Dec 22, 2025
Hegseth Gotta Go
It seems clear the guy is pushing a religious agenda, which should be obvious as a violation of the first amendment.
DOJ Fails
Anybody up for some Waste, Fraud, and Abuse?
WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal agent described her wounds as “boo-boos.”
Nevertheless, the Department of Justice aggressively pursued the alleged perpetrator. They jailed Sidney Lori Reid on a charge of felony assault, accusing her of injuring the agent during a July protest of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown in Washington, D.C.
When grand jurors thrice declined to indict the 44-year-old on the felony, prosecutors tried her on a misdemeanor.
Body camera footage played at trial revealed that Reid had not intentionally struck the agent. Instead, the agent had scratched her hand on a wall while assisting another agent who had shoved Reid and told her to “shut the f—- up” and “mind her own business.”
It took jurors less than two hours to acquit the animal hospital worker.
“It seemed like my life was just going to be taken away from me,” said Reid, who spent two days in jail and worried she would lose her new job and apartment. “It broke my heart because this is supposed to be a good and fair country and I did not see anything surrounding my case that was good or fair at all for anybody.”
Reid’s case was part of the Justice Department’s monthslong effort to prosecute people accused of assaulting or hindering federal officers while protesting the Republican president’s immigration crackdown and military deployments. Attorney General Pam Bondi has ordered prosecutors to charge those accused of assaulting officers “with the highest provable offense available under the law.” In a recent statement, Bondi pledged that offenders will face “severe consequences.”
The Justice Department has struggled to deliver on that commitment, however. In examining 166 federal criminal cases brought since May against people in four Democratic-led cities at the epicenter of demonstrations, The Associated Press found:
— Of the 100 people initially charged with felony assaults on federal agents, 55 saw their charges reduced to misdemeanors or dismissed outright. At least 23 pleaded guilty, most of them to reduced charges in deals with prosecutors that resulted in little or no jail time.
— More than 40% of the cases involved relatively minor misdemeanor charges, a figure that appears to undermine Trump’s claims that many of those accused are domestic terrorists.
— All five defendants, including Reid, who went to trial so far were acquitted.
— Prosecutors have successfully secured felony indictments against at least 58 people, some initially charged with misdemeanors. Those people have been accused of an assortment of assaults that include throwing rocks at federal vehicles, and punching or kicking officers. Those cases are awaiting trial.
Several factors help explain the mixed record. Sometimes prosecutors have failed to win grand jury indictments required to prosecute someone on a felony. In other instances, videos and testimony have called into question the initial allegations, resulting in prosecutors downgrading offenses. In dozens of cases, officers suffered only minor injuries, or no injuries at all, undercutting a key component of the felony assault charge that requires the potential for serious bodily harm.
Felonies carry stiff sentences, often years in prison. A misdemeanor conviction, on the other hand, typically results in no jail time or only a few weeks or months behind bars.
Former prosecutors and law professors said the AP’s analysis raises questions about how the Justice Department has prosecuted protesters.
“It’s clear from this data that the government is being extremely aggressive and charging for things that ordinarily wouldn’t be charged at all,” said Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor who is the director of Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy. “The other thing that is missing here from the way the federal government appears to be looking at these protests is there seems to be no respect for First Amendment rights. They appear to want to chill people from protesting against the administration’s mass deportation plans.”
Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor and former adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School, said Justice Department officials could be working on other cases instead of “minor, minor misdemeanors.”
“Many of these cases also show how the rhetoric on Twitter and in press releases and statements is not surviving the courtroom,” he said. “What that tells you is that the Trump administration is hoping to send a message and chill future protests, not pursue serious criminal cases that need to be prosecuted.”
The Justice Department said it will continue to seek the most serious available charges against those alleged to have put federal agents in harm’s way.
“We will not tolerate any violence directed toward our brave law enforcement officials who are working tirelessly to keep Americans safe,” said Natalie Baldassarre, a department spokesperson. “Those who attack law enforcement will be held fully accountable for their actions, despite the best efforts of activist liberal judges who would rather see violent criminals walk free.”
