Late last week US attorneys announced a crackdown on the “large, for-profit medical marijuana industry” in California.

From CNN…

[The attorneys sent] letters of warning to landlords and lien holders of places in which marijuana is being sold illegally, “civil forfeiture lawsuits against properties involved in drug trafficking activity” and numerous criminal cases. The latter refers to arrests in recent weeks related to cases filed in federal courts in Los Angeles, San Diego, Sacramento and Fresno, all part of an effort that [US attorney Benjamin] Wagner claimed has resulted in the seizure of hundreds of pounds of marijuana, tens of thousands of plants and hundreds of thousands in cash.

In 1996, California became the first state in the US to legalize medical marijuana, and since then, dispensaries and growing operations have multiplied and prospered in California. In a domino effect, 15 states– including Arizona– have followed suit and created boutique laws regulating the sale, cultivation, and distribution of medical marijuana, AND cities and counties have created lower tiers of regulations to control where dispensaries and growing operations can be located and who can grow their own marijuana.

Even with layers upon layers of legislation, the bureaucrats and politicians have not been able to really control the spread of marijuana use. According to US government statistics, 16.7 million Americans 12 and older used marijuana at least once in the previous month (2009 data). Marijuana is believed to be the most widely used illegal “drug” in the US.

A poll released in August 2011 revealed that 55% of Americans support full legalization of marijuana– with Democrats (63%-33%)  and Independents (61%-34%) favoring marijuana legalization and most Republicans (46%-56%) oppose the change. An ABC News poll from 2010 showed 81% of Americans support medical marijuana. Many states, counties, and cities have decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana.

With such widespread use of marijuana, majority support for legalization, and a burgeoning industry: What’s the big deal? Why are the feds cracking down now, when they have allowed this industry to grow and spread for 15 years? Because they’re making money. Legislation in California, Arizona, and other states dictates that medical marijuana should be a nonprofit industry. (What’s up with that? Aren’t we a country of capitalists?)

From FOX News in LA…

Pot shops around Southern California have been raided, including a growing operations in Riverside County. In Orange County, federal agents moved to seize a property in a forfeiture action on Thursday, and Drug Enforcement Agents raided several shops in San Diego County.

Federal agents announced Friday that medical marijuana shops operating outside of state law must close within 45 days or face civil and/or criminal prosecution.

“While California law permits collective cultivation of marijuana in limited circumstances, it does not allow commercial distribution through the store-front model we see across California,” U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr. said yesterday.

Warning letters have been mailed to dozens of pot shops and landlords that have been targeted.

Marijuana advocates said it was waste of federal resources.

A year or more ago, as many as 1,000 pot shop were in business in and around Los Angeles as confusion reigned over state and local laws regulating marijuana.

Back to my question: Why crack down now? My personal theory is that this is all Governor Jan Brewer’s and Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne’s fault. Arizona voters legalized medical marijuana in 2010– much to the chagrin of our Nanny State government. Since that passage, the state, county, and city governments in Arizona have thrown up dozens of roadblocks to implementation (ie, strict local zoning laws for dispensaries and growers, licensing fees*, a steep $130 annual fee* for medical marijuana cards, physician referrals, etc.)

The biggest roadblock Horne and Brewer could come up with was a full-on legal challenge to the federal government (something Arizona relishes). Horne and Brewer are asking the feds to clarify the question of legality. How can medical marijuana be legal, when marijuana is illegal? Can state employees be arrested for participating in the distribution of marijuana? Even though 1000s of Arizonans have jumped through the hurdles, paid the annual fee, and now hold a medical marijuana cards, Horne has halted implementation of the law until he receives a ruling from the federal government.

The federal government’s stance on medical marijuana is untenable. In some ways, the policy of looking the other way while marijuana use proliferates is like the government’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy. “Hide your sexuality, and we won’t prosecute you.” “Hide that joint, and we’ll pretend you’re not smoking pot.”

US attorneys are challenging and shutting down a well-established, wide-spread, successful industry in because distributors are making money– not unlike the German brewers who were targeted by the temperance movement. Except for the temporary prohibition of alcohol– which led to widespread illegal use– what other product or industry has been persecuted like this?  The sale of other mood-altering and sometimes-addictive drugs– pharmaceuticals, alcohol, and tobacco– is legal in the US and those industries do not have nonprofit status forced upon them. Why marijuana?

