(NBC Today Show) Brad Pitt hasn’t thrown his hat in the ring to be mayor of his adopted hometown, New Orleans. Others have done that for him, launching a grassroots campaign complete with nifty T-shirts touting “Brad Pitt for Mayor.”
But he’s more than willing to serve, the actor told TODAY’s Ann Curry with a self-deprecating laugh.
“If chosen, would you run?” Curry asked in the prerecorded interview that ran Thursday.
“Yeah,” Pitt said.
“Would you serve?”
“Yeah. I’m running on the gay marriage, no religion, legalization and taxation of marijuana platform,” he joked.
Screw mayor of New Orleans, Brad Pitt for President!
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009 at 9:20 am | By: Radical Russ
Every week I receive an email somewhat similar to this one:
My name is _____, I’m 21 years old, live in Baton Rouge, La., and was arrested last week under the charge of possession of marijuana (less than 1 gram) as well as paraphernalia (a hand-blown glass pipe, and I would imagine the baggie the herb was in). I was pulled over a little before 9 a.m. on 5/28 in Alexandria, La. The policeman called me out of the car, over to his vehicle, asked for my license, searched me, then asked if I had any weapons or narcotics in my vehicle. I replied, “No.” He asked if he could search the car, I answered, “Yes.” He told me to stay where I was, and I let him know there was a pocket knife on my dashboard. He returned a few moments later with the herb and proceeded to arrest me, place me in custody, and bring me to jail. I was booked, then released on bond around 10 p.m. the same night.
I’m sad to hear about your encounter with law enforcement, but perhaps this will teach you the phrases I tell every cannabis consumer I know:
“Officer, I do not consent to any searches.”
“Officer, am I being detained or am I free to go now?”
“Officer, I cannot answer any questions without my attorney present.”
Never say “yes” to a search. An officer has a right to ask you out of your car. He has the right to pat you down for weapons. That’s it. If he wants to search your car, and you have closed the doors and windows, he must gain your permission. If he’s asking your permission, he does not have probable cause to search, or he would be searching already. Especially now in light of the most recent Supreme Court ruling, which declared that officers can’t arrest you and use the arrest as a sole factor in deciding to search your car.
Once he had you out of that car, his rights to search that car, absent probable cause, just disappeared. Now, if you say, “Officer, I do not consent to any searches,” he may get belligerent and he may threaten to call in the drug dogs. That’s when you say, “Officer, am I being detained or am I free to go?” If he detains you after you’ve asked, your lawyer has the hook to go after him for violating your rights for detaining you without probable cause, because pulling you over for a traffic violation is not probable cause to believe you’re committing a drug crime.
Or look at it this way: If you say yes to a search and he finds weed, it’s a 100% guarantee you will be cuffed, stuffed, booked, fingerprinted, photographed, and sit in a cell with a lifelong criminal record. If you say no to a search, at least you have some chance he’ll recognize your rights and back off, or if he doesn’t, you’ll be cuffed, stuffed, booked, fingerprinted, photographed, and sit in a cell, but you’ll have ammunition for your lawyer to keep you from having a lifelong criminal drug record.
Wednesday, February 18th, 2009 at 2:08 pm | By: Radical Russ
Responding to the Michael Phelps Bong Hit Heard ‘Round The World, a Louisiana DA pens “Hey Dude! Where’s My Brain?” in the Shreveport Times, under the heading of “Con: Why marijuana should remain illegal”, which confuses me, because the “Con” side to keeping marijuana illegal is legalization, which is what this Charles R. Scott opposes. Maybe the editors at the Times hit the bottle one too many times…
Secondly, from 27 years experience as a judge, I know marijuana is a gateway drug to more dangerous drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamines, prescription medication and heroin.
That’s new! How exactly is the marijuana you have to get illegally now the gateway drug to prescription medication? The only gateway from marijuana to other illicit drugs is the illegal marketplace where you have to purchase the marijuana. Nobody calls Bacardi 151 rum a gateway drug to cocaine, because there’s no cocaine for sale at the liquor store.
