That marijuana charge was eventually dropped in an agreement with the city of Missoula, and Prosser had reason to rejoice in 2004 when Montanans passed a law allowing medical use of the drug. [...]

The ruling came to haunt Prosser in late March, when DEA agents seized less than a half ounce of marijuana sent to her by her registered caregiver in Flathead County.

At the time, the DEA special agent in charge of the Rocky Mountain Field Division said federal agents were “protecting people from their own state laws” by seizing such shipments.[...]

Aren't they kind? Protecting us from our own state's laws. And you know, who really needs laws anymore, given this imperative? All we really need are kind stormtroopers.

Without the relief that marijuana delivered to her, Robin Prosser killed herself at home last week. She was 50.

(Is this what it means to "kill someone with kindness"?)

“She just said she couldn't take it all anymore,” Byard said.

In her guest opinion [essay], Prosser wrote that: “I'm 50 years old, low-income and sick. I spend most days in my apartment in bed, with no air conditioning, unable to go outside because I can't tolerate the sun.”

Beset by financial problems, troubled by depression, unable to find a reliable source of pain relief, she took her own life three months after the piece was published.

“Give me liberty or give me death,” she wrote in July. “Maybe the next campaign ought to be for assisted-suicide laws in our state. If they will not allow me to live in peace, and a little less pain, would they help me to die, humanely?”

Before being disabled by her disease, Prosser was a concert pianist and a systems analyst. After the disease hit her, she became a tireless advocate for legalized use of marijuana in medical situations.

So let's recap. Let's break it down nice and slow for those of you with a huge lungful of pot smoke:

• Invading other nation because you feel like it: LEGAL

• Rolling a joint because it takes your mind of your painful disease: ILLEGAL

• Hiring contractors who are kill-happy and who assault and murder humans for very little reason: AMERICAN GOVERNMENT WILL EQUIVOCATE

• Growing and preparing and ingesting herb in privacy of own home as a sunlight substitute: AMERICAN GOVERNMENT WILL NOT HESITATE TO PUNISH YOU

• Creating a prison in Cuba where you can escape the laws that govern our behavior: FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WILL DO

• Legally passing a State Law allowing citizens to befriend plants: FEDERAL GOVERNMENT WILL UNDO

• Wiretapping citizens phone calls and intercepting their emails: LEGAL (even when Illegal!)

• Natural herbs that enhance the quality of your life: ILLEGAL (even when Legal!)

• Waterboarding: UNDERSTANDABLE

• Bong Hits Against Painful Autoimmune Diseases: NON-NEGOTIABLE and ILLEGAL

So the next time someone asks you "What part of 'illegal' don't you understand?" Tell them "All of it."

What I'm reading is that the government and its laws are professing that any control or force exerted upon us—or any other people with lesser weaponry—is acceptable. From denial of self-medication to denial of happiness to inflicting pain directly to inflicting murder. The government and their muscle approve their own philosophies and their own use of force to back up those philosophies upon us. (Again, or on anyone less strapped than themselves.) Not a very deep or difficult lesson to read.

But if you, good citizen, attempt to exert your own life force, your own control, such as on your body, or your own peace of mind—even if you use resources wholly not owned nor impacting upon that same government to do so—this body of men (yes, and women) with guns will go so far as to kill you, in the end, to prevent you from exercising such volition.

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness? Really?

Remember the days we believed that government was here simply to serve the People, simply to reflect the People's wishes, to ensure that the People could live life happily and free from Tyranny? What was that...seventh grade?

Regardless, this is certainly not true today. The People do not want war. But politicians speak of keeping this war going no shorter than another SIX YEARS. At the soonest! The people did not want Bush. But he is our "president" today because the Supreme Court overruled the People. The People want Impeachment. But even their new representative voice, the ("big" and quickly becoming Mainstream in their own right) blogs, won't talk about it, let alone our "representatives." The People do not want wiretapping indiscriminately and without oversight, but we have it. The People—state by state—do not want draconian and absurd laws prohibiting plants like Marijuana (a natural wonder that promotes brain cell growth ("neurogenesis") as well as provides anti-depressant effects, staves off alzheimers, and fights cancer)—and yet the Federal Government steps in to "save" the People from such terrible consequences. A government you and I fund! A government that exists because we work hard to pay for it!

It's not parody anymore. It's not funny. It's a fucking madhouse in here. Again and again. The government steps in. Not to make sure the People have a life of liberty. But to "save" them from their own actual needs and wants. Saving them over there and saving us from our own lives and desires over here. Saving everyone, and with no idea of what is up or what is down.

Saddest part is they don't even have the cojones to call things by name. Or they seek to confuse us along with themselves. But they certainly don't even have the moral fortitude nor courage of conviction you'd think that such forceful and intrusive natures would bring. They skulk like liars, even. All they have are big guns and bad stories. The men with triggers and spygoggles and three-thousand dollar pens and sunbeam rugs lie and make up transparent shit like "we thought they had WMD" or "we are saving you from your own decisions." And they righteously watch people kill themselves who just want a fucking joint. Who just want some relief from the pain their particular path has brought them.

Our government. These frontmen. These sick self-serving suits. These hypocritical well-dressed human beings suffering spiritual sepsis sneak out of their own military service, make secret deals with official US enemies, love up some underage interns on the IM, get freaky in bathrooms and in clergy robes and in wetsuits, and then these fucking fascists want to invade every oil-rich country on the globe and spout off on TV about some bullshit, some grandiose patriotic cess designed as combination aphrosidisiac, hypnotizing agent, and anthem-odor.

I leave you to make up your own mind about this Law and this Government and what it all should mean to you. Not to mention the words and morality of those in power today, as well as the agendas that spring from that (a)morality. I have to get off the keyboard so I can use both hands to roll this next piece out. Adagio. Dolce. Rubato.

I will accept any rules that you feel necessary to your freedom. I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.

—R.A. Heinlen