From the start of Trump’s second term through Nov. 24, the Department of Homeland Security says there have been 238 assaults on Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel nationwide, up from 19 during the same period last year. The agency declined to provide its list or provide details about how it defines assaults.
The assaults have occurred amid a pair of shootings targeting immigration detention facilities in Texas and the deadly attack on National Guard troops in Washington, where a former Afghan soldier who had worked for the CIA has been charged.
The specter of antifa
The administration has deployed — or sought to deploy — troops to the four cities where AP examined the criminal cases: Washington; Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; and Chicago. Judges have blocked the deployments in Portland and Chicago, citing a lack of credible evidence there’s any organized rebellion and finding that Trump administration officials had often exaggerated or lied about threats posed by protesters. A district judge and an appeals court have gone back and forth over whether Trump must give control of the troops in California back to the state.
Trump and his administration have sought to justify the military deployments, in part, by painting immigration protesters as “antifa,” which the president has sought to designate as a “domestic terrorist organization.”
“President Trump will not turn a blind-eye to the sustained campaign of violence destroying American cities perpetrated by leftists and those who enable them,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman.
Short for “anti-fascists,” antifa is an umbrella term for far-left-leaning protesters who confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists, sometimes clashing with law enforcement.
The AP’s review found only a handful of references to “antifa” in court records for any of the 166 cases it reviewed. Federal prosecutors wrote in court papers that a defendant in Portland was someone who “claims a loose association with Antifa.” In another case, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit that conservative influencers had described a protester as an “Antifa helper or agitator.”
The AP found no case in which federal authorities officially accused a protester of being a “domestic terrorist” or part of an organized effort to attack federal agents.
In affidavits for many of the Portland cases, federal agents referred to so-called “black bloc” protesters who wear all black clothing but did not use the word “antifa” to describe them.
In at least one press release, DHS has alleged a protester was a suspected member of antifa. That person was arrested outside a Chicago-area ICE facility in October while allegedly carrying a firearm. He has not yet been charged with a crime, court records show.
Five people pleaded guilty last month to terrorism-related offenses stemming from a July 4 shooting that wounded a police officer outside an immigration detention center near Dallas. Prosecutors in that case accused the defendants of being part of an antifa cell. It was not included in AP’s analysis because it did not occur in one of the four cities where Trump has sought to deploy troops.
“Rioters and other violent criminals have threatened our law enforcement officers, thrown rocks, bottles, and fireworks at them, slashed the tires of their vehicles, rammed them, ambushed them, and even shot at them,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.
Evaporating Felonies
— All five defendants, including Reid, who went to trial so far were acquitted.
— Prosecutors have successfully secured felony indictments against at least 58 people, some initially charged with misdemeanors. Those people have been accused of an assortment of assaults that include throwing rocks at federal vehicles, and punching or kicking officers. Those cases are awaiting trial.
Several factors help explain the mixed record. Sometimes prosecutors have failed to win grand jury indictments required to prosecute someone on a felony. In other instances, videos and testimony have called into question the initial allegations, resulting in prosecutors downgrading offenses. In dozens of cases, officers suffered only minor injuries, or no injuries at all, undercutting a key component of the felony assault charge that requires the potential for serious bodily harm.
Felonies carry stiff sentences, often years in prison. A misdemeanor conviction, on the other hand, typically results in no jail time or only a few weeks or months behind bars.
Former prosecutors and law professors said the AP’s analysis raises questions about how the Justice Department has prosecuted protesters.
“It’s clear from this data that the government is being extremely aggressive and charging for things that ordinarily wouldn’t be charged at all,” said Mary McCord, a former federal prosecutor who is the director of Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy. “The other thing that is missing here from the way the federal government appears to be looking at these protests is there seems to be no respect for First Amendment rights. They appear to want to chill people from protesting against the administration’s mass deportation plans.”
Randall Eliason, a former federal prosecutor and former adjunct professor at the George Washington University Law School, said Justice Department officials could be working on other cases instead of “minor, minor misdemeanors.”
“Many of these cases also show how the rhetoric on Twitter and in press releases and statements is not surviving the courtroom,” he said. “What that tells you is that the Trump administration is hoping to send a message and chill future protests, not pursue serious criminal cases that need to be prosecuted.”
The Justice Department said it will continue to seek the most serious available charges against those alleged to have put federal agents in harm’s way.
“We will not tolerate any violence directed toward our brave law enforcement officials who are working tirelessly to keep Americans safe,” said Natalie Baldassarre, a department spokesperson. “Those who attack law enforcement will be held fully accountable for their actions, despite the best efforts of activist liberal judges who would rather see violent criminals walk free.”
From the start of Trump’s second term through Nov. 24, the Department of Homeland Security says there have been 238 assaults on Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel nationwide, up from 19 during the same period last year. The agency declined to provide its list or provide details about how it defines assaults.
The assaults have occurred amid a pair of shootings targeting immigration detention facilities in Texas and the deadly attack on National Guard troops in Washington, where a former Afghan soldier who had worked for the CIA has been charged.
The specter of antifa
The administration has deployed — or sought to deploy — troops to the four cities where AP examined the criminal cases: Washington; Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; and Chicago. Judges have blocked the deployments in Portland and Chicago, citing a lack of credible evidence there’s any organized rebellion and finding that Trump administration officials had often exaggerated or lied about threats posed by protesters. A district judge and an appeals court have gone back and forth over whether Trump must give control of the troops in California back to the state.
Trump and his administration have sought to justify the military deployments, in part, by painting immigration protesters as “antifa,” which the president has sought to designate as a “domestic terrorist organization.”
“President Trump will not turn a blind-eye to the sustained campaign of violence destroying American cities perpetrated by leftists and those who enable them,” said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman.
Short for “anti-fascists,” antifa is an umbrella term for far-left-leaning protesters who confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists, sometimes clashing with law enforcement.
The AP’s review found only a handful of references to “antifa” in court records for any of the 166 cases it reviewed. Federal prosecutors wrote in court papers that a defendant in Portland was someone who “claims a loose association with Antifa.” In another case, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit that conservative influencers had described a protester as an “Antifa helper or agitator.”
The AP found no case in which federal authorities officially accused a protester of being a “domestic terrorist” or part of an organized effort to attack federal agents.
In affidavits for many of the Portland cases, federal agents referred to so-called “black bloc” protesters who wear all black clothing but did not use the word “antifa” to describe them.
In at least one press release, DHS has alleged a protester was a suspected member of antifa. That person was arrested outside a Chicago-area ICE facility in October while allegedly carrying a firearm. He has not yet been charged with a crime, court records show.
Five people pleaded guilty last month to terrorism-related offenses stemming from a July 4 shooting that wounded a police officer outside an immigration detention center near Dallas. Prosecutors in that case accused the defendants of being part of an antifa cell. It was not included in AP’s analysis because it did not occur in one of the four cities where Trump has sought to deploy troops.
“Rioters and other violent criminals have threatened our law enforcement officers, thrown rocks, bottles, and fireworks at them, slashed the tires of their vehicles, rammed them, ambushed them, and even shot at them,” said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.
Evaporating Felonies
Federal immigration enforcement agents detain a protester in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025. (Anthony Vazquez/Chicago Sun-Times via AP, File)
Federal immigration enforcement agents detain a protester in the Little Village neighborhood of Chicago on Thursday, Oct. 23, 2025. (Anthony Vazquez/Chicago Sun-Times via AP, File)
The AP’s analysis showed that dozens of people charged with felonies have seen their offenses reduced to misdemeanors.
