Smokers celebrate as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — The crowds of happy people lighting joints under Seattle's Space Needle early Thursday morning with nary a police officer in sight bespoke the new reality: Marijuana is legal under Washington state law.

Hundreds gathered at Seattle Center for a New Year's Eve-style countdown to 12 a.m., when the legalization measure passed by voters last month took effect. When the clock struck, they cheered and sparked up in unison.

A few dozen people gathered on a sidewalk outside the north Seattle headquarters of the annual Hempfest celebration and did the same, offering joints to reporters and blowing smoke into television news cameras.

"I feel like a kid in a candy store!" shouted Hempfest volunteer Darby Hageman. "It's all becoming real now!"

Washington and Colorado became the first states to vote to decriminalize and regulate the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana by adults over 21. Both measures call for setting up state licensing schemes for pot growers, processors and retail stores. Colorado's law is set to take effect by Jan. 5.

Technically, Washington's new marijuana law still forbids smoking pot in public, which remains punishable by a fine, like drinking in public. But pot fans wanted a party, and Seattle police weren't about to write them any tickets.

In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

The mood was festive in Seattle as dozens of gay and lesbian couples got in line to pick up marriage licenses at the King County auditor's office early Thursday.

King County and Thurston County announced they would open their auditors' offices shortly after midnight Wednesday to accommodate those who wanted to be among the first to get their licenses.

Kelly Middleton and her partner Amanda Dollente got in line at 4 p.m. Wednesday.

Hours later, as the line grew, volunteers distributed roses and a group of men and women serenaded the waiting line to the tune of "Chapel of Love."

Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.

In dealing with marijuana, the Seattle Police Department told its 1,300 officers on Wednesday, just before legalization took hold, that until further notice they shall not issue citations for public marijuana use.

Officers will be advising people not to smoke in public, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."

He offered a catchy new directive referring to the film "The Big Lebowski," popular with many marijuana fans: "The Dude abides, and says 'take it inside!'"

"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."

Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.

"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress."

The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.

That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

Alison Holcomb is the drug policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and served as the campaign manager for New Approach Washington, which led the legalization drive. She said the voters clearly showed they're done with marijuana prohibition.

"New Approach Washington sponsors and the ACLU look forward to working with state and federal officials and to ensure the law is fully and fairly implemented," she said.

___

Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

Read More..

More young American adults are leaving the nest

WASHINGTON — After riding out the tough economy in their parents' basements, more young American adults are starting to break out on their own, pushing up the nation's mobility rate and giving an important boost to the housing market and the broader recovery.

Thanks to improving job prospects and super-low mortgage rates, adults in their 20s and early 30s are moving into their own apartments and buying homes in increasingly greater numbers, according to real estate experts and government statistics.

Census Bureau data show that the nation added more than 2 million households in the 12 months that ended March 31, about triple the annual average for the previous four years. Most of the gain came from baby boomers, but young adults are hitting the road as well.

The recession had knocked overall U.S. interstate migration to a post-World War II low, but last year the number of people ages 25 to 29 who moved across state lines reached its highest level in 13 years, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution.

Frey called the shift significant: "They're leading indicators of migration coming for the broader population."

Laurie Brown, 26, said she was "completely broke" when she moved back into her parents' house near Tahoe City, Calif., in early March 2011. She came home with college loans to pay and other debt from bouncing from one place to the next.

"At first, I thought I'd be there only two months," she said.

But Brown soon realized just how tough the job market was. She had a bachelor's degree, magna cum laude, in business communications from George Fox University in Newburg, Ore., but the best she could find after returning home was busing and waiting tables at a restaurant in Tahoe City.

"I was really humbled," she said. "It made me feel like I wasn't an adult, like you're back in high school." Once a week, she got together for happy hour with three high-school buddies who were all in the same boat: college graduates living at home again. "We were kind of a support group," she said.

Then in late April, after finding full-time work at a nonprofit youth development and literacy program in the Tahoe area, Brown moved into an apartment about 15 minutes from her parents' home.

"In some ways it was a blessing in disguise," she said of her 14 months living with her mother and father. Although it was hard at times to adjust, she said, "it was really nice to spend time with my parents. I was able to reconnect with them."

During the recession and slow recovery, young people better educated than their parents' generation have struggled to compete with older workers in a job market with several unemployed people for every opening. That compares with about two people unemployed for every job opening before the 2007-09 recession.

