According to an exit poll in Kentucky, 42% of Hillary Clinton supporters will vote for McCain when Obama becomes the nominee. 33% will vote for Obama, and 23% will vote for Hillary Clinton. What the hell?

If you’ve logged into Facebook today, you’ve probably seen the new chat feature. I’m hooked.

I find it odd that they don’t have a desktop client though. MySpace teamed up with Skype for a chat service, and I see something similar happening with Facebook.

Google Talk is fairly popular among tech crowds, but has yet to be “mainstream” like AIM, MSN, etc. It’s based on Jabber, which makes it very flexible and powerful. I see Facebook adding a desktop client powered by Google within 4 months. There’s plenty of similarities already, and I think it would be a good match.

On second thought, Microsoft has had their hands in Facebook’s pockets for a while, so maybe it’ll be bundled with MSN. We’ll see what happens. That post is a little old, but M$ was one of the largest Series C investors.

(My predictions almost always turn out to be wrong)

Thanks to my friend over at www.vsingh.net for letting me post a screenshot of our chat

In observance of 420, I’m going to be gone all day. I’ll probably be protesting the crazy marijuana laws on Capital Hill in Denver. Let’s take a look at a victim of the so called “War On Drugs”. Visit MPP.org for more information.

Source For This Post: http://www.mpp.org/victims/james-burton.html

James Burton, a Vietnam veteran and master electrical technician, faced a stark choice after he was diagnosed with a congenital form of glaucoma: He could either use marijuana and save his vision or he could continue to take the conventional but ineffective prescription drugs his doctors prescribed and slowly go blind. He chose marijuana and began growing his medicine on his Kentucky farm.

After local law enforcement officers discovered his garden, he was arrested and charged with cultivation with intent to sell. At his trial, ophthalmologist Dr. John Merritt testified that marijuana was the only medicine that could keep Burton from going blind. The jury convicted him of simple possession of marijuana, and he was sentenced to one year in a maximum security prison.

While incarcerated, Burton was deprived of his medicine. As his sight worsened over that year, he had to fight to keep prison doctors from performing a risky surgical procedure.

When Burton was released, he and his wife, Linda, were homeless. Despite the jury’s finding that he was growing marijuana solely for his own use, on March 27, 1989, U.S. District Judge Ronald Meredith had ordered his house and 90-acre farm confiscated without allowing Burton to testify in his own behalf to save it.

Burton and his wife said good-bye to their families and left the country. Today, they live in the Netherlands, where Burton has a marijuana prescription from a doctor, allowing him to receive his marijuana from pharmacies there. His glaucoma is finally under control.

To send a man trying to save his vision to prison, and steal the home and land that he and his wife had worked decades for, should have the authors of the Constitution spinning in their graves,” said Burton’s attorney Donald Heavrin.

Burton is now helping other patients obtain marijuana for their medical needs. He is a founder and manager of the Institute of Medical Marijuana, a non-profit organization that supplies the Dutch Health Ministry with marijuana to be legally distributed through pharmacies by prescription, paid for by the Dutch government.

In observance of 420, I’m going to be gone all day. I’ll probably be protesting the crazy marijuana laws on Capital Hill in Denver. Let’s take a look at a victim of the so called “War On Drugs”. Visit MPP.org for more information.

Source For This Post: http://www.mpp.org/victims/jimmy-montgomery.html

Confined to a wheelchair for more than two years because of an injury, paraplegic Jimmy Montgomery used marijuana to stimulate his appetite and to control the muscle spasms typical of spinal cord injuries.

Montgomery was arrested for possession with intent to distribute two ounces of marijuana — his personal medical supply, which had been found in the back of his wheelchair. Police then attempted to seize his home; because it belonged to his 62-year-old mother, Thelma Farris, she was also charged in connection with his marijuana offense.

In court, the only evidence of any intent to distribute was the testimony of a sheriff’s deputy who claimed he had never seen anyone with two ounces who was not a major dealer. The deputy was later convicted on three counts of embezzlement of seized drug property and money.

Additional damning testimony came from an acquaintance whose own sentence for a cocaine conviction was reduced in exchange for the statement against Montgomery.

Montgomery’s mother testified that doctors recommended marijuana to her son to relieve his severe muscle spasms. “When Jimmy smoked marijuana, he didn’t have to stay belted to his chair,” she reported.

Montgomery was eventually found guilty and given a life sentence, which was later reduced to 10 years. After a year in prison, Montgomery nearly died twice after receiving inadequate medical treatment. He was later released on an appeals bond in 1993.

In April 1995, Montgomery was re-imprisoned. Rather than allow him to use medical marijuana, the government provided muscle relaxants, opiates, and tranquilizers. He was frequently placed in solitary confinement and handcuffed to a prison bed without adequate medical treatment for the antibiotic-resistant infections in his lower body. Friends watched his condition deteriorate as a prosecutor blocked his release.

