Pubdate: Tue, 03 Jan 2012
Source: Ukiah Daily Journal, The (CA)
Copyright: 2012 Mike Jamieson
Contact: http://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/feedback
Website: http://www.ukiahdailyjournal.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/581
Author: Mike Jamieson

FED INTEL IS THE SLIPPERY SLOPE

To the Editor:

The Sunday, Dec. 18 editorial is a second UDJ editorial expressing 
"disappointment but not surprise" at two members of the Board of 
Supervisors voicing sentiments related to the annual 
federal/state/local operations eradicating grows on expansive public 
lands in our region. First, in an earlier piece this year that also 
seemed to be a voicing of phony "disappointment but not surprise," 
the UDJ chided Dan Hamburg and John McCowen for commenting that these 
annual operations would likely not be necessary if we had federal 
legalization and regulation of marijuana. Now Dan Hamburg and John 
Pinches are under fire for not supporting Congressman Mike Thompson's 
"logical and necessary notion of allowing the federal government to 
use its superior intelligence apparatus to locate pot fields in the 
Mendocino National Forest....(and that Hamburg and Pinches) act like 
federal agents are ready to camp out in their own back yards."

Not only does incorporating military and intelligence assets 
represent a slippery slope due to the current maintenance of a 
separation between those sectors and local law enforcement 
jurisdictions, using these assets are additionally not needed at all 
to detect and eradicate grow sites. What they have already been using 
and doing has been fully effective.

Week after week of watching the Supervisor meetings on channel 65 has 
been made interesting and enjoyable for me largely because Hamburg, 
Pinches, and McCowen do a lot of questioning and digging in their own 
unique ways and I have seen the auto pilot voting on some agenda 
items disrupted, with good results.

Mike Jamieson

Ukiah
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom