A place to interact with political activist and former Libertarian Gubernatorial Candidate, Loretta Nall. This blog covers Alabama politics, drug policy reform with emphasis on marijuana laws, medical marijuana, prison reform, voting rights, equal rights for gays and lesbians, ballot access reform and other social justice oriented issues.
Showing posts with label alabama state house drug dealer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label alabama state house drug dealer. Show all posts
Tonight is also a pledge drive for The Drug Truth Network. Dean Becker does a remarkable job spreading the truth about the drug war. He often has hapless drug warriors on his show to skewer live on the air. In his home base of Houston he's convinced many law enforcement officials of the failure of the drug war and won them over to the right side of the fight. His show airs on tons of networks across the nation. Please tune in and pitch in a contribution to Drug Truth Network tonight at 6:30 p.m. CST.
This Sunday, on the Drug Truth Network hour we will interview Loretta Nall, reformer extraordinaire, playing some Cultural Baggage songs (and Shotgun Lobotomy as well, my last two bands before getting into drug reform/hosting radio shows), lots of satirical PSA's and asking for your pledge of support.
We have nearly 70 radio stations, but none of them pay me a dime and the mothership of DTN needs your support.
KPFT, Houston is one of the 5 Pacifica affiliates (and from my perspective the one that best follows Lew Hills intent.
(No listener calls on the air this week, but we do need to hear from, Toll Free across N. America, call in to 1-877-9-420-420
Please listen in Sunday, August 16 at 6:30 to 7:30 PM central time and call in your pledge to 713-526-5738.
Basic membership in the Pacifica Foundation is $25 for students and seniors, $35 for those in between.
Thanks for your show of support over the years. (8 Years this coming October)
Sincerely
Dean Becker Producer - Drug Truth Network Speaker - Law Enforcement Against Prohibition 713-849-6869 Drug Truth Network
Interestingly enough, Speaker of the House Seth Hammett says Bridges is only calling for drug testing because it is an election year. You'll remember that Rep. Hammett resigned as Speaker of the House and said he would not seek reelection in 2010 the day after Rep. Alvin Holmes brought all of this to light. I read somewhere that Rep. Hammett said he wasn't really sure if he wanted further investigation into this matter and he made a statement through his spokesperson to the Montgomery Advertiser, but declined to be interviewed himself. Does that make him guilty of something? No. But it sure makes him look suspicious.
Normally I am against drug testing. But, in this case I think I can make a rare exception. After all, if a kid who wants to be in the band has to pee in a cup to prove their worthiness then, by all means, the members of the House and Senate should be drug tested. They should have been the first ones in line long, long ago. They are the ones who pass laws that put other people in jail for using drugs. They are the ones with their hands in everyone's pocketbook. Why have we allowed them to sit in judgment of us for so long without demanding that they be drug tested?
If the members of the Alabama House are drug tested then a hair test needs to be used. A urine test is too easy to manipulate. A hair test is much more effective for determining drug use.
Having said all that I still say we need to legalize marijuana. Today is good. Not only would it generate a huge amount of tax revenue for the state of Alabama it would also get rid of the need for anyone, other than maybe airline pilots, to have to pee in a cup for anyone other than their physician.
There is yet another story out today in the Montgomery Advertiser covering the State House Drug Dealer scandal and it is looking for all the world like the Clerk of the House, Greg Pappas, is up to his neck in the whole thing. Today he stopped talking to the newspaper.
Now, I don't know what powers the Clerk of the House has, but I'd wager that he doesn't have the power to cover this up all by himself. He doesn't have the power to make the ABI decide not to prosecute Lorenza Hooks after they saw him on video camera leaving the bag full of marijuana in an empty office. I'd bet he also doesn't have the power to make a Grand Jury return a 'no bill' when Lorenza Hooks was named as the shooter by the person who got shot. It could be that Greg Pappas was trying to help the guy keep his job, in which case, he would be a good guy in my book. For the record, I've only communicated with Greg Pappas on a couple of occasions when trying to set up a rally at the State House. He has a great radio announcer voice and seemed genuinely nice.
It appears, however, that Mr. Pappas violated some rules when he donated 80 of the 160 hours of leave time donated to Lorenza Hooks to keep him on the payroll even though he was suspended. According to the Montgomery Advertiser...
"Under Alabama Code 36-26-35.2, state employees are allowed to donate their accrued and unused annual sick or compensatory leave time to another state employee who has qualified for catastrophic sick leave or maternity leave."
There are other BIG, POWERFUL people involved in this....have to be.
There is a follow up today to the State House Drug Dealer story that first appeared in Sunday's Montgomery Advertiser. Today's story is about the Montgomery County D.A.'s office opening their own investigation into the matter.
Here's the money quote:
State Rep. Craig Ford, D-Gadsden, said that the investigation could have an impact on hiring and employment practices in the future, including whether there will be drug testing of House employees.
I say we drug test every elected official in the State House. Normally, I am against that kind of thing, but these are the jackasses who sit on their thrones and pass laws that put other people in prison for smoking marijuana, or using harder drugs, when many of them probably use drugs when no one is looking. They are the very first ones that should be tested and they should be tested every other day as long as they are elected. Every other day would be better than just random testing because most illicit substances have a 72 hour half-life in ones system.
