With pot legal, police worry about road safety | Fox News

DENVER – It's settled. Pot, at least certain amounts of it, will soon be legal under state laws in Washington and Colorado. Now, officials in both states are trying to figure out how to keep stoned drivers off the road.

Colorado's measure doesn't make any changes to the state's driving-under-the-influence laws, leaving lawmakers and police to worry about its effect on road safety. "We're going to have more impaired drivers," warned John Jackson, police chief in the Denver suburb of Greenwood Village.

Washington's law does change DUI provisions by setting a new blood-test limit for marijuana — a limit police are training to enforce, and which some lawyers are already gearing up to challenge.

Read more: With pot legal, police worry about road safety | Fox News

New fear: Medical pot, pregnancy

Arizona pediatricians are concerned that the state's medical-marijuana law is being used to treat the ailments of pregnant women, potentially harming fetuses.

Members of the Arizona chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics want to stop the practice and point to one incident in which a mother in labor told hospital officials that she had received a medical-marijuana card during pregnancy and had been using the drug.

The mother later told her baby's pediatrician, Kara Tiffany, that a physician who was aware of her pregnancy recommended the marijuana. The mother showed the pediatrician her medical-marijuana-certification documents, which indicated that a naturopath made the marijuana recommendation.

Read more: New fear: Medical pot, pregnancy

Medical-marijuana report offers insight into users, doctors

Arizona health officials want to strengthen the controversial medical-marijuana program to crack down on physicians who improperly recommend marijuana, train physicians who write most certifications and make it easier to revoke patient cards if health officials suspect wrongdoing.

Health officials also want to study how effective marijuana is in treating debilitating conditions, such as cancer, and examine whether marijuana affects opiate dependency, impacts vehicle-traffic injuries and impacts pregnancy outcomes and breastfeeding. Such studies would require changes to the law, which restricts the scope of information state health officials can obtain from physicians and patients.

The recommendations are contained in the state’s inaugural report of the medical-marijuana program, approved by voters in 2010 to allow people with certain debilitating medical conditions, to use marijuana. They must obtain a recommendation from a physician and register with the state, which issues identification cards to qualified patients and caregivers.

Read more: Medical-marijuana report offers insight into users, doctors

Colorado, Washington first states to legalize recreational pot - chicagotribune.com

DENVER/SEATTLE (Reuters) - Colorado and Washington became the first U.S. states to legalize the possession and sale of marijuana for recreational use on Tuesday in defiance of federal law, setting the stage for a possible showdown with the Obama administration.

But another ballot measure to remove criminal penalties for personal possession and cultivation of recreational cannabis was defeated in Oregon, where significantly less money and campaign organization was devoted to the cause.

Read more: Colorado, Washington first states to legalize recreational pot - chicagotribune.com

Latino votes key to Obama's victory

Despite failing to deliver immigration reform as promised in his first term and deporting a record number of immigrants, President Barack Obama received 75 percent of the Latino vote in Tuesday's national election, exceeding the 67 percent he received in 2008.

The support likely played a major role in Obama's re-election -- and, conversely, in Republican nominee Mitt Romney's defeat, analysts say.

It could also serve as a catalyst to jump-start bipartisan talks on comprehensive immigration reform, which have stalled in Congress for more than a decade, analysts say.

For Obama and Democrats, the push makes sense: Their successes at the ballot box in recent years have been buoyed by Latino voters, and they have campaigned on the promise of immigration reform. For Republicans, many of whom have taken a hard-line anti-immigration stance in recent years that many Hispanic voters perceive to be anti-Latino, a push for reform could be politically advantageous.

"The Republican Party, the new guard, is going to be coming after those Latino voters because they know they need them to win an election," said Joe Garcia, director of the Latino Center at Arizona State University's Morrison Institute for Public Policy. "I still think this is going to be the decade of the Latino because both parties are going to be courting the Latino vote."

Statistics show how critical the Latino vote was in Tuesday's presidential election. For the first time in history, the Latino vote can plausibly be credited with playing the decisive role in a presidential election, said Gary Segura, a political-science professor at Stanford University and a principal at the polling firm Latino Decisions.

