House Financial Services Committee chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling

Republicans and some Democrats have targeted the package passed in 2010, known as Dodd-Frank, for intense criticism. Conservatives decry the string of comprehensive new regulations as onerous and guilty of stunting economic growth.

Financial industry interests have also complained, flooding lawmakers who want to rewrite Dodd-Frank with cash in the last two election cycles and gaining new influence when Republicans seized control of the House.

This political alliance has begun paying handsome dividends for financial companies as legislators hostile to the new regulations are willing to go to considerable lengths to make sure the industries covered by the oversight are given a chance to craft reforms more to their liking.

The New York Times reports on Friday that House Republicans working on bills to repeal Dodd-Frank and loosen myriad other financial regulations have allowed banking lobbyists to draft much of the legislation themselves. Three-quarters of the language in one bill that easily passed the House Financial Services Committee had been written by lobbyists for Citigroup. Industry officioals defend such a practice as “common” in Washington.

Wall Street and big banks, once reviled as the driving forces of the 2008 market crash and subsequent recession, have seen their reputations significantly polished in the nation’s capital. Banks and their lobbyists now enjoy a “resurgent influence” with business-friendly Republicans and election-wary Democrats in Congress.

Bank lobbyists are not leaving it to lawmakers to draft legislation that softens financial regulations. Instead, the lobbyists are helping to write it themselves.

One bill that sailed through the House Financial Services Committee this month — over the objections of the Treasury Department — was essentially Citigroup’s, according to e-mails reviewed by The New York Times. The bill would exempt broad swathes of trades from new regulation.

In a sign of Wall Street’s resurgent influence in Washington, Citigroup’s recommendations were reflected in more than 70 lines of the House committee’s 85-line bill. Two crucial paragraphs, prepared by Citigroup in conjunction with other Wall Street banks, were copied nearly word for word. (Lawmakers changed two words to make them plural.)

The lobbying campaign shows how, three years after Congress passed the most comprehensive overhaul of regulation since the Depression, Wall Street is finding Washington a friendlier place.

The cordial relations now include a growing number of Democrats in both the House and the Senate, whose support the banks need if they want to roll back parts of the 2010 financial overhaul, known as Dodd-Frank.

This legislative push is a second front, with Wall Street’s other battle being waged against regulators who are drafting detailed rules allowing them to enforce the law.

The payoff for both sides in the equation is incredibly attractive. Financial companies have been able to ingratiate themselves with lawmakers already receptive to their calls for fewer regulations by spending huge sums on lavish lobbying events and bankrolling scores of congressional candidates.

And as its lobbying campaign steps up, the financial industry has doubled its already considerable giving to political causes. The lawmakers who this month supported the bills championed by Wall Street received twice as much in contributions from financial institutions compared with those who opposed them, according to an analysis of campaign finance records performed by MapLight, a nonprofit group.

In recent weeks, Wall Street groups also held fund-raisers for lawmakers who co-sponsored the bills. At one dinner Wednesday night, corporate executives and lobbyists paid up to $2,500 to dine in a private room of a Greek restaurant just blocks from the Capitol with Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, Democrat of New York, a co-sponsor of the bill championed by Citigroup.

Industry officials acknowledged that they played a role in drafting the legislation, but argued that the practice was common in Washington. Some of the changes, they say, have gained wide support, including from Ben S. Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman. The changes, they added, were in an effort to reach a compromise over the bills, not to undermine Dodd-Frank.

It’s unlikely to be a coincidence that the chairman of the House committee in charge of financial industry oversight and at the center of granting direct access by lobbyists to the drafting of important regulatory bills has been wined and dined by some of the nation’s leading banks.

According to Pro Publica, Texas Rep. Jeb Hensarling met with several banking executives at an exclusive Utah ski resort — complete with a celebrity chef to cater the event — only weeks after attaining chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee. That is the same committee now discovered to be letting lobbyists for Citigroup and other banks draft legislation intended to gut federal financial regulations.

The posh party for Hensarling’s campaign PAC may not have breached any election laws, but it presented an “invaluable opportunity” for financial companies and their lobbyists.

In January, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, ascended to the powerful chairmanship of the House Financial Services Committee. Six weeks later, campaign finance filings and interviews show, Hensarling was joined by representatives of the banking industry for a ski vacation fundraiser at a posh Park City, Utah, resort.

The congressman’s political action committee held the fundraiser at the St. Regis Deer Valley, the “Ritz-Carlton of ski resorts”known for its “white-glove service” and for its restaurant by superstar chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

Working from a blueprint compiled by the so-called “Gang of Eight,” moderate Democrats and Republican lawmakers that have long championed changes to immigration policy, the Senate on Tuesday passed a final immigration bill out of a key committee in a move that triggers a full vote on the measure. Senators on the Judiciary Committee approved the sweeping immigration legislation in a stunning bipartisan 13-5 vote, with important Republicans joining with Democrats in support.

Democrats on Capitol Hill and most Hispanic and immigrant advocacy groups cheered the Senate vote as a monumental step towards a more human national immigration policy and one that could bring millions of undocumented men, women and children out of the shadows and help them to eventually attain citizenship.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved the bipartisan “gang of eight” immigration bill on Tuesday in a 13 to 5 vote after a marathon final day of markup that stretched into the evening.

All Democrats on the committee, along with Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and gang of eight Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), voted in favor of the bill, which will now go to the Senate floor. Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), who voted against the bill out of committee, said he would support allowing it to move forward for debate — rather than joining a filibuster — once on the Senate floor. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who was also a “no” vote, said if it had been between his vote and moving the bill to the Senate floor, he would have voted in favor.

The crowd in the room erupted into applause when the final vote tally was read, rising to their feet and chanting “Yes we can!” then “Si se puede!”

Democrats seemed equally pleased to vote the bill out of committee.

“The dysfunction in our current immigration system affects all of us and it is long past time for reform,” Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said before the bill’s passage. “I hope that our history, our values, and our decency can inspire us finally to take action. We need an immigration system that lives up to American values and helps write the next great chapter in American history by reinvigorating our economy and enriching our communities.“

Though getting through the Judiciary Committee marks a historic victory for supporters of immigration reform, The accolades and celebrations following Tuesday’s vote could prove premature. That the bill nearly died in the Democratic-controlled Senate is an indication of the extreme jeopardy any immigration-related legislation is in upon arrival in the House, a chamber now dominated by hardcore conservative Republicans.

Tea Party favorites had already tried to scuttle debate on immigration in the committee stage, with GOP Senators Ted Cruz and Rand Paul leading the opposition to any measure that included citizenship for undocumented individuals or other government benefits for immigrants that entered the country “illegally.” This position was in stark contrast to other Republicans like Orrin Hatch and Lindsey Graham who actively worked with their Democratic foes in crafting the “Gang of Eight” package.