The legislature is right — marijuana is a “dangerous” substance. It alters the mind and the heart — look it up. In hundreds of cases, motorists with a “joint” or a “blunt” of marijuana place our citizens in danger. How would you explain to the parents of a child or to anyone who loses a loved one in an accident that could have been prevented if the drivers were not impaired or stoned on pot?
I’d probably re-use one of the speeches you’ve used when somebody’s child was lost in an alcohol-related crash, since that’s a far more likely scenario than the stoned driver killing someone.
Evans, 18 and three of her friends walked out on a $46.07 bill at the Posados Café in Bossier City, La., on Saturday night. But Evans made a crucial misstep — she left her purse behind.
Police were called, and according to them, they found not only her driver’s license, but also a bag of marijuana in her purse.
Evans and her friends — Jordan James, 18, Jennifer Martin, 22, and Morgan Goleman, 18 — returned to the restaurant to retrieve the purse, just as officers were about to leave the scene.
“One of the officers recognized Evans from her identification, and they were subsequently arrested,” police spokesman Mark Natale told TODAYshow.com
Natale said that the women admitted that they purposely left without paying their bill, though at least one of the women blamed the restaurant.
“The service was so slow, we just said, ‘screw it’ and left,” Martin told the New York Post.
All four were booked on charges of theft and possession of marijuana. Martin and James were also booked for possession of drug paraphernalia.
Evans lost the crown 10 days shy of completing her reign, which would have ended November 1.
One of the keys to any successful dine-n-dash is to take all your stuff with you when you dash! One of the keys to any successful cannabis consumer staying out of jail is to never leave your stash out of your sight when you have it in public! Another good precautionary step is to not store your stash in the same place as anything identifyable as yours, like say, your photo ID.
But of course, any successful cannabis consumer would also adhere to Steinborn’s Rule: Only Break One Law at a Time. If you’re carrying your stash, it’s no time for speeding, trespassing, or for Mary Jane’s sake, skipping out on a restaurant tab! Four of you couldn’t come up with $11.52 each, assuming you wouldn’t leave a tip for the poor service?
For the possession of marijuana charge, assuming it is a first offense for Miss Evans, carries a misdemeanor sentence with a possible 6 months in jail and a $500 fine. Louisiana is also a Marijuana Tax Stamp state, so she may face penalties of evading that tax. Then there is the theft charge on top of all that. Then consider that Miss Evans may lose her federal financial aid at Northwestern State University, where she is a student, not to mention any scholarships she may have received through the school and the pageant. As she applies for jobs she will have to check the box that says she has a drug conviction.
I will be interested to see how this case turns out, and if this young pretty blonde white beauty queen gets the same sort of treatment an 18-year-old black man in Louisiana would get for a theft and marijuana possession charge… As a marijuana reformer, I don’t want to see anyone punished for marijuana possession, but as a former waiter who lived on tips and son of restaurant managers whose bottom-line suffered from dine-n-dashers, I hope she gets a few days in jail for the theft charge.
After New Orleans regained its title as the nation’s murder capital, the public demanded its city leaders crack down on violent crime. By filing hundreds of new felony cases each month, it appeared as if the new DA heeded their call.
Unfortunately, this wasn’t the case, said Steve Singer, chief of trials for the Orleans Public Defenders Office.
The flood of new felony charges didn’t target murderers, rapists or armed robbers — they targeted small-time marijuana users, sometimes caught with less than a gram of pot, and threatened them with lengthy prison sentences.
The resulting impact has clogged the courts with non-violent, petty offenses, drained the resources of the criminal justice system and damaged low-income African-American communities, Singer said.
Landrum-Johnson’s decision to accept felony charges on people arrested for second and third marijuana possession offenses is a dramatic break from the tactics of former DAs Jordan and Harry Connick.
A first-time marijuana possession charge in Louisiana is a misdemeanor punishable by up to six months in prison but typically results in a small fine. A second offense is a felony that can carry up to five years in jail and a third offense up to 20 years.
Under Jordan and Connick, however, second and third offenses were routinely reduced to misdemeanors that typically did not require a trial. This freed up public resources to be spent on violent crimes as opposed to minor, victimless offenses, Singer said.
Landrum-Johnson was unavailable for comment but her spokesman Dalton Savwoir said that while he agreed there has been an increase in second and third offense marijuana felony acceptances, the increase is not attributable to a change in policy.
