foggy Mountain Jamboree) CK92801
Frank Sinatra (The Great American Songbook) CK94291
G3 (Live In Tokyo) E2K97685
George Jones (My Very Special Guests) E2K92562
Gerry Mulligan (Jeru) CK65498
Horace Silver (Silver’s Blue) CK93856
Jane Monheit (The Season) EK97721
Jon Randall (Walking Among The Living) EK92083
Life Of Agony (Broken Valley) EK93515
Louis Armstrong (The Great American Songbook) CK94295
Mary Mary (Mary Mary) CK94812 CK92948
Montgomery Gentry (Something To Be Proud Of: The Best of 1999-2005) CK75324 CK94982
Natasha Bedingfield (Unwritten) EK93988
Neil Diamond (12 Songs) CK94776 CK97811
Nivea (Complicated
Our Lady Peace (Healthy In Paranoid Times) CK94777
Patty Loveless (Dreamin’ My Dreams) EK94481
Pete Seeger (The Essential Pete Seeger) CK92835
Ray Charles (Friendship) CK94564
Rosanne Cash (Interiors ) CK93655
Rosanne Cash (King’s Record Shop) CK86994
Rosanne Cash (Seven Year Ache) CK86997
Shel Silverstein (The Best Of Shel Silverstein) CK94722
Shelly Fairchild (Ride) CK90355
Susie Suh (Susie Suh) EK92443
Switchfoot (Nothing Is Sound) CK96534, CK96437, CK94581
Teena Marie (Robbery) EK93817
Trey Anastacio (Shine) CK96428
Van Zant (Get Right With The Man) CK93500
Vivian Green (Vivian) CK90761

CDs with the SunComm MediaMax technology include:
My Morning Jacket, Z
Santana, All That I Am
Sarah McLachlan, Bloom Remix Album
Amici Forever, Defined
Foo Fighters, In Your Honor
David Gray, Life in Slow Motion
Alicia Keys, Unplugged

We’re considering whether the effect on the public, or on
EFF members, is sufficiently serious to merit a lawsuit.

If you satisfy the following criteria, we would like to hear
from you:

1. You have a Windows computer;

2. Either First 4 Internet’s “xcp” or SunComm’s MediaMax
copy protection has been installed on your computer from a
Sony CD and has not yet been removed (Note that computer
security professionals are warning that Sony’s uninstall
package creates even more security risks

http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=926);

3. You reside in San Francisco;

4. You are willing to participate in litigation.

We have not made any final decisions about filing any legal
action, but we would like to hear from music fans who have
been harmed by Sony BMG’s copy protection technology.

Please contact SonyDRM@eff.org, or reply to this mail.

You can also meet to discuss your experiences with EFF staff
personally at next week’s CopyNight – a regular local event
for those interested in IP issues. CopyNight is at 7pm,
Tuesday 22nd November, at the 21st Amendment Restaurant and
Brewery: see for details.

Thank you for your time,

Electronic Frontier Foundation

This is my entry for the Blog-a-Thon that the Electronic Frontier Foundation is sponsoring. The contest is about who used the internet in creative ways to stand up for digital rights. This should be FUN!

I started out in 1996 in the middle of my divorce where after getting a screwing by the courts I decided to represent myself pro se. This lead to about 20 lawsuits that I published online and resulted in my forced legal education. I found that I could actually intimidate judges by what I was publishing online about them.

In particular there was one incident where I called the Missouri Court of Appeals Souther District and recorded a conversation with the clerk of the court where she admitted that she had no idea if the judgements actually came from the judges or not. I not only posted it online but emailed a copy to 250 Missouri judges. It eventually led to the Chief Justice of the Missouri Supreme Court being caught forging a signature to cover it up and he stepped down as chief justice shortly thereafter. I don’t know if I caused it but a fantasize that I did.

Needing attention for my legal woes I decided to Run for Congress in 1998 as a Democrat, and in 2000 I ran for US Senate against John Ashcroft as a Republican. I’m the guy who lost to the guy who lost to the dead guy.