Conservatives are prepared to make a last stand in the House, threatening to kill any immigration deal and widen the rift that has developed between the GOP”s conservative base and its more moderate establishment. One leading Tea Party supporter in the House spoke for many of his colleagues when he declared that there is “no bill that I can support.”

With the Senate landmark immigration bill set to go to the full chamber floor for a vote, attention is now shifting to expected heated debate over the version in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Senate leaders received praise for coming to a bipartisan consensus on key issues Tuesday night — although one involved the very controversial decision to withdraw an amendment including same-sex couples — thus paving the way for a panel to approve the measure 13-5.

But the immigration plan, which is backed by President Obama and many establishment Republicans, appears headed for a showdown with wary House conservatives.

…….

It’s unclear whether the Republican-run House will embrace the Senate proposal, which would create a pathway to citizenship for many who entered the country illegally. Chances are slim.

“There’s no bill I’ve seen that I can support,” Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Texas, said in an interview Tuesday. When his constituents hear explanations of the proposed pathway to citizenship, he said, “they omit that paragraph and pencil in ‘amnesty.’”

Such uncertainty in the House and the necessity of winning a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate has forced immigration proponents to make a number of concessions to those conservatives willing to work on the issue.

Putting together this shaky coalition of Republicans needed to pass a broader bill has had one extremely important consequence for a large group of immigrants, as well as more obtuse ramifications for millions of other Americans . The final language of the Senate package specifically excluded any official recognition of same-sex marriages for immigration purposes, a nod to the right that has left gay activists livid at being abandoned to improve the prospects of a bill that very likely will die in the House regardless.

Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy had offered an amendment to the larger immigration package that would have created legal recognition of the immigration rights of gay couples and same-sex marriages.Such a mandate would directly impact the nearly 30,000 LGBT couples currently unable to unite in the United States under existing immigration procedures.

Although the existing ban on recognizing immigrant gay marriages or civil unions could soon be struck down by the Supreme Court’s upcoming decision on the federal Defense of Marriage Act, gay rights groups had sought to circumvent the uncertainty of waiting for a legal ruling by enshrining equal rights and protections in any congressional immigration legislation.

Leahy was forced to pull his provision on gay couples with a “heavy heart” after public opposition from key Republicans caused Democrats in the Senate to express their unwillingness to vote for it if it meant the entire bill could be stalled. Flipping on a path to citizenship for the undocumented is part of the GOP’s effort to rebrand the party as more tolerant and inclusive, but that policy shift still does not extend to LGBT immigrants or citizens.

Conservative lawmakers claimed acknowledging gay rights in the immigration law would be a “bridge too far” for them after risking Tea Party backlash for backing the broader measure.

Sen. Patrick Leahy withdrew his proposed amendment to the comprehensive immigration reform bill that would have recognized the marriages of same-sex couples for immigration purposes on Tuesday night, after several Democratic members of the committee stated that they would not be supporting it.

A little past 7 p.m., Leahy said, “It is with a heavy heart … I will withhold the Leahy Amendment 7 at this point.”

Leahy, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, offered the amendment a half-hour earlier, saying, “I don’t want to be the senator who asks Americans to choose between the love of their life and the love of their country.”

He added, “Discriminating against people based on who they love is a travesty,” noting that he wanted to hear from members of the bipartisan “Gang of Eight” senators about why they didn’t include protections for gay couples in the initial bill.

Sen. Lindsey Graham went first, saying he opposed the inclusion of gay couples’ protections in the bill, despite noting his respect for Leahy’s “passion” is support of marriage equality.

“If you redefine marriage for immigration purposes [by the amendment], the bill would fall apart because the coalition would fall apart,” Graham said. “It would be a bridge too far.”

Democrats immediately sought to comfort the gay community by promising to resurrect the provision at a later date, possibly as a standalone measure. But such a bill would be unlikely to win GOP support in the Senate on its own, and would face certain defeat in the House.

Republican lawmakers supportive of immigration reform had warned their Democratic colleagues that any push to include gay rights in immigration legislation would drive off conservative votes for the bill. And religious groups lobbying for an immigration bill had likewise issued threats that they would attack any package that featured protections for gays despite breaking with their ideological allies and advocating for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

“Immigration is hard enough. Let’s not go down the road of redefining marriage,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told reporters last month, adding that the language “is not going to be in the bill.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-S.C.) echoed that point to Politico. “It will virtually guarantee that it won’t pass,” he said. “This issue is a difficult enough issue as it is. I respect everyone’s views on it. But ultimately, if that issue is injected into this bill, the bill will fail and the coalition that helped put it together will fall apart.”

And as Politico’s Carrie Budoff-Brown points out, the provision might also provoke a host of evangelical and Catholic leaders who have endorsed the “Gang of Eight” effort. Support from religious groups has been viewed by advocates as crucial to winning the backing of GOP lawmakers and approval from conservative voters.

Reaction from the LGBT community has been swift. Activists have voiced outrage at the premise put forward by Democrats that protections for gay couples was not important enough to risk  scuttling the entire immigration bil, and that Republicans were using the gay couple issue to hold the entire package hostage.

Gay rights groups charged that Democrats “don’t have the courage or the spine” to take on conservatives that remain opposed to any federal recognition of same-sex marriage or civil unions.

Several key gay rights groups did not accept that rationale, arguing that the issue was a matter of principle and fairness for the estimated 30,000 binational same-sex couples who remain unable to unite in the country. They are currently barred from receiving a spousal visa under the federal Defense of Marriage Act.

“Today it became clear that our so-called ‘friends’ don’t have the courage or the spine to stand up for what’s right,” said Felipe Sousa-Rodriguez, co-director of the advocacy group GetEqual. He added that Democratic lawmakers “are content to buy into the false choice that Republicans created — holding a sorely needed immigration bill hostage in order to cement inequality into law.”

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Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin denounced the four Republicans in the bipartisan immigration group — Graham and Sens. John McCain (Ariz.), Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Jeff Flake (Ariz.).

“It is deplorable that a small number of senators have been able to stand in the way of progress for lesbian and gay couples torn apart by discriminatory laws,” Griffin said. “We are extremely disappointed that our allies did not put their anti-LGBT colleagues on the spot and force a vote.”

Aftermath of an American drone strike in Yemen (Al Jazeera)

A host of details have gradually been assembled piecing together a picture of the armed drone programs operated by American military and intelligence agencies in Pakistan, Yemen, and other foreign countries. Strikes targeting known or suspected foreign-born terrorists have routinely been publicized and openly discussed by government officials and military personnel.

