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Jaybird

Jaybird is Birdmojo on Xbox Live and Jaybirdmojo on Playstation's network. He's been playing consoles since the Atari 2600 and it was Zork that taught him how to touch-type. If you've got a song for Wednesday, a commercial for Saturday, a recommendation for Tuesday, an essay for Monday, or, heck, just a handful a questions, fire off an email to AskJaybird-at-gmail.com

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9 Responses

  1. Mike Dwyer says:

    This is an extremely interesting take on the story. I probably wouldn’t have noticed it. Question: If Obama orders the Fed to stand down on marijuana, late this year, can the next President just put them back on it in January? Or would this be something they defer to their predecessor on? Genuinely curious because I really believe he has some cool Executive Orders planned for late in his Presidency.Report

    • Presidents can reverse/modify any existing EOs as well as issue their own. What they can’t do is violate existing statute or create new statute.Report

      • Will H. in reply to Michael Cain says:

        I don’t think this is so much about executive orders, but agency heads, and priority assessments.
        Generally, an agency will have several designated priorities; e.g., our top ten (or six) priorities for the next year (or six months), and they tend to focus rather intently on those things, and typically at the exclusion of other concerns. This is so whoever is heading up the initiative can gain bragging rights about what a bang-up job they did, while taking care of holding down the fort gets you about as much bragging rights as using common sense.
        These lists of priorities are a farted out every once in awhile by the agency heads, or whoever they designate the farting work to.

        So, the question is (are):
        How soon can a new agency head get in to cool his heels behind a federal desk, and how soon can he get someone to fart out one of these lists?

        A lot of different factors go into those calculations.Report

        • Michael Cain in reply to Will H. says:

          Sure. The President, or a DEA Administrator, could make enforcement of various marijuana-related laws a low priority. What the President can’t do is, for example, exempt by EO banks that provide services to a state-licensed marijuana retailer from the money-laundering statutes that apply for Schedule I drugs. No sane bank is going to take that risk. Maybe this President and Justice Department aren’t interested in prosecuting; the next one might be, and the statute of limitations is long.Report

  2. Oscar Gordon says:

    Because they messed with the old guy who’s just growing some plants for his glaucoma, or pain, or cancer relief, etc. The police are starting to learn that they pay a price when, in their zealousness, they step on people who were actually following the law (or, conversely, who weren’t doing anything to warrant a violent raid, even if they were breaking the law).Report

  3. LeeEsq says:

    Many times different parts of large organizations; government, business, religious, educational, recreational don’t communicate with each other. This creates jumbled actions at times. This isn’t to deny that it could be a direct order covered up when they realize how bad they look but we do have a lot Rube Goldberg organizational designs in many sorts of large or even small organizations that facilitate a lack of communication.Report

  4. Pyre says:

    In related news:

    Despite the growing tide of popular opinion as well as the President’s promise to let science determine the issue instead of ideology, the DEA is still working to justify their own existence.

    http://www.cnn.com/2016/08/11/health/dea-marijuana-schedule-l/

    It should be noted at this point that 26 states (If you count DC as a state) have legalized it to some degree and 13 are considering some form of legalization. (Sidenote: California, Maine, Nevada, and Massachusetts are voting on full legalization with Arizona possibly joining them if the final hurdles in AZ’s petition process can be cleared.)

    It should be noted that, when this many states had signed on for gay marriage, it was considered an inevitability. The only difference this time is that the opposition comes from a government department that is a relic of the Drug War instead of private “Marriage Protection” organizations that were also relics. Hopefully, weed will have their own Obergefell v. Hodges soon so we can put this behind us.Report