Among them was Dana Briggs, a 70-year-old Air Force veteran who was charged in September with assault after a protest in Chicago. Prosecutors first downgraded the charge to a misdemeanor. After video footage emerged of federal agents knocking Briggs to the ground, prosecutors dropped the case. Prosecutors declined to say why they dismissed it.
In Portland, 28-year-old Lucy Shepherd was charged in November with felony assault after she batted away the arm of a federal officer who was attempting to clear a crowd outside the city’s ICE facility. Her lawyers argued in court filings that a video of her arrest proved there had not been an assault. The video, they wrote, showed she brushed aside an officer with “too little force to have been intended to inflict any kind of injury on the officer whatsoever.” Prosecutors dropped the case.
The office of the U.S. attorney for Oregon declined to comment.
Prosecutors are not required to disclose why they sought to downgrade a charge, and much of that process is cloaked in secrecy. Legal experts said prosecutors typically take such action when they learn the evidence is weaker than expected or uncover facts that do not support a felony charge.
Court records showed that prosecutors have secured felony indictments against people who are accused of assaulting federal officers and agents in a host of ways. They have been accused of hurling rocks and projectiles at officers, punching or kicking them and shooting them with paintballs.
How a case dissolved
Marimar Martinez, a 30-year-old teaching assistant at a Montessori school, was arrested and charged in October with a felony, accusing her of trying to use her car to ram into a Border Patrol agent in a southwest Chicago neighborhood. A DHS press release asserted that she and the driver of another car involved in the incident were “domestic terrorists.”
In court papers, an FBI agent alleged that Martinez and the other driver were “aggressively” driving and chasing a Border Patrol vehicle.
When Border Patrol agents got out of their vehicle, the FBI agent wrote, Martinez drove at one of the agents. The agent was forced to open fire, the agent alleged, striking Martinez at least five times. She was treated at a hospital and released. Inside Martinez’s car, authorities recovered a loaded firearm, the agent wrote.
DHS noted in a press release that Martinez had been armed with a “semi-automatic weapon.” Martinez and a 21-year-old man were charged with assaulting a federal officer with her vehicle, which was classified as a dangerous weapon. They faced up to 20 years in prison.
Then the case fell apart.
It turned out Martinez legally owned the gun, and her attorneys contended that video footage — from security cameras and body cameras worn by Border Patrol officers — undermined the official narrative. The videos showed a Border Patrol agent steering his vehicle into Martinez’s truck, rather than the other way around, her attorney said. Text messages showed the federal agent bragging about his marksmanship after the shooting.
“I fired 5 rounds and she had 7 holes,” read a text message that the agent, Charles Exum, sent to colleagues. “Put that in your book boys.” Twenty-four hours after the shooting, Exum texted, “Cool, I’m up for another round.”
Federal prosecutors last month dismissed all charges against Martinez and the other driver. Martinez’s attorney celebrated the move but emphasized that his client’s “life is changed forever” due to her physical injuries, trauma and long-term impacts of being publicly branded a “domestic terrorist.”
“They call this ‘Operation Midway Blitz,’ but I call it ’Operation Midway Bust’ because this and every case that has come out of this has fallen apart,” said the lawyer, Christopher Parente.
Joseph D. Fitzpatrick, an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, said prosecutors are constantly evaluating evidence to ensure “the interests of justice are served in each and every case.”
Legal experts said dropping cases or reducing charges are not straightforward victories for the accused.
They noted that defendants have to hire lawyers and may face significant legal expenses. They may also be held in jail for days or weeks, potentially losing jobs and seeing their families disrupted.
That right there is the point of it. People tend to back off when Trump's Goons demonstrate government power.
The value of their actions is all about the harassment, so it's not quite the failure it appears to be.
Lost at trial
Former federal prosecutors and defense attorneys said they were surprised that the Justice Department took at least five misdemeanor cases to trial. Such trials eat up resources, and those convicted frequently receive little jail time. The experts said they were also shocked DOJ lost all five cases at trial, a sign that the cases were particularly weak.
