News Brief

For nearly 30 years, the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting has waged a quixotic battle to eradicate California's outdoor marijuana industry. It's at it again this year.

President Obama has signed into law a bill that reduces, but does not eliminate, disparities in federal sentencing for crack and powder cocaine offenses. It isn't retroactive, which means current prisoners still wait for relief.

More crooked prison and jail guards get busted, another sticky-fingered cop goes down, so does a Rio Grande Valley lawman, a former California Highway Patrol trooper is in big, big trouble, and a small-town Texas police force has troubles in the dope squad.

The Massachusetts legislature passed, and the governor signed, legislation to reform some mandatory minimum sentences. But the final version omitted some important provisions originally endorsed by the Senate.

The Marijuana Policy Project and its Nevada affiliate want a marijuana legalization initiative on the 2012 ballot. A new poll suggests they have a lot of work to do over the next 27 months if it's to pass. Advocates say public education is what it's going to be about.

Three months out from election day, California's Prop 19 marijuana legalization campaign is out-fundraising the opposition by better than ten-to-one. And unlike the opposition, a chunk of Prop 19's money is in the form of small donations from the grassroots.

Support for pot legalization remains in the forties, but is higher than opposition and is trending upward, according to the latest Rasmussen poll.

A sleazy federal probation officer gets indicted, a bunch more cops get arrested, and two big city East Coast dirty cops head for the slammer.

A bill that would create a blue-ribbon National Criminal Justice Commission to explore mass incarceration, the drug war, and related topics has passed the House. The Senate version awaits a floor vote.

More than a decade after District voters approved it, medical marijuana is now legal in the nation's capital. But operating dispensaries are still months away.