Maybe the time has come for legalization. I believe that the US attorneys are forcing a lawsuit (or multiple lawsuits) by cracking down on the country’s largest medical marijuana businesses. The patchwork of marijuana laws across the US is silly and inefficient, and the nonprofit requirements for medical marijuana are contrary to the country’s pro-business, for-profit underpinnings.

Many progressives have been disgruntled with President Obama’s conciliatory behavior toward Congressional conservatives; they feel that he has too often given in or compromised too early. Obama’s administration is not without progressive milestones. He increased the minimum wage, passed landmark healthcare reform, passed banking reform, repealed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, extended unemployment benefits, funded 1000s of teacher salaries and other public jobs when the states went broke, caught Osama bin Laden, tried to pass the DREAM Act, and continues to try to protect social safety net programs from Republican raids. What if he brought home the big kahuna– legalization of marijuana?

One of the reasons President Roosevelt and progressives repealed the prohibition was that the country needed that tax revenue from the sale of alcohol; our country could use the tax revenue from the sale of legal marijuana now. For this reason, some economists have predicted that legalization of marijuana is inevitable.  Tom Horne and Jan Brewer may have pushed this issue forward.

*P.S. The 1000s of medical marijuana cardholders who have paid $130 for a card and the dozens of businesses who have rented space and paid state fees and have been prohibited from conducting legal business by Horne’s political lawsuit should sue the state.

Day of the Dead shrine I created to remember family members. (Photo and shrine by Pamela Powers)

Personal memorial shrines are not seen much in the part of the country where I grew up. Giant, gleaming white Calvinistic crosses, yes. Individual shrines with statues, candles, flowers, momentos, not so much (or at least not outside of the cemetery).

In the 30 years that I have lived in Tucson, I have grown to value and admire this cultural tradition. Some shrines around town– like the one on Greasewood near Pima College, the ghost bike at Mountain and Fort Lowell, the magnificent display for Gabrielle Giffords in front of UMC, and others– are unique, well-maintained remembrances.

The Carlos Lamadrid Shrine, erected by the US-Mexico border fence where he was shot to death, is particularly poignant. I don’t know much about Carlos except what I have read in the newspaper. He was a 19-year-old, Latino community college student who grew up in Douglas and was in the wrong place at the wrong time with a large quantity of marijuana.

Carlos is one of hundreds of people who have died on the US-Mexico border. Crossers, drug mules, gangsters, cartel customers, ranchers, border patrol agents, children… all gone.

The Border Patrol wants Carlos’ family to remove the shrine near Douglas obstensibly to rebuild the fence. I think they want that shrine gone because they want everyone to forget about Carlos and the lives lost on the border.

What if everyone who lost a loved one on the border erected a shrine along the border fence? Think about it. Hundreds of shrines, thousands of flowers, photos, candles, momentos. What a beautiful remembrance and poignant message that would be.

Death on the border is not about drugs, money, security, jobs or violence; it’s about life on the border.

Back in July, I reported that the Border Patrol ordered removal of a shrine in memory of 19-year-old, US citizen Carlos Lamadrid, who was shot by the Border Patrol in March 2011.

Yes, Carlos was running marijuana along the border, but he was a US citizen and a human being. He didn’t deserve to die. The Border Patrol wants us to forget they killed him. Here’s a link to the latest story in the Arizona Daily Star. Note Carlos’ family is suing the US government for wrongful death.

The US-Mexico border fence between has been ballyhoo’d by the right as necessary to border security, denegrated human rights advocates as a contributing factor in border deaths, and repeated breached by Mexicans with ladders, hack saws, torches, catapults, tunnels, and memorials.

The most recent news is that right-wing Republican Legislators have started a fundraising to build more sections of the fence, since the federal government and the state government are strapped for cash. (Yeah, that’s the ticket ask us workers to pay for it, since we have so much extra cash on our hands.)

The latest assault against the border fence has been at the hands of Mother Nature, who knocked down a 40-foot section of the border fence using flood waters. Apparently, the multi-million-dollar border fence has a design flaw. [doh] Environmentalists and officials with the Organ Pipe National Monument officials warned the Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security of the potential for flood damage before the fence was built, but these warning were ignored.