“When the DOJ tries to take a swing at someone, they should hit 99.9% of the time. And that’s not happening,” said Ronald W. Chapman II, a defense attorney with extensive experience in the federal courts.
The highest-profile loss involved Sean Charles Dunn, a Washington, D.C., man who tossed a Subway-style sandwich at a Border Patrol agent he had berated as a “fascist.” Dunn was acquitted Nov. 6 after a two-day trial.
Katherine Carreño was arrested in August on a felony assault charge, accused of striking a federal officer in Los Angeles. The 32-year-old was protesting with a group outside the downtown federal building when DHS security officers asked them to move out of the way of a vehicle that was trying to enter a gate, according to a criminal complaint.
Carreño, a paralegal, said it was one of many times she had gone to demonstrate in front of the federal complex where immigrants were being detained.
An officer gave “two loud commands to move back,” which all protesters did except Carreño, the complaint alleged. The officer pushed her away from the vehicle, and Carreño “raised her hand and brought it down in a slapping/chopping motion” onto the officer’s arm. She did this twice before being detained, the complaint said.
Prosecutors reduced the charge to a misdemeanor and took her to trial.
Social media video shown to jurors showed an officer striding toward Carreño and pushing her back. She was not standing in front of the vehicle but to the right and slightly forward of it. The video did not show whether Carreño hit the officer.
The officer said she did not push Carreño. Some jurors, pointing to the video evidence, said they disagreed. It took them just under five hours to reach their verdict — not guilty.
Happy Birthday
Brownie Mary
Mary Jane Rathbun (December 22, 1922 – April 10, 1999), popularly known as Brownie Mary, was an American medical cannabis rights activist. As a hospital volunteer at San Francisco General Hospital, she became known for baking and distributing cannabis brownies to AIDS patients. Along with activist Dennis Peron, Rathbun lobbied for the legalization of cannabis for medical use, and she helped pass San Francisco Proposition P (1991) and California Proposition 215 (1996) to achieve those goals. She also contributed to the establishment of the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club, the first medical cannabis dispensary in the United States.
Rathbun was arrested on three occasions, with each arrest bringing increased local, national, and international media attention to the medical cannabis movement. Her grandmotherly appearance generated public sympathy for her cause and undermined attempts by the district attorney's office to prosecute her for possession. The City of San Francisco eventually gave Rathbun permission to distribute cannabis brownies to people with AIDS. Her arrests generated interest in the medical community and motivated researchers to propose one of the first clinical trials to study the effects of cannabinoids in HIV-infected adults.
Early life
Rathbun was arrested on three occasions, with each arrest bringing increased local, national, and international media attention to the medical cannabis movement. Her grandmotherly appearance generated public sympathy for her cause and undermined attempts by the district attorney's office to prosecute her for possession. The City of San Francisco eventually gave Rathbun permission to distribute cannabis brownies to people with AIDS. Her arrests generated interest in the medical community and motivated researchers to propose one of the first clinical trials to study the effects of cannabinoids in HIV-infected adults.
Early life
Brownie Mary was born Mary Jane Rathbun in Chicago, Illinois, on December 22, 1922. Her mother, a conservative Irish Catholic, named her "Mary Jane". She was raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she attended Catholic school. At the age of 13, she was involved in an altercation with a nun who tried to cane her, but Rathbun fought back. As a teenager, she moved out of her home and found a job as a waitress; she worked as a waitress for most of her adult life. Social activism appealed to her from a young age; she traveled from Chicago to Wisconsin to campaign for the right of miners to form unions. In the late 1940s, she worked as an activist promoting abortion rights for women in Minneapolis. During World War II, she moved to San Francisco, California, where she met a man at a United Service Organization (USO) dance. They married, but soon divorced. The marriage produced a daughter, Peggy, who was born in 1955. She later moved to Reno, Nevada, but after Peggy was killed by a drunk driver in a car accident in the early 1970s, Rathbun returned to San Francisco.