“Rather, the increase is a result of the fact that during 2008, it has become easier to obtain certified copies of prior convictions (that are) required evidence (to prosecute) second and third offense marijuana cases,” Savwoir said.
In other words, Savwoir said, clerical malfunctions that prevented the DA from seeking felony prosecutions of marijuana cases in the past have been rectified.
None of this would have anything to do with Keva Landrum-Johnson running for a judgeship in Orleans Criminal District Court, would it? Surely this increase in felony prosecution for minor marijuana charges is solely because they fixed a clerical glitch, not because someone running a political campaign wants to point to her high felony prosecution record and proclaim how “tough on crime” she is.
Three New Orleans men made it easy for Kenner police to find their hidden drug stash, authorities said.
The three men were arrested Sunday night when marijuana they hid in T-shirts and plastic garbage bags in their vehicle’s engine started a fire , Kenner police said.
“From the heat of the engine it caught on fire,” Kenner Police Lt. Wayne McInnis said.
Police officers responded to a call about a vehicle fire at 10:15 p.m. at [a convenience store] just off Interstate 10 at Loyola Drive, McInnis said.The men were hastily grabbing items from under the engine of a 2007 Dodge Caliber and throwing them in a garbage can, all the while trying to douse flames in the engine and the garbage can and pick up fallen marijuana, McInnis said.
The officers could smell marijuana, McInnis said. They could also see loose marijuana in the engine, on the ground underneath the car and in a trail leading from the gas pumps, McInnis said.
In all, police found 1.8 pounds of marijuana, or 838.7 grams, which McInnis called a “substantial” amount. “Usually we deal in ounces, we don’t usually deal in pounds,” he said.
Okay, now you know I’m completely against arresting or harassing any adult for their personal, responsible use of marijuana. And reading this story is kind of funny, in a tragic way, as you can picture these poor guys trying to save their beloved bud, cursing themselves — stupid, stupid stupid! — for hiding their stash in the engine… wrapped up in plastic and cotton… surrounded by oil and gas…
But really, it is just another sad consequence of prohibition, and another episode where the 1% of idiots who happen to smoke weed make the 99% of us responsible smokers look bad. I suppose that fire started while they were on I-10. Now you have a flaming car on the freeway endangering others. These guys are idiots, to be certain, and idiots do idiotic things. But there would be no motivation for these idiots to have attempted smuggling and selling marijuana if there were no profit in it. If they could buy it at a liquor store and their customers could buy it at a liquor store, there’d be no market for “Dodge Caliber Engine Bud” and they could go about their idiot lives doing some other, safer idiot things
RevRayGreen: I'll post a pic of me and my son....gimme a minute
Missippi Hippy: Guess what... I'm gonna be a new... ummmmm well, my pet piggie Ganja is in labor and they ain't mine in the same sense. See what your wife [...]
RevRayGreen: days they didn't talk back..or act disrespectful..
RevRayGreen: feel so lucky my son is 18 going 19 and my daughter 16 going on 17..relish the days that can't talk back
Urb Age: Congrats Spof thats awesome. My little Clara is about to hit 20 months. Im not the activist I used to be, but its made me a better man.
Urb Age: Heck I was gonna go up there, but just not feeling well this weekend..Dang it, I hate it when that happens..
RevRayGreen: wishing I was hanging at NORML cafe...
JohnH: Just a quick comment about tokin' and sperm motility....been tokin since age 14 and have 8 kids ranging in age from 30 to 9...(what can I say, I found 2 [...]
slash5city: really ..oprah 35 yr or more in the closet toker ...outed ....o my god !!
SneakerPimp: that would be huge news just imagen the headline
RevRayGreen: maybe Oprah smokes and keeps it on the DL...
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Some of the nation’s top athletes discuss why today's pros are turning to cannabis — and away from alcohol and painkillers — off the field, and question why pro sports leagues are continuing to sanction those who do. Moderator: Steve Bloom, Author, Pot Culture; editor, celebstoner.com * Toby Grear, MMA fighter * Sean Neumann, Documentary Filmm […]
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Brad Pitt for mayor of New Orleans on “gay marriage, no religion, legalization of marijuana platform”
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