However, rumors and eventual proof of deadly drone attacks on American citizens fighting with al Qaeda and other suspected terror groups in Southeast Asia or the Middle East had never been admitted officially by the Obama administration. A cone of silence existed around the specific targets of drone strikes who were speculated to be U.S. citizens — most notably American-born radical Anwar al-Awlaki.

On Wednesday, the New York Times reports that Attorney General Eric Holder formally acknowledged the direct targeting of Awlaki and the deaths of three other Americans in U.S. drone strikes conducted in Yemen and Pakistan. THe three other men were not “specifically” targeted, according to the Attorney General.

Holder broke the news in a letter to members of Congress, where several hearings and investigations of the administration’s use of drones overseas have shed considerable light on the formerly secret program.

One day before President Obama is due to deliver a major speech on national security, his administration on Wednesday formally acknowledged that the United States had killed four American citizens in drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan

In a letter to Congressional leaders obtained by The New York Times, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. disclosed that the administration had deliberately killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was killed in a drone strike in September 2011 in Yemen.

The American responsibility for Mr. Awlaki’s death has been widely reported, but the administration had until now refused to confirm or deny it.

The letter also said that the United States had killed three other Americans: Samir Khan, who was killed in the same strike; Mr. Awlaki’s son Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was also killed in Yemen; and Jude Mohammed, who was killed in a strike in Pakistan.

“These individuals were not specifically targeted by the United States,” Mr. Holder wrote.

Holder’s letter to lawmakers goes into new detail on how and why Awlaki was deemed so dangerous to American interests that a drone strike was approved. Justification for the lethal use of drones has been an important part of the administration’s policy of unmanned targeted killings, though their legal arguments have been far from universally accepted as legitimate.

Besides the well-known and highly radical aspects of Awlaki’s teachings and internet-based content, the Attorney General claims he “planned” and was directly implicated in at least two terrorist plots against U.S. airliners, information that had not been previously disclosed. Given these alleged threats, Holder argues the use of deadly force against Awlaki was “lawful” and “just.”

But Mr. Holder’s letter went further in discussing the death of Mr. Awlaki in particular, an operation the administration had previously refused to publicly acknowledge. He said it was not Mr. Awlaki’s words urging violent attacks against Americans that led the United States to target him, but direct actions in planning attacks.

Mr. Holder alleged that Mr. Awlaki not only “planned” the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009, a claim that has been widely discussed in court documents and elsewhere, but also “played a key role” in an October 2010 plot to bomb cargo planes bound for the United States, including taking “part in the development and testing” of the bombs.

“Moreover, information that remains classified to protect sensitive sources and methods evidences Awlaki’s involvement in the planning of numerous other plots against U.S. and Western interests and makes clear he was continuing to plot attacks when he was killed,” Mr. Holder wrote.

He added, “The decision to target Anwar al-Awlaki was lawful, it was considered, and it was just.”

The Attorney General’s letter is significant in that it represents the first instance of a formal acknowledgement that Awlaki was not only killed by the United States, but that he was directly targeted and that a drone was used to take him out. Countless media reports following his death in September 2011 eventually affirmed that a U.S. drone strike was responsible, but official confirmation was absent.

Holder’s letter to Congress marks a shift away from the abstract regarding the Obama administration’s controversial and increasingly contentious drone policy, especially its role in targeting American citizens. It’s also remarkable considering the White House and government officials spent months trying to keep secret any and all details on Awlaki’s death.

A New York Times article from this March explains the events up to and immediately after Awlaki’s death in excruciating detail, including that event’s place as a breakthrough in the push by the administration and U.S. intelligence community to craft a legal justification for such a killing.

Eighteen months later, despite the Obama administration’s effort to keep it cloaked in secrecy, the decision to hunt and kill Mr. Awlaki has become the subject of new public scrutiny and debate, touched off by the nomination of John O. Brennan, Mr. Obama’s counterterrorism adviser, to be head of the C.I.A.

The leak last month of an unclassified Justice Department “white paper” summarizing the administration’s abstract legal arguments — prepared months after the Awlaki and Khan killings amid an internal debate over how much to disclose — has ignited demands for even greater transparency, culminating last week in a 13-hour Senate filibuster that temporarily delayed Mr. Brennan’s confirmation. Some wondered aloud: If the president can order the assassination of Americans overseas, based on secret intelligence, what are the limits to his power?

……

David Barron and Martin Lederman had a problem. As lawyers in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, it had fallen to them to declare whether deliberately killing Mr. Awlaki, despite his citizenship, would be lawful, assuming it was not feasible to capture him. The question raised a complex tangle of potential obstacles under both international and domestic law, and Mr. Awlaki might be located at any moment.

According to officials familiar with the deliberations, the lawyers threw themselves into the project and swiftly completed a short memorandum. It preliminarily concluded, based on the evidence available at the time, that Mr. Awlaki was a lawful target because he was participating in the war with Al Qaeda and also because he was a specific threat to the country. The overlapping reasoning justified a strike either by the Pentagon, which generally operated within the Congressional authorization to use military force against Al Qaeda, or by the C.I.A., a civilian agency which generally operated within a “national self-defense” framework deriving from a president’s security powers.

Carefully dodging any admission of culpability in any targeting of Americans associated with terrorist groups overseas, administration officials have nonetheless vigorously defended President Obama’s use of lethal drone strikes and the idea that U.S. citizens could be legally killed in such attacks.

CIA director John Brennan told lawmakers during his confirmation hearings earlier this year that the administration’s protocol for authorizing drone strikes was “legally grounded” and only meant to “protect the American people.”

Brennan defended the drone program, saying that Obama “insisted that any actions we take will be legally grounded, will be thoroughly anchored in intelligence, will have the appropriate review process, approval process before any action is contemplated, including those actions that might involve the use of lethal force.”

“My role as the president’s counterterrorism adviser was to help to orchestrate this effort over the past four years to ensure, again, that any actions we take fully comport with our law and meet the standards that I think this committee and the American people expect of us as far as taking actions we need to protect the American people, but at the same time ensuring that we do everything possible before we need to resort to lethal force,” he said.

An unclassified outline of the administration’s policy given last summer to Congress indicated that the government could use lethal force against an American overseas if the person was a senior operational leader of al Qaeda or one of its affiliates and an attack was imminent.

European regulators have launched an aggressive investigation into ”serious” allegations of price rigging by some of the globe’s biggest oil companies and the top oil market trading agency. Motorists in continental Europe and Britain have long voiced complaints over disparities in retail gasoline prices from the wholesale values set by traders and oil companies.

The inquest took a dramatic turn earlier this month when corporate offices of Shell, BP, Statoil and the world’s top oil pricing firm were raided by investigators with the European Commission under suspicion that the companies involved “colluded” to artificially inflate prices for crude oil and other products. Regulators now suspect the price-fixing may have been carried out for as many as 11 years before government officials were finally tipped off.

