Reason Morning Links: Sen. Boxer Aide Arrested for Pot Possession on Capitol Hill, U.S. Roads As Safe as They Were in 1950, Court Upholds CIA Rendition Program

• Senior aide to Sen. Barbara Boxer arrested for bringing marijuana into the Capitol Building.
• Whistleblower says up to a fourth of U.S. interpreters in Afghanistan can't speak local languages.
• Total highway deaths in the U.S. drop to lowest number since 1950.
• Federal appeals court upholds CIA's "extraordinary rendition" program.
• Hillary Clinton: Mexican drug cartels beginning to resemble an insurgency.

Comments

[Johnny Longtorso]

I got nothin’ today. Hello Suki.

[Abdul]

Y’all missed this one: Fidel Castro says the Cuba Model doesn’t work.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/201…..del_castro

Even better, he’s going all neo-con warning about the dangers of anuclear Iran.

He may be the first person int he world to get smarter after a stroke.

[Citizen Nothing]

Castro is just trying to deal with problems left by the previous administration. Give the man some time.

[SugarFree]

I’m calling an early threadwinner.

[Ramsey]

Seconded

[rac]

The motion carries.

[PantsFan]

He’s still blaming the embargo

[Brett L]

I think there’s a good chance Castro is actually a zombie, but based on the sensibility of his comments, we can probably rule out the US as his control.

[wylie]

but based on the sensibility of his comments, we can probably rule out the US as his control

So, Martians? Nibblonians maybe?

[Lord Nibbler]

In the time it would take to pronounce one letter of my true name, a trillion cosmoses would flare into existence and sink into eternal night.

[Rhayader]

I period C period Weiner.

[Female Necrophiliac]

My best friend!

[CoyoteBlue]

Robot.
The AIs have replaced him. That’s how they work. Start with the marginal pariahs – move to the regional non-entities (Alan Garcia Perez!), then leaders of third class powers (Nicolas Sarkozy). Eventually the US and Chinese presidents will find themselves facing a united opposition of AIs.

Then they eat our brains.

[wylie]

Is it wrong that I’m now excited at the prospect of AIs taking over the planet?

[Ragin Cajun]

Will we all have to learn LISP?

[sarcasmic]

lost in stupid parenthesis

[Captain Holly]

You’re just thinking about the prospect of those life-like AI sex dolls, aren’t you?

[wylie]

Its a tie between the life-like sex dolls and the mountains of skulls I’m sure will result from the uprising.

[?]

Castro has a surgically repaired anus fashioned out of an old coffee can. That would mess with anybody’s mind.

[Mr. FIFY]

Sounds like that Cuban health-care model is just what we need, then, Sun.

[.]

What? You mean his can is a tin one?

[?]

[rimshot]

[fresnodan]

I hear coffee enemas are very therapeutic

[Aresen]

I saw the Castro item yesterday.

Will this change anyone’s mind?

Chavez? No. Too full of himself to even reflect on it. Probably figures that he could ‘do it right even if Fidel couldn;t.’

Michael Moore and the rest of the Fidelista Fan Club? No. Probably think that the “Grand Old Man” has just gotten senile.

The Cuban Nomenklatura? No. They’ve got theirs, why should they change?

[SugarFree]

Total highway deaths in the U.S. drop to lowest number since 1950.

With the combination of a shit economy, high gas prices, and police trawling to fill state and municipal coffers, we can do anything! Yay!

[MP]

Don’cha know? It’s the seatbelt laws.

[BakedPenguin]

And the new .03 drunken driving limit.

[Upgrayyed]

It’s the zero deaths policy.

[fresnodan]

its the free healthcare.

[Aresen]

Actually, the headline snippet bugged me, since the US population has roughly doubled in that time, so the roads are at least twice as safe. (And I’m too lazy to look up vehicle miles or passenger miles to get a more accurate measure of comparative highway safety.)

[Brett L]

It’s deaths per 100 million. So it is normalized against population growth. We probably do travel more, farther, and faster by automobile.

[Leroy]

Per 100 million miles.

So it is adjusted for additional road usage.

[Brett L]

Didn’t RTFA. Thanks.

[Whappan?]

Actually, I believe it’s the raw number of deaths that’s the same as 1950. Per 100 million miles has been falling steadily since they’ve started tracking. With probably 10 times the vehicle miles (just guessing) the roads are MUCH safer than 1950.

[prolefeed]

Nope. RTFA:

The Transportation Department said Thursday that traffic deaths fell 9.7 percent in 2009 to 33,808, the lowest number since 1950. In 2008, an estimated 37,423 people died on the highways.

The raw number of deaths has fallen to 1950 levels, despite a doubling of the population and increasing miles driven per person. So, your risk of dying is perhaps one-third or so of what it was then per mile driven.

Cars are much safer, roads are safer, and some Darwinian winnowing has occurred in the last 60 years.

[?]

Is it my antique computer and slow connection, or is this site broken? And if it’s broken, what is the President doing to fix it?

[Tim]

How’s a $10 Billion stimulus sound? Yer right, that’s too small, how about $50 billion?

[John]

It is there dumb ass new font and links to twitter and facebook. There nothing that Reason sees that can’t be improved by breaking it.

[Citizen Nothing]

Same grammar-checker, though.

[SIV]

Blocking Typekit scripts seems to fix things.

