Ethical Hacking Professor: NullCrew ‘Criminals,’ Anonymous a ‘Gang’

sbowne 228x300 Ethical Hacking Professor: NullCrew Criminals, Anonymous a Gang WASHINGTON — City College of San Francisco Computer Science Professor Sam Browne told The Internet Chronicle that whatever NullCrew has planned for the Pentagon on Valentine’s Day, it won’t be hacktivism. Mr. Brown, who teaches ethical hacking and has addressed the DEF CON cybersecurity conference, says that NullCrew acts in violation of the liberal causes they tout.

A NullCrew spokesperson has variously  described the hacking group’s motives in terms of nihilistic schadenfreude and activism.

NullCrew, he writes, is just out for an “ego-boost” by dumping the passwords of innocent people.

Their real message is: “We are powerful, fear us!”  The political slogans they spout are just a paper-thin cover story.

If you want real social change, you do it the way Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. did it–carefully reasoned nonviolent actions, done in the open, accepting the social sanctions they provoke.  Hiding in the shadows, stealing data, harming innocent people, and evading justified law enforcement actions, is not the way to influence people to support your cause.  It just scares people, as it should, and encourages them to support more Draconian law enforcement measures to stop the scary hackers.

Several Anonymous actions and threats of action have operated under the presumption that, in threatening the online security of randomly chosen individuals, government entities will be inspired to not clamp down on users’ Internet privacy; or users’ redistribution of links to copyrighted content, for whatever end.

False-flag OpLastResort Releases Personal Information of Local Bank Employees

INTERNET — Well under 9.000 files (a paltry 4,000) representing the IP addresses, logins, and personal home addresses of small-time employees at local banks were allegedly released on Monday by “Anonymous” hackers. This information was posted on alabama.gov, along with a message claiming the data was obtained from the Federal Reserve. Some early reporting claims this information was posted on Pastebin.com. However, the only Pastebin link traded publicly by members of #OpLastResort contains only the insane rants of Aaron Bale. Anonymous also repeated the claim that they have long-term footholds in government computer systems. This release was coordinated with cooperation from advocacy journalist ”Violet Blue,perhaps to beat more skeptical coverage to the punch.

wesupportyournarrative False flag OpLastResort Releases Personal Information of Local Bank Employees

We support your narrative because it is ours. Now that is quality reporting!

“The hacktivist entity dropped enough technical details to make it clear that its tracks were covered and that Anonymous still had access to .gov websites,” said Violet Blue’s article published on ZDNET. Exemplary of what not to do when covering statements issued by hacking groups, the mere mention of “technical details” has reinforced an extraordinary narrative. Certainly these profoundly extraordinary claims from Anonymous require extraordinary evidence. However, this evidence is not mentioned or cited in any depth beyond this short sentence, dangling on its own mere absurd assertion. Even more, it is a dangerous and apparently unfounded endorsement of a terroristic threat designed to drain the government of resources.

This action has drawn strong comparisons to a past Anonymous operation manufactured by federal agents. “Anonymous,” led by FBI agent Sabu, hacked the open-source intelligence publication Stratfor, mischaracterizing it as a “Shadow CIA.” Using this information on Christmas eve, Sabu led “Anonymous” to target low-level journalists, raiding their bank accounts to make donations that would later be returned to the journalists after the charities were penalized.

Investigators at Chronicle.SU have been unable to find any proof that the information on 4,000 bank employees exists, as the alabama.gov website on which it was allegedly posted has since been taken offline. However, Violet Blue has reported on it (citing broken hyperlinks to alabama.gov), so therefore it must be true. Aaron Bale, spokesperson for the operation, refused to provide a link to the information for Chronicle.SU, accusing the glorious and infallible publication of cooperation with the US government, “[N]o one knows what [yo]ur talking about. At least sabu was lulzy and relevant. Fed money doesn’t buy what it used to.”

Chronicle.SU is wholly owned and operated by Lebal Drocer, Inc., a subsidiary of the United Soviet Socialist Democratic Republic of Cuthbert, Georgia, a sovereign entity and economic powerhouse leading the South to Rise Again in the name of its Dear Islamic Leader, the Loyal and Moral Raghubir Goyal.