Some have called the idea of a decade-long oil rigging scheme as big as the “LIBOR” scandal that rocked financial markets last year, when banks and traders spent years tinkering with the benchmark rate for charging rates of interest.

The London offices of BP and Shell have been raided by European regulators investigating allegations they have “colluded” to rig oil prices for more than a decade.

The European commission said its officers carried out “unannounced inspections” at several oil companies in London, the Netherlands and Norway to investigate claims they may have “colluded in reporting distorted prices to a price reporting agency [PRA] to manipulate the published prices for a number of oil and biofuel products”.

The commission said the alleged price collusion, which may have been going on since 2002, could have had a “huge impact” on the price of petrol at the pumps “potentially harming final consumers”.

Lord Oakeshott, former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman, said the alleged rigging of oil prices was “as serious as rigging Libor” – which led to banks being fined hundreds of millions of pounds.

…….

The European authorities declined to name any of the companies raided but BP, Shell, Norway’s Statoil and Platts, the world’s leading oil price reporting agency, all confirmed they are being investigated.

In a statement Shell said: “We can confirm that Shell companies are currently assisting the European commission in an inquiry into trading activities.”

BP said: “BP is one of the companies that is subject to an investigation that was announced by the European commission. We are co-operating fully with the investigation and unable to comment further at this time.”

Statoil, which is 67%-owned by the Norwegian government, said: “The authorities suspect participation by several companies, including Statoil, in anti-competitive agreements and/or concerted practices contrary to Article 53 of the European Economic Area (EEA) [market manipulation].

“The suspected violations are related to the Platts’ Market-On-Close (MOC) price assessment process, used to report prices in particular for crude oil, refined oil products and biofuels, and may have been ongoing since 2002.”

What is unclear for now is how much of an impact the alleged European rigging has had or will have on global oil markets and prices paid by American consumers. With world markets increasingly interconnected and fluctuations of any kind in one part of the globe instantly analyzed by traders and industries all over the planet, the ramifications of the probe could be far-reaching.

The fact that the globe’s leading oil market price assessment firm has been directly targeted in the investigation and the similarity of the potential oil fixing scheme to recently uncovered operations in the United States and elsewhere leads Matt Taibbi to argue that the story rates as “hugely significant” for Americans, too.

One analyst I spoke to for that piece talked specifically about Platts (and another, similar price assessment company), noting that they “do benchmarks for the entire oil market, the entire refined products market” and “you name it” – any of these benchmarks that rely on voluntary reporting could be manipulated.

It’s not clear yet exactly what is alleged to have occurred, but Europeans have long complained that retail gas prices have not seemed to match wholesale prices. In fact, complaints that wholesale prices at gas stations were noticeably slow to fall when wholesale prices fell prompted the U.K.-based Office of Fair Trading last year to conduct a cursory inquiry into possible anti-competitive behavior in the fuel markets. Early this year, they announced that they hadn’t found enough evidence to warrant a full-blown investigation. But complaints persisted.

The story is obviously hugely significant in its own right, just as the LIBOR story was. But both are even more unpleasant in conjunction with each other, and the other price-fixing scandals that have cropped up in the financial markets in the last year or two. We’ve had other price-fixing scandals involving gas in the U.K. and here in the U.S., just a few weeks ago, it came out that the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) concluded that JPMorgan Chase used “manipulative schemes” to tinker with energy prices in Michigan and California.

While the fixing scandal is relegated to Europe for now, there is little question that similar motivations exist in the United States for oil companies to manipulate and artificially enhance market prices to improve their bottom line.

Gas prices are already beginning to soar for the summer in the US, jumping from what were seasonal highs to begin with and now approach or break price records in many locations. Oil insiders warn of higher prices after Memorial Day despite the record-setting boom in American oil production and the expansion of global supplies due to the flow of US crude.

While analysts and consumer advocates repeatedly question the causes behind the unwavering upward trend in prices at the pump, government regulators in the United States have done virtually nothing to uncover any truth to allegations of rigged markets or unfair pricing practices.

Incentive for oil companies to keep crude and pump prices consistently elevated is obvious to many experts, with one congressional report detailing how high gas prices reap a “windfall” of profits for oil giants like Exxon, Shell and BP.

At least one lawmaker has taken notice of the European investigation and is calling for a US-based inquiry into the oil markets and attempts by the industry to universally rig prices.

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has proposed legislation to force federal regulators to mirror the price-fixing operations in Europe and begin a similar investigation in the United States, as well as use the government to crack down on oil speculation that is also fingered as a leading cause of high gas prices.

Sanders said a full accounting of oil markets is necessary to root out “fraud, manipulation, abuse and excessive speculation.”

With gasoline prices rising rapidly, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) today proposed an amendment to make U.S. federal regulators follow the lead of Europeans and investigate oil and fuel price manipulation.

Sanders also proposed a 30-day deadline for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to use its emergency powers to curb excessive speculation in crude oil markets.

“We must do everything that we can to make sure that oil and gasoline prices are transparent and free from fraud, manipulation, abuse and excessive speculation,” said Sanders, a member of the Senate energy committee.

Over the past five months, the national average price for a gallon of gasoline has gone up by more than 41 cents. The price hikes come at a time when U.S. oil inventories reached a three-decade high while demand for gasoline is lower than four years ago when prices averaged less than $2.30 a gallon.

“The skyrocketing cost of gasoline and oil is causing tremendous hardship to the American consumer, small businesses, truckers, airlines and fuel dealers. In fact, as we struggle to claw our way out of this terrible recession, high oil and gas prices are enormously detrimental to the entire economic recovery process,” Sanders said.

Republican Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois has thrown his support behind the president’s selection, part of the charm offensive billionaire philanthropist and Obama campaign bundler Pritzker has been conducting behind the scenes with key lawmakers leading up to Senate hearings.

But moderate Republicans may be the easiest to placate regarding Pritzker.  A close friend of the president and a wealthy heiress known for bankrolling charitable causes and political campaigns, Pritzker also remains deeply involved with the business practices of her family’s source of wealth, the Hyatt Hotels chain.

Criticisms over contract negotiations and unfair treatment of employees at the hotel company has several grassroots labor organizations launching protests and calling on President Obama to rescind Pritzker’s nomination. 

UNITE HERE, a major service employee union, has accused Hyatt of worker mistreatment and openly violating safety protocols. Pritzker and the chain’s current executive leadership have refused to sign new union contracts for more than three years.

Organized labor will break its silence and oppose President Obama’s nominee for Commerce Secretary, Chicago’s Penny Pritzker, the Daily News has learned.

