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Senior economic adviser to Barbara Boxer Marcus Stanley was arrested Tuesday entering the Hart Senate Office Building with a "substance that tested positive for marijuana," apparently jumping the gun on possible passage this November of Proposition 19 despite his boss’s opposition to the measure.
An aide to Sen. Barbara Boxer was arrested Tuesday and charged with possession of marijuana after he was stopped during a security screening while entering the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington at about noon.
Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Capitol Police, said officers observed Marcus Stanley, 43, with a “green leafy substance that tested positive for marijuana.” He was released later on Tuesday, she said. Stanley had been working for Boxer’s senate office since January 2009 as a senior economic adviser.
“Marcus Stanley is no longer with this office,” Boxer’s communication director Zachary Coile said in a statement. “He submitted his resignation and Sen. Boxer accepted it because his actions yesterday were wrong and unacceptable.”
Rachel Weiner at WaPo reports:
Because the charge was a misdemeanor, Stanley was released soon after being charged. He quit Boxer’s staff shortly thereafter.
Stanley has worked on Capitol Hill since 2007, according to financial disclosure records from Legistorm, and draws a six-figure salary. He has also worked for the Joint Economic Committee.
Marijuana possession has been an ongoing issue on the Capitol grounds, especially since the Capitol Visitor Center opened with additional screening facilities. In the past year and a half, more than a dozen people have been stopped for bringing marijuana into the Capitol complex, along with other drugs, including at least one instance involving cocaine, according to police records….
This is not the first time a member of Boxer’s senior staff has been arrested. Senior policy adviser Jeffrey Rosato, who also worked on the EPW committee, was fired in 2008 after he was arrested and charged with the receipt and distribution of child pornography.
Stanley is the fourth Hill aide to be arrested by Capitol Police this year, according to an analysis by POLITICO.
25 Comments
What a dope! Maybe he found working for Boxer tedious.
LOL! Time to legalize pot across the land
They’re still arresting people for simple possession?
It wouldn’t have happened in CA!!
Do they search people going into the Capitol? He should have known better than to try this, but…….
I agree and that’s why it sounds fishy to me. Also, I infer from the articles I read on this event that he was carrying loose, unrolled pot rather than a joint, and that makes even less sense.
Heh.
You beat me to it. That made me laugh out loud.
Leave it to Politico to mention the Boxer aide who was arrested for receiving and distributing child pornography, as if that was somehow comparable to having a joint in your pocket.
Yes, I thought that was typical and worth including, to highlight Politico’s essentially gossip-rag nature inside the Beltway.
I feel bad for the guy. Both guys actually. One lost a good job over nothing. The other obviously has some issues but didn’t deserve five years in prison.
Wait – who got five years in prison? Because if it’s the perv, he deserved that and more.
No a “perv” doesn’t deserve five years. A child molester/rapist like Roman Polanski can get life for all I care. But someone who has a pornography addiction but doesn’t act on it except to download pictures should get treatment diversion for a first offense.
Not when it’s child pornography. That’s the issue.
Shouldn’t child incest be punished more severely than possession of child pornography? It rarely is. In fact in a number of states the usual sentence for incest is probation:
http://www.protect.org/component/content/article/980
Meanwhile, in Japan and Russia, possession of child porn is not a crime at all.
The laws are messed up. All I know is there are vastly more people into child porn than there are child molesters. Statistically the former are fairly low-risk people.
Er – if it’s NOT child pornography, it’s not an offense at all.
The issue when it IS child pornography is exactly how much the law should come down on the purchaser compared to the creator/vendor, and that issue is extremely debatable.
Just as with any offense, the punishment should fit the crime. Even people who have no interest in that form of erotica can believe that the crime of purchasing it pales into relative insignificance compared to the crime of creating or distributing it.
Thanks for this, Teddy!
Sorry Teddy, I didn’t mean to get your post off track with my apparently Victorian view of child pornography.
Funny, our Senators look more like they are on crack than weed, so I don’t know what to make of this.
Maybe it takes a thousand pot-smoking staffers to heard a hundred crackhead senators?
So was he a medical patient just picking up his meds on the way to work?
Medical marijuana now legal
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/dc/2010/07/medical_marijuana_now_legal.html
Did he become a lawbreaker by entering a federal building?
Isn’t the entire DC area federal space? I really think we medical users need some clarifications on these laws. Can I go to DC as long as I never enter a building? How about museums? What about breakfast with my senator? Are they going to strip search me? Do a blood test?
I hear traveling to DC is the ONLY way for a Californian like me to meet with Senator Feinstein. I want to ask her to her face why she discriminates against me for my religion. Hopefully someone will have a cell phone camera going if I ever get the opportunity.
I won’t travel to a place that is going to discriminate against me and put me in jail for my religion. That would be stupid.
Sister Lauren
THC Ministry
I smell a rat. Baca and Boxer are fronting for the powers that be on prop 19.
“I’ll tell you what I could really use Barbara- a high profile arrest. I’ve been getting hammered ever since i said the demaon weed makes young white women want to sleep with middle aged, black jazz musicians. And I may have really screwed the pooch with the medical marijuana triple murder stuff. I don’t know what happened. The focus group loved it. Is there anyone you know of…(overlapping) really?….in your office? You mean he works for you?”
Officer 1: “(phffffft!) Here… Good shit!”
Officer 2: “(phffffft! cough-cough!) I hope they never legalize it, I love conducting field tests!”
This is too precious. Phony Babs has an aide get busted with grass.
Can’t wait for her and Phonygold to be the two biggest name Dems to get sent packing by the electorate come November. Love the idea that Carly the Evil Sheep might dump Babs. The only worse disgrace would be to lose to Palin.
Fuck us over, you deserve to get your head handed to you on a plate.
He was arrested for have a weapon of mass distraction.
Our leaders are addicted to a green product which is totally addictive, ensnares all who take it, causes people to become more and more dependent on it over time, and results in an almost instantaneous loss of moral fiber. Money.