Without sufficient incomes, they delayed getting married and having children, and simply stayed where they could pay little or no rent.

The result was that 2 million more adults ages 18 to 34 were living under their parents' roofs last year than four years earlier, according to an analysis of census data by Timothy Dunne, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland.

Over the last year, the jobless rate of those ages 25 to 34 has dropped a little more sharply than it has for the overall population. It fell to 7.9% in November from 9% at the start of the year, compared with a decline to 7.7% from 8.3% for all workers.

"With stronger economic fundamentals, the process will pick up speed," Dunne said. "I think there's pressure. Households can delay formation for only so long."

People tend to move long distances for new jobs.

A week ago, Kevin Ratz, 27, hitched a U-haul to his Ford pickup, loaded the trailer with furniture, stereo equipment and skis, and drove to Chicago.

Ratz left behind his parents' suburban Detroit home, where he had stayed in his childhood room for the last two years. The room was pretty much unchanged, with its sports-car posters on the wall and youth-hockey trophies lining the bookshelf.

One big reason he moved back in with his parents was the weak job market for young pilots. Although he had a degree in aviation from Western Michigan University and some experience as a flight instructor, he found few well-paying openings in the field.

Read More..

Bill on Russia Trade Sets Off Acrimony on Rights

WASHINGTON — In theory, the action by Congress this week to make Russia a full trading partner — finally doing away with a 38-year ban that once punished the Soviet Union over its restrictive emigration rules — could have begun a new era of happier ties between former cold war rivals.

Instead, it has set off a burst of ire, as American lawmakers used the opportunity to approve new legislation chastising Russia over its human rights record.

The bill, which President Obama is expected to sign, imposes steep penalties on Russians designated as violators of human rights — barring them from travel to the United States and freezing any financial assets here.

It would also require the administration to develop a list of rights abusers and effectively prevent anyone on it from owning property or doing business in the United States, where many wealthy Russians have maintained substantial assets and investments.

Far from celebrating its new, favored trade status, the Kremlin has reacted with rage, pledging to retaliate with its own restrictions and accusing the United States and its European allies of hypocrisy on the issue of human rights. The Russian Foreign Ministry said it was “strange and wild to hear complaints about us from politicians of a state, which has, in the 21st century, allowed legal torture and abduction of people all over the world.”

In comments posted on the ministry’s Web site on Friday, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov said that he warned Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton about the consequences of the legislation on Thursday in Dublin, where they met with the United Nations special envoy on Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi. “I confirmed that Russia will refuse entry to its territory to American citizens who are truly guilty of gross violations of human rights,” Mr. Lavrov said.

The bill won praise, however, from some of President Vladimir V. Putin’s most prominent critics — a development that was certain to only further inflame the Kremlin.

“Excellent,” Aleksei Navalny, the anticorruption advocate and political opposition leader, declared in a Twitter post. “I congratulate those who managed this. At least, there is some place in the world where they punish thieves and the murders of our fellow citizens.”

Although passage of the legislation was expected, the new acrimony further imperils a relationship that has been deeply strained in recent months, particularly by disagreements over how to stem the violence in Syria.

The two countries have also been at odds over the American plan for a missile defense system in Europe, as well as Russia’s crackdown on political dissent and on nongovernmental organizations.

The strains have also worsened at a time when the United States wants Russia’s cooperation on numerous other matters, including containing Iran’s nuclear weapons program, as well as maintaining crucial supply routes that will be vital for the withdrawal of American troops and supplies from Afghanistan.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said that if the relationship soured, it was America’s fault. “We do not want to turn away from the positive sides in our bilateral relations, which have been developed in recent years with no small amount of effort,” it said. “But it is necessary to give our assessment that the law approved by the Senate will rather negatively affect the prospects for bilateral cooperation. Responsibility for this, naturally, lies wholly on the U.S.A.”

Other Russian officials noted caustically that the United States was guilty of its own human rights violations, citing abuses in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, as well as at the terrorist detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and at secret C.I.A. prisons in Europe.

While granting full trade status is a step that stands to benefit American businesses as much if not more than their Russian counterparts, many lawmakers in Washington said that they could not reconcile themselves to normalizing trade relations without holding Mr. Putin’s government accountable for what they described, in scathing terms, as systematic rights abuses, pervasive corruption and disrespect for the rule of law, as well as the suppression of political dissent.

