As Marcy Wheeler says, this plot has it all – Mexican drug cartels, Iran, assassinations, attacks on the Saudi AND Israeli embassies. You name it, it’s in there.

When Barack Obama ran for president he promised to respect the states’ medical marijuana laws. But since taking office Obama has been steadily using more and more parts of the federal government to wage a war on medical marijuana.

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee is hosting a confirmation hearing for Michele Leonhart for head of the DEA. Watch live here.

A rabidly anti-pot drug warrior — who temporarily served as DEA Head under Bush — Leonhart has defied Attorney General Eric Holder’s edicts to end raids on medical marijuana dispensaries and believes that the growing violence on the Mexican border is indicative of the Drug War’s success there.

The National Journal reports that the Senate Judiciary Committee will move the nomination on Michelle Leonhart for DEA administrator next week after a seven-month delay. Leonhart, a drug warrior to the core, has served as the temporary head of DEA since she was promoted to that position by George W. Bush in 2007.

In her time at the DEA, Leonhart has organized the campaign against medical marijuana, and ignored the clear directive from Attorney General Eric Holder to stop raiding dispensaries. Despite this flagrant insubordination, President Obama saw fit to nominate Leonhart to serve as the official DEA head earlier this year. And now, it looks like Leonhart will move through the Senate, with few signs that anyone in the Senate will actually fight her nomination, let alone stop it.

In September, former DEA Chiefs sent a letter to Eric Holder, informing him that it was the obligation of the Department of Justice to oppose Prop 19 if it passes just as they opposed the Arizona immigration law.

In response, Eric Holder is assuring them that they don’t need to worry, because the Department of Justice will “vigorously enforce” federal drug laws even if Prop 19 passes,

That’s no doubt good news for former DEA Chief Robert Bonner, one of the authors of the original letter to Holder, and who has since worked himself into an anti-pot frenzy about what will happen with the drug cartels and the border situation if Prop 19 passes.

Just Say Now can exclusively report the ties between Bonner’s anti-Prop 19 Reefer Madness and nearly $500,000 in federal contracts to “consult” with the Department of Homeland Security about our ever-growing border war.

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) is pushing a bill that aims to put yet more people in jail for using marijuana, even hoping to create a crime for “conspiracy to possess” marijuana that could put people in jail for planning to fly to Amsterdam with their friends to smoke pot.

That’s bad enough, and luckily Nancy Pelosi pulled the bill of the House’s fast track. But Lamar Smith continues his war on marijuana, hilariously suggesting on Fox News that Barack Obama is “encouraging the use of marijuana.”

But Paul Armentano, Deputy Director of NORML, took to the pages of The Hill newspaper to give a reality check to Lamar Smith’s lies.

Do the former DEA Administrators defend the federal marijuana prohibition with evidence that marijuana’s harms to users are so great that users must be denied the liberty to take the minimal risks attendant to its use? No, they cite an annual “strategy document” that has historically been an instrument of political propaganda, and was never taken seriously a genuine policy or planning document for addressing public safety or public health problems.

Nine former DEA heads held a press conference this morning to promote their letter to Eric Holder, asking the Justice Department to intervene and challenge Prop 19 if it passes. The fact is that these nine people shoulder a huge chunk of the blame for the utter and complete failure of the war on drugs that has made the situation on the Arizona border so critical. It’s quite shameless that they’d make things even worse by demagoguing the immigration law in this fashion, but it’s symptomatic of a wasteful and counterproductive bureaucracy trying to protect its power — and its enormous budget.

Last week, Mexico’s President Calderone called on President Obama to join the debate on legalizing marijuana. The US drug policy has lined the pockets of the drug cartels with billions of dollars, and they are threatening to destabilize not only Mexico but countries across Latin America.

Please show your support and sign the petition asking President Obama to end the war on marijuana.

Earlier this month the DEA conducted several coordinated raids of California medical marijuana dispensaries and collectives. Problem is, these DEA raids are in direct opposition to the directive issued by President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder last year that designated raids on legal medical marijuana dispensaries to “not be a priority” for the DEA. Today, Firedoglake publisher Jane Hamsher joined drug policy reform organizations and a conservative group, led by the Marijuana Policy Project, in condemning the DEA’s raids.