The decision stems from long-standing grievances with labor practices at the Hyatt Hotels chain, a source of her family’s fortune, and despite earlier reports that unions would not raise objections to the nomination.

Donald “D” Taylor, president of the 270,000-member union of hotel and restaurant workers known as UNITE HERE, confirmed the move to The News on Monday. His opposition was spurred by his just learning that the Senate Commerce Committee was moving up its confirmation hearing for Pritzker.

The union had been led to understand that hearing would take place perhaps well after the Memorial Day weekend. But the surprise decision to move up the hearing forced the union’s hand.

“We are opposed to the nomination of Penny Pritzker based on what has taken place at Hyatt,” Taylor said in a phone interview.

…….

UNITE HERE’s disputes with the hotel chain date to 2009 and the expiration of contracts at those Hyatt hotels that are unionized. There have been many demonstrations nationally related to its outsourcing previously unionized housekeeper positions at hotels in Boston and Baltimore and hiring what the union alleged were often temporary workers paid minimum wages.

The union has also alleged worker safety issues and argues the Hyatt track record run contrary to Obama’s call for more vigilant enforcement of safety regulation by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. UNITE HERE alleges that housekeepers have been obligated to clean bathroom floors on their hands and knees rather than have access to a mop.

Labor groups call Hyatt the “worst hotel employer in America” and have tried to get hourly employees named to the Hyatt corporate board that Pritzker chairs as a means of making sure employee complaints are addressed.

 But Pritzker’s nomination will also roil the Democratic base, particularly organized labor. That’s because Pritzker sits on the board of directors for Hyatt Hotels, the national hotel chain co-founded by her father, which is currently engaged in a protracted struggle with the hospitality workers union UNITE HERE.

“Hyatt has singled itself out as the worst hotel employer in America,” according to a UNITE HERE-maintained website called Hyatt Hurts. The allegations which UNITE HERE has brought against the company include wage theft, unreasonable workloads, unjust firings, and conditions which lead to high injury rates.

Pritzker has been a repeated target of UNITE HERE demonstrations, but with her nomination the campaign has moved into a new phase. Now the union is requesting that Hyatt appoint a worker to fill her seat on the board of directors.

“If they put someone like me on the Hyatt board of directors, that would certainly send a signal that corporate American is listening extensively to what workers on the ground have to say,” said Cathy Youngblood, a Hyatt housekeeper in West Hollywood and the architect of the union’s “Someone Like Me” campaign to place a worker on the Hyatt board of directors. In December 2012, she kicked off the campaign by submitting a resolution to Hyatt corporate headquarters.

The lawmaker speaking out about the need for austerity at a time of disaster is none other than Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn. His constituents faced a terrifying ordeal on Monday when a massive twister leveled much of Moore, Oklahoma, including schools, businesses and many neighborhoods. At least 51 people are confirmed dead, including many children.

But Coburn quickly put out a statement that promised to line up spending cutds before any taxpayer funds were appropriated for tornado cleanup. As much as $200 million was needed following the deadly Joplin tornado in 2011, and Coburn confirmed that he would “absolutely” seek funding offsets if a similar figure was called for following the Oklahoma disaster.

The tornado damage near Oklahoma City is still being assessed and the death toll is expected to rise, but already Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., says he will insist that any federal disaster aid be paid for with cuts elsewhere.

CQ Roll Call reporter Jennifer Scholtes wrote for CQ.com Monday evening that Coburn said he would “absolutely” demand offsets for any federal aid that Congress provides.

Coburn added, Scholtes wrote, that it is too early to guess at a damage toll but that he knows for certain he will fight to make sure disaster funding that the federal government contributes is paid for. It’s a position he has taken repeatedly during his career when Congress debates emergency funding for disaster aid.

Both Oklahoma US senators — Coburn and fellow Republican James Inhofe — have a controversial history concerning federal disaster relief. They have argued against money for FEMA and  joined with other Republicans in Congress to successfully stall federal aid for victims of Hurricane Sandy last year, sparking outrage from the regions affected by that storm and even fellow Republican New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

But both Sooner State lawmakers have also called for immediate federal money when natural disasters have scarred their own home state. A Coburn staffer claims things will be different in the aftermath of the Moore twister.

Sens. Jim Inhofe and Tom Coburn, both Republicans, are fiscal hawks who have repeatedly voted against funding disaster aid for other parts of the country. They also have opposed increased funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which administers federal disaster relief. 

Late last year, Inhofe and Coburn both backed a plan to slash disaster relief to victims of Hurricane Sandy. In a December press release, Coburn complained that the Sandy Relief bill contained “wasteful spending,” and identified a series of items he objected to, including “$12.9 billion for future disaster mitigation activities and studies.”

Coburn spokesman John Hart on Monday evening confirmed that the senator will seek to ensure that any additional funding for tornado disaster relief in Oklahoma be offset by cuts to federal spending elsewhere in the budget. “That’s always been his position [to offset disaster aid],” Hart said. “He supported offsets to the bill funding the OKC bombing recovery effort.” Those offsets were achieved in 1995 by tapping federal funds that had not yet been appropriated.

In 2011, both senators opposed legislation that would have granted necessary funding for FEMA when the agency was set to run out of money. Sending the funds to FEMA would have been “unconscionable,” Coburn said at the time.

……..

And despite their voting record on disaster aid for other states, both Coburn and Inhofe appear to sing a different tune when it comes to such funding for Oklahoma.

In January of 2007, Coburn urged federal officials to speed disaster relief aid after the state faced a major ice storm.

A year later, in 2008, Inhofe lauded the fact that emergency relief from the Department of Housing and Urban Development would be given to 24 Oklahoma counties. “The impact of severe weather has been truly devastating to many Oklahoma communities across the state. I am pleased that the people whose lives have been affected by disastrous weather are getting much-needed federal assistance,” he said at the time.

Inhofe has on Tuesday distanced himself somewhat from both his colleague Tom Coburn’s stand on offsetting disaster spending and his own recent history in voting against federal aid for other parts of the country.

Confronted with his current request for federal assistance for Monday’s deadly Oklahoma storm juxtaposed with his vocal opposition to aid money for Sandy victims, Inhofe said that the two situations are “totally different” and that the Sandy bill included “pork” spending.

In the wake of the devastating tornado in an Oklahoma City suburb, Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) rejected comparisons between federal aid for this disaster and the Hurricane Sandy relief package he voted against.

That was a “totally different” situation, Inhofe told MSNBC, arguing that the Sandy aid was filled with pork. There were “things in the Virgin Islands. They were fixing roads there and putting roofs on houses in Washington, D.C.”