Blogging has been good for dealing with consumer issues. When Sprint decided to charge me $241 for $7 worth of usage I used the web to fight back. I created This Web Page which contains 5 recorded phone calls of their collection agency threatening me in a game of electronic warfare. I did a similar web site on MCI when they shut off my phone service with 12 recorded phone calls. The CBS evening news found the MCI story on my web site and Interviewed me on the evening news.

Recording phone calls was very effective in a dispute I had with PayPal. They didn’t like my Men’s Guide to Escort Services and my Shy Girl’s Guide to becoming a Whore. So they not only cut me off, but decided to keep my money and actually took $300 out of my checking account. So I called them up and recorded this conversation of them explaining their policies in their own words. Within two weeks I had my money back.

The web is good for making political statements as well. During the 2004 election Michael Moore made public statement giving people permission to pirate his movie Fahrenheit 9/11 on the internet but no one actually did it because they feared copyright infringement. So 2 weeks before the election I rented a 100mb line and published it for downloading within 2 hours of posting it on my blog. the 100mb line was saturated and stayed saturated up to election day. Once I did it other people joined in because of the media coverage and the fact that no one contacted me to take it down. (Thank you Michael Moore and Loin’s Gate Films). This resulted in hundreds of thousands of copies being sent over the Internet.

I currently own several controversial sites like OverthrowTheGovernment.org and FlagBurning.org. Here’s a video of me burning my 2000 census form on the steps of the Missouri Supreme Court. I host many political sites such as Bartcop, American Politics Journal, Political Strikes, and Faux News Channel. My motto for hosting is, No anti-bush site left behind.

Blogging is also good for social change. One can write articles that educate and empower the next generation. These articles include my anti-smoking tobacco message, The Truth about Smoking Pot and Why it’s important for young people to vote.

My latest project is The Church of Reality which is a religion that I invested based on believing in everything that’s real. The purpose of this religion is to evangelize reality the way it really is and to raise the importance of reality in society in general. It challenges fiction based religions on the basis of what is real.

So whether you are running for office, intimidating judges, standing up to big corporations that are screwing you over, fighting political battles, reforming the government, educating people, or starting new religions, blogging is the ultimate tool for free speech. It is so powerful that “they” would love to shut it down and it’s only because of organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation that people like me can continue to speak out and change that world ensuring that the human race will continue to evolve forward.

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 7:

To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

In listing the powers that the United States should have to serve the needs of the people Article 1, Section 18 lists 18 things. Post offices is one of them. It is in the Constitution that mail is important.

So – what does this have to do with privacy you might ask? To address that we first have to ask ourselves 2 questions. What is mail in the context of 18th century technology – and – why is it so important to make it into the constitution?

In 1776 there were no telephones, no television, no email. The only form of long distance communication that existed at the time was mail. And mail by definition was understood to be PRIVATE. In that era with the technology at the time the word “mail” meant long distance private communication. And long distance private communication was so important that the founding fathers put it into the Constitution.

The privacy aspect of mail is established in federal law.

TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 83 > § 1703

Whoever, without authority, opens, or destroys any mail or package of newspapers not directed to him, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

Why is it illegal to open someone else’s mail if you don’t destroy it or delay it? If the person gets the mail without delay then what has changed in reading it first? Only one thing. You have violated their privacy. It is established in federal law that privacy applies to mail. The reason for this is that it is part of our culture to respect the privacy of others by prohibiting the reading of other people’s mail. And in 1776 mail was considered as private as it is today. And the founding fathers considered mail important enough to put it into the Constitution.

I therefore contend that the founding fathers recognized mail not only for the aspect of mail being long distance communication, but that it was private, and the element of privacy was contemplated in the establishment of post offices clause.

More research needs to be done to fully support this. What needs to be researched is to understand why the founding fathers considered mail so important. And then to establish what the laws and culture was regarding the privacy of mail and if the founding fathers depended upon that privacy. Was the mail used to convey secret information where a letter was sealed and there was an expectation that the postal carriers would respect the seal? I believe that once researched it will be obvious that the element of privacy was part of the post office clause.