From the Arizona Daily Star…

The design does not allow for the free flow of water in natural washes intersecting the border, he said. In washes, the fence has grate openings at the bottom that are 6 inches high and 24 inches wide with 1-by-3-inch bars.

“The fence acts as a dam and forms a gradual waterfall,” [Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument Superintendent Lee] Baiza said. “It starts to pile up on the bottom as the grass, the leaves, the limbs start plugging up. The water starts backing up and going higher. The higher it gets, the more force it has behind it.”

Sunday’s storm dumped 1.5 to 2.5 inches of rain in the area upslope from the area where the fence failed, according to the National Weather Service.

Bursts of strong rain are common at the park, meaning that other parts of the fence that are in the natural washes could be at risk of being knocked over, too, Baiza said.

The problems were anticipated by Organ Pipe officials.

In October 2007, before the fence was built by Kiewit Western Co. for $21.3 million, Organ Pipe officials told the U.S. Department of Homeland Security they were worried that the design would impede the movement of floodwater across the border; that debris would get trapped in the fence; that water would pool; and that the lateral flow of water would cause damage to the environment and patrol roads, according to a report issued by Organ Pipe in August 2008 about flooding that summer.

In response, the Border Patrol issued a final environmental assessment with a finding of no significant impact. It also said the fence would not impede the natural flow of water or cause flooding.
The agency said it would remove debris from the fence within the washes immediately after rains to ensure that no flooding occurred.

At a December 2007 meeting, Kiewit officials stated in a handout that the fence design “would permit water and debris to flow freely and not allow ponding of water on either side of the border” because the drainage crossing grates “met hydraulic modeling requirements.”

“Now we know who’s right,” said Matt Clark, Southwest representative for Defenders of Wildlife. “Period. End of story.”
The situation is an example of how Homeland Security ignored expert advice from people within the federal government to ram through border-fencing projects, Clark said.

The first sign of problems occurred on July 12, 2008, when the 15-foot-high wire-mesh fence halted the natural flow of floodwater during a storm that dumped 1 to 2 inches of rain in 90 minutes around the border towns of Lukeville, and Sonoyta, Sonora.

Water pooled behind the fence and flooded into the Lukeville Port of Entry and private businesses, causing damage.
At the Gringo Pass convenience store, merchandise was damaged and the store was closed for cleanup, according to a lawsuit filed by the company against the U.S. government in 2009. The lawsuit says the flooding diminished property value by $6 million.

On Sunday, the storm also caused flooding in several buildings in Lukeville owned by Gringo Pass, Inc. after water pooled against the border fence and seeped into the structures. Those buildings now include a restaurant, post office, shuttle company and a duty-free store that had just received a new shipment of goods, said a store spokesperson. The convenience store is now out of business.

After the July 2008 flooding, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument officials issued a 17-page report detailing how it happened. Baiza said then he wanted government officials to revisit the design to prevent future problems.
To remedy the problem, the Army Corps of Engineers installed 50 to 60 liftable gates in 11 drainage systems as part of a 2010 drainage-improvement project. The system calls for the gates to be raised by a hoisting apparatus during storms so water can freely flow.

On Sunday, though, the gates were down, Baiza said.

Questions about the fence, the design and gates were not answered Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security or the Army Corps of Engineers.

The recent events show that there should be no border barriers in water crossings, Clark said. Officials should use alternative security measures such as ground sensors in those areas, which would not only allow floodwater to move freely but also create breaks for wildlife.

“Flooding is a very visual and physical reminder that walls block ecosystem processes,” Clark said. “There are major costs both fiscally and environmentally to building walls across watersheds.”

This 3-month-old baby and her six-year-old brother are among the 90,000 Arizona children on the Kids' Care waiting list. (Photo Credit: Pamela Powers)

Arizona Governor Hard-Hearted Hattie… oops… Jan Brewer gained national attention last fall when she dropped 97 people who had been eligible for transplants under the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (AHCCCS) off the list.

Arizona’s Death Panel quickly went viral– thanks to multiple news stories, including the front page of the New York Times, and open fund-raising for Arizona transplant patients on MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann. The decision also secured the Scrooge of the Year title for Brewer.