Activism
Rathbun first met fellow activist Dennis Peron in 1974 in the Castro district at Cafe Flore, where they shared a joint. While working as a waitress at the International House of Pancakes, she earned extra money selling cannabis-laced brownies; she became known in the Castro for selling "magical brownies" out of a basket for several dollars each. Rathbun baked and sold cannabis brownies for profit out of her house. Peron also sold Rathbun's brownies at his Big Top pot supermarket on Castro Street. He was shot in the leg during a police raid on his business in 1977.
In the early 1980s, Rathbun was baking about 50 dozen cannabis brownies per day. She advertised her "original recipe brownies" on San Francisco bulletin boards, calling them "magically delicious". An undercover police officer discovered what she was doing, and on the night of January 14, 1981, police raided Rathbun's home and found more than 18 pounds (8.2 kg) of cannabis, 54 dozen cannabis brownies, and an assortment of other drugs. When Rathbun opened the door, she reportedly told the police, "I thought you guys were coming." She was 57 years old when she was first arrested. It was at this time that the media began calling her "Brownie Mary". She pleaded guilty to nine counts of possession and received three years probation. The judge also sentenced her to 500 hours of community service. Rathbun began working with the Shanti Project, a support group for people with HIV/AIDS. According to Peron:
Those first 500 hours she worked at a variety of places, from the gay thrift store to the Shanti project, doing her community service in record time—60 days. Although no longer obligated to do community service, she continued her work for St. Martin de Pores soup kitchen until 1982, when she joined the Shanti project, which was responding to the demands of the emerging AIDS crises. Mary had lost her only daughter in an auto accident ... and now she adopted every kid in San Francisco as her own.
Rathbun's brownie customers were mostly gay men. When they first began coming down with AIDS in the early 1980s, she noticed that cannabis helped them with the wasting syndrome; she also found this to be true of cancer patients. People donated cannabis to Rathbun and she began baking brownies in the hundreds and distributing them to sick people free of charge. Rathbun's monthly $650 Social Security check helped her to purchase baking supplies.
On December 7, 1982, Rathbun was walking down Market Street carrying a bag of brownies when she by chance met one of the officers who had originally arrested her in 1981. Rathbun was on her way to deliver cannabis brownies for a friend who had cancer and was suffering from the side effects of chemotherapy. The officer inquired as to the contents of her bag and found her in possession of four dozen cannabis brownies. She was taken to the city jail and held on multiple counts of possession and violation of her probation. The district attorney eventually dropped the charges.
Beginning in 1984, Rathbun volunteered weekly in the AIDS ward (Ward 86) at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH). According to Donald Abrams, "she used to wheel our patients to radiology [and] take their specimens to the lab". Ward 86 honored her with a "Volunteer of The Year" award in 1986. Author Carol Pogash profiled Rathbun's volunteer work at SFGH in her book, As Real As It Gets: The Life of a Hospital at the Center of the AIDS Epidemic (1992).
In New York in the early 1990s, Peron spoke at a meeting of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) about the possible use of cannabis for the relief of AIDS symptoms. Multiple studies had demonstrated that cannabis could help with nausea and the loss of appetite suffered by patients undergoing therapy for diseases like cancer and AIDS. However, cannabis had been illegal in the United States since 1937. Classified under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act in 1970 as a drug that "has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States", medicinal users of cannabis were subject to arrest.
In spite of a skeptical reception at his initial meeting with ACT UP, Peron persisted. He told Rathbun about ACT UP, and she later spoke to the group about her first-hand experience distributing cannabis-laced brownies to people with AIDS. Reporter Peter Gorman noted that this time "the reception was warmer, but still skeptical".
Rathbun helped work on Proposition P, which made it the policy of the City of San Francisco to recommend that the State of California and the California Medical Association make cannabis available for medicinal purposes and to protect physicians from penalties for prescribing medicinal cannabis. Proposition P passed with the support of 79 percent of San Francisco voters on November 5, 1991.