If the estimated 11.8 million Latinos who voted nationally on Tuesday had split their votes evenly between the two parties, Obama would not have won, Segura said Wednesday in a computer conference call.

Latinos played a pivotal roll in several battleground states, including Colorado, Nevada, Virginia and Ohio, that went for Obama, helping him gain the electoral votes needed to defeat Romney, Segura said.

Garcia said Latinos' overwhelming support for Obama showed they were willing to "forgive him" for failing to pass immigration reform and for deporting a record number of illegal immigrants. What helped, Garcia said, was Obama's announcement in June that he would allow young undocumented immigrants to receive work permits and remain in the country temporarily without the fear of deportation under a program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

"I think they gave him a little bit of a benefit of the doubt and said, 'OK, we are going to forgive you for not keeping your promise on that first term but fully we expect something happening early in this second term,' and I think Obama will push for immigration reform in this term," Garcia said.

A Latino Decisions/America's Voice poll of 5,600 voters in 11 states, including Arizona, found that Obama's stance on immigration helped him win support among Latino voters who were turned off by Romney's stance.

Romney opposed allowing illegal immigrants to gain legal status and opposed the Dream Act, a bill that would allow young undocumented immigrants to earn citizenship by attending college or serving in the military. Romney also supported Arizona's employer-sanctions law, which requires all employers to use a federal database to check whether new hires are authorized to work in the U.S.

In Arizona, Obama's support among Latino voters skyrocketed from 56 percent in 2008, when Arizona Sen. John McCain was the Republican nominee, to 79 percent this year, according to the Latino Decisions/America's Voice poll.

But he still lost Arizona to Romney by 11 percentage points, unofficial results show. That margin could narrow when all 602,000 uncounted provisional and early ballots in the state are tabulated in the coming days.

Frank Sharry, executive director of America's Voice, an immigrant-advocacy group in Washington, D.C., that pushes comprehensive immigration reform, said he believed some Republicans in the Democrat-controlled Senate would likely be willing to work with Obama and Senate Democrats to pass bipartisan immigration reform.

"They know their chances of wining the White House in 2016 will be lower without the support of Latino voters," Sharry said.

In 2006, McCain helped lead a bipartisan attempt to pass immigration reform, followed by an attempt in 2007 led by Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl. Both failed.

Rep. Jeff Flake, a six-term GOP congressman who on Tuesday was elected to replace the retiring Kyl, once was a strong advocate for comprehensive immigration reform. In 2012, he pivoted to a position that would require border-security upgrades to the Border Patrol's Tucson Sector.

While he still wants any solution to include enhanced border-security measures, Flake told The Arizona Republic on Wednesday that an effort "to effectively deal with the Dream Act issue" likely could pass easily with strong bipartisan support.

"I remain convinced that as Republicans we've got to do more on this issue, not just because it's good policy, but because it's obviously necessary politics as well," he said. "When you look at demographics, we cannot continue as Republicans to alienate such a significant portion of the electorate."

Kareem Crayton, a political scientist and associate professor of law at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, said Democrats and Republicans both have something to gain from revisiting immigration reform.

"If the Democrats intend to extend their level of support from the Latino community, they're going to have to make good on this," Crayton said. "They can't fail at this."

For their part, Republicans need to come to terms with demographic challenges, he said.

"I thought they would have recognized this four years ago, but ginning up the White vote just won't do the trick," Crayton said. "They're not going to be a successful national party if they are simply going to try to compete between the lines of the Old Confederacy. It's just not going to work. ... The numbers just aren't there for them, and the largest and fastest-growing population among the non-White groups are Latinos."

Poll results

A Latino Decisions/America's voice poll of 5,600 voters in 11 states, including Arizona, found that 66 percent of Latino voters said they felt like President Barack Obama cared about the Latino community while 74 percent of Latinos thought Republican candidate Mitt Romney didn't care about the Latino community or considered him hostile to Latinos.

While the poll showed that Latinos overwhelming supported Obama over Romney in Arizona, efforts to dramatically increase the number of Latino voters in Arizona appear to have fallen short.