Ellen Barry and Andrew E. Kramer contributed reporting from Moscow.

Read More..

Exclusive: Google to replace M&A chief

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Google Inc is replacing the head of its in-house mergers and acquisitions group, David Lawee, with one of its top lawyers, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Don Harrison, a high-ranking lawyer at Google, will replace Lawee as head of the Internet search company‘s corporate development group, which oversees mergers and acquisitions, said the source, who spoke anonymously because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

Google is also planning to create a new late-stage investment group that Lawee will oversee, the source said.

Google declined to comment. Lawee and Harrison could not immediately be reached for comment.

One of the Internet industry’s most prolific acquirers, Google has struck more than 160 deals to acquire companies and assets since 2010, according to regulatory filings. Many of Google’s most popular products, including its online maps and Android mobile software, were created by companies or are based on technology that Google acquired.

Harrison, Google’s deputy general counsel, will head up the M&A group at a time when the company is still in the process of integrating its largest acquisition, the $ 12.5 billion purchase of smartphone maker Motorola Mobility, which closed in May.

And he takes over at a time when the Internet search giant faces heightened regulatory scrutiny, with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and the European Commission conducting antitrust investigations into Google’s business practices. Several recent Google acquisitions have undergone months of regulatory review before receiving approval.

As deputy general counsel, Harrison has been deeply involved in the company’s regulatory issues and many of its acquisitions. He joined Google more than five years ago and has completed more than 70 deals at the company, according to biographical information on the Google Ventures website.

Harrison is an adviser to Google Ventures, the company’s nearly four-year old venture division which provides funding for start-up companies.

While most of Google’s acquisitions are small and mid-sized deals that do not meet the threshold for disclosure of financial terms, Google has a massive war chest of $ 45.7 billion in cash and marketable securities to fund acquisitions.

Lawee, who took over the M&A group in 2008, has had hits and misses during his tenure. Google shut down social media company Slide one year after acquiring it for $ 179 million, for example.

The planned late-stage investment group has not been finalized, the source said. The fund might operate separately from Google Ventures, according to the source.

“Think of it as a private equity fund inside of Google,” the source said.

The company recently said it would increase the cash it allocates to Google Ventures to $ 300 million a year, up from $ 200 million, potentially helping it invest in later-stage financing rounds.

Google finished Friday’s regular trading session down 1 percent, or $ 6.92, at $ 684.21.

(Reporting By Alexei Oreskovic; editing by Carol Bishopric and Jim Loney)

Wireless News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Smokers celebrate as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — The crowds of happy people lighting joints under Seattle's Space Needle early Thursday morning with nary a police officer in sight bespoke the new reality: Marijuana is legal under Washington state law.

Hundreds gathered at Seattle Center for a New Year's Eve-style countdown to 12 a.m., when the legalization measure passed by voters last month took effect. When the clock struck, they cheered and sparked up in unison.

A few dozen people gathered on a sidewalk outside the north Seattle headquarters of the annual Hempfest celebration and did the same, offering joints to reporters and blowing smoke into television news cameras.

"I feel like a kid in a candy store!" shouted Hempfest volunteer Darby Hageman. "It's all becoming real now!"

Washington and Colorado became the first states to vote to decriminalize and regulate the possession of an ounce or less of marijuana by adults over 21. Both measures call for setting up state licensing schemes for pot growers, processors and retail stores. Colorado's law is set to take effect by Jan. 5.

Technically, Washington's new marijuana law still forbids smoking pot in public, which remains punishable by a fine, like drinking in public. But pot fans wanted a party, and Seattle police weren't about to write them any tickets.

In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

The mood was festive in Seattle as dozens of gay and lesbian couples got in line to pick up marriage licenses at the King County auditor's office early Thursday.

King County and Thurston County announced they would open their auditors' offices shortly after midnight Wednesday to accommodate those who wanted to be among the first to get their licenses.

Kelly Middleton and her partner Amanda Dollente got in line at 4 p.m. Wednesday.

Hours later, as the line grew, volunteers distributed roses and a group of men and women serenaded the waiting line to the tune of "Chapel of Love."

Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.

In dealing with marijuana, the Seattle Police Department told its 1,300 officers on Wednesday, just before legalization took hold, that until further notice they shall not issue citations for public marijuana use.

Officers will be advising people not to smoke in public, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."

