Rich Paul has become a martyr for the legal marijuana movement, risking a life in prison rather than accept that something he loves should be a crime.
As Harry Cheadle of Vice reported earlier, the New Hampshire libertarian was arrested on four charges of selling marijuana and one of selling LSD last year. Paul refused to bargain with the FBI or accept a plea bargain — even when offered a deal with no jail time — and when his trial came Paul tried in vain to convince the jury not to convict him.
At his sentencing on Friday, Paul faces a maximum of 100 years in prison, even if he is likely to get far less.
While his story has been held up as a paragon of ludicrous drug laws, the 40-year-old claims that he’s really being targeted because of his membership in a libertarian political group.
Bradley Manning’s 4th year of incarceration began recently, and his trial began today at Ft. Meade. Manning is facing 2 dozen charges after leaking documents to the website Wikileaks. Before giving the documents to Wikileaks, Manning attempted to give the documents to the New York Times and Washington Post, among other news outlets. Manning offered a plea bargain during a pretrial conference on February 28. His guilty plea to 10 lesser charges included possessing and willfully communicating to an unauthorized person all the main elements of the WikiLeaks disclosure. The UK Guardian reported, “That covered the so-called ‘collateral murder’ video of an Apache helicopter attack in Iraq; some US diplomatic cables including one of the early WikiLeaks publications the Reykjavik cable; portions of the Iraq and Afghanistan warlogs, some of the files on detainees in Guantanamo; and two intelligence memos.
These lesser charges each carry a two-year maximum sentence, committing Manning to a possible upper limit of 20 years in prison.” (more…)
Coming strong and solid following the denunciation of the program by the Keene Sentinel, we’re proud to present the fourth installment of AKPF #1. In this episode, we continue to explore the media explosion surrounding the Robin Hood of Keene lawsuit, while highlighting some golden oldies from the files of Aqua Keene.
1. 00:10 Opening AKPF Intro feat. the music of Too Short
2. 01:54 James Fallon introduces the Robin Hooders
3. 02:38 Dr. Dave joins the AKPF haranguement squad
4. 08:10 James shows how it is done on a very special FOX News broadcast
5. 12:10 Bill Miles delivers and important message about science in this submission
6. 14:03 CC.FPP puppy interlude (German Shepherd)
7. 14:09 WTNH Voice of the People heaps praise on Robin Hood of Keene and the Merry Men
8. 15:23 James F intros Pete Eyre’s RHK lawsuit overview from CopBlock.org
9. 20:43 Court Jester Tom Mullins declines communicating on the record.
10. 23:23 Peace News Now reports on the case (more…)
While a motion to continue is hardy any indicator, Robin Hood and friends’ legal conflict is off to a promising start as the first disagreement in the city’s lawsuit against the Merry (wo)Men was found in the light most favorable to the defense. Having first received the foundational paperwork of the lawsuit on May 9, last week the six defendants received notice of a preliminary hearing scheduled in superior court for Monday, June 10. I had been scheduled to be out of town for a few days leading up to and on the hearing date, so I filed a motion to continue, asking for either all parties’ hearings to be rescheduled, or to have a hearing scheduled solely for myself. No stranger to courtrooms myself, I have filed countless motions to continue with courts across New Hampshire, and have not yet had one denied. It was not surprising that the city attorney might object, and reading his objection, you would think that the situation was dire.
As stated in the City’s Verified Petition for Preliminary and Permanent Injunctive Relief, the seriousness of the situation warrants immediate consideration and action by the Court; the City and its Parking Enforcement Officers would be prejudiced by any delay in this proceeding.
What exactly will ‘the city’ present as damages in this case? They have yet to cite a specific claim against Robin Hooders other than vague allegations of ‘harassment’. Attorney Mullins seems so convinced that Robin Hooders pose such a potential threat that even delaying their preliminary hearing one day could mean chaos in the streets of Keene. Mullins’ objection was denied, the continuance granted, and a new hearing date has been set for June 11 at 2:30pm.
We’re only three episodes into the hottest new weekly variety series on Cheshire TV’s local access channel 8, and already AKPF #1 has received a scathing denunciation from the anonymous editorial board of the Keene Sentinel! AKPF is allegedly tied to the devious Robin Hooding ‘campaign’, and the nameless author alleges all sorts of terrifyingly vague safety concerns that may come about as a result of filling meters. First sensationalizing the material, the author attempts to marginalize the Robin Hooding footage selected by referring to it as ‘mundane’. Clearly, they have not watched much of the hundreds of hours of footage at Fr33manTVraw if they think that a riveting discussion that myself and James Cleaveland had with parking enforcer Jane exemplifies mundane footage.
Before the conclusion of the editorial, there’s a video cited which, based on facts referenced, likely is this months-old video, which was produced by Chris Cantwell, a comedian from New York who is not affiliated with Robin Hood of Keene nor is named in the lawsuit. Though it would not take much investigating on the part of the Slantinel, it was apparently too much work to figure out the names of the individuals they make broad allegations against, not so much alleging crime as they are “childish behavior playing out in the streets”. Despite a functioning website, and presence on the internet for several years, the Slantinel also fails to link to the video they absorbed so much knowledge from. It is almost as though they would rather you just take their word for it. (more…)
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