NullCrew Ups the Ante With Valentine’s Day Release Threat

officialnull profile photo 300x300 NullCrew Ups the Ante With Valentines Day Release Threat

NullCrew’s Twitter Profile Photo

Two weeks.

Two weeks until you’re either drinking wine, snuggling (or worse) with your loved one; or cowering in fear as the NullCrew‘s latest SQL injection information is dropped for all the world to see . . .  or at least a couple of hundred people.

As the “Doomsday File” craze hits the Web with fury, following in the footsteps of the great Anonymous leader Aaron Bale, NullCrew raises the bar once again with levied threats against the Pentagon, they say in a recent interview at E Hacking News. They elaborate:

Our next big release will be on Febuary 14th, yes, yes; VALENTINES DAY! It’ll be the official release of #FuckTheSystem valentines day, and one target I will tell you is the pentagon.

But our next single release will be a multipul target release, on United States government servers; retaliating against #OperationFastAndFurious. How many more need to die, from weapons the government is putting into criminal’s hands?”

With elite hacker friends like these, who needs Anonymous? These folks will hack the Pentagon and get away with it, scot- free . . . or so they think. Field reporter, ethical researcher and all-around swell guy doxbin has accrued enough information to note that the majority of the members is located within the friendly confines of Canada, a well known bastion for hackers/freedom fighters everywhere.

Or is it really?

In a previous exposé, Internet Chronicle resident Anonymous expert Kilgoar reported  PLF (Peoples Liberation Front) leader and Anonymous figurehead Commander X is in fact a Homeland Security Department plant who resides in Canada after “escaping” the clutches of the “Fids.” So why Canada? We spoke with Aaron Bale about this and he believes it to be a psy-op, perpetuated by Cyber Command in conjunction with the CIA, which cannot operate on domestic soil. Essentially, NullCrew is trying to kill Mr. Bale.

It’s the only plausible answer.

Technology reporter and reigning King of the Ring™ Champion, Danny, had a chance to catch up with ShaggyTheAngel, Anonymous co-leader, voxanon ircop and owner of freeanons.info to ask him about the NullCrew’s latest threats and how Anonymous might be able to one-up them:

(5:19:17 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: you want the keys?
(5:19:22 PM) Danny the King of Tommy Hillnigger: not rly
(5:19:42 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: because those are real warheads man
(5:19:45 PM) Danny the King of Tommy Hillnigger: idc
(5:20:00 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: you know where theay are aimed?
(5:20:04 PM) Danny the King of Tommy Hillnigger: idc
(5:20:05 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: Which one is going where?
(5:20:07 PM) Danny the King of Tommy Hillnigger: idc
(5:20:15 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: NYC
(5:20:17 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: DC
(5:20:18 PM) Danny the King of Tommy Hillnigger: cool story
(5:20:23 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: and nevada
(5:20:26 PM) Danny the King of Tommy Hillnigger: rofl
(5:20:29 PM) Danny the King of Tommy Hillnigger: nevada
(5:20:34 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: navada
(5:20:47 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: I can code java but spelling is off
(5:20:52 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: go figure huh?
(5:21:12 PM) Danny the King of Tommy Hillnigger: im reporting you for
terroristic threats
(5:21:25 PM) shagggggy@jabber.ccc.de: oh so now you are scared
(5:21:30 PM) Danny the King of Tommy Hillnigger: not rly idc”

It’s clear to this intrepid reporter that there is a civil war amongst rival hacker gangs a’brewin’, and we may all pay the price. Soon.

All that really needs to be said about this group of the worlds greatest hackers/Psy-op commandos, NullCrew, can be summed up by a quote from them at the beginning of the E Hacking News interview:

These servers are a part of the system, a system which is ran by
corrupt rich assholes. They mostly use their money for themself,

No donations to the people who need the money, and if they do; it’s just
so people look at them in a kinder way, only for publicity.