In New York in the early 1990s, Peron spoke at a meeting of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP) about the possible use of cannabis for the relief of AIDS symptoms. Multiple studies had demonstrated that cannabis could help with nausea and the loss of appetite suffered by patients undergoing therapy for diseases like cancer and AIDS. However, cannabis had been illegal in the United States since 1937. Classified under Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act in 1970 as a drug that "has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States", medicinal users of cannabis were subject to arrest.
In spite of a skeptical reception at his initial meeting with ACT UP, Peron persisted. He told Rathbun about ACT UP, and she later spoke to the group about her first-hand experience distributing cannabis-laced brownies to people with AIDS. Reporter Peter Gorman noted that this time "the reception was warmer, but still skeptical".
Rathbun helped work on Proposition P, which made it the policy of the City of San Francisco to recommend that the State of California and the California Medical Association make cannabis available for medicinal purposes and to protect physicians from penalties for prescribing medicinal cannabis. Proposition P passed with the support of 79 percent of San Francisco voters on November 5, 1991.
"My kids need this and I'm ready to go to jail for my principles ... I'm not going to cut any deals with them. If I go to jail, I go to jail."
Brownie Mary
Rathbun was arrested for a third time in Cazadero, California, on July 19, 1992, while pouring cannabis into brownie batter at the home of a grower. She was charged with possession of 2.5 pounds (1.1 kg) of cannabis and released on bail. The Sonoma County district attorney's office attempted to prosecute her in People v. Rathbun, bringing her case international media coverage. She pleaded not guilty to two counts of felony marijuana possession. Rathbun was acquitted of the charges. Attorney Norman Elliott Kent notes that Rathbun's legal defense relied on medical necessity, the same defense used by Robert Randall in United States v. Randall (1976). According to Kent, Rathbun "was able to testify that her deliveries were made to assist others in need, not to advance individual greed, that the nobility of her actions outweighed the reprehensibleness of her offense according to the law."
In August 1992, Rathbun testified about medical cannabis in a hearing held by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. The Board passed a resolution making the arrest or prosecution of people in possession of or growing medical cannabis the "lowest priority". The Board recognized Rathbun's volunteer work at the hospital by declaring August 25 "Brownie Mary Day".
In September 1992, Rathbun joined ACT UP/DC at a protest in Washington, D.C., against the medical cannabis policies of the George H. W. Bush administration. The group delivered a letter to James O. Mason, head of the United States Public Health Service, requesting that people with AIDS receive immediate access to cannabis. After fourteen years of allowing a small group of individuals to use cannabis for medicinal purposes, Mason had terminated the federal government's Compassionate Investigational New Drug program (Compassionate IND) in March 1992. The Carter administration first established the Compassionate IND program in 1976 when Robert C. Randall successfully argued a medical necessity defense in United States v. Randall.
In addition to cancelling Compassionate IND, Mason made controversial comments about the program, arguing, among other things, that people with AIDS who used cannabis "might be less likely to practice safe ... sexual behavior." ACT UP/DC asked Mason to resign his post if he failed to meet their demands to restore access to cannabis. Brownies were served at the protest in honor of Rathbun, who had been arrested the month before and was now facing felony possession charges for distributing cannabis brownies to AIDS patients. Outside the Department of Health and Human Services, Rathbun invited Mason to "follow me around for two days as I visit my kids in the wards, and then see where he stands on this".
In 1992, Rathbun helped Peron open the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club, the first medical cannabis dispensary in the United States. In 1996, she and Peron campaigned on behalf of California Proposition 215, a statewide voter initiative that would allow patients to possess and cultivate cannabis for personal medical use with the recommendation of a physician. The initiative passed with more than 55 percent of the vote and became state law; other states have since passed similar legislation.
In 1997, she was honored as the Grand Marshal of the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade, along with Dennis Peron.