He offered a catchy new directive referring to the film "The Big Lebowski," popular with many marijuana fans: "The Dude abides, and says 'take it inside!'"

"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."

Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.

"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress."

The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.

That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

Alison Holcomb is the drug policy director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and served as the campaign manager for New Approach Washington, which led the legalization drive. She said the voters clearly showed they're done with marijuana prohibition.

"New Approach Washington sponsors and the ACLU look forward to working with state and federal officials and to ensure the law is fully and fairly implemented," she said.

___

Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

Read More..

After generations of failure, a school and its students head for success

I was prepared for the dog-and-pony show — the choreographed "reveal" of a school makeover that's been in the works for years.

I didn't expect much beyond a grown-up version of show-and-tell. But I came anyway because I have a soft spot for Jordan High in Watts.

I've spent a decade tracking the school's efforts to improve; watched reformers arrive with big plans and leave with broken dreams.

The school's problems, they'd say, are too deep and expensive to fix; too intertwined with a neighborhood that will always be warped by dysfunction and poverty.

But on Wednesday, state schools Supt. Tom Torlakson visited the school with certificates announcing its improvement. Jordan's 93-point jump on the state's academic performance index was the biggest of any urban high school in California this year.

That's why Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa showed up after working "56 hours straight" on trade missions and labor deals. "No way I'd miss this," he said. His Partnership for Los Angeles Schools is the architect of Jordan's reforms.

And it's why philanthropist Melanie Lundquist, whose $50-million contribution keeps the partnership going, showed up ready to celebrate the return on her investment in this city's struggling schools.

We spent the morning visiting classrooms, talking with teachers, oohing and aahing over pristine hallways and perfectly manicured grounds.

But what moved me most was what I heard from students on a campus that, for generations, hasn't been able to shake its "failure" label.

"It used to be 'Why are we here at Jordan?'," said one 12th-grade girl. We knew what she meant:

Their school was nothing but a holding pen. Their neighborhood had been written off. Their lives would never change.

That's how it was for years, she said. "Now everybody is seeing the change, in the school and the community."

::

I don't know that everybody is seeing a difference. "Change" here has been a popular but failed refrain.

Two years ago, the school was failing so persistently, it was essentially dissolved — reconstituted, in edu-speak. Its students and campus were divided between two groups, Green Dot Charter and the mayor's Partnership for Los Angeles Schools.

Both schools on the campus posted gains this year. But the partnership's jump — from 515 to 608 on the state's academic performance index — surprised even its most ardent supporters.

Still, 608 isn't scholar status; scores at the best public high schools are more than 200 points higher. And Jordan isn't out of the woods. Its enrollment dropped this fall, after a charter school with "college" in its name opened up nearby.

The students I talked with understand that Jordan's reputation may be its biggest hurdle. And they intend to change that by succeeding, returning as mentors and spreading the word.

"We know that we're the ones that have to make the difference," said senior Esmeralda Diaz. She was Student of the Month in her chemistry class — for her good work and for helping classmates with theirs.

She's not sold on all the changes at Jordan. She misses the pep rallies, the socializing, the school spirit that disappeared when her campus was divided in half and its student body shrunk.

Read More..

North Korea Gets Ready for Launching

SEOUL, South Korea — The name of the satellite that North Korea will attempt to put into orbit as early as next week helps explain why the country’s impoverished regime wanted its own satellite project. Kwangmyongsong, or Shining Star, was also a title for Kim Jong-il — the late father of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, and the man whose legacy of nuclear and missile programs his son must consolidate to justify his own hereditary rule.

North Korea’s state news media make it clear that the country’s rocket and nuclear programs have become integral to its self-image as a small, poor but militarily powerful country, which bigger nations must placate with economic concessions, and to its ruling party’s claim to political legitimacy. Thus, analysts say, North Korea will push ahead with its plan to launch the satellite despite international warnings of more sanctions.

By Thursday, all three stages of an Unha-3 rocket had been assembled at a launching pad, waiting for fueling, according to South Korean officials. North Korea said the countdown could come as early as Monday.

The timing is urgent for North Korea and tricky for regional powers.

Dec. 17 is the first anniversary of the death of Kim Jong-il, an occasion his son’s government must mark with something it hopes will remind its people of the late leader’s greatness and the success of his son’s leadership. This year is also the 100th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-un’s grandfather and the founder of the dynasty, as well as the year North Korea was to have become a “strong and prosperous nation.” Mr. Kim is running out of time to provide some evidence of that achievement.

