Pot has always been a fool-killer for phonies like Kamala Harris, our purported vice president.
Two of her most embarrassing, hypocritical political moments come down to pot, and now there's going to be a third.
According to Fox News:
Five White House staffers have been fired because of their past use of drugs, including marijuana, press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday.
Marijuana has become a delicate issue for President Joe Biden’s administration because 15 states and Washington, D.C., allow for recreational usage, despite a federal prohibition. The administration has tried not to automatically penalize potential staffers for legal behavior in their communities by developing a more flexible policy, Psaki said in a statement to The Associated Press.
“In an effort to ensure that more people have an opportunity to serve the public, we worked in coordination with the security service to ensure that more people have the opportunity to serve than would not have in the past with the same level of recent drug use,” Psaki said. “While we will not get into individual cases, there were additional factors at play in many instances for the small number of individuals who were terminated.”
The Daily Beast website first reported the firings Thursday night.
Would this be the same White House that claims to be all in for marijuana legalization? The same Democrat party, 85% of whose members support the total legalization of pot?
Well, gee. Somehow marijuana use in the White House is still a firing offense, even for those who come from the 15 blue states where pot use is perfectly legal in contradiction to federal law. That's a stance the White House's Attorney General nominee said he would explicitly respect.
But somehow, that doesn't apply to the Biden White House, (though one might expect an exception for Hunter). Somehow, federal law, all of a sudden, actually matters, contrary to everything else the Biden administration has promoted.
And that creates problems for Kamala Harris, crime fighter extraordinaire, who as prosecutor put at least 1,500 small-time pot users in prison, yet says she's all in for marijuana legalization:
For Harris, this puts the spotlight on all her hypocrisies on the matter once again.
Harris, recall, was the one who giggled her way through a 2019 Charlamagne Tha God radio interview during her presidential campaign, in an attempt to court black voters, with Cheech and Chong drivel like this:
Q: They say you oppose legalizing weed.
KAMALA HARRIS: That's not true.
Q: I know. HARRIS: And look, I joke about it — half-joking — half my family’s from Jamaica. Are you kidding me? ...
Q: Have you ever smoked? HARRIS: I have.
Her Stanford professor-emeritus dad, of course, blasted her for her cheap negative stereotypes about Jamaicans.
There also was this:
"I have [smoked marijuana]. And I inhaled. I did inhale," Harris said. "I think it gives a lot of people joy. And we need more joy in the world."
There also was this:
Charlamagne tha God: What was you listening to when you was high? What was on? What's on with me?
(Deejay known as) DJEnvy: Was it Snoop?
Kamala Harris: Oh, my goodness, (near-giggle) yeah, Snoop. (another nod and a near-giggle) Definitely Snoop, uh hunh. (More lolling around with a pause) Tupac. For sure. For sure.
Which brings us to her second hypocrisy. Neither of those famous gangsta rappers were around and making music when Harris was supposedly hard at work smoking pot in college. They were around when she was district attorney in the Oakland, though, putting young black pot offenders in prison, keeping them in beyond their terms. So was she smoking pot and giggling about it while listening to Tupac, and still throwing young black drug offenders in prison? That's quite a picture.
That's what enabled one of her presidential primary rivals, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, to deliver to Harris a campaign death blow at a Democratic debate. Remember this?
Gabbard: I want to bring the conversation back to the broken criminal justice system that is disproportionately, negatively impacting black and brown people all across this country today. Now, Senator Harris says she's proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she'll be a prosecutor president. But I'm deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana.
She blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labor for the state of California, and she fought to keep a cash bail system in place that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way.
Jake Tapper (moderator): Thank you, Congresswoman. Senator Harris, your response?
Harris: As the elected attorney general of California, I did the work of significantly reforming the criminal justice system of a state of 40 million people, which became a national model for the work that needs to be done. And I am proud of that work. And I am proud of making a decision to not just give fancy speeches or be in a legislative body and give speeches on the floor but actually doing the work, of being in the position to use the power that I had to reform a system that is badly in need of reform. That is why we created initiatives that were about re-entering former offenders and getting them counseling. It's why, and because I know the criminal justice system is so broken, it is why I'm an advocate for what we need to do to not only decriminalize but legalize marijuana in the United States.