NullCrew added:

wisc.edu Became a target when they commited [sic] Animal Cruelty.

You may be asking yourself: What does the Caturday at University of Wisconsin have to do with taking down “rich assholes?” The answer lies in an obscure yet poignant quote from current Philadelphia Eagles Quarterback Michael Vick, as years ago he was being dragged out of the Mississippi Bulldogs locker-room (later being charged with disorderly conduct): “I’d do it all again if it wasn’t for that meddling NullCrew!”

Was Twitter hacker a 1337 h4x0r?

Twitter hacked!

Expert weighs in:

Following Anonymous #OpLastResort Announcement, House Oversight Requests Swartz Hearing

Sentencing Commission Nyan cat Following Anonymous #OpLastResort Announcement, House Oversight Requests Swartz Hearing

Sentencing Commission Website “Asteroids” Game, featuring Nyan Cat

WASHINGTON — Following days of Anonymous defacement and deactivation of the U.S. Sentencing Commission website, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Ranking Member Elijah Cummings (D-MD) wrote a letter Monday to the attorney general requesting a briefing on attempts to prosecute late Internet activist Aaron Swartz for computer fraud and theft.

As to whether Anonymous computer fraud spurred the letter, the committee majority’s staff had not responded to requests for comment, and minority press staff say they have  “no comment” beyond the letter itself. Meanwhile members of the hacktivist collective are likely to claim the timing of the letter as a success in their “OpLastResort” campaign to draw attention to overzealous copyright enforcement, particularly by former Swartz prosecutor Carmen Ortiz. To the end of drawing that attention, operation participants have loaded a whimsical, custom game of “Asteroids” onto the Justice Department’s Sentencing Commission website, or employed Structured Query Language injection causing its total inaccessibility, such as at the time of this writing.

Notably using the passive voice, the Oversight Committee representatives’ letter to Attorney General Eric Holder reads in part:

HOGRC re Swartz Jan 28 2013 Following Anonymous #OpLastResort Announcement, House Oversight Requests Swartz Hearing

They ask that Mr. Holder schedule a committee briefing by next Monday and be prepared to answer the following questions:

HOGRC Qs re Swartz Jan 28 2013 Following Anonymous #OpLastResort Announcement, House Oversight Requests Swartz Hearing

As of midday Monday the following presentation from the OpLastResort (Operation Last Resort) campaign was the most viewed YouTube video in any category.

The video claims that federal sentencing guidelines are out of keeping with the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. To encourage authorities to institute enforcement and legislative changes, the video encourages members of Anonymous to download and redistribute “warheads,” information files encoded via the same PGP “.aes256″ standard WikiLeaks utilized for its eventually unraveled Cablegate “insurance” file. The video says that activists will release heavily redacted, private government files to a select media outlet. In order for authorities to deter the release of the full information “warheads,” the video makes the following demands:

[1] There must be reform of outdated and poorly-envisioned legislation, written to be so broadly applied as to make a felony crime out of violation of terms of service, creating in effect vast swathes of crimes, and allowing for selective punishment.
[2] There must be reform of mandatory minimum sentencing.
[3] There must be a return to proportionality of punishment with respect to actual harm caused, and consideration of motive and mens rea.
[4] The inalienable right to a presumption of innocence and the recourse to trial and possibility of exoneration must be returned to its sacred status, and not gambled away by pre-trial bargaining in the face of overwhelming sentences, unaffordable justice and disfavorable odds.
[5] Laws must be upheld unselectively, and not used as a weapon of government to make examples of those it deems threatening to its power.

While Anonymous has become famous for inciting vigilantism with imagery from the 2005 film “V for Vendetta,” this video also promotes action using scenes and music from the Batman “Dark Knight Trilogy.”