And “what better time to paint Washington, Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing into a corner with a flare-up that demands crisis-management diplomacy than during leadership transition?” asked Lee Sung-yoon, a North Korea specialist at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Massachusetts, referring to elections and leadership changes unfolding in countries with the most at stake in the region.

“For Pyongyang, the perennial problem child in Northeast Asia, it pays to provoke,” Mr. Lee said, noting the North’s longstanding strategy of using military threats to grab the region’s attention and extract concessions.

This will be the second attempt by North Korea to send a satellite named after its late leader into orbit by year’s end. A rocket carrying a Kwangmyongsong satellite exploded in April shortly after takeoff. The mishap embarrassed Mr. Kim before the foreign journalists his government had invited to witness the launching. It also scuttled U.S. aid shipments and invited the comment from the country’s rival, South Korea, that the estimated $900 million Pyongyang had spent in developing and launching the rocket would have been better used to buy food for its hungry people. Mr. Kim hardly needs another embarrassment.

If successful, however, the rocket launching will bolster the claim North Korea made in October that it has missiles capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. Washington has said that the North Korean rocket is essentially a long-range missile minus a warhead, and therefore banned under U.N. resolutions. How close North Korea has come to mastering the technology necessary to deliver a nuclear payload by intercontinental ballistic missile is open to question.

The planned rocket launching comes amid signs that North Korea and Iran, Washington’s two leading proliferation concerns, have been strengthening their ties, including an agreement on scientific and technological cooperation signed in September. Iran said in 2009 that it had succeeded in putting a satellite into orbit with its Safir rocket. The Japanese and South Korean news media reported this week that Iranian specialists were in North Korea to help fix whatever caused the April launch failure.

“It’s time to formally consider the North Korean and Iranian missile development programs as an integrated one: A missile test in Iran helps North Korea, and a missile test in North Korea helps Iran in terms of sharing of test results and improved components,” said John S. Park, a nuclear security researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, adding that Chinese companies have served as intermediaries helping procure and transport components for the two nations.

The North Korean rocket presents one of the first foreign policy tests for Xi Jinping, the new Chinese leader. So far, Beijing appears to be following its standard playbook, not obsessing, publicly at least, over North Korea’s missile threats while encouraging the gradual economic reforms that it hopes will bring progress on denuclearization. The Chinese Foreign Ministry has called on “all sides” to remain “calm and restrained.”

Washington has condemned North Korea’s “highly provocative act.” But the administration of President Barack Obama, who will begin his second term in January, will probably need months to coordinate policy with the new leaderships its allies are in the midst of selecting. Japan is to hold parliamentary elections Dec. 16, and South Korea will elect a president Dec. 19.

Read More..

Celebrations planned as Wash. legalizes marijuana

SEATTLE (AP) — Legal marijuana possession becomes a reality under Washington state law on Thursday, and some people planned to celebrate the new law by breaking it.

Voters in Washington and Colorado last month made those the first states to decriminalize and regulate the recreational use of marijuana. Washington's law takes effect Thursday and allows adults to have up to an ounce of pot — but it bans public use of marijuana, which is punishable by a fine, just like drinking in public.

Nevertheless, some people planned to gather at 12:01 a.m. PST Thursday to smoke in public beneath Seattle's Space Needle. Others planned a midnight party outside the Seattle headquarters of Hempfest, the 21-year-old festival that attracts tens of thousands of pot fans every summer.

"This is a big day because all our lives we've been living under the iron curtain of prohibition," said Hempfest director Vivian McPeak. "The whole world sees that prohibition just took a body blow."

In another sweeping change for Washington, Gov. Chris Gregoire on Wednesday signed into law a measure that legalizes same-sex marriage. The state joins several others that allow gay and lesbian couples to wed.

That law also takes effect Thursday, when gay and lesbian couples can start picking up their wedding certificates and licenses at county auditors' offices. Those offices in King County, the state's largest and home to Seattle, and Thurston County, home to the state capital of Olympia, planned to open the earliest, at 12:01 a.m. Thursday, to start issuing marriage licenses. Because the state has a three-day waiting period, the earliest that weddings can take place is Sunday.

The Seattle Police Department provided this public marijuana use enforcement guidance to its officers via email Wednesday night: "Until further notice, officers shall not take any enforcement action — other than to issue a verbal warning — for a violation of Initiative 502."