Now, fast forward to February 2011, at least two of the transplant patients have died, waiting and hoping that the Arizona Legislature would change its mind and vote to fund transplants again. Although the Arizona transplant patients have become a cause celebre, they are by far not the only victims of Arizona’s Teapulbican government.

Brewer and her Legislative cronies want to knock everyone– 250,000+ adults– off of the AHCCCS list. Last summer, they wanted to shutdown the voter-initiated Kids’ Care program, which provides health care and early childhood development programs for small, low-income children, and steal the Kids Care money, but the voters said “no way” in the November 2010 election. The Legislature did cap enrollment for Kids Care, which now has a 90,000 (and growing) waiting list of children who have been denied AHCCCS coverage but may be eligible for Kids Care.

Now, I may sound hard-hearted here, but why would the Arizona Legislature care about 95 transplant patients when they don’t care what happens to 90,000 babies or 250,000 adults? Yes, all 95 of those people will most likely die without a transplant, but without health insurance coverage, a percentage of the 90,000 babies and 250,000 adults will also die or go undiagnosed and untreated.

When you’re on a Death Panel, you have to make tough decisions– like giving corporate tax breaks.

I was discussing this situation with a friend yesterday. He said, “All hell will break loose when the babies die by legislative decision.”

Arizona Legislators Anna Tovar (a former transplant patient) and Kyrsten Sinema (who voted to dump 250,000 people off AHCCCS) will hold a press conference and rally at the state capitol today, February 28, 2011, to draw attention to the 95 remaining transplant patients. I want to know why they are focusing on a small group of transplant patients and not on the 90,000 babies and 250,000 adults who need help.

Last week the news carried several stories about the antics of Arizona’s wacky Legislature at work. What I found interesting was that in the bowels of the Arizona Daily Star, there were related stories that could have helped our Legislators in their deliberations over anchor babies,  drug smuggling, birth certificates, and gun controll– if they read the newspaper.

All of these examples are from the January 28 Star.

As Arizona’s anchor baby law takes shape, Indiana’s is struck down.

Bills would bar citizenship to illegal immigrants’ kids (page 1)

Federal ruling in Ind. favors entrants’ kids (pageA15)

Also, from the January 28 Star, Ranchers want more high-tech border surveillance, more troupes, and more guns– while Mexicans lob pot over the fence with a catapult and build tunnels. I think the Mexicans have been watching The Tudors mini-series. Henry VIII won one of his last great great battles– against a walled city– with catapults and tunnels.

Border holes must be plugged, Ariz. ranchers tell lawmakers (page 4)

Smugglers fly pot over border with catapult (page 1)

Arizona Legislators want Obama’s birth certifice once and for all. Hawaiian Legislators are now selling copies for $100 each.

Arizona lawmakers: Candidates, including Obama, must prove US birth

HI bill would give anyone Obama birth info for fee (page A17)

From the January 30 Star…
Businessmen are worried about Arizona’s image– which may be shifting from that of a sunshine state with low corporate taxes to a lawless state where armed crazy people wander the streets (ya think?)– and Girl Scouts are afraid they’ll be shot while selling cookies in front of grocery stores. In the meantime, Tucson State Senator Frank Antenori wants to further loosen gun laws and allow people to wander the streets at night “hunting varmints.”

Shooting aftermath worries business (page 1)

Booth sales frighten some Girl Scouts after shooting (page B1)

Antenori: OK night hunting of ‘varmints’ (page B1)

Russell Pearce– get your cronies to work on the state’s real problems and stop diddling around with these side issues.

Televangelist Pat Robertson (Photo Credit: Beliefnet.com)

On a recent 700 Club show, televangelist and standard bearer for the Christian right, Pat Robertson, mused about the folly of criminalizing pot use and mandatory sentencing. (No, this is not a joke.)

Robertson has a history of crazy talk– like when he said Haitians had made a “pack with the devil” and that is why their country was destroyed by an earthquake early in 2010.

Here is what Robertson has to say about tough-on-crime laws that turn youth into hardened criminals– because they were caught taking “a couple of puffs of marijuana.”

“It got to be a big deal in campaigns: ‘He’s tough on crime,’ and ‘lock ‘em up!’” the Christian Coalition founder said. “That’s the way these guys ran and, uh, they got elected. But, that wasn’t the answer.”