“Everyone was getting in and exploiting the tragedy that took place,” he said. “That won’t happen in Oklahoma.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook

Suspected for years of employing unusually skilled and complicated maneuvers to skirt tax laws in the United States and other countries, a new congressional investigation finds that Apple’s efforts at dodging the IRS are far more extensive than previously indicated. Apple has shifted billions of dollars to overseas tax havens in a strategy shared by many other familiar American brands and which is most prevalent among tech companies that have particularly mobile assets and operations.

But the New York Times reports that the US Senate, as part of its broader look at simplifying the federal corporate tax system, has discovered a massive “scheme” put together by Apple executives to insulate a significant chunk of the company’s profits and cash assets from government regulators. Lawmakers say the company behind the iPhone and iPad has achieved the “holy grail of tax avoidance” with “gimmicks” that leave much of the company’s profits held in offshore accounts that are technically “stateless” — thus out of the reach of the US or other governments.

Even as Apple became the nation’s most profitable technology company, it avoided billions in taxes in the United States and around the world through a web of subsidiaries so complex it spanned continents and went beyond anything most experts had ever seen, Congressional investigators disclosed on Monday.

The investigation is expected to set up a potentially explosive confrontation between a bipartisan group of lawmakers and Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, at a public hearing on Tuesday.

Congressional investigators found that some of Apple’s subsidiaries had no employees and were largely run by top officials from the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif. But by officially locating them in places like Ireland, Apple was able to, in effect, make them stateless — exempt from taxes, record-keeping laws and the need for the subsidiaries to even file tax returns anywhere in the world.

“Apple wasn’t satisfied with shifting its profits to a low-tax offshore tax haven,” said Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations that is holding the public hearing Tuesday into Apple’s use of tax havens. “Apple successfully sought the holy grail of tax avoidance. It has created offshore entities holding tens of billions of dollars while claiming to be tax resident nowhere.”

Thanks to what lawmakers called “gimmicks” and “schemes,” Apple was able to largely sidestep taxes on tens of billions of dollars it earned outside the United States in recent years. Last year, international operations accounted for 61 percent of Apple’s total revenue.

While much of the hidden money is technically under the purview of foreign governments, Apple has also managed to avoid American taxes on tens of billions of dollars in profits. From 2009 to 2012 alone, the tech giant sent $74 billion to offshore tax havens that would have been subject to taxation in the United States. It’s effective tax rate on the profits it did make available to the IRS was also significantly less than the company has public reported, a 20 percent corporate rate that saved it $8 billion over three years.

Apple allegedly ran a scheme that Republican Sen. John McCain claims makes the company “one of America’s largest tax avoiders.”

Over all, Apple’s tax avoidance efforts shifted at least $74 billion from the reach of the Internal Revenue Service between 2009 and 2012, the investigators said. That cash remains offshore, but Apple, which paid more than $6 billion in taxes in the United States last year on its American operations, could still have to pay federal taxes on it if the company were to return the money to its coffers in the United States.

John McCain of Arizona, who is the panel’s senior Republican, said: “Apple claims to be the largest U.S. corporate taxpayer, but by sheer size and scale, it is also among America’s largest tax avoiders.”

……

The Senate investigators also found evidence that the company turned over substantially less money to the government than its public filings indicated.

While the company cited an effective rate of 24 to 32 percent in its disclosures, its effective tax rate was 20.1 percent, based on the committee’s findings. And for a company of Apple’s size, the resulting difference was substantial — more than $8 billion in 2009, 2010 and 2011.

The extent of Corporate America’s distasteful and publicly embarrassing — though not illegal — tax avoidance gamesmanship has not stopped the same executives and business interests from lobbying Congress for even lower rates on the few taxes they do pay the federal government. Already enjoying effectively zero-percent taxation thanks to aggressive accounting and offshore havens, many of the nations largest companies are simultaneously demanding that lawmakers cut their tax burdens even more.

Apple, Google and other big multinational corporations are partners in a powerhouse lobbying organization that has been pressing Washington for big changes to the federal tax code. The centerpiece of their plan is a  corporate tax “holiday” that would allow companies to repatriate at least $1 trillion held overseas back to the United States.

The idea behind the tax holiday is to foster investment in the US and shift profit-generating projects that had been based offshore back onto American soil. Such a deal is awfully sweet for corporations and has critics complaining of preferential treatment. After previously avoiding all taxes on profits shipped offshore to countries with a low or non-existent tax rate, corporations would be able to move their profits back to the US tax-free, a veritable double-dip of tax avoidance.

Apple CEO Tim Cook will actually present his own proposals for a“dramatic simplification” of the corporate tax code at the same Senate hearing where details of his company’s tax strategies will be questioned.

While lawmakers grill Cook over Apple’s apparent success in dodging tax bills around the globe, the executive will continue to lobby for a “reasonable” — and significantly lower — corporate tax rate designed to save potentially trillions in corporate profits.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook plans to propose a “dramatic simplification” of corporate tax laws when he testifies for the first time before Congress next week, just as lawmakers are considering an overhaul of the tax code.

In an interview with The Washington Post, Cook said he will present specific proposals aimed at encouraging companies to bring back foreign earnings to the United States and invest that money injob creation, as well as research and development. He will speak at a Senate hearing Tuesday that is taking aim at companies that shift profits overseas to lower their tax bills.

More than 1,000 U.S. companies hold an estimated $1.7 trillion in earnings overseas, according to a JPMorgan report. And Apple, which has built up one of the biggest cash piles in corporate history, holds massive amounts in foreign countries.

Some companies, especially large multinationals, have argued that U.S. rates are too high and out of step with other developed economies.

“If you look at it today, to repatriate cash to the U.S., you need to pay 35 percent of that cash. And that is a very high number,” Cook said in an interview Thursday. “We are not proposing that it be zero. I know many of our peers believe that. But I don’t view that. But I think it has to be reasonable.”

The National Rifle Association is launching an effort to force a recall election and oust a state senator in Colorado who played a key role in passing that state’s trio of stronger gun regulations in March.

So far there has been little appetite for pushing a recall outside of the NRA’s national political arm, which is flooding Colorado voters with appeals about “extreme” restrictions on the “second amendment rights” of Coloradans  .

Shedding it’s “wild west” image as a haven for gun enthusiasts and whatever weapons they cared to bring with them, Colorado took decisive steps to curb gun violence as the site of two of the worst mass shootings in American history — Columbine and the Aurora theater shooting last summer.

Three new laws were signed into effect by Gov. John Hickenlooper earlier this year, including an expanded state background check program and a ban on certain high capacity ammunition magazines.

Colorado’s governor signed bills Wednesday that place new restrictions on firearms, signaling a change for Democrats who have traditionally shied away from gun control in a state with a pioneer tradition of gun ownership and self-reliance.

The legislation thrust Colorado into the national spotlight as a potential test of how far the country might be willing to go with new gun restrictions after the horror of mass killings at an Aurora movie theater and a Connecticut elementary school.

Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper signed bills that require background checks for private and online gun sales and ban ammunition magazines that hold more than 15 rounds.

The bills’ approval came exactly eight months after dozens of people were shot in Aurora, and a day after the executive director of the state Corrections Department, Tom Clements, was shot and killed at his home. Hickenlooper signed the legislation right after speaking with reporters about Clements’ slaying.

Hickenlooper said large-capacity magazines “have the potential to turn killers into killing machines.” He also said he realized some gun owners may be inconvenienced but that “the potential for damage seems to outweigh, significantly, the inconvenience that people would have,” he said.

The bills signal a historic change for Democrats in a state where owning a gun is as common as owning a car in some rural areas.

Now gun lobbyists are determined to seek revenge for the historic measures by seeking to boot from office state lawmakers that contributed to the implementation of some of the nation’s toughest gun control provisions.

The NRA is targeting Colorado State Senate President John Morse in a campaign to trigger a recall election, the first time in decades that the group has taken such a step.

After state-based efforts largely failed, local gun activists reached out to the powerful and well-funded NRA to take over the proposed recall campaign. The group has done so with enthusiasm, blasting Morse for supporting ”extreme and onerous” gun laws that harass “responsible gun owners and sportsmen.”

Already groups supporting more gun restrictions have been active on the local level. And now for the first time in almost two decades, the National Rifle Association is attempting to coordinate the recall of a top state legislator for having successfully passed further gun restrictions in his state, CNN has learned.

The focus of the NRA campaign is Colorado State Senate President John Morse. He is facing a petition drive to initiate an election to recall him because of  legislation passed earlier this year requiring “universal” background checks on sales of all firearms in the state, as well as a ban on the sale of ammunition magazines greater than 15 rounds.

Morse told CNN he knew he was being targeted by local gun groups, but at the beginning did not know the NRA was after him.

“It was a grassroots effort for a little while, but when that didn’t take at all, it was clear they were getting money from outside, and I wasn’t the least bit surprised the NRA was behind it,” said Morse.

……

In a mailer obtained by CNN, the NRA Political Victory fund wrote to a “Second Amendment Supporter” in Colorado that “your NRA is coordinating a recall effort with the Basic Freedom Defense Fund to put Senator Morse on the ballot for a special election and vote him out of office.” (Emphasis theirs.)

Writes the NRA: “State Senator Morse led the charge to pass extreme and onerous anti-gun state legislation in Denver earlier this year. Responsible gun owners and sportsmen will be forever burdened by his misguided leadership in the Colorado Senate.”

Whether the NRA can sustain such a bold political move in Colorado is up for question, as the state’s reputation for gun tolerance is matched by voter support for tougher gun regulations. After two high-profile mass shootings and the murder of a public official at is home, state residents are overwhelmingly receptive to stricter gun control  according to recent polling.

…Progress Politics

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The juxtaposition between official inaction and verbalized threats against Colorado and Washington, where voters overwhelmingly passed ballot measures legalizing cannabis last November, has allowed the Obama administration to inculcate a culture of fear among states and the majority of Americans that believe pot should not be criminalized.

As the time draws closer for the government to decide how severely to go after states that trump national drug laws, most observers predict an epic legal clash between federal statutes and the increasingly progressive model for pot regulations being crafted among the individual states. A vow to go after Colorado and Washington for legalization has already been made by President Obama’s chief adviser on drugs as the administration’s wider battle against even pot only used for medical purposes continues to escalate.

Gil Kerlikowske, the official White House “drug czar” and a former chief of police in Seattle,told Canadian magazine MacLean’s that steps will be taken to ensue “enforcement” of federal prohibitions o marijuana is upheld in any state that attempts to supersede such laws.

Kerlikowske argues that a “pachwork” of state-based drug laws interacting with the “public health issue” of marijuana use would create “difficulties,” and the director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy gave no indication that the administration is prepared to let the groundbreaking measures passed in Colorado and Washington to stand.

 Q: In the November elections, two states—Washington and Colorado—voted to legalize marijuana for recreational use. President Obama has said that the U.S. government has “bigger fish to fry” than to go after recreational users in states where it is legal. Where do things stand with regard to producers and distributors of marijuana, which is still illegal under federal law?

A: You’ll continue to see enforcement against distributors and large-scale growers as the Justice Department has outlined. They will use their limited resources on those groups and not on going after individual users.

Q: You’ve written on the White House website that “coming out of the election, we are in the midst of a national conversation on marijuana.” Is the U.S. headed for a patchwork of policies, state by state?

A: I think a patchwork of policies would create real difficulties. We still have federal law that places marijuana as being illegal. The administration has not done a particularly good job of, one, talking about marijuana as a public health issue, and number two, talking about what can be done and where we should be headed on our drug policy.

The president’s drug czar was even more direct in dismissing the legitimacy of state-by-state legalization in comments last month, giving the most forceful rebuttal to legalized pot yet from any federal official .

Kerlikowske insisted that laws like those approved by voters last year amount to unconstitutional nullification of federal statutes, and that no state can prevent law enforcement from going to pursue” people who are criminals in the eyes of the administration.

Gil Kerlikowske said enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 — which ranks marijuana as a Schedule One drug alongside heroin, LSD and ecstasy — remains in the hands of the US Department of Justice.

“No state, no executive can nullify a statute that has been passed by Congress,” the director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy told a National Press Club luncheon.

“Let’s be clear: law enforcement officers take an oath of office to uphold federal law and they are going to continue to pursue drug traffickers and drug dealers,” he said.

But while his drug czar all but condemns citizens who supported pro-pot amendments as akin to modern day secessionists, President Obama has contributed to the confusion on his own administration’s drug policy by repeatedly downplaying marijuana as a law enforcement “priority.”

Shortly after the votes in Colorado and Washington, the president told Barbara Walters in an interview for ABC News that there is “bigger fish to fry” for the federal government than marijuana growers and users, and that combating recreational use in states “that have determined that it’s legal” will not be a “top priority” for the Justice Department.

President Obama says recreational users of marijuana in states that have legalized the substance should not be a “top priority” of federal law enforcement officials prosecuting the war on drugs.

“We’ve got bigger fish to fry,” Obama said of pot users in Colorado and Washington during an exclusive interview with ABC News’ Barbara Walters.

“It would not make sense for us to see a top priority as going after recreational users in states that have determined that it’s legal,” he said, invoking the same approach taken toward users of medicinal marijuana in 18 states where it’s legal.

While he has declined on numerous occasions to publicly endorse a national policy of legalized cannabis, the president’s laissez-faire attitude towards enforcing the federal marijuana prohibition as demonstrated in the Walters interview is concurrent with public sentiment that has undergone an incredible transformation.