After considerable public pressure, Montgomery was released on medical parole on July 27, 1995. He later lost a leg from an ulcerated bed sore he developed in prison.

In observance of 420, I’m going to be gone all day. I’ll probably be protesting the crazy marijuana laws on Capital Hill in Denver. Let’s take a look at a victim of the so called “War On Drugs”. Visit MPP.org for more information.

Source For This Post: http://www.mpp.org/victims/lester-siler.html

In July 2004, Lester Eugene Siler, 42, was brutalized by five rogue police officers in his Duff, Tennessee, home. Siler, who is illiterate, was beaten and held at gunpoint, had his head held underwater in a toilet, and was threatened with shooting and electrocution after refusing to sign a search consent form that he could not read. The officers also threatened to attach a battery charger to Siler’s testicles and to burn him with a lighter.

Siler is a convicted drug dealer serving 11 years of probation and had previously agreed to act as an informant for the county sheriff’s office. The unofficial raid was prompted after neighbors suspected he might have resumed selling drugs.

All five officers were fired when Siler’s wife revealed she had captured 45 minutes of the torture on audiotape. In July 2005, the officers received sentences ranging from four to six years in prison for their involvement in the assault.

In observance of 420, I’m going to be gone all day. I’ll probably be protesting the crazy marijuana laws on Capital Hill in Denver. Let’s take a look at a victim of the so called “War On Drugs”. Visit MPP.org for more information.

Source For This Post: http://www.mpp.org/victims/marisa-garcia.html

In January 2000, 18-year-old Marisa Garcia was driving in Diamond Bar, California. A police officer searched her car at a gas station and found a pipe with marijuana residue in the glove compartment. Garcia received a ticket for marijuana possession.

Garcia was found guilty of misdemeanor marijuana possession in March 2000 and paid a $415 fine. Later that month, as Garcia completed her Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) for her upcoming freshman year at California State University - Fullerton, she was forced to answer “yes” to Question 31, which asks if the applicant has ever been convicted of a drug offense.

Like nearly 10,000 other students that year who answered “yes” to Question 31 (or left it blank), Garcia was denied federal financial aid for one year. The federal law that cut her aid — the drug provision in the Higher Education Act of 1998 — allows for the successful completion of a drug rehabilitation course instead of a year without aid. But Garcia could not afford the expensive, in-patient treatment programs in her area, nor, as an occasional marijuana user, did she believe she had a marijuana problem that required treatment.

Garcia was able to find money for school by doubling the hours she worked at her part-time job, and her mother used credit cards and the equity in her home to cover the rest. Garcia is currently involved in the campaign to repeal the drug provision to the Higher Education Act. Learn more about this campaign at www.RaiseYourVoice.com.

In observance of 420, I’m going to be gone all day. I’ll probably be protesting the crazy marijuana laws on Capital Hill in Denver. Let’s take a look at a victim of the so called “War On Drugs”. Visit MPP.org for more information.

Source For This Post: http://www.mpp.org/victims/bryan-epis.html

Bryan Epis learned about the medical value of marijuana when he found it treated chronic upper back and neck pain from a near-fatal car accident in which he fractured two vertebrae.

After California voters passed Proposition 215 in 1996, Epis saw an opportunity to provide a service to patients like himself, and created the Chico Medical Marijuana Caregivers dispensary. Forty patients — all of whom were carefully screened — were served by the dispensary, and Epis personally provided money for five low-income patients’ medical bills. Epis was in the process of starting another dispensary in San Jose when the federal government arrested him.

Epis was charged with — and ultimately convicted of — conspiracy to manufacture more than 1,000 marijuana plants. He was growing far fewer, but prosecutors used unrelated documents from his computer to suggest that he had plans to grow more.

At trial, U.S. District Judge Frank C. Damrell, Jr., refused to allow any mention of California’s medical marijuana law or that the marijuana was for medical purposes. Like all federal juries, even in states with medical marijuana laws, Epis’ jury was instructed to disregard any references to the medical circumstances that witnesses attempted to mention. The jury had no choice but to convict Epis for the hypothetical 1,000 plants that he allegedly was going to grow.

Despite rallies on the courthouse steps by dozens of supporters and numerous letters to the judge requesting leniency, Epis was sentenced on October 7, 2002, to a mandatory minimum term of 10 years in federal prison. Afterward, members of the jury said they had no idea that such a stiff sentence might be imposed, and would have voted differently had they known. Epis is the first California medical marijuana patient convicted under federal law.

While Epis was in prison, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that federal government has no constitutional authority to regulate or prohibit medical marijuana activities that are purely intrastate in nature. The ruling protected patients in every medical marijuana state under the Ninth Circuit’s purview — Alaska, California, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.