John Stoltenberg: “Andrew ‘@rabite’ Auernheimer Only Kidding; No Racist, Sexist”

John Stoltenberg 150x150 John Stoltenberg: Andrew @rabite Auernheimer Only Kidding; No Racist, SexistMuch ado has been made persecuting compassionate and considerate member of the online family Andrew Auernheimer, a playful jokester who has brought delight to the faces of millions of Internet users. Monocultural chauvinists in federal law enforcement have run wild with accusations of “computer fraud,” while confused fellow “leftists” like Raw Story Editor Emeritus Ron Brynaert have smeared Andrew with vile accusations of sexism and near-genocidal racism. All of these accusations are the exact opposite of all of Andrew Auernheimer’s opinions.

I have worked throughout my life not only for the cause of LGBTQIA rights (or QLIBTGA — there need not be any order!) but for the welfare of individuals on barest public subsistence. To me, the Stonewall Riots seem like they were only yesterday, even though my parents birthed me right as the New Deal gave hope for the first time to masses of retired individuals. I can tell you with complete certainty that the loveable Mr. Auernheimer has no predilections against people of color, against sex workers, or anyone in the greater Semitic family. By citing with pseudo-pride his European heritage, Andrew is only ironically referring us to that continent’s relatively generous and effective social safety nets.

With a wink and a smile, Andrew’s latest blog post is letting us all know that he is with us in the Great Fight against Ignorance, and that by pretending to be some sort of brown-eyed, ginger Nazi he is with us on the picket lines for the long haul. He starts off with his usual tongue-in-cheek smirk:

Several people asked if I’d go see “The Hobbit” with them. I declined in a rather cruel fashion.

See? There he goes again, letting us know explicitly that his tone is cruel. While normally I’d decline to agree with the heartless, hard-nosed associates of Forbes magazine, their take on Andrew’s humor as being intentional and sarcastic in its offensiveness is right on.

Calm down, Time’s Philip Elmer-DeWitt. Old Andrew knows the score. He’ll be with us — next to our engineer sisters with signs — the next time former Harvard President Lawrence Summers tries to tell women they’re stupid, obsequious domestic playthings.

Andrew has done as much to promote multiculturalism as Auburn University’s own Alan Gribben, when the latter published the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn NewSouth Edition, effectively cleansing the book of its pro-white, pro-death code words.

Before taking us into his snarky, actually anti-Nazi diatribe against Hollywood’s latest money-grubbing snatch into theatergoers’ pockets, Andrew claims to be for some sort of unrealistically self-sufficient Nordic life ethic. Then — and this is the really brilliant part — the satirist comes out against barest government provision for working families. To this end, he cites the original end to J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Return of the King.

In Tolkien’s version, the hobbits of the fellowship return to the Shire only to see it taken over by a snide old wizard controlling a horde of half-orcs. The hobbits do the only sensible thing that one would do when finding ones hometown infested by section 8 housing full of parasitic thugs, rapists and murderers: start a pogrom.

Did you see that? By playing on pop culture stereotypes of African-Americans as mindless killing, force-copulating machines, Andrew has held the Stormfront set slime up to the disinfectant of sunshine. Usually those Christian Identity losers are just able to keep to reinforcing each other somewhere in flyover country, or via their teledildonic message board activity.

Let me give you another example: The Tortoise and the Hare. I’m sure you were read it as a child. It always seemed to me to be an idiotic story to encourage people to slave away endlessly for a statistically impossible hope that they are somehow getting ahead.

When I finally read the real story, I knew hundreds of millions of children were being robbed.

Europe rose to power with children being read the Brothers Grimm classic, “The Hare and the Hedgehog.”

If my decades-long “Mirror Has Two Faces” marriage to acclaimed fellow feminist Andrea Dworkin taught me anything, it was how to use literary analysis to determine within seconds which males of white, Protestant descent were bigots. Through his brilliant satire — daresay his innumerable contributions to the computing community, for which he has been endlessly persecuted by our government — blessed Andrew is his generation’s Bayard Rustin, Harvey Milk and Larry Kramer, all rolled into one!

