Barbara Lee, Barbara Lee, oh Barbara Lee...

Congresswoman Barbara Lee has been out and about these days. She appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher, then hula hooped with Stephen Colbert (just before he celebrated Washington DC's legalization of marijuana).

The only Congressperson to vote against the Iraq war (or more specifically, the blank-check ability for any President to wage war indefinitely), Lee is no stranger to courageous positions. So it was fitting that she was present to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Berkeley Patient's Group, a medical marijuana dispensary in her district (pictured).

Lee presented BPG with a Congressional recognition, just after watching them donate $10,000 to the local Women's Cancer Resource Center. We don't celebrate our sheroes often enough on this blog, or elsewhere, so here we recognize the good Congresswoman, whose constituents like to say, "Barbara Lee speaks for me."

Pundits are scratching their heads over the Republican landslide midterm election that also saw marijuana measures carry in Oregon and Alaska, as well as DC and a score of cities and counties in Michigan, Maine, Massachusetts and New Mexico. In addition, California and New Jersey passed key criminal justice measures defelonizing crimes like drug possession.

All seven of NORML PAC’s publicly endorsed candidates for the US House of Representatives won decisively, including New Jersey's Bonnie Watson Coleman. Pennsylvania's anti-marijuana Republican Governor Tom Corbett got trounced by Democratic challenger Tom Wolf, who is friendly to marijuana. In California, Lee won handily but three of the worst-voting Democrats on marijuana matters got the boot:  Assemblymembers Steve Fox of Palmdale, Sharon Quirk-Silva of Fullerton, and Al Muratsuchi from Torrance. And Colorado's Democratic governor John Hickenlooper, who retained his seat, announced he would be giving a rebate to state voters after bringing in $50 million in tax revenues from legal marijuana.

The message is clear: supporting marijuana reform is no longer a third rail in politics, and being against this emerging voting block might just get you an early retirement from public life.

MORE ON THE MEDIA
Maher smoked his interview with Kal Penn, who starred as a pothead in the Harold and Kumar movies, and also worked in the Obama administration. Asking Penn to nudge Obama on pot, Maher rightly pointed out, "He must know that there's a lot of people who can't vote, can't get housing, can't do a lot of things, get jobs because they have that on their record, that he could have on his record because of what he did. And that's just a hypocrisy I don't think he should be able to live with."

Interviewing rising Democratic star Sen. Kristin Gillibrand, Colbert asked, since marijuana is now legal in DC, might that have a positive effect on the hostility in Washington. "Maybe it would help if you and Mitch McConnell got together and smoked pot," he joked. But although Colbert enjoined Obama to "appoint yourself Commander in Spleef," Obama spoke about sharing a bourbon instead with McConnell, who represents the hemp-growing state of Kentucky.

Stay tuned: CelebStoner ‏reports that Very Important Pothead Woody Harrelson will host Saturday Night Live on 11/15, and Tokin Woman Cameron Diaz will do so the following week (11/22).

Kathy Bates: I Shared Some Good Stuff with Susan Sarandon

Actress extraordinaire Kathy Bates is the latest celeb to "out" herself as a potsmoker on Andy Cohen's "Watch What Happens Live" on Bravo TV.

Asked to pick the bigger pothead between Matthew McConaughey and Susan Sarandon, Bates said she shared "some good sh##" with Sarandon and Melissa McCarthy last June. "But I didn't inhale," she joked.

Bates played a marijuana smoker in the 2011-12 series "Harry's Law," but had to play a witch in "American Horror Story: Coven" to win an Emmy this year. She played Alice B. Toklas's lover Gertrude Stein on film in Woody Allen's "Midnight in Paris."


Others who've talked about pot with Cohen include Oprah Winfrey and Sarandon herself; Martha Stewart told Cohen that "of course" she knows how to roll a joint.

Thanks to the Smell the Truth blog for the tip. 

John Wayne & McCarthyism : Out Macho-ing Marijuana

A poster spotted by marijuana historians Michelle & Michael Aldrich at The Hash Museum in Barcelona promotes John Wayne starring in a film titled Marijuana.

Turns out the poster was for a European release of the 1952 film Big Jim McLain in which Wayne plays an  investigator for the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), headed by the notorious Sen. Joseph McCarthy. The film was re-written and dubbed to change the "bad guys" to marijuana smugglers for release in Europe.

In the original, Wayne's tactics include dating the secretary of a labor official's psychiatrist (played by Nancy Olson from Sunset Boulevard, who hated the script). The psychiatrist kills McLain's partner (James Arness) with an injection of a truth serum. A title card on the film says it was based on actual HUAC files, and made with the cooperation of the committee. (The pot smokers = commies connection again, as in the 1957 film Sweet Smell of Success.)