Other Support for Constitutional Privacy

The First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof …

Why – because religion is private.

The Fourth Amendment:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Clearly the search part is prohibited because of personal privacy. The seizure part is about the ownership of property, but searching doesn’t take away property, it takes away privacy. The Fourth Amendment protects a persons privacy by prohibiting unreasonable searches. The Fourth Amendment is really saying “The security of a person’s right to privacy shall be protected by prohibiting unreasonable searches.” I contend that the Fourth Amendment screams privacy.

Clearly privacy is contemplated in the Constitution even if it isn’t directly spelled out. I invite everyone to take this work, copy it, and build on it. Spread it around because those who think privacy isn’t in the Constitution just don’t get it.

I remember back in the early 1980s I used to fix CB radios. I worked at the local truck stop in Strafford Missouri that was located next to the state truck scales. I worked the loot looking for CB radios to fix, or hop up, or add channels to. I had a bag of tools I carried and worked the lot to make a living.

Business was especially good when the “chicken coops were open. Many of these truckers were running overloaded and had to wait till the scales closed so they wouldn’t get caught running too heavy.

You see – truckers are pressured into cheating. They are barely making it and are squeezed by high taxes, price of fuel, repairs, regulations, and hungry jurisdictions trying to increase the tax base by robbing the truckers coming through their area. In otder to survive and get home to see their families they will try to get away with driving more than they are allowed to. And if they can work 16 hours a day – the system will force them to do just that.

I remember being out there with the hitchhikers, whores, and drug dealers who would sell truckers “white cross” and methamphedimines so that they can stay awake. I remember one guy who was barely able to stay awake long enough to actually buy the drugs. And he was going to drive non-stop all the way to California. How dangerous is that to the public?

Walmart doesn’t give a shit about anyone and they are part of the fascist takove of America. They contributed big time to the Republicans so they will get their way and force truckers to work two more hours a day than they are now. We are all slaves to the man. But we must resist them and stop the deterioriation of honesty.

It’s an interesting article and the point of it is that as a juror you have the right and duty to override the law if you feel it is unjust — and — the government is doing everything they can to keep you from knowing about that. It’s called jury nullification which is a term I didn’t really like until I found out that it meant jurry nullification of law.

What this means is if you are on a jury and you are told you have to convict someone of a crime that is a bullshit offense – you don’t hav to do it. You can find him “not guilty” even if you know for sure that he committed the crime.

The founding fathers gave juries that power so that they can put a human element into the decision making process. The wanted real people to make the final decision and to use their own values to determine if it was “right” to convict someone of a crime. They understood that sometimes the law is imprecise and that someone might have technically committed a crime but the law was being applied in a way that it was never meant to be used. Or – that if a law is just plain unjust then real people can decide to nullify it. It is part of the checks and balances written into the constitution that give 12 people the final decision. A judge has to rule according to the law. A jury does not.

The Article goes into some of the history of why this is so important and how these kinds of decisions have lead to some of our most important freedoms that we enjoy today.

“Jury nullification of law”, as it is sometimes called, is a traditional American right defended by the Founding Fathers. Those patriots intended that the jury serve as one of the tests a law must pass through before it assumes enough popular authority to be enforced. Our constitutional designers saw to it that each enactment of law must pass the scrutiny of these tribunals before it gains the authority to punish those who choose to violate any written law. Thomas Jefferson said, “I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”

American colonial juries regularly thwarted bad law sent over from mother England. Britain then retaliated by restricting both trial by jury and other rights which juries had won or protected. Result? The Declaration of Independence and the American Revolution!

It is your duty to think for yourselves. The judge will not instruct you to do this. In fact may judges are hostile to your rights and duties as jurors.