The Tortoise and the Hare actually outdates the 19th century Grimm brothers tale by thousands of years. The former tale’s place in the foundation of Old Europe, which And-and calls “the most precious thing that I hold within me,” is actually far deeper. Andrew knows well that the Tortoise story’s Greek origins place it at the crossroads of democracy’s very founding. While the Grimm tale is meant to encourage young men to put women in “their place” and to marry women who look as much like them as possible, modern anthropological biologists and Andrew understand that intelligence quotients tend to be higher in the offspring of interracial couplings. This neo-Puck has extended his hand across from the hilltops of Appalachia straight to his brothers, sisters and intersex individuals at the tippitiest-top of the ivory tower.

His wink comes when he cites the story of Prometheus, who like Aesop’s tortoise is of Greek origin. Therein Andrew’s mission to open our eyes and hearts to the plights of LGBTQIA individuals and those of color blossoms into full view. “Promethian flame is being replaced with politically corrected filth,” he writes.

So it’s with a palm to my chin, and a high-cheeked grin that I call off the misguided, if well-meaning, attack dogs at the Southern Poverty Law Center, Human Rights Campaign and Anti-Defamation League who have unfairly maligned Andrew Auernheimer. My friends, you owe him an apology. Were my lifelong friend Andrea alive, I’m sure she would wholeheartedly agree. God bless.

Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy takes Personal Drug Abuse Battle Public

Patrick Kennedy Mayo Clinic after Cark Wreck Former Rep. Patrick Kennedy takes Personal Drug Abuse Battle Public

Following a Drug-related Capitol Hill Car Accident, Rep. Kennedy says He will Enter Rehabilitation (Image: CNN, 2006)

WASHINGTON — Only days into the start of the 113th Congress, former Rhode Island 1st District Representative Patrick Kennedy, who has a long history of drug abuse, is spearheading the re-criminalization of cannabis possession in Washington state and Colorado. A referendum last year ended the states’ criminal penalties for recreational cannabis possession.

The website of his pro-criminalization group, Project SAM, forwards that social service and medical authorities alone cannot address problems associated with individual abuse of cannabis, stating, “A rational policy no longer relies only on the criminal justice system to address people whose only crime is smoking or possessing a small amount of marijuana.”

The website of Project SAM, the brainchild also of former President George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum, advocates a view that, “Although people arrested for marijuana possession rarely end up in prison, an arrest record can hurt someone’s chances of . . . accessing social benefits later in life.” The Department of Education website says, “[s]tudents with criminal convictions have limited eligibility for federal student aid.”

The website also calls for the possibility for “expungement of any personal record regarding possession of small amounts of marijuana.” However to pursue numerous professional pathways — particularly in the fields of law enforcement, social services and education — expungement is functionally a mirage.

In 2006 Rep. Kennedy crashed his Ford Mustang into a Capitol Hill traffic barrier. Two pulled Boston Herald articles (now archived here and here) cited sources from a Capitol Hill bar who claimed that, in addition to being under the influence of prescription sleep aids Ambien and Phenergan, Rep. Kennedy had been adding alcohol to the mix. That same year Rep. Kennedy would enter rehabilitation for his addiction to the painkiller Oxycontin.

Marijuana Policy Project Communications Director Mason Tvert, who successfully led a 2006 Denver legalization referendum, was reached for comment about the organizations and individuals funding Project SAM. He writes, “Since they’re a non-profit, it’s unlikely we’ll find out.”

INTERNAL FBI SOURCE: ‘th3j35t3r is . . . ‘

jesterdefeatschronicle 300x2361 INTERNAL FBI SOURCE: th3j35t3r is . . .

FBI Confidential Informant: “We’re busy with other things, Chronicle, so here’s th3j35t3r.”

WASHINGTON — Tuesday morning The Internet Chronicle’s press release email list slowed to a crawl, as an internal FBI source said it wished to step forward and finger to the Washington Bureau neoconservative and militant zionist criminal hacker “th3j35t3r” once and for all.

However, as The Internet Chronicle has noted, “th3” j35t3r is in fact a collective. Here are the members of that collective, in no particular order:
Linda Sutton
Laura Walker
Debra Walker
Robin Jackson
Tom Ryan (an interview with Mr. Ryan here)
U.K. Resident Mark Walker

In coordination throughout 2011 targeting Islamic fundamentalists’ sites, journalists at WikiLeaks, and various others among the American cybersecurity press, including The Internet Chronicle. Now they do not hack anything at all, says the Internet Chronicle confidential informant, but engage in never-ending self-congratulations.