His co-host added that the success of religious-run dormitories for drug and alcohol cessation therapy present an “opportunity” for faith-based communities to lead the way on drug law reforms.

“We’re locking up people that have taken a couple puffs of marijuana and next thing you know they’ve got 10 years with mandatory sentences,” Robertson continued. “These judges just say, they throw up their hands and say nothing we can do with these mandatory sentences. We’ve got to take a look at what we’re considering crimes and that’s one of ‘em.

“I’m … I’m not exactly for the use of drugs, don’t get me wrong, but I just believe that criminalizing marijuana, criminalizing the possession of a few ounces of pot, that kinda thing it’s just, it’s costing us a fortune and it’s ruining young people. Young people go into prisons, they go in as youths and come out as hardened criminals. That’s not a good thing.”

Robertson’s comments about mandatory sentencing for pot use ruining young lies is refreshingly Christian. What would Jesus do? Of course, Jesus would forgive. Merry Christmas, Mr. Robertson.

Back in the early 1980s, I interviewed an old rancher who lived in Dragoon, Arizona for a feature story about rural Cochise County.

His 1800s stone ranch house was decorated with rustic furniture, a smattering of family heirlooms, and a large collection of old glass bottles. Being somewhat of an antique buff myself, I remarked at the variety of old bottles he had collected. As I photographed him, his house, and the bottle collection, I asked where he had gotten them all.

“This house is on the Mormon Trail,” he explained. “I found them all on my property.”

“The Mormon Trail?” I inquired– thinking it was a migration route like the Oregon Trail or Cornado’s Trail.

The grizzled old rancher chuckled, “The Mormon Trail is the route the Mormons took from St. David to the bars in Willcox. They didn’t want their family members or church elders in St. David to know they had been drinking in Willcox, so they dropped the evidence– the alcohol bottles– along the Mormon Trail as they rode their horses back home.”

I was reminded of the old rancher’s story this morning when I read Mesa seeks to seclude shops selling medical pot in today’s Arizona Daily Star.

In an attempt to legislate morality and control the temptation of the evil weed– even though it has been approved only for medical purposes– Mesa’s city council is considering highly restrictive zoning laws. Here is an excerpt from the Star (with emphasis added).

Mesa won’t let medical-marijuana shops open in most of its commercial districts, with city leaders saying they don’t want the substance sold near neighborhoods or in prominent locations.

Instead, the shops will be forced to industrial areas and just one kind of commercial use.
The city is taking a different approach from most other Arizona cities, which so far have been restricting the shops to commercial zones. The city staff had proposed that kind of regulation, but members of the City Council feared that would put the stores at the corner of major intersections.

The stores will be restricted from most areas in the city, as they must be at least a mile from each other, 2,400 feet from rehab facilities, 1,200 feet from churches and schools, and 500 feet from day-care facilities or preschools.

A map prepared by the city shows only slivers of land where the shops could open.

This is folly, and obviously another example of Arizona’s nanny state leanings. Once the Arizona Department of Health Services sets up the system for licensing dispensaries, caregivers, and medical providers, medical marijuana sales will begin in Arizona. It will be legal– even for Mesans– to purchase medical marijuana with a doctor’s recommendation.

The Mesa city fathers should learn a lesson from the Mormon Trail story. If people want or need drugs– legal or otherwise– they will find a way to obtain then, even if it means driving to an industrial district of their lily-white city or (heaven forbid) driving into Phoenix.

Arizona bureaucrats are wringing their hands over the implementation of Prop 203– the medical marijuana law that voters approved in November 2010.

The roadblocks that bureaucrats like Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall, Arizona Bar official Patricia Sallen, and now Arizona Department of Health Services Director Will Humble have erected bring me question one of this state’s core Republican values– free-market capitalism.

Is Arizona a nanny state that wants to protect its citizens from legal marijuana distribution? Or is Arizona a business-friendly, capitalist state that will allow the free market decide which marijuana dispensaries survive? So far, Arizona’s approach to the medical marijuana business is out-of-step with its generally laissez-faire, no-holds-barred business attitude.

