U.S. Department of Justice

Hacking the Law: Fights Over Cyber-Security and a Silicon Valley Divide

New Law Would Help California Pot Clubs Get The Feds Off Their Backs

Today, a California Congressman introduced legislation that would finally give pot clubs the smoke break they deserve. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) rolled out a new bill that would modify the federal Controlled Substances Act so anyone complying with state marijuana laws, (i.e. pot clubs ... More >>

Feds Might Stop Trying to Seize Marijuana Grow Records

While real casualties abound, by and large the U.S. Justice Department's crackdown on California's medical marijuana industry has been half-hearted. True, about one-third of San Francisco's licensed medical marijuana dispensaries were shut down from 2011 to 2012. But more are open now, and the fed ... More >>

Harborside Health Center Chief Asks Obama to Freeze Federal Crackdown on Pot Clubs

Last week, President Barack Obama informed and entertained pot smokers across the nation with his sorta pro-marijuana comments, claiming (once again) that his administration has bigger problems to tackle than pot. In short, he fed marijuana advocates the same line from when he was elected in 2008 ... More >>

Obama Says Feds Will Back Off Marijuana; Do You Believe Him?

Stop us if you've heard this one before: As the states press forward with reform on marijuana prohibition, the president of the United States -- which still outlaws marijuana and prosecutes providers -- says that marijuana enforcement is "not a priority."Yet cannabis users and providers are still lo ... More >>

Harborside Health Center: Feds Say Oakland Can't Stop Them From Shuttering Pot Club

The federal government is now arguing that the City of Oakland shouldn't be allowed to prevent the feds from closing down Harborside Health Center, the state's largest medical marijuana dispensary. As our weed readers probably recall, Oakland filed a lawsuit in October in an attempt to put an end ... More >>

Wells Fargo Controls One-Third of This Year's U.S. Mortages

This past spring, about a dozen housing advocates marched up Russian Hill to Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf's house, to protest the steady stream of foreclosures in San Francisco. On another day, they bused over to Los Altos and Hillsborough, to the respective homes of a couple of the bank's board memb ... More >>

Want to Open a Medical Marijuana Dispensary in S.F.? The DEA Is Onto You

We're no police theorist, but the goals of a law enforcement action are simple: to prevent, to intervene, or otherwise dissuade behavior deemed illegal.If this is the case, the federal Justice Department's crackdown on California's medical marijuana industry is only partway there; about a dozen Bay ... More >>

Medical Marijuana: Feds Show Little Interest in San Jose, Where Dispensaries Are Illegal

Aside from strikes at the medical marijuana industry's most vocal, visible, and influential leaders, little rhyme or reason has accompanied the federal Justice Department's crackdown on California cannabis.U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag offered no comment or explanation as her office shut down roughly o ... More >>

Obama's Oakland Visit: Marijuana Lovers Promise To Be There

President Barack Obama's reelection campaign picked office space in downtown Oakland (of which there is plenty available) to house its Bay Area headquarters. The East Bay city has put in the work, and on Monday, Oakland will receive a presidential visitor for the first time in recent memory, when Ob ... More >>

Fire, Not Obama Crackdown, Shuts Mission Medical Marijuana Dispensary

Prior to the four-alarm fire next door, the coffee shop behind the nameless awning and signless storefront at 208 Valencia St. was notable not for what was behind the white door opposite the barista -- a pot club -- but for the dispensary's flaunting of federal law.Exactly how 208 Valencia Caregiver ... More >>

Obama Explains Medical Marijuana Crackdown -- Sort Of

Mystery accompanied the federal Justice Department's crackdown on California's state-legal medical marijuana industry since Oct. 7, when prosecutors formally declared their war on weed. Who was behind the feds deciding it was time to shut down hundreds of California dispensaries -- rogue prosecutors ... More >>

Mayor Ed Lee Finally Breaks Silence on Medical Marijuana

"If you get Ed Lee on record about medical marijuana," more than one well-connected San Francisco politico has told us, "you deserve a medal."Our best efforts were all deflected, including a situation when we physically blocked Mayor Lee's path to his hybrid Mayoralmobile and still did not win a com ... More >>

Medical Marijuana Week: Protest President Obama, Mail Nancy Pelosi a Heart.