The internal FBI source seemed to find a personal breaking point in the group’s willingness to try to financially exploit the hacker’s “patriot” image, as tons of Special Forces operators seemed all too happy to imagine that there was one among their numbers, a SEAL, retired and fighting the good fight against Islamic extremists. Unfortunately these service peoples’ golden calf was just that. Now a confidential informant from within the FBI has confirmed that th3j35t3r is a group of civilians who have never shed a drop or blood or urea fighting Pashtuns in the high mountains of Southwest Asia.

IRAN STATE MEDIA: Barack Obama killed Aaron Swartz

WASHINGTON – A full 16 hours before an Internet Chronicle writer would issue his dire, satirical indictment of unnamed conspirators for the murder of Aaron Swartz, Iranian state media was already on the case, hinting early Eastern time Sunday morning the Internet activist’s opposition to President Barack Obama’s kill-list targeted assassination program led to his untimely death, which a New York medical examiner’s office has unequivocally called a self-hanging.

This however did not stop the intrepid Iranian state journalistic apparatus from putting two and two together to make whatever it wanted. PressTV quotes the medical examiner spokeswoman selectively to leave in doubt if her office believes foul play to be at work.

Paragraph two of the ridiculous report:

Police found the body of the 26-year-old in his apartment in New York City borough of Brooklyn on Friday, said a spokeswoman for the city’s chief medical examiner.

The article declines to mention, as any responsible media outlet would, that the exact same spokeswoman also mentioned a cause of death. Mr. Swartz achieved legal persecution and fame in the United States for redistributing copyrighted academic material from JSTOR. The free flow of this type of information is wholly responsible for the economic rise of the BRIC — Brazil, Russia, India and China — the countries’ middle classes now burgeoning. Education is no longer confined to buildings in Western countries. Increasingly an education is available to absolutely anyone able to read text with an Internet connection. To further the human race, Mr. Swartz supported a greater equilibrium, a crowdsourcing of this kind of academic information. This threat to the status quo is why U.S. Attorney Carmen Ortiz sought his incarceration for multiple decades.

Monday government snitch Adrian Lamo took to Twitter to term comments on the PressTV Swartz article “new [and] experimental forms of weaponized crazy.”

Iranian state media is also responsible for other complete outrages to decency and media ethics, such as their headline, as seen on Google:

Israeli death squads1 IRAN STATE MEDIA: Barack Obama killed Aaron Swartz

PressTV tries to couch their attribution of the Newtown massacre to Israelis by attributing the claim to an “intelligence analyst” once one clicks the link. The analyst in question is a Gordon Duff, who expresses sympathy for downtrodden Palestinians in the same set of breaths or pen strokes that he blames the Israeli intelligence community for the slaughter of U.S. kindergarteners.

[The Newtown killings are] what [Israeli death squads] do in Gaza every day. It is what was done in Norway. It is what happened at Sandy Hook. Nobody buys the “lone gunman” story anymore, not with the Gabby Giffords’ shooting, not with the Aurora “Batman” shooting, certainly not with Breveik, and certainly not in Connecticut.

Gordon Duff 631x1024 IRAN STATE MEDIA: Barack Obama killed Aaron Swartz

PressTV “Intelligence Analyst” Gordon Duff

Indeed, for full disclosure, while Sunday The Internet Chronicle’s own Kilgoar also claimed that Mr. Swartz’s suicide was some kind of Putin-esque murder, it is worth noting that our publisher does not yet have the full financial support of a nonaligned movement nation. Kilgoar also never directly fingered for the death the president. The only American nationals whose liquidations Mr. Obama is known to have unilaterally ordered were the al-Awlakis — a distributor of al-Qaida’s English language Insight magazine, in addition to his two minor children.