About 18 months ago, armed with a number of pamphlets explaining the importance to each of us in having the courts fully inform juries of their rights, I stood in the Mendocino County Courthouse. I had been talking about this issue, with courthouse visitors when I was “invited” into Judge James Luther’s courtroom by two of his bailiffs. Judge Luther, showed me how in general our courts have eroded. I was told to stop talking to my fellow citizens about their constitutional rights. Their right to understand a jury’s role in the court procedure. I was told to stop or be arrested for jury tampering.

The issue before the court was a discovery issue in the case of Apple v. Does. Apple seeks to be able to serve discovery on journalist Jason O’Grady of PowerPage and his ISP who processes his email. Jason is not a defendent in this case and EFF was there representing the interests of the nonparites to ask for a protective order preventing Apple from serving discovery on journalists and the ISPs who process their email.

I was at the hearing today and EFF did a good jub and moved the judge significantly in their direction. The winning issue for EFF is that Apple was lazy and didn’t investigate hard enough before trying to compel a nonparty journalist to give up their sources. Case law requires that the journalist is a last resort.

The process was very interesting. There were 5 lawyers at the table for the hearing. The judge did something unusual. He recognized that there were a lot of important questions on the table. So he started out asking a lot of questions and then he said that the lawyers should leave the room and confer about these issues for 15 minutes and come back for the arguments.

One of the questions was if there was a real issue to be suing over. Basically addressing the merits of the underlying case. Apple asserted that the information that PowerPage revealed was in fact a real product that is currently under development and that the “trade secret” that was revealed was a technical blueprint that would only be of interest to engineers and not the general public.

I personally believe Apple was lying to the judge here and it wasn’t just the law firm that represented Apple but also Apple’s in house legal counsel was there.

There was a question as to whether or not Jason O’Grady of PowerPage was a real journalist or not. EFF made a strong argument that the number of visitors to PowerPage is greater than the number of visitors to Macworld. That his publication had better circulation than many newspapers.

At issue was that stealing trade secrets was a criminal offense and the judge asked if and journalist who published information they know is a trade secret if they aren’t really actibg as a “fence” and using free speech immunity to become a conspirator in a crime.

The judge pressed Apple’s lawyers on what else they had done to discver the identity of the source of the leak. It turns out that Apple had not done a single deposition of any of it’s employees. The lawyer said the Apple’s investigator questioned 60 of it’s employees “under threat of losing their job”.

The reason this is important is because one of the key issues of immunity of journalists in discovery is if they are going to the journalist as a last resort. Apple has a real problem on this issue and their efforts to make this a last resort argument clearly fail.

Another issue of interest to me is that Apple is trying to do an end run around journalistic immunity by going after the ISPs who host the journalist’s email. That means that email providers like myself can be compelled to act as Apple’s corporate spies. The issue wasn’t addressed to the depth that I would have liked to hear and I’m hoping that was because it was obvious that if they can’t get discovery against the journalist that they can do an end run around the law and go after people who might have access to the journalist’s stuff.

The judge was very sharp in my opinion. Not at all like the brain dead Missouri judges I’m used to. Buy the time the judge was done EFF had clearly moved him for his preliminary decision against the protective order to having to take the weekend to think about it.

I am optimistic about this – but I may be wrong. The way I see it EFF clearly won on the issue that Apples failed the “exhaust all other remedies” test that would give journalists immunity. So I think the issue that the judge is struggling with is if Jason O’Grady is a journalist. I think that if the judge decides that Jason is a journalist – EFF wins.

Apple puts Free Speech at Risk

So – Apple – in order to protect it’s trade secets is putting everyone’s free speech rights on the line. I believe it is time to punish Apple for their sins against the first amendment. I’m looking for ideas on how to do this. Perhaps the open source community should delay Mac versions of it’s software in protest of Apple’s threatening freedom on the internet for it’s own selfish causes. This worked very well three years ago against Adobe who jailed a Russian programmer who wrote a program to decode Adobe eBooks. Adobe paid a political price for that they they won’t soon forget and I think Apple is ripe for the same kind of punishment.