Thanks to a 2003 law, marijuana enforcement remains the department's lowest priority. Even before I-502 passed on Nov. 6, police rarely busted people at Hempfest, despite widespread pot use, and the city attorney here doesn't prosecute people for having small amounts of marijuana.

Officers will be advising people to take their weed inside, police spokesman Jonah Spangenthal-Lee wrote on the SPD Blotter. "The police department believes that, under state law, you may responsibly get baked, order some pizzas and enjoy a 'Lord of the Rings' marathon in the privacy of your own home, if you want to."

Washington's new law decriminalizes possession of up to an ounce for those over 21, but for now selling marijuana remains illegal. I-502 gives the state a year to come up with a system of state-licensed growers, processors and retail stores, with the marijuana taxed 25 percent at each stage. Analysts have estimated that a legal pot market could bring Washington hundreds of millions of dollars a year in new tax revenue for schools, health care and basic government functions.

But marijuana remains illegal under federal law. That means federal agents can still arrest people for it, and it's banned from federal properties, including military bases and national parks.

The Justice Department has not said whether it will sue to try to block the regulatory schemes in Washington and Colorado from taking effect.

"The department's responsibility to enforce the Controlled Substances Act remains unchanged," said a statement issued Wednesday by the Seattle U.S. attorney's office. "Neither states nor the executive branch can nullify a statute passed by Congress" — a non-issue, since the measures passed in Washington and Colorado don't "nullify" federal law, which federal agents remain free to enforce.

The legal question is whether the establishment of a regulated marijuana market would "frustrate the purpose" of the federal pot prohibition, and many constitutional law scholars say it very likely would.

That leaves the political question of whether the administration wants to try to block the regulatory system, even though it would remain legal to possess up to an ounce of marijuana.

Colorado's measure, as far as decriminalizing possession goes, is set to take effect by Jan. 5. That state's regulatory scheme is due to be up and running by October 2013.

___(equals)

Johnson can be reached at https://twitter.com/GeneAPseattle

Read More..

Intersection near L.A. library named for Ray Bradbury

The intersection of 5th and Flower streets in downtown Los Angeles was designated Ray Bradbury Square by city officials Thursday.

But a better description might be "the intersection of imagination and inspiration," author and producer Steven Paul Leiva told fans of the noted writer who died in June at age 91.

The location, near the front entrance to the Central Library, is a fitting place to honor the author of "The Illustrated Man" and "The Martian Chronicles" because Bradbury was a lifelong supporter of libraries and wrote his early short stories and novels on library typewriters that were available to the public.

"Bradbury couldn't afford to go to college so he went to the public library instead," city Librarian John Szabo told a crowd of more than 100 on hand for the unveiling of the intersection's new signs. "He said he graduated at age 28 from the library."

Said one of Bradbury's daughters, Sue Bradbury Nixon:

"My father would say that the library was his university. He would lecture at libraries for free. He was concerned that without everyone's support libraries would close."

Bradbury's writing career began at age 12 when he met a carnival magician called Mr. Electrico, who touched him with his "electric sword" and caused his hair to stand on in end, which he later described as an epiphany.

"I knew something special had happened in my life," Bradbury would explain.

Those honoring Bradbury on Thursday recalled his poetically spun fantasy and horror tales, some of which reflected his fear that technology was causing humans to lose touch with their souls.

The theme of his 1953 bestseller "Fahrenheit 451," in which a totalitarian government destroys books, was not censorship but how technology such as television was deterring people from reading, he said.

Perhaps because of that fear, Bradbury pounded out his 1,000-word-a-day writing regimen on a typewriter instead of a computer and was reluctant to have his work published as e-books.

Nonetheless, he remained a futurist to the end. Actor Joe Mantegna, who had a role in the 1998 movie "The Wonderful Ice Cream Suit" — based on Bradbury's 1957 short story called "The Magic White Suit" — told the crowd that the author's dream was to have his ashes "put in a Campbell's soup can and sent to Mars."

"He was a science fiction writer who admitted he knew no science," said another friend, fellow science fiction author David Brin. "He couldn't solve an algebra problem. He'd say 'I don't write science fiction. I write fantasy.' But nothing made him happier than sitting next to Walter Cronkite during the moon landing."

