Poor Ed Rosenthal. You'd think he advocated something so dire that entire Federal government is after him. Oh right, he supports giving cancer patients reefer and other crimes against the state.
Seriously, can these charges be any more trumped up?
Medical Marijuana Advocate Faces New U.S. Indictment
A leading medical marijuana advocate who successfully appealed his federal conviction this year has been indicted on new criminal charges....The man, Ed Rosenthal, a well-known spokesman for the movement to legalize marijuana, was already facing a retrial on federal charges of growing marijuana for medical use. He is to be arraigned Monday in Federal District Court here on the new indictment, unsealed late Thursday.
It accuses Mr. Rosenthal, 61, of 14 felony charges that include cultivating marijuana plants; laundering $1,850, which the government says he got from selling the plants to medical dispensaries; and tax evasion. His tax returns, prosecutors said, omitted income from the sale of the plants.
Reached Friday at his home in Oakland, Mr. Rosenthal said he thought the efforts to prosecute him were part of a campaign to shutter medical marijuana sites in California and to subvert the state law allowing them.
“They want to shut me up,” he said. “They are vindictive. They don’t like anybody beating them, and they will go after you again and again until they wear you down.”
The state and the federal government have been locked in a legal and cultural battle over the medicinal merits of marijuana since 1996, when California voters approved a ballot measure giving seriously ill patients the right to buy and use the drug with a doctor’s prescription.
Aren't there more important crimes to solve, and criminals to find than Ed Rosenthal?
The new charges against Mr. Rosenthal are similar to those in a 2002 federal indictment. At the time, Mr. Rosenthal worked for the City of Oakland and was sanctioned under city and state laws to grow marijuana plants and sell them to dispensaries. He was convicted by a jury, but a federal appeals court overturned the decision, citing juror misconduct. He was granted a new trial, and prosecutors were moving forward, but the new federal indictment supersedes the earlier one.
MOst important is to punish those who help other die in a dignified manner, for example, in Iraq, okay, never mind. I believe it is time Californians fight for their independence. Just let us find that source of water, I'll be.