Walter E. Washington Convention Center, Jan. 2. © 2011 Matt Dunn

Good morning, everyone. Today’s Tuesday, in case the long weekend confused you. And it’s June! Perhaps now, we can move on to sunny days and temperatures that make sense.

Memorial Day weekend was a mess of shootings from Baltimore to Chinatown. A teen was found shot in the head in Greenbelt, a man was found dead in his SUV, and Ted Koppel’s son was found dead in his New York apartment. A gravely depressing morning roundup, I know.

In national news, the “top kill” failed to plug the hole–and it seems BP may have overestimated its ability to deal with the situation. Attorney General Eric Holder plans to visit the Gulf Coast to assess the area. The Department of Justice has asked BP to retain all documents related to the spill. Uh-oh. Better head to the beaches down south before they cease to exist. On the bright side, someone will now write a book and get a movie deal. Even Osama bin Laden’s jealous.

A move in Fairfax County to build a day laborer site in Centreville has opponents up in arms, amid fears that giving them an official building will only lure more immigrants seeking work into the area.

Around here, residents complain Nationals Ballpark has really brought nothing more than “a giant bowl of mud.” Traffic fines are skyrocketing in an attempt to balance the city’s budget. And I also learned this weekend via a bouncer that if you’re a Virginia resident with an old-school vertical driver’s license, you won’t be getting drinks in the District. Cheers to ugly purple licenses!

Can’t find a date in real life? Can’t find a date online? I’d say you’re screwed, but now we’ve got date doctors–they type for you! Note: they won’t fuck for you.

There's a chance of thunderstorms today, so don't forget your umbrella.

Photo by azrainman. Creative Commons Attribution License.

Is he trying to get arrested? Perhaps. The stunt is being orchestrated by activists with the nonprofit Hemp Industries Association and Vote Hemp advocacy group, as part of the first annual Hemp History Week.

Yesterday, a North Dakota lawmaker filed a lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, accusing the federal Drug Enforcement Administration of delaying the approval of federal licenses to grow "non-drug" industrial hemp in that state.

It's a subtle distinction. Both hemp and marijuana are varieties of the cannabis plant. But the THC levels are much different. Smoking marijuana will get you high. Smoking hemp will only make you frustrated. Still, the two plants have a similar look and aroma, which is probably why the government bans the domestic cultivation of hemp, too, because, well, who can really tell the difference?

It wasn't always that way, of course.

Two nights ago, an intimate crowd gathered in the subterranean Capitol Hemp store in Adams Morgan for readings from the recently uncovered diaries of one-time government botanist Lyster Dewey (prominently featured recently in the Washington Post, and less surprisingly, High Times magazine).

The diaries contain all sorts of details on hemp farming research by the government dating back to the 1890s and indicate that Dewey himself used to grow the stuff at his place in Petworth, identified in the books as 4512 9th Street NW.

On Friday, a bunch of hemp advocates will board the Capitol Hemp truck, bound for Mt. Vernon to find out where America's first president grew it ("a well-known fact," according to Vote Hemp honcho Eric Steenstra) on his Virginia farm. It seems tourists don't usually get that info during tours of the historical site. Maybe they'll bring the guy in Washington garb to give a history lesson.

Photo courtesy of the Hemp Industry Association

Speaking with reporters, Mr. Holder provided few specifics but said the Justice Department’s enforcement policy would now be restricted to traffickers who falsely masqueraded as medical dispensaries and “use medical marijuana laws as a shield."

Cause for cautious optimism, clearly. But will Obama's Justice Department show newspapers some love? The kicker:

Mr. Holder said the department should be open to preserving a healthy newspaper industry. He said he would consider adjusting enforcement of antitrust statutes if that would help news organizations develop collective distribution systems.

Hmm. Why don't they just nationalize us already?

In 1996, Holder proposed cracking down on marijuana users and sellers, a policy perspective which was and—assuming he still holds it—is completely antithetical to President-Elect Barack Obama's promise to end federal crackdowns on medical marijuana dispensaries.

What kind of legacy did Holder leave? Evidence abounds that the drug war has done nothing to help D.C.'s crime problem. The MPD are still investigating recent violence in Petworth, but it's likely that the crimes have a drug component, just as they do in Trinidad, Anacostia, on Kennedy Street, and in other parts of the District. Turf wars have become part and parcel of the drug trade, and are a direct result of law enforcement artificially driving up prices for drugs and limiting geographic opportunities for transactions.

The Washington Post on Holder's (failed) drug policies in 1996:

U.S. Attorney Eric H. Holder Jr. said in an interview that he is considering not only prosecuting more marijuana cases but also asking the D.C. Council to enact stiffer penalties for the sale and use of marijuana.

"We have too long taken the view that what we would term to be minor crimes are not important," Holder said, referring to current attitudes toward marijuana use and other offenses such as panhandling.

Now, people arrested in the District and charged with distributing marijuana, even large quantities, face only misdemeanor charges, a standard that has sparked repeated complaints by police officers....

Holder said he hopes to discourage some of that activity by being tougher on marijuana crimes. New guidelines should be in place by the end of the month, he said, noting that the District could learn from New York's "zero-tolerance" policy. There, crime plummeted when police aggressively enforced quality-of-life crimes, including panhandling and public drinking, which gave officers an opportunity to check for drugs, guns and outstanding warrants.

"If you take these so-called minor crimes seriously and treat them fully, it has a ripple effect," Holder said. [h/t to Dave Weigel]

BTW: New York's "zero-tolerance" policy wasn't a reform in any meaningful sense of the word. Instead, it gave the state license to lock away undesirables, of which—by N.Y.'s criteria—D.C. has more than a few.

Anyone care to bet against Holder finding a way to invest more money in the War on Drugs while still fulfilling Obama's promise to end raids on medical marijuana dispensaries? My money says the latter will give them enough political capital to fuck over recreational users across the country.

In a cover story in 1997—the same year Clinton nominated Holder for Dep. Attorney General—City Paper questioned Holder's approach to corruption during his tenure as U.S. Attorney for D.C.

But for all the love Holder has engendered in the community as U.S. Attorney, he has had precious little impact on the city's endemic municipal corruption.

Holder defended himself to reporter Stephanie Mencimer as follows:

"Certainly, the Dirty Dozen occurred while I was here," he says, referring to the 12 police officers caught up in an FBI sting operation in 1993 for bribery and other drug charges. "There was the housing case involving the sale of Section 8 authorizations, and there are other things in my mind that I think about our public corruption section and the work that they've done on the local side. So I'm not sure there's anything we have to apologize for, or try to defend. We've been as vigilant as we've ever been."

Further complications to this appointment include Holder's instrumental role in Clinton's presidential pardon of "billionaire fugitive" Mark Rich, and a June interview with Legal Times in which he said an ascent to A.G. "ain't gonna happen."

Just for good measure, a bit of CP prescience, courtesy of Mencimer:

Even without any big corruption trials, in the final analysis, Holder will get what all the District's U.S. Attorneys get for their trouble here: a better job. Holder's three and a half years in the District have given him wings. He's likely to be flying on to the Justice Department soon, where the albatross around his neck will be replaced by one who looks quite a bit like Bill Clinton. Meanwhile, the District will be left with the same old cadre of crooks, a durable group who know that if they bide their time they can outlast just about any U.S. Attorney.

Photograph courtesy of Covington & Burling LLP