Latest Self-Declared Right | Depends how ya look at it

• Officials in Carroll County, Maryland, finally released a woman in August after she had been detained for 67 days -- just for declining to give her name to a traffic patrolman (who had stopped her for a broken taillight). In her idiosyncratic understanding of the U.S. Constitution's Fifth Amendment, to "not be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against (herself)" means keeping her identity hidden from police. Eventually, sheriff's deputies captured her fingerprints, and since they matched no outstanding warrants, she was released. [Carroll County Times, 9-1-2015] Militar

• y veteran Gary Dixon, 65, has multiple medical issues, the worst of which is stage four lung cancer, which he says he got from Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. He takes from 10 to 15 meds a day, previously supplied by the Veterans hospital in Topeka, Kansas, but for post-traumatic stress and anxiety, he also smokes marijuana when he can get it. (Kansas has not legalized medical marijuana.) A recent policy change by the VA bars pain meds for marijuana users, leading Dixon to fend for himself for the meds (about $400 a month, he said), because he so badly needs the marijuana. [KSNT-TV (Topeka), 9-9-2015]

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