Brin joked that Bradbury "nodded" in recognition to City Councilman Jose Huizar, who represents the downtown area, when a gust of wind knocked a large color portrait of him off an easel. It was caught by author Sam Weller, who wrote a 2005 biography of Bradbury.

He said a Fire Department ambulance's siren "saluted" Bradbury as it screamed down Flower Street, momentarily drowning out City Councilman Paul Koretz as he spoke to the crowd.

Although Bradbury was born in Waukegan, Ill., and his family didn't move to Los Angeles until he was 14, the new Ray Bradbury Square signs succinctly describe him as "Author-Angeleno."

bob.pool@latimes.com

Read More..

Oscar Niemeyer, Modernist Architect of Brasília, Dies at 104

Eraldo Peres/Associated Press

The Esplanade of Ministries in Brasília features some of the most famous works by the architect Oscar Niemeyer, including the Metropolitan Cathedral, center right. More Photos »

Oscar Niemeyer, the celebrated Brazilian architect whose flowing designs infused Modernism with a new sensuality and captured the imaginations of generations of architects around the world, died on Wednesday in Rio de Janeiro. He was 104.

The medical staff at the Hospital Samaritano in Rio, where he was being treated, said on national television that he died of a respiratory infection. Mr. Niemeyer was among the last of a long line of Modernist true believers who stretch from Le Corbusier and Mies van der Rohe to the architects who defined the postwar architecture of the late 1940s, ’50s and ’60s. He is best known for designing the government buildings of Brasília, a sprawling new capital carved out of the Brazilian savanna that became an emblem both of Latin America’s leap into modernity and, later, of the limits of Modernism’s utopian aspirations.

His curvaceous, lyrical, hedonistic forms helped shape a distinct national architecture and a modern identity for Brazil that broke with its colonial and baroque past. Yet his influence extended far beyond his country. Even his lesser works were a counterpoint to reductive notions of Modernist architecture as blandly functional.

“Brazil lost today one of its geniuses,” Dilma Rousseff, Brazil’s president, said in a statement issued Wednesday night. “Few dreamed so intensely, and accomplished so much, as he did.” Allied with the far left for most of his life, he suffered career setbacks during the rule of Brazil’s right-wing military dictatorships of the 1960s and ’70s, and he was barred from working in the United States during much of the cold war. As Modernism later came under attack for its sometimes dogmatic approach to history, his works were marginalized.

Still, Mr. Niemeyer never stopped working; he churned out major new projects through his 80s and 90s. And as the cold-war divide and architecture’s old ideological battles faded from memory in recent years, a younger generation began embracing his work, intrigued by the consistency of his vision and his ability to achieve voluptuous effects on a heroic scale. For his part, Mr. Niemeyer never wavered from a conviction that, as he once put it, “form follows beauty.”

Oscar Ribeiro de Almeida Niemeyer Soares Filho was born in Rio de Janeiro on Dec. 15, 1907, one of six children of a typographer and his wife. His father owned a graphic arts business, and a grandfather was a judge on the country’s supreme court. A precocious talent, Mr. Niemeyer was trained at the National School of Fine Arts, where he soon drew the attention of its dean, Lucio Costa. Costa was at the center of a small group of architects working to bring the message of Modernist architecture to Brazil.

The timing was ideal. Costa was then designing the Ministry of Education and Health’s headquarters in Rio, and he invited Mr. Niemeyer to join his firm as a draftsman. In 1936, the ministry hired the Swiss-born architect Le Corbusier to contribute ideas for the design. Le Corbusier was already a legend in architecture, and the building would become the first major public project by a Modernist architect in Latin America.

Mr. Niemeyer, one of several draftsmen assigned to the project, absorbed Le Corbusier’s vision of a modern world shaped by the myth of the machine, and drew on the master’s belief in an architecture of abstract forms enlivened by a sensitive use of light and air.

A Vision Emerges

But Mr. Niemeyer was also a self-confident apprentice with a vision of his own; under Costa’s supervision, he made significant changes to Le Corbusier’s scheme. The columns supporting the building’s main office block were more than doubled in height, giving the structure a more slender profile. An auditorium that Le Corbusier had envisioned as a separate structure was tucked under the office block, creating a more compact urban composition.

Shielded from the sun behind rows of elegant baffles, the building had a clean, stripped-down style that made it a sparkling example of classical Modernism while heralding Brazil’s emergence as a vibrant center of experimentation.

Simon Romero contributed reporting from Rio de Janeiro.

Read More..