Barney Frank Present for Partner's Pot Bust
Congressman Barney Frank (D-Mass.) admitted Friday that he was present during the 2007 arrest of his partner James Ready, busted for growing marijuana at his Maine residence.
Frank claims that he was unaware of Ready's agricultural endeavors and is "not a great outdoorsman" and wouldn't have recognized the plant anyway.
While this excuse is comically flimsy — I'm pretty sure it doesn’t take Bear Grylls to identify a marijuana plant — it's more frustrating than anything else.
Frank is known for his friendly stance towards marijuana use, having introduced both the States' Rights to Medical Marijuana Act (H.R. 2592) and the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2008 (HR 5843).
"In a free society a large degree of human activity is none of the government's business. We should make criminal what's going to hurt other people and other than that we should leave it to people to make their own choices," Frank said in 2008 in defense of the bill.
It would have been nice to see Frank use this admission as an opportunity to promote his stance on the decriminalization of marijuana rather than make some lame excuse.
As blogger squashed puts it, "I wish he had said 'It's absurd that pot is illegal. It's just a plant, for crying out loud.' But instead of saying something reasonable, he said something ridiculous."