Pot smokers getting no love from Obama this Valentine's Day ​The week doesn't often begin on Friday. But then again, it's not often Medical Marijuana Week -- is it?Indeed not. And that Medical Marijuana Week coincides with Valentine's Day is no mistake: It was the Compassionate Use Act that got us ... More >>

Medical Marijuana Patients Opposing Federal Approval of ... Medical Marijuana

umpp.orgStanding Up Against... Medical Marijuana​Medical marijuana can be good for the brain. No less an authority than the federal government's Department of Health and Human Services says so: HHS awarded to a group of doctors in 2003 a patent titled "Cannabinoids as antioxidants and neuroprotect ... More >>

DNA Lab Cover-Up: SFPD to Investigate Claims in Secret Court Records

Secret Court Transcript Reveals Concerns About 'Deliberate Attempt' to Mislead Crime Lab Auditors

​Judge: "It's always the coverup that makes the things worse than the problem to begin with"The San Francisco Police Department and District Attorney's Office are both implicated in allegations that a deliberate effort was made to conceal defects at the city's troubled forensics lab from state in ... More >>

Medical Marijuana: Feds Move to Forfeit Marin Pot Club's Property

​The choice offered by the Justice Department was clear: Select California medical cannabis dispensaries needed to close up shop or have their properties seized and operators thrown in prison.This was the ultimatum issued in September by United States Attorney for Northern California Melinda Haag ... More >>

Marin Alliance For Medical Marijuana Dodges Federal Threat -- for Now

Praise Legalists​Second SF Dispensary Closes Under Federal PressureAn eviction notice was never so welcome.Last Wednesday, California's oldest storefront medical marijuana collective, Fairfax-based Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, received an eviction notice from its landlord -- which means t ... More >>

Obama's Medical Marijuana Crackdown: Two S.F. Pot Clubs to Close

And Divinity Tree, and Green Door Sacramento, and maybe Medithrive​Lombard Street is in the city's oft-posh Marina District, but that stretch of US-101 that leads from the Golden Gate Bridge down through Van Ness Avenue includes seedy motels as well as high-end boutiques. It might have also contai ... More >>

Sonic.net: The Li'l ISP that Stood up to the Feds

​I way overpay for my monthly Internet service. There are a bunch of reasons: Sonic.net, my ISP, has great customer service. It almost never goes down. The website is simple and user-friendly. It updates it quickly with service info. When you call them, they talk to you like you're a fellow human, ... More >>

Feds Now Fight War on Medical Marijuana with Passive Aggressive Strategies

​Hard to believe it's been only two years since Attorney General Eric Holder shocked -- and relieved -- California's medical marijuana users when he said the federal government had no interest in prosecuting state-legal cannabis activities. The Bush Era was over -- no more doors kicked in by Kevla ... More >>

Oscar Grant Supporters Petition Department of Justice to Investigate BART

The fight continues​More than 500 people have signed a petition urging the United States Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division to speed up its investigation of Oscar Grant's death at the Fruitvale BART station in 2009. Last year, before ex-BART cop Johannes Mehserle was convicted of involu ... More >>

Federal Backruptcy Court Declares DOMA Unconstitutional

Gay couples go broke, too. ​The latest assault on the federal law that only recognizes straight spouses comes from an institution that's not exactly known for making rousing statements about civil rights: the federal bankruptcy court.According to news reports., the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Ce ... More >>

Medical Marijuana Providers Go to Prison. Will President Obama Intervene?

This pretty much sums it up​Dr. Mollie Fry and her husband, Dale Schafer, are ill. Fry is a breast-cancer survivor with severe mental-health issues, and Schafer's hemophilia means he is frequently bedridden. So he will have to be in a prison hospital beginning May 2, when the couple will begin fiv ... More >>

Kamala Harris Files Brief Supporting Federal Health Care Reform

This won't hurt a bit...​California Attorney General Kamala Harris has filed a brief in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit seeking to aid the defense of President Barack Obama's landmark health care legislation.The so-called Affordable Care Act, perhaps Obama's most significant legisla ... More >>

Obama's Stance On DOMA Could Benefit Binational Gay Couples

​Political calculations are aflutter in response to the Obama administration's claim that it would no longer defend the Defense of Marriage Act, the law that limits marriage between a man and a woman. Here's one more: What does this mean for gay immigrants who are married?As we explored in a 2010 ... More >>

Government lets fraudulent drug companies deal with Medicare

Airlines Accused of Price-Fixing in Class-Action Lawsuit

​A hangar-ful of airlines is facing a class-action lawsuit filed in San Francisco that alleges an "international conspiracy" to fix prices and bilk travelers.The suit was filed yesterday in U.S. District Court by San Francisco resident Caroline Joy, who is represented by the law firm Moscone Embli ... More >>

Asylum Denied

Only a fraction of Mexicans get U.S. asylum.