Tapper: Thank you, Senator. I want to bring Congresswoman Gabbard back in.
Gabbard: The bottom line is, when you were in a position to make a difference and an impact in these people's lives, you did not and worse yet in the case of those who are on death row, innocent people, you actually blocked evidence from being revealed that would have freed them until you were forced to do so. There's no excuse for that and the people who suffered under your reign as prosecutor — you owe them an apology.
And boy, the Democratic Party establishment, which had picked Harris as their favorite, made sure Tulsi was punished for that little impertinence.
But it was completely true, and it exposed Harris as a flamin' hot hypocrite, even as she claims she's all in for pot legalization now.
According to Politico, Harris is innocent, and decrepit old Joe is the one who's against it:
He’s just not ready to embrace cannabis.
Despite a shift in public opinion toward legalizing marijuana over the past 30 years, the president’s more conservative approach to weed policy is well-known on Capitol Hill. When the Daily Beast reported late Thursday that “dozens” of young White House staffers had been suspended, asked to resign or placed in a remote work program after admitting to prior marijuana use, pro-cannabis lawmakers were dismayed Friday but hardly shocked.
“It is another very vivid example of the clash between outmoded past policies, and where America is, and where America is going,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Capitol Hill’s unofficial weed czar, said in an interview. “It's not, probably, surprising."
Politico and other Democrats are trying to rationalize the White House opposition to pot in the White House as a relic of Biden's past tough stance on crime in the 1990s.
Many Republican and Democratic lawmakers, including Vice President Kamala Harris, have shifted their positions on cannabis legalization in recent years. But Biden — who, as a senator, shepherded the 1994 crime bill that disproportionately hit communities of color and set mandatory minimum sentences for marijuana possession — has never truly warmed to the idea. As recently as last year, Biden’s staff rejected marijuana legalization as part of the Democratic Party policy platform. It was a step backwards from 2016, when the party made history by endorsing a “pathway” to legalization.
But that won't protect Kamala, who was part of that 'tough on crime' trend of the 1990s, same as Joe.
Meanwhile, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki is trying to spin the matter by saying it was only a few of them who got canned.
According to a statement given to the Associated Press:
In an effort to ensure that more people have an opportunity to serve the public, we worked in coordination with the security service to ensure that more people have the opportunity to serve than would not have in the past with the same level of recent drug use,” Psaki said. “While we will not get into individual cases, there were additional factors at play in many instances for the small number of individuals who were terminated.”
According to Fox News:
But Psaki also said the Biden administration has updated its hiring policies to ensure that past marijuana use does not automatically disqualify staff from serving in the administration.
Psaki on Friday tweeted that the administration "announced a few weeks ago that the White House had worked with the security service to update the policies to ensure that past marijuana use wouldn’t automatically disqualify staff from serving in the White House."
"As a result, more people will serve who would not have in the past with the same level of recent drug use," Psaki added.
"The bottom line is this: of the hundreds of people hired, only five people who had started working at the White House are no longer employed as a result of this policy," she said.
Which is spin and nonsense. Federal policy since the 1980s has been to excuse minor instances of marijuana usage. Psaki is claiming that's a big change from Biden, once again plagiarizing someone else's policy.
As for the people let go, one wonders what it took to get them out -- smoking pot in the White House? Selling and dealing drugs? Showing up stinking of reefer? Had to have been something bad, given the already lax standard.
Which brings us back to Kamala, who bragged of getting high, supposedly in college. She got high, and then prosecuted others, then said she was all in for marijuana legalization, and now serves a White House that won't let potheads in.
Seems the Biden/Harris administration is all in for forcing private employers to hire marijuana users, with all the dullness of mind that entails in their workforces, given their stance on legalization, but they sure as heck don't want that stuff around in their White House. Laws and punishment for the little guys around marijuana legalization, just not the same for themselves.
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