Colombia’s Chamber of Representatives has approved a bill that would legalize the cultivation of drugs that grow as plants, bringing to fruition the start of more legislative drug reform efforts to come, as promised by South American leaders during the recent Summit of the Americas.

Colombia’s drug crop legalization bill would make growing marijuana, opium, coca and poppies legal, but drug trafficking, including sales, would remain a severe crime, according to Colombia Reports.

The U.S. is a strong ally of Colombia’s and the Obama administration has provided military support to the country, even going so far as to station U.S. soldiers and drone aircraft at Colombian military bases, ostensibly to help combat drug trafficking networks. The country has historically been a key U.S. asset in the region, so much that they’ve even accepted prior U.S. administrations sending aircraft over Colombian poppy and coca fields to spray the indigenous population with herbicide.

CONTINUED at The Raw Story.

President Barack Obama took an opening shot at conservative justices on the Supreme Court on Monday, warning that a rejection of his sweeping healthcare law would be an act of “judicial activism” that Republicans say they abhor.

Obama, a Democrat, had not commented publicly on the Supreme Court’s deliberations since it heard arguments for and against the healthcare law last week.

Known as the “Affordable Care Act” or “Obamacare,” the measure to expand health insurance for millions of Americans is considered Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement.

A rejection by the court would be a big blow to Obama going into the November 6 presidential election.

Republican presidential candidates, who are vying to take on Obama in November elections, have promised to repeal the law if one of them wins the White House.

Obama’s advisers say they have not prepared contingency plans if the measure fails. But the president — who expressed confidence that the court would uphold the law — made clear how he would address it on the campaign trail if the court strikes it down.

“Ultimately, I am confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,” Obama said at a news conference with the leaders of Canada and Mexico.

CONTINUED at Reuters.

The Supreme Court’s conservative justices said Wednesday they are prepared to strike down President Obama’s healthcare law entirely.

Picking up where they left off Tuesday, the conservatives said they thought a decision striking down the law’s controversial individual mandate to purchase health insurance means the whole statute should fall with it.

The court’s conservatives sounded as though they had determined for themselves that the 2,700-page measure must be declared unconstitutional.

“One way or another, Congress will have to revisit it in toto,” said Justice Antonin Scalia.

Agreeing, Justice Anthony Kennedy said it would be an “extreme proposition” to allow the various insurance regulations to stand after the mandate was struck down.

Meanwhile, the court’s liberal justices argued for restraint.Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the court should do a “salvage job,” not undertake a “wrecking operation.” But she looked to be out-voted.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. said they shared the view of Scalia and Kennedy that the law should stand or fall in total. Along with Justice Clarence Thomas, they would have a majority to strike down the entire statute as unconstitutional.

CONTINUED at the LA Times.

Even before the administration’s top lawyer could get three minutes into his defense of the mandate, some justices accused the government of pushing for excessive authority to require Americans to buy anything.

“Are there any limits,” asked Justice Anthony Kennedy, one of three conservative justices whose votes are seen as crucial to the fate of the unprecedented insurance mandate.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. suggested that the government might require Americans to buy cellphones to be ready for emergencies. And Justice Antonin Scalia asked if the government might require Americans to buy broccoli or automobiles.

“If the government can do this, what else can it … do?” Scalia asked.

CONTINUED at the LA Times. Video at link.

President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul is front and center at the Supreme Court for three days of hearings to determine the fate of a law aimed at extending health insurance to more than 30 million Americans.

The justices will hear arguments beginning Monday in a highly partisan legal fight between the Obama administration and the 26 states that are leading a challenge to the largest expansion in the nation’s social safety net in more than four decades.

A decision is expected by late June, in the midst of a presidential election campaign in which all of Obama’s Republican challengers oppose the law and promise its repeal, if the high court doesn’t strike it down first.

People hoping for a glimpse of the action have waited in line all weekend for the relatively few seats open to the public. The justices allotted the case six hours of argument time, the most since the mid-1960s.

CONTINUED at MyWay.

When a reporter asked then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) back in October 2009 “where specifically does the Constitution grant Congress the authority to enact an individual health insurance mandate?”, Pelosi’s response was to dismiss both the reporter and the question. “Are you serious?” she sneered. Nadeam Elshami, Pelosi’s communications director, later amplified his boss’s response, tellingCNS News, “You can put this on the record. That is not a serious question.”