Is Philadelphia More Immigrant-Friendly Than San Francisco?

Does Philly's Michael Nutter have more spine than Gavin Newsom?​Philadelphia's deputy mayor said yesterday that his city will likely cease cooperating with federal immigration officials by sharing records of local arrests, a policy change that would put it in the vanguard of so-called "sanctuary c ... More >>

SF Weekly Letters

Hope You Enjoyed CMCR Report, Because That's All, Folks

It's not news that marijuana may have healing qualities: after all, medicinal cannabis has been (sort of) the law of the land since 1996, when California voters passed Proposition 215 . Still, it was a very big deal when the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research released the results last Wednesday ... More >>

NYT Mag on Torture-Memo Author John Yoo: Aw, Ain't He Cute?

Uttered in any location with a view of San Francisco Bay, the name of John Yoo tends to reduce people to convulsive hand-wringing. Yoo, a professor at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, has been a frequent target of liberal protesters and activists -- many of them students -- because of his ass ... More >>

The Guardian's Illustrated, Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy -- Did You Know Spain Was Involved?

We're not exactly unaccustomed to paranoid political thinking in the pages of our rival weekly here in San Francisco. But the journos at the Bay Guardian have taken their conspiracy theories to new levels -- and depicted them in bolder-than-ever graphics -- in this week's issue.Appearing alongside a ... More >>

Chronic City: Aptly Named 'Joint Resolution' Succeeds; California Senate Urges Change in Federal Medical Marijuana Rules

​By a 23-15 vote, the California State Senate yesterday approved a "joint resolution" urging the federal government to stop Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) raids on medical marijuana patients and providers. The Sen. Mark Leno-authored resolution additionally calls for the nation to "create a compreh ... More >>

The torture memos and Berkeley's law-school schedule

Breaking News: State to Pay Out $335K Settlement for Carole Migden's Erratic Driving

Boom! There goes another $335K.The state of California will pay out a $335,000 settlement in the matter of a former senator's case of DWM -- Driving While Migden. The San Franciscan's much-publicized 2007 highway incident left a 30-mile trail of terrified 911 callers and ended with the veteran ... More >>

S.F. Study: Immigration Judges More Burned Out Than Prison Wardens

What happens when judges' job burnout level gets too high? You don't want to know.According to a just-published survey of 96 U.S. immigration judges, the men and women deciding delicate asylum cases are stressed and burned-out to the point that the term "asylum" begins to have unpleasant connotation ... More >>

Service with a Snarl

In San Francisco, lizards, rodents, and vicious Chihuahuas have all been declared service animals.

Invisible Man

Unlike the other U.S. attorneys fired by the Bushies, Kevin Ryan.

Should journalist Josh Wolf be afraid?

The Assistant U.S. Attorney, the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, and the SFPD want to get their hands on a video shot by a San Francisco blogger

Brugmann's Brain Vomit

Cleaning up the latest drivel from San Francisco's leading bull-goose loony

Little Fish, Big Fish

Memo to Ashcroft: Why aren't you pursuing Barry Bonds the way you did Martha Stewart?

Business as Usual

The problem today isn't shoddy corporate ethics -- capitalism was built on corruption. The problem is America's bias against government regulation.

The War on Raves

Forget terrorists; let's fight the dancers

Yellow-Bellied Journalism

Hearst executives' behavior in the Examiner sale was nothing less than cowardly

Mecklin

Cleaning Out the Swamp

Online Pirates of the Caribbean

Three San Francisco men found riches in Antiqua with their Internet gambling site. Now they're federal fugitives. Caribbean

Dead Heat

Despite the deaths of Aaron Williams and Mark Garcia, the SFPD continues to use pepper spray on suspects who stand a good chance of dying in custody.