Much coverage has been devoted to the landmark Pew poll that founds, for the first time in any nationwide poll, a solid majority of Americans favor making pot legal across the country. This represents a virtual sea change from just a few years ago in public attitudes on marijuana use and the classification of its possession and distribution as an extremely serious crime. Even more important is the endorsement of the legalization movement among young people, with nearly three-quarters of Americans between 18 and 29 backing legal pot.

Many point to the rising tide of public support for legal marijuana as a dynamic shift that makes existing federal drug laws untenable in the same way the prohibition of alcohol was in the first quarter of the 20th century.

Marijuana legalization is “out of the bag” thanks to the growing coverage of laws permitting its medical use, decriminalization for possessing small amounts, or the big laws just approved in Colorado and Washington. Instead of pursuing a failed policy of antagonism towards distributors that would become virtually impossible in states where legal operations have sprung up under the new legalization measures,  the federal government ought to work with states to honor the voters while providing safeguards and honest regulation that would ensure clear guidelines for growers, users, and law enforcement.

The feds, who account for only 1 percent of marijuana arrests, simply do not have the manpower to go after all those growers. Nor do they have the constitutional authority to demand assistance from state and local law enforcement agencies that no longer treat pot growing as a crime.

Given this reality, legal analyst Stuart Taylor argues in a recent Brookings Institution paper, the Obama administration and officials in Colorado and Washington should “hammer out clear, contractual cooperation agreements so that state-regulated marijuana businesses will know what they can and cannot safely do.” Such enforcement agreements, which are authorized by the Controlled Substances Act, would provide more security than a mere policy statement, although less than congressional legislation.

Even without a specific resolution from the Justice Department, states are moving ahead with popular and progressive cannabis regulations that honor the will of the voters and the sentiment of the entire nation.

Responding to the legalization measure approved by voters last November, Colorado lawmakers passed a series of historic measures to formally tax and regulate marijuana within the state’s borders. It represents the most sweeping and liberal rules for pot use and distribution in the country.

But with no movement from the Obama administration and little tangible to base policy on besides vague threats and predictions of a federal crackdown on states that buck national drug laws, places like Colorado and Washington State face the likelihood of swift federal retaliation and a battle to prevent implementation of legalization statutes.

The Pacific Northwest has already felt the possible sting of blowback over voter-approved pot legalization laws, proving that the Justice Department may not be willing to let states set pot policy themselves without a confrontation. Numerous pot dispensaries in Washington State were threatened with DEA raids and ordered to shutter their businesses late last month, although federal officials claimed it was not in connection with last November’s vote.

The agency refuted arguments that they should recognize the new state law on marijuana, affirming that DEA “enforces federal drug laws” and that state-based measures are essentially illegal.

Cease-and-desist letters were sent to 11 Seattle-area pot dispensaries because they are within 1,000 feet of schools or other prohibited areas, according to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

The DEA would not identify the businesses or their precise locations.

Despite Washington state’s new legal recreational-pot law, enacted by voter-approved Initiative 502, all forms of marijuana remain illegal under federal law. A policy statement from the Obama administration is supposedly coming on the new legal-pot laws in Colorado and Washington.

DEA spokeswoman Jodie Underwood said the 11 dispensaries received the same letters that went to 23 local dispensaries last August. She said the letters, dated April 29, did not have implications for Washington’s and Colorado’s new laws.

“DEA enforces federal drug laws, and these letters have nothing to do with any pending legislation or state law. The ballot initiatives in both states are under review by DOJ (the Department of Justice),” she said.

A test case for how the feds would go after legalized pot is the aggressive crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries in states where they are perfectly legal and thoroughly regulated, primarily in California. The Obama Justice Department has made medical marijuana a “top priority,” despite the contrary assertions by the president, shuttering hundreds of operations in states from California to Montana and repeatedly ignoring the increasing umber of state laws legalizing medical marijuana. .

The  federal crackdown includes a suit filed earlier this month to shut down a medical pot dispensary in Berkeley that is California’s oldest such establishment, an action vigorously condemned by local city officials and labeled “mean” and “vindictive” by advocates for medical cannabis.

Several dozen protesters gathered in downtown Berkeley Wednesday afternoon to fight federal action against one of California’s oldest medical marijuana dispensaries, targeted for closure by the Justice Department.

“The Obama administration’s ongoing war against patients is despicable and has to stop,” Steph Sherer, executive director of Americans for Safe Access, told the crowd. “This is a mean, vindictive move aimed at shutting down one of the oldest and well-respected dispensaries in the country.”

U.S. Attorney Melinda Haag on Friday served pot shop Berkeley Patients Group with a lawsuit that attempts to seize the property and ultimately shut the business. Berkeley officials say the dispensary provides significant benefits to the community.

“BPG has served as a national model of the not-for-profit, services-based medical cannabis dispensary,” Berkeley City Council member Darryl Moore said in a resolution opposing the lawsuit. “They have improved the lives and assisted the end-of-life transitions of thousands of patients; been significant donors to dozens of other organizations in our city; [and] shaped local, state and national policies around medical cannabis.”

Berkeley Patients Group received a letter from Haag last year, claiming its location within 1,000 feet of a school broke state law. The operation later relocated, and the lawsuit makes no mention of its proximity to schools or violation of specific laws.

Federal agents and prosecutors have not held back in showing considerable zeal in carrying out the government’s pot crackdown. Several other medical pot dispensaries have received similar treatment to the iconic Berkeley clinic, including threats made to owners of an another California operation of 40 years in prison for engaging in activities considered legal and respectable in the Golden State, but deemed a menace on par with terrorism by the Obama administration.

A San Jose dispensary operator has informed us that the federal government has begun a new round of actions against lawful medical cannabis dispensaries in the South Bay. Landlords are receiving threatening letters from US Attorney Melinda Haag, warning of forty-year-prison sentences if landlords do not evict their dispensary tenants.

Dated April 26, one letter to a San Jose landlord stated: “The office has been advised that there is a marijuana dispensary … operating at the real property located at …, which property you own or have under your management control. The dispensary is operating in violation of federal law, and persons and entities who operate or facilitate the operation of such dispensaries are subject to criminal prosecution and civil enforcement actions. Since the dispensary is operating within a prohibited distance of a [Art Academy], the unlawful operation of the dispensary is subject to enhanced penalties.”

Haag threatened the landlord with property forfeiture, forty years in prison, and asset seizure, among other penalties.

“Please take the necessary steps to discontinue the sale and/or distribution of marijuana at the above-referenced location. … Very truly yours, Melinda Haag, United States Attorney.”

Our sources forwarded two such letters to us and wrote, “I’m sure there are more of these.”