Before the election, the National Association of Latino Elected Officials projected that 359,000 Latinos would vote in Arizona's general election, up from 291,000 in 2008.

Early estimates based on exit polls show that about 300,000 Latinos voted in Arizona this year out of a total of about 1.6 million votes cast, said Evan Bacalao, senior director of civic engagement at NALEO.

Petra Falcon, director of Promise Arizona, an organization that worked to increase the number of Latino voters in Arizona, said it is too early to tell how many Latinos voted in Arizona because of the thousands of provisional ballots that haven't been counted.

Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., won election to the Senate with 17 percent of the Latino vote in Arizona, according to the Latino Decisions/America's Voice poll. His Democratic opponent, former U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona, who is a Latino of Puerto Rican descent, received 83 percent of the Latino vote in Arizona. Flake defeated Carmona by less than 5 percentage points, according to unofficial results.

by Daniel González, and Dan Nowicki - Nov. 7, 2012 The Republic | azcentral.com Latino votes key to Obama's victory

Bipartisan Couple's Counseling

Perhaps both parties should consult a mediator in order to reach compromise to avoid the fiscal cliff.

Republicans review identity

WASHINGTON - Having lost the popular vote in five of the past six presidential elections, Republicans plunged Wednesday into an intense period of self-examination, blame-setting and testy debate over whether their party needs serious change or just some minor tweaks.

The fallout will help determine if the GOP might return to heights approximating the Ronald Reagan years or, as some fear, suffer even deeper losses as the nation's Democratic-leaning Hispanics increase in number.

"The party is clearly in some sort of identity crisis," said Rick Tyler, a past aide to former House Speaker Newt Gingrich.

Hard-core conservatives, furious at President Barack Obama's re-election in the face of a weak economy, called for a wholesale shift to resolutely right positions on social and fiscal matters. Some demanded that party leaders resign.

Establishment Republicans largely shrugged off the tirades. But they split into two main camps themselves, portending potentially lengthy soul-searching, especially in Congress.

"The Republican Party is exactly right on the issues," said Terry Holt, a veteran GOP strategist with close ties to House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. The party mainly needs to nominate candidates who can relate to average Americans better than multimillionaire Mitt Romney did, Holt said.

Some other Republicans, however, see bigger problems. The party must shed its "absolutism on issues like tax increases," which congressional lawmakers oppose at virtually every level, said John Ullyot, a former Republican Senate aide. "The only way the party is going to move more to the middle is when we get sick of losing," he said.

While Holt and others say the Republican Party is aligned with most Americans on big issues, Tuesday's exit polls raise doubts in some areas. Six in 10 voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, the highest share saying so since the mid-1990s. Two-thirds of voters said illegal immigrants working in the United States should be offered a chance to apply for legal status.

Nearly half of all voters supported Obama's plan to raise taxes on couples' incomes above $250,000. Thirteen percent said taxes should be increased on all Americans, and 35 percent said no one should pay higher taxes.

Republican insiders, meanwhile, nervously focused on an approaching problem that could produce even bigger presidential losses in the future. The GOP relies overwhelmingly on white voters. Hispanics, the nation's fastest-growing group, have bristled at Republican attacks on illegal immigration.

Republican campaign pros said the party must find a way to temper the talk about immigration without infuriating conservatives who oppose amnesty for those who entered the country illegally.

by Charles Babington - Nov. 8, 2012 Associated Press

Republicans review identity

59% of Americans Think Marijuana Should Be Legalized | Just Say Now

A new Huffington Post poll/YouGov poll has found one of the highest level of support for marijuana legalization of any national poll. Overall it found 59 percent of Americans think marijuana should be legalized, while just 26 percent think it should remain illegal. From Huffington Post:

YouGov (10/23)
Which of the following is closest to your opinion?
Marijuana should be legalized, taxed, and regulated like alcohol . . 51%
Marijuana should be legalized but NOT taxed and regulated like alcohol . . 8%
Marijuana should not be legalized . . 26%
Not sure . . 15%

Read more: 59% of Americans Think Marijuana Should Be Legalized | Just Say Now