Personal life
Rathbun often appeared in public wearing polyester pantsuits, and she was said to have a "sailor's mouth." Jane Meredith Adams of The Dallas Morning News observed that "four-letter words are an essential part of the vocabulary of Brownie Mary." Philosophically, she considered herself an anarchist and an atheist.
Illness and death
Rathbun suffered from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and osteoarthritis. She survived colon cancer and walked with artificial knees. Rathbun often self-medicated by consuming half a cannabis brownie in the morning and another half in the afternoon to ease the pain of osteoarthritis in her knees. She claimed cannabis brownies allowed her to walk and helped her with her gout. By the spring of 1996, Rathbun was in extreme pain and was no longer able to bake. She began losing weight and told Peron that she considered traveling to Michigan for physician-assisted suicide at the hands of Jack Kevorkian. After suffering a fall in August 1998, Rathbun was admitted to Mount Zion Hospital for surgery on her neck and spine. She recovered from the operation at Davies Medical Center, but received few visitors. Later, she was confined to a bed at Laguna Honda Hospital, a nursing home for the poor. Rathbun died of a heart attack at age 76 on April 10, 1999. On April 17, 300 people, including her friend, district attorney Terence Hallinan, attended a candlelight vigil held in her honor in the Castro. Hallinan told a crowd of several hundred people gathered at her memorial that she was a hero who will "one day be remembered as the Florence Nightingale of the medical marijuana movement."
Legacy
Legacy
The Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, and CNN distributed stories about Rathbun's arrests around the world and brought her campaign for access to medical cannabis to a wide audience. Her grandmotherly visage became the public face of the American medical cannabis movement in the early 1990s, winning support and sympathy for the movement. Support for Proposition P and California Proposition 215 gained momentum when her arrests were publicized. Rathbun and her court case in 1992 became, according to Jane Meredith Adams of The Dallas Morning News, "a cause célèbre for those fighting to legalize marijuana for medical use...a heroine to people with AIDS and cancer" and others. English news magazine The Economist attributed Rathbun's efforts at direct action on the issue to the change in electoral support for medical cannabis in the United States: "In 1996 California eased its law on the use of marijuana. The change allows a doctor in the state to prescribe the drug if he believes it will lessen a patient's pain. The relaxation in the public mood towards the use of marijuana was ascribed chiefly to Mary Jane Rathbun."
Rathbun's 1992 arrest caught the attention of her friend Donald Abrams, clinical professor at the University of California, San Francisco, and a physician at San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH). He was in Amsterdam attending an AIDS conference when he learned of Rathbun's arrest by way of CNN. Rick Doblin of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies read about Rathbun's arrest in the newspaper. He sent a letter to the AIDS program at SFGH proposing that "Brownie Mary's institution" should consider conducting clinical trials of cannabis on the wasting syndrome in AIDS patients. Inspired by Rathbun's arrest, Abrams and Doblin collaborated to develop a protocol to test the effects of cannabis on appetite and body weight. Five years later, after two of their proposed studies were rejected by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), their third research protocol, "Short-Term Effects of Cannabinoids in Patients with HIV-1 Infection", was finally approved in 1997. The study was funded with $978,000 from the National Institutes of Health with cannabis supplied by NIDA.
Dec 21, 2025
Today's Robert
Powerful monied people have been pressing the Both Sides crap for a very long time, intending (IMO) to collapse our little experiment in democratic self-government in order to install a corporate-style plutocracy.
And it's possible that the Epstein thing is going to blow it all up - if we can get or most of it - or enough of it - out into the sunlight.
Let no ox go ungored.
Paraphrasing A Quote
The world is my country,
every human is my kin,
and doing good is my religion.
--Thomas Paine
Today's Rich
Did we think that horseshit AI clip about Trump Gaza was just MAGA trolling the libs?
It's still possible that it's nothing but a new grift.
Happy Solstice, Everybody
December 21 @ 8:03 am
The season of the dark
sits on us like the weight
of love gone wrong.
And just as we begin
to believe the light has died forever
the sun begins to stay a little longer.
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