The PressTV article insinuating Mr. Obama ordered Mr. Swartz’s execution sings this praise of the now-dead 26-year-old, how Mr. Swartz sought to thwart “corporate cartels” (such as JSTOR) and the draconian Stop Online Privacy Act.

Swartz was critical of monopoly of information by corporate cartels and believed that information should be shared and available for the benefit of society.

“Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves,” he wrote in an online “manifesto” in 2008.

Also from the PressTV Swartz article:

DemandProgress argued that the thwarted Stop Online Piracy Act would have broadly authorized the US government to censor and restrict legitimate Web communication.

Iranian state media do not hasten to add that, for its own citizens, the government of Iran censors millions of Web pages and that, even before getting online in Iran, Internet users have to pledge not to access “non-Islamic” websites.

Solicitor General: Gut Individual Mandate to Further Cannabis Legalization

katyal Solicitor General: Gut Individual Mandate to Further Cannabis Legalization

Acting Attorney General Neal Katyal, who this week outlined the administration’s shift from state-based health care exchanges to “chilling out”

WASHINGTON — Friday morning Acting Attorney General Neal Katyal announced that the Obama administration would be backpedaling from its take on the commerce clause to forward the “holy, righteous cause” of recreational cannabis legalization. Bolstered by praise from Colorado and Washington state Democratic leaders, and directives from the highest echelons of the Obama administration, Mr. Katyal announced in a press conference that the results of the landmark case Gonzales vs. Raich were “not cool” and were keeping millions of Americans from “chilling out” and “lighting up, man.”

Reached by phone in his Fairfax office at George Mason University Law School, Professor Michael Greve said the new anti-commandeering stance would prove exciting to Libertarian Party devotees at the Mercatur Institute and millions of drug-addled American liberals, most of whom are dependent on federal largesse for their barest subsistence.

“The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” said Mr. Greve, “established a conditional pre-emption regime in which the federal government told the states, ‘establish an exchange or we will do it for you.’” Following 18 more conservative states having in essence told the government to come in and establish exchanges, Mr. Greve said, “these states have told the federal government to take responsibility for the inevitable failure of these health care regimes.”

Mr. Katyal said in a press conference Friday morning, “As long as Congress refuses to act to deschedule cannabis from the same tier as heroin — come on, heroin, people — the administration must act.” The administration’s tight, 180-degree turn came on the heel of several online townterviews, during which poll respondents consistently begged the administration to cease the notoriously racist drug war. In his weekly address today, a visibly intoxicated President Barack Obama spoke to his office webcam in a cloud of smoke, admitting, “Millions of toothless Southern and Midwestern Americans, who will never vote for me, anyway, versus a good time for the peace-loving denizens of Colorado and Washington state? That’s an easy choice for me, bra.”

Following an on-screen hit from a gravity bong haphazardly constructed from a Chicago Bears novelty cup, which the 51-year-old U.S. president described as “vicious,” he said, “I realize the insane hypocrisy of my having smoked marijuana for recreation before overseeing a federal regime that incarcerates millions of Americans — particularly African-Americans — in such record numbers. Something had to be done, and I have directed the Department of Justice to just scrap this health care reform thing.”

Attorney General Eric Holder released a statement saying he now concedes that “all of these Republican attorneys general, they’re right, man. Just as we can’t force these conservative states to establish exchanges, we also can’t use the commerce clause to force this horrible drug war down the throats of Colorado and Washington citizens. The voters have spoken. Let freedom reign.”

House Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD), speaking to Politico, said that the legislative slowdown that faced descheduling cannabis was fueled by an ambiguity around the level of taxation that the illicit industrial psychoactive crop should receive. “If we had chosen to tax it too high, we would fuel black market activity. If we had voted to tax it too low, we just wouldn’t be taking our deficit seriously, and that would be unpatriotic.”

Internet Chronicle legal analysts have long predicted that the landmark Gonzales case would prove problematic for the Obama administration’s main objective — even if that objective were only background or covert — of legalizing the sticky-icky. In the wake of this decision, Iran and Russia are expected to overtake within weeks the United States in terms of arbitrary and/or politically motivated incarceration.