After the Alabama Bureau of Investigation questioned Hooks and had the drugs analyzed, the agency determined that it did not have enough to prosecute.
And that is the thing that gets to me the most. How did the ABI come to that conclusion? Lorenza Hooks admitted to owning the bag and the video camera showed him putting the bag in the empty legislator's office. The ABI investigated and conducted tests to see if the marijuana was actually marijuana. It was. How does that equate to 'not enough evidence to prosecute'?
Someone commented on the original post here a few days ago that the only reason a person isn't charged when they are caught red handed is if they are an informant for the police or they are rolling on someone. I wonder if that is the case here?
When, in the entire history of Alabama, has a black man simply said "It's not mine" when caught with weed and gotten away with it? Never! And he was caught on video camera and we all know that video cameras don't lie. Lorenza Hooks even admitted the bag was his.
Who in the Alabama State House has the power to keep those files related to the marijuana out of his personnel file?
Who in the Alabama State House has the power to make the ABI come to the conclusion that there wasn't enough evidence to charge Mr. Hooks even though he was caught on video and admitted the bag containing the marijuana, scales and baggies was his?
Who in the Alabama State House has the power to make a grand jury return a 'no bill' in a shooting case where the victim identified Mr. Hooks as one of the shooters?
Will there be another investigation? If so, who will carry it out? Troy King? Oh please NO...he couldn't investigate his own asshole with a flash light and a mirror. I wouldn't trust the ABI to conduct another investigation considering the first conclusion they came to. Who does that leave? State Police? Would it be enough to get the feds involved? Seems to me since Rep. Alvin Holmes said his life was threatened that would be enough for federal involvement. About the only ones far enough removed from the good ole boy network in Montgomery to conduct an independent investigation would be the FBI.
This thing is HUGE y'all. HUGE! Call me a conspiracy theorist if you want but by the time this is over some big names in Alabama politics are going to take a very hard fall.
UPDATE: The marijuana that looks like dog turds displayed with the story is not the marijuana that was actually found in the State House. Only a copy of a picture of the original marijuana was found and it wasn't suitable for newsprint.
Here's the skinny. A janitor placed a backpack with two pounds of marijuana inside former legislator Bobby Humphreys office in 2006. Humphreys found the backpack, opened it and discovered that it contained 2 pounds of pot, baggies and scales. He called security. Security looked at video tapes of people entering the State House, matched the bag to a janitor named Lorenza Hooks, who admitted the bag was his....but not the weed. Yeah right....I suppose we have evil, pot smoking, State House elves running loose in Montgomery, that plant marijuana in the backpacks of unsuspecting janitors
Hooks was never charged for the pot and continued as a State House employee for two more years until he was suspended after being named as a suspect in a shooting. Quality staff that guy!
But wait...there's more. After Hooks was named by the shooting victim as the guy who shot him a grand jury returned a 'no bill' on the case and turned him loose. Only then did the legislative council decide to fire him. The House legislative council did not know about the drugs until that meeting in April 2009. Hooks personnel file did not contain anything about the drugs and did not contain the pictures from the security camera even though House Security, administrative asst. to the clerk Don Ladner and Clerk Greg Pappas were all notified the day the drugs were found.
When Hooks was finally suspended after the shooting he was allowed to use his leave time to continue on the House payroll and to receive health benefits. According to a note in Hooks' personnel file, he had 336 sick leave hours and 229 annual leave hours. Three unidentified House employees also donated 160 hours of leave time to Hooks, which ultimately kept him on the House payroll until Dec. 1, 2008.
My guess? Mr. Hooks was selling to some very high ranking officials inside the Alabama State House. People whose names we would all recognize. They covered for him. How else could this guy can haul two pounds of marijuana into the state house, get nailed but never charged for it? If it were anyone else they would have been charged with possession with intent to distribute and trafficking. How many young black men have been arrested, prosecuted and convicted of much lesser infractions involving marijuana in Montgomery?
I say we call all representatives and senators into a special session where they will be drug tested using a hair test, because urine tests for drugs are much too easy to manipulate. That will give us a baseline on who smokes pot, snorts coke, smokes meth or uses opiate based drugs. Then they can be charged, prosecuted and imprisoned like the 'common riff raff' that they rule from Goat Hill.
Oh....the weed in that picture up top looks like total bunk schwag. A commenter over on REDDIT asked "Ugh, is that dog shit in those baggies?" I wouldn't even smoke it. "It's Labrador man" ~Tommy Chong~ You'd think with that 62% pay increase the members of the House and Senate could afford the good stuff. Somebody needs to be prosecuted for making our state look worse than usual with that terrible representation of Alabama weed.
And here's another interesting tidbit...The day after Alvin Holmes took the mic on the State House floor and gave the low down on what was going on Speaker Seth Hammett (who is mentioned in the full story) announced he would not seek re-election. Coincidence?
I hope all of you who read this will commence writing LTE's at once. And please take a moment to vote this up on Reddit and DIGG