Big Jim McLain was the first film produced by Wayne-Fellows Productions (later renamed Batjac), John Wayne's independent production company. This image is funny, as though Wayne could sock marijuana in the eye, which he tried to do to sell this rotten film in Europe. Wayne later produced The Green Berets to drum up support for the war in Vietnam.

In other propaganda wars: these days, the Long Beach Police Department has seen fit to warn parents that their child might come home with marijuana-laced candies on Halloween. Their press release states, “Although there have been no reported incidents in Long Beach where a child unknowingly ingested marijuana laced candy, parents should still take every precaution.” I don’t know of marijuana-laced candy being distributed to children anywhere, on Halloween or any other time. But hey, let’s not miss another chance to scare people needlessly about marijuana.

In San Diego, a law enforcement officer was been spotted wearing a T-shirt that said, "Fuck the Growers. Marijuana's Still Illegal." Lake County, CA has let people know they're still out eradicating illegal marijuana gardens, despite a court ruling requiring officers to get a warrant first. And two licensed medical marijuana dispensaries in LA were raided by the DEA this week.

But perhaps most disturbing news came during the proceedings in federal court in Sacramento on Friday, where Dr. Greg Carter was cross-examined by a government attorney because he submitted testimony in favor of rescheduling cannabis to make it legal to study and prescribe. The US attorney demanded to know whether Carter considered himself an activist, and whether or not he was a member of NORML, the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. This question is often asked in court proceedings in the McCarthyesque format, "Are you, or have you ever been, a member of NORML?"

Dr. Carter answered that he isn't a member of NORML, although he works with the organization on some of their publications. (He is co-author, along with Cal NORML director Dale Gieringer, of the Medical Marijuana Handbook.) A highly credentialed MD who specializes the the treatment of ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease), Carter said he has been trying unsuccessfully to get a government grant to study the use of cannabis for ALS patients. And although he hasn't smoked marijuana in at least 25 years, Carter said if he had a disease like ALS he would try it, because, “For neuropathic pain, there is overwhelming evidence that cannabis is effective." But why bother to use science and reason when it's so much more fun to punch out what we'd rather not understand?

UPDATE: The movie Trumbo has a scene where screenwriter Dalton Trumbo confronts Wayne about his dodging of military service (and subsequent "patriotism").

The California Assembly rejected a bill that would have designated a "John Wayne Day" because of his racism and support for HUAC.

Siberian Princess / Shaman Used Cannabis; Had Cancer?

UPDATE 10/15: Princess Ukok is included in the new book Tokin' Women: A 4000-Year Herstory.

Scientists are claiming that the 2500-year-old mummy known as the "Ice Princess," whose elaborately tatooed body was buried with six saddled horses and other acoutrements including a container of cannabis, had breast cancer.

The Siberian woman's frozen remains were discovered in 1993 by archaeologist Natalia Polosmak high in the Altai Mountains. She was apparently a high priestess of the Pazyryk people, who were closely related to the Scythians, the tribe of the Amazon Women that inhaled cannabis smoke ritually, as described by the Greek historian Herodotus in 440BCE.

Now a team of Russian scientists say MRI technology has found evidence of breast cancer, the bone infection osteomyelitis, and injuries consistent with a fall -- perhaps from a horse, in the Ice Princess. Polosmak wrote in a recent issue of the journal Science First Hand: “It is likely that for this sick woman, the regular inhalation of cannabis smoke was a necessity.”

I rather like to think of her as more a shamaness. Her "elaborate headgear" can be interpreted "as a symbol of the Tree of Life—a healing tree which existed in so many cultures all around the planet."

Another recent discovery found two Viking women buried similarly with a container of cannabis.

Stoner Babes in Chains (with Chocolate!)

I call them my Popeye moments: "That's all I can stands, and I can't stands no more." So I stuff some spinach in my pipe and start to write.

After an OK start, Elle magazine's "Pot Week" quickly took a nosedive into vapidity, with scintillating (not) stories about how to give yourself a cannabis facial or find pot-leaf-motif accessories, or hempy cosmetics. At least it was nice they were promoting some pot-friendly businesses, I consoled myself.

But the capper came today, with a story titled, "High Fashion: Pairing Artisanal Pot Chocolates With Fall's Best Looks." Because, ladies, you wouldn't want the chocolate you eat not to match your designer duds. How gauche would that be? The piece pictured a Claire Danes-look alike in a fetching frock splashed with color, just like the chic chocolates next to her.

Coincidentally, I caught Danes tonight smoking a joint in the 1999 film Brokedown Palace. She puffs her pot in a Thai prison, where two American women played by her and Kate Beckinsale are sent for being tricked (or coerced) into smuggling heroin.