The latest example of the state’s schizophrenic behavior appeared in an Associated Press story in today’s Arizona Daily Star. The story features hand-wringing Humble brainstorming about ways to hamper the medical marijuana industry with fees and over-regulation before it even gets off the ground. [Emphasis added.]

“Most other states, you hang out a shingle and you’re a dispensary,” said Will Humble, director of the Arizona Department of Health Services, which will regulate the medical marijuana industry. “I want to avoid those kinds of abuses.”

Humble sees limiting the number of dispensaries and putting stringent requirements in place as a way to avoid such issues.

Dispensary hopefuls will have to pay up to $5,000 to apply for a license. In their application, they’ll need to include addresses for their pot shops and off-site cultivation facilities; detailed security plans to prevent break-ins; procedures for accurate record-keeping; information about employees for background checks; a sworn statement that they’re meeting zoning requirements; and a statement pledging they won’t sell pot to unregistered patients.

The department hopes to post a draft of proposed requirements on Dec. 17 and finalize rules by late March.

If a business owner has the proper business licenses and has complied with local zoning, why shouldn’t they be able to “hang out a shingle” and become a medical marijuana dispensary? How is that an “abuse”? Isn’t that called capitalism? Seriously, folks, how is this different from setting up a pharmacy or a shop that sells nutritional supplements?

So, Governor Jan Brewer wants to give huge tax cuts to businesses that will re-locate to Arizona, but would-be marijuana dispensary businesses get hefty fees + mountains of procedures + a patchwork of city and county zoning regulations + the requirement to be non-profit + a limit on growth + no legal help? That doesn’t seem business friendly to me.

UPDATE: Check out this link for the update on this story.

The Arizona Bar Association recently announced that Arizona lawyers may not be able to assist would-be clients who have a legal problem related to the state’s new medical marijuana law.

Patricia Sallen, ethics counsel for the Arizona Bar Association, said that Arizona lawyers are not allowed to help clients break the law.

Since medical marijuana is now legal in Arizona and since the federal government said it would not prosecute marijuana cases in states where medical marijuana is legal, what’s the big deal? From the NY Daily News:

Federal drug agents won’t pursue pot-smoking patients or their sanctioned suppliers in states that allow medical marijuana, under new legal guidelines to be issued Monday by the Obama administration.

Two Justice Department officials described the new policy to The Associated Press, saying prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state law.

The big deal, according to Sallen, is that even though the new law allows patients with a doctor’s recommendation are allowed to buy 2.5 ounces of marijuana every 2 weeks, marijuana possession is still illegal under federal law.

Sallen said that [illegality of marijuana possession at the federal level] could keep attorneys from helping Arizona corporations set up a dispensary. And it also could mean no help going to court for any company that believes it was unfairly or unlawfully denied a dispensary license — or even for an individual who claims to be entitled to a medical marijuana card.

This disconnect between state and federal law could leave medical marijuana patients, caregivers, and business owners who want to dispense or grow medical marijuana in the lurch for legal assistance. Sallen says she is basing her preliminary opinion on a similar situation in the state of Maine. OK, that’s Maine’s opinion, but what about the 14 other states and the District of Columbia? They also have medical marijuana laws. What is their stance?

In my opinion, this is just another legal roadblock in Arizona’s medical marijuana saga. Arizona voters passed medical marijuana twice before, but the Arizona Legislature stopped implementation. This year, Pima County Attorney Barbara LaWall vehemently (and some say inappropriately) campaigned (1, 2) against medical marijuana before the 2010 election. After Prop 203 passed, she and her minons heavily lobbied the Pima County Board of Supervisors and the Tucson City Council for highly restrictive zoning laws. In the end, neither body adopted all of LaWall’s recommendations, but the county now has more restrictive zoning for dispensaries and growing operations than the city does.

So, let’s focus here– there are 4 different levels of laws governing medical marijuana– federal, state, county, and city– and citizens who want to benefit from this new industry and businesses that want to participate in its creation can’t hire a lawyer in Arizona? What sense does that make?

It only makes sense if you are part of the legal establishment that has benefited from prohibition and you want to set this industry up for failure– or at least inhibit growth– by denying legal counsel.

Given this paranoia by local legal officials, it’s no surprise that the state bar association has tossed out yet another barrier to progress.

UPDATE: Check out this link for the update on this story.