While the case — later known as Gonzales v. Raich — was on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Epis was freed on appeal and reunited with his daughter on August 9, 2004. Nine-year-old Ashley had appeared on a series of billboards highlighting the injustice of her father’s conviction and incarceration.

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to allow federal interference in intrastate medical marijuana activity in June 2005, Epis must now ask for a reduction in his sentence or finish his sentence, which ends in 2010.

In observance of 420, I’m going to be gone all day. I’ll probably be protesting the crazy marijuana laws on Capital Hill in Denver. Let’s take a look at a victim of the so called “War On Drugs”. Visit MPP.org for more information.

Source For This Post: http://www.mpp.org/victims/carter-singleton.html

65-year-old Carter Singleton began chemotherapy in 2003 to treat non-Hodgkins lymphoma. Shortly thereafter, his six-foot, 230-pound frame began to wither away. Unable to eat, he lost 80 pounds in five months and was so weak he could barely move.

After a friend suggested that he try marijuana, Singleton found that it stimulated his appetite. Marijuana allowed him to gain weight, which gave him the strength he needed to beat the cancer.

In 2003, he was arrested for cultivating medical marijuana in his home.

“I was starving to death,” he says. “I did what I had to do.”

Singleton was fortunate to have a sympathetic judge who did not subject him to jail. His cancer is now in remission.

In observance of 420, I’m going to be gone all day. I’ll probably be protesting the crazy marijuana laws on Capital Hill in Denver. Let’s take a look at a victim of the so called “War On Drugs”. Visit MPP.org for more information.

Source For This Post: http://www.mpp.org/victims/palm-beach-county-florida-school-raid.html

Fifteen high school students in Palm Beach County, Florida, were arrested in January 2005 for selling drugs on school property. Some of the teens had sold as little as $10 worth of marijuana to undercover police officers who had befriended them. Other students had sold MDMA (Ecstasy) and cocaine.

In a drug investigation called “Operation Old Schoolhouse,” which took place at five area high schools, five county police officers posed as high school students in order to make the arrests.

Local prosecutors intend to charge the teens as adults, calling the students’ actions “a crime that doesn’t deserve juvenile prosecution.” The county’s school police chief and superintendent indicated that several other schools were also under investigation.

Selling any quantity of marijuana within 1,000 feet of a school is considered a felony in Florida, resulting in up to five years’ imprisonment. Selling MDMA or cocaine can bring up to 15 years’ imprisonment.

In observance of 420, I’m going to be gone all day. I’ll probably be protesting the crazy marijuana laws on Capital Hill in Denver. Let’s take a look at a victim of the so called “War On Drugs”. Visit MPP.org for more information.

Source For This Post: http://www.mpp.org/victims/matthew-ducheneaux.html

In July 2000, 36-year-old Matthew Ducheneaux was arrested for smoking marijuana in a park in South Dakota. Ducheneaux was a quadriplegic who used marijuana with his doctor’s permission to treat violent muscle spasms.

Wheelchair-bound since a 1985 car accident, Ducheneaux had tried Valium, codeine, and even Marinol to treat spasms that cause his legs to shake so violently that the floor of his home trembles in response. Nothing calmed his tremors, and many of the drugs he tried had undesirable side effects, including hair loss, extreme drowsiness, and liver toxicity.

After finding that marijuana treated his spasms, Ducheneaux sought permission to use marijuana. In 1988, he was approved for a now-discontinued program through which seriously ill people can obtain marijuana from the federal government. However, the federal government required such strong security measures for pharmacies serving patients in the program — such as 24-hour armed guards — that Ducheneaux could not find a local pharmacy willing to comply, so he had to find marijuana from friends or drug dealers.

Ducheneaux asked his doctor for a note saying he used marijuana for medical purposes, hoping that such a note might prove useful if he were ever to get into trouble with the law. The note stated, “Matthew is quadriplegic. He uses marijuana for muscle spasms caused by his paralysis.”

Ducheneaux did not have the note with him the day of his arrest, but the existence of the note later prompted the DEA to threaten to investigate his doctor for prescribing an illegal drug.

On August 28, 2002, Matthew Ducheneaux was convicted of marijuana possession. A previous ruling had barred him from telling the jury that he used marijuana for medical purposes. Ducheneaux’s attorney believed the jury’s hands were tied: “All of them conclusively said afterward that they didn’t want to find him guilty.”

Even prosecutor Matthew Theophilus had doubts about blocking any mention of Ducheneaux’s medical reasons for using marijuana, noting, “I think there is some merit to his defense.”

Ducheneaux received a five-day suspended sentence and was barred from using marijuana for year; he had faced a maximum sentence of up to one year in jail and a $1,000 fine.

The South Dakota Supreme Court later upheld Ducheneaux’s conviction, as well as the court ruling barring his medical necessity defense. Ducheneaux passed away on May 23, 2005.