It made me think of Mollie Fry, the California MD who's serving time in federal prison for growing 30 some marijuana plants a year for three years (aggregated to 100 plants so that she got a five year mandatory minimum sentence). Fry, who is in her 60s, recently did a stint in solitary confinement because she dared to give some medical advice to a fellow prisoner.

It's no accident that the creator of "Weeds" followed it with "Orange is the New Black." California just released statistics showing that 1513 women were arrested on marijuana felonies in 2013, and 1240 saw misdemeanor charges (those figures don't count the number of tickets given for the infraction of less than an ounce). But California's female attorney general Kamala Harris doesn't seem to care, giggling when the subject of legalization was brought up and reaching to the lame argument that we have to be worried about second-hand marijuana smoke.

Nationwide, 61% of women prisoners are mothers of young children and one half of all inmates held in federal prisons are nonviolent drug offenders (Harper's Index, June & July 2014; US Dept. of Justice).  Last I checked, there were still California counties who shackle women prisoners while they are giving birth, despite a new state law outlawing the practice.

Danes is now playing a schizophrenic CIA agent involved with the President in Homeland. In real life, the White House outed CIA agent Valerie Plame for political purposes, endangering her and the people she worked with. A new round of Gary Webb-bashing has accompanied the release of a film about the reporter, Kill The Messenger, detailing his series for the San Jose Mercury News about the CIA's complicity in importing crack cocaine into South Central Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, NORML Women's Alliance leader Cheri Sicard is holding a Bingo Night fundraiser for Paul Free, who is one of several prisoners unjustly serving life sentences for marijuana "crimes." Because another thing that sucks is how many of our men are in prison.

As we munch our designer chocolates and watch our fantasy TV shows, let's take a moment for a reality check (not a Reality TV check). Hey, I hear the new style at the Milan fashion shows is Bohemian, with flat heels, and fewer fancy gowns. If the fashion world can gain some sanity, maybe we all can.

Melissa Etheridge To Market Marijuana-Infused Wine

UPDATE 10/15: Etheridge is included in the new book Tokin' Women: A 4000-Year Herstory.

Tokin' Woman Melissa Etheridge moved the medical marijuana issue forward in 2005 when she told Dateline NBC she used it for the effects of her chemotherapy. The rocker went further in 2010, appearing at a press event in favor of California's effort to legalize the weed for all adults. “I don’t want to look like a criminal to my children anymore," she said. "I want them to know this is a choice that you make as a responsible adult.”

Etheridge donated proceeds from a 2011 film she made about breast cancer to the medical marijuana movement, and she won a 2013 Tokey Award for penning the oped, "Pot Got Me Through" for CNN.

It is fitting then that Etheridge is joining the ranks of female marijuana entrepreneurs, as celebrated by Elle.com this week.

The singer told Bloomberg News that she is working on a cannabis-infused wine that "tastes amazing." She called the venture "a huge opportunity" and said she looks forward to "bringing this to a world in a not scary way, not a drug, outlaw way...this is an American business that really needs a lot of help."

Elle.com's "Pot Week"

Elle.com has acknowledged marijuana's move to the  mainstream by dubbing this "Pot Week".

It's accompanied by a slide show titled, From Annie Hall to Miley: A Visual History of the Stoner Babe.

Opening with Tokin Woman Maya Angelou, it moves through Annie Hall, 9 to 5, Oprah Winfrey, Roseanne Barr, Saving Grace, Sex in the City, Jennifer Aniston, Lady Gaga, Martha Stewart, Mad Men, Susan Sarandon, Rhianna and Miley Cyrus.

It adds a few I haven't covered, like Bridget Fonda in Jackie Brown (pictured), Lindsay Weir from Freeks and Geeks, Stephanie from The Wackness, Kristina Braverman from Parenthood and the gals from High Maintenance and Broad City.

The site followed with a second slide show, highlighting their 13 Most Powerful Women in the Cannabis Industry.

The week of features follows this weekend's New York Times style section story highlighting the female pot entrepreneurs in Colorado. “We’re weeding out the stoners,” said Olivia Mannix, the 25-year-old co-founder of a start-up called Cannabrand, an advertising agency devoted exclusively to marketing marijuana. “We want to show the world that normal, professional, successful people consume cannabis.”

It has been announced that pot researcher Dr. Julie Holland will team with Diablo Cody (Juno) and Oprah Winfrey on an HBO comedy based on Holland's new book Moody Bitches: The Truth About the Drugs You’re Taking, the Sex You’re Not Having, The Sleep You’re Missing and What’s Really Making You Crazy. The book examines “the pros and cons of the drugs people are being offered as well as some surprising and highly effective natural therapies.”

(Thanks to Steve Bloom of CelebStoner for the tips.)