The U.S. Supreme Court thinks that it is. On Monday March 26, the Supreme Court will begin hearing three days of oral arguments devoted to the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, including its controversial “requirement to maintain minimum essential coverage.” This requirement, also known as the individual mandate, forces all Americans to buy or secure health insurance under what Congress claims is its power “to regulate commerce…among the several states.”

Twenty-six of those states, plus the National Federation of Independent Business and several individuals, are challenging the health care law, claiming it is an illegal power grab by the federal government that tramples the Constitution and undermines the principles of federalism.

Contrary to what Nancy Pelosi would have you believe, these challengers have a strong and serious case. Here are four of their best arguments against the individual mandate.

CONTINUED at Reason. Written by Damon W. Root.

Apple‘s legal row over its iPad trademark in China creates a window of opportunity for rivals such as Lenovo Group and Samsung Electronics as they try to chip away at the U.S. firm’s dominance of the potentially vast Chinese tablet market.

Apple [AAPL  511.04    8.92  (+1.78%)   ], the world’s most valuable technology company, is fighting lawsuits brought by debt-laden Chinese electronics maker Proview Technology (Shenzhen), causing retailers and resellers in more than 10 Chinese cities to take iPads off their shelves, according to media reports.

Apple’s iPad enjoys a huge lead over rival tablet PCs in China with a 76 percent share. Lenovo [0992.HK  7.20    0.27 (+3.91%)   ] and Samsung trail a distant second and third with about 7 percent and 3 percent respectively, data from research firm IDC showed.

“Apple’s loss could be Lenovo and Samsung’s gains,” said Jonathan Ng, an analyst with CIMB in Singapore.

Samsung likely has most to gain, because its Galaxy tablet competes in the same price segment as the iPad.

“Samsung will probably benefit more from Apple’s ongoing lawsuit because both of them are after the same higher-end consumers given their price points,” said Dickie Chang, an analyst from IDC in Hong Kong.

“The impact on Lenovo may be less because Lepads are lower priced and are aimed more at entry-level users.”

A basic iPad 2 typically costs 3,688 yuan ($585), roughly the same price as 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab, while some models of Lenovo’s Lepad were selling at roughly half that price on online retail sites.

IDC said in the third quarter Apple sold about 1.3 million iPads in China, while Lenovo, the world’s second largest PC maker, sold around 120,000 Lepads in its home market and South Korea’s Samsung sold 58,000 Galaxy Tabs.

The Lepad and Galaxy Tab both run on Google‘s [GOOG  613.845    9.205 (+1.52%)   ] Android operating system.

CONTINUED at CNBC.

The Department of Justice offered a defense Thursday for President Obama’s controversial decision to make several recess appointments while Congress was holding pro forma sessions.

In a memo, Justice argued the pro forma sessions held every third day in the Senate do not constitute a functioning body that can render advice and consent on the president’s nominees. It said the president acted consistently under the law by making the appointments.

“Although the Senate will have held pro forma sessions regularly from January 3 to January 23, in our judgment, those sessions do not interrupt the intrasession recess in a manner that would preclude the president from determining that the Senate remains unavailable throughout to ‘receive communications from the president or participate as a body in making appointments,’” Virginia Seitz, assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, wrote in the memo dated Jan. 6.

The Office of Legal Counsel concluded the president has authority to make recess appointments during a recess and that Congress can only prevent the president from making such appointments “by remaining continuously in session and available to receive and act on nominations,” not by holding pro forma sessions.

Republicans, who had set up the pro forma sessions to prevent Obama from making the appointments, are expected to challenge them in court.
Obama used his recess-appointment powers to place Richard Cordray as director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. He also named three people to the National Labor Relations Board.

Seitz offered several points in defense of Obama’s actions.

The memo noted that pro forma sessions typically last only a few seconds and require the presence of only one senator.

CONTINUED at The Hill.

Latvia’s largest bank is scrambling to contain a run among depositors gripped by fears of the bank’s imminent collapse.

The panic among Swedish-owned Swedbank‘s depositors began Sunday after rumors spread that the financial institution was facing legal and liquidity problems in Estonia and Sweden.

Swedbank’s Latvian chief Maris Mancinskis on Monday called the rumors “absurd.” He said the bank is functioning normally and all depositors will have access to their funds via bank machines.

Mancinskis said some 10,000 Latvians withdrew over 10 million lats ($20 million) on Sunday.

Latvia’s 10th largest bank, Latvijas Krajbanka, is currently being liquidated after regulators uncovered fraud on a massive scale. Depositors were left without access to their money for days.

Source: CNBC.