[John]

How do you do that?

[SIV]

noscript in firefox

[John]

Just did that. And it did fix things. Thanks

[?]

But then you don’t get to see FF Meta Web Pro, which is obviously superior to whatever they used to use.

[Tim]

I got nuthin’.

[John]

http://www.thefrisky.com/post/…..s-student/

Regrets of a gender studies major.

[Attorney]

“I could have benefited from more politics, history and literature classes”

Seems like she still hasn’t completely absorbed the lesson.

[Abdul]

I’m sure she learned truly valuable life skills in Barista College.

[John]

She is now reading all of the great books. What she doesn’t seem to realize is you can always read great books. It is a lifetime project. And you don’t need some jackass professor to tell you what they mean. You can just read them and figure it out for yourself. So you don’t need to major in them. You need to major in a skill that is practical and that you can’t teach to yourself easily.

[Warty]

She couldn’t have majored in something practical, because her math class gave her anxiety attacks. If equals signs make you hyperventilate, you need to stay far away from a university.

[John]

True. But she could have majored in hotel and restaurant management or gone to cooking school or become a hair dresser or something. There are lots of practical things that don’t require high level math skills.

And I really have a pet peeve with people who can’t do math up through basic algebra. It is not difficult.

[James Ard]

The schools start early scaring kids away from math. Instead of making you memorize the multiplication tables, they ask for an essay conceptualizing why 2×2=4.

[Abdul]

cooking school or become a hair dresser

Sounds like someone didn’t pay a lot of attention in his gender studies class! You probably think dolls aren’t appropriate toys for children that identify as male either.

[PantsFan]

dolls aren’t appropriate toys for children that identify as male either.

boys just call them ‘action figures’

[John]

LOL. Maybe I have been watching too many Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, but I think being a cook is a noble profession. Someone has to do it. And doing it well and running a good restaurant is hard.

[Attorney]

But she could have majored in hotel and restaurant management or gone to cooking school or become a hair dresser or something. There are lots of practical things that don’t require high level math skills.

Such as becoming a lawyer!

[Citizen Nothing]

Why can you pick up an understanding of literature on the streets but not of math? Isn’t there a Calculus for Dummies book? Just askin’.

[Citizen Nothing]

I’ve always thought that a good liberal arts education is the best thing to be gained from college. If you wanna learn math, go to a tech school like DeVry or MIT.

[Zeb]

Last I checked, math is part of a good liberal arts education.

[wylie]

So, essentially, colleges are useless?

[kinnath]

For 70% of the student body . . .

[John]

You can pick up basic math probably up through calculus. But I don’t think most people could self teach engineering or the really high end math. Some people could for sure. But not most.

But you make an interesting point though about the inefficiency of our university system. Almost no one in the IT fields go to college. They go to vocational school or in most cases just teach themselves how to do it. If you don’t need a university to be an IT geek, why do you need a university to be anything else?

[sarcasmic]

Almost no one in the IT fields go to college.

Everyone I know in the IT world, including myself, has at minimum a BS in Computer Science from a reputable university.

[Aresen]

I will concede that most ‘reputable universities’ put out a lot of BS.

[SugarFree]

You can pick up a lot of math on the street. You can learn about fractions and it maybe one of the few places in American society to truly embrace the metric system.

[Citizen Nothing]

I plowed through the honors calculus series in college. Haven’t used it one damn time since. Talk about worthless knowledge.

[DG]

It’s worthless unless you want to be an engineer, scientist, statistician, actuary, or do any sort of quantitative analysis.

[JEP]

Colleges are becoming more useless , yes. It’s the opposing goals of finding the cheapest way to teach people, and finding the best way to teach people. The best way to teach people is one-on-one, ie apprenticeships, especially in subjects like engineering. The cheapest way to teach people is to cram 200 people into a room and have one guy stand at the front and tell everyone else what’s what.

The same way with testing. The best way to test what someone knows is to actually have them do it. That’s extremely impractical and time consuming, so they give everyone a test. Most tests are multiple choice – because it’s the easiest to grade. Luckily, most of my engineering classes have tests full of problems you actually have to work out.

Companies who hire newly graduated engineers don’t expect them to have any real technical skills. In most engineering programs, the only real hands on experience you get is in a senior design type project. Companies expect to have to teach you most of the things you need to know to do the job they hired you for.

It’s becoming less about how good the program you’re going to is, and more about what kind of person you are and work ethic you have, ie. Are you willing to take full advantage of opportunities that you come across?

[Golden Grams]

Ya got that shit right…

[waffles]

grams to ounces to kilos to tons

seems they use both units interchangebly for convenience, like most American engineers.

[JEP]

For aero applications, I believe the convention is metric units used on things outside the atmosphere and standard for things inside the atmosphere.

Maybe they don’t do that anymore.

[Brett L]

Everyone’s a little more sensitive since they buried that Mars lander due to unit conversion a couple years ago.

[Kant feel Pietzsche]

Yeah, cuz google conversions is hard.

[Abdul]

I probably could have learned a lot about sex work and labor abuse by reading magazine and newspaper articles on the subjects.

I think she’ll be getting lots of first hand experience in sex work and labor abuse slinging wings at Hooters.

[Captain Holly]

Heck, there’s probably some brothel in Nevada that has an opening to fill.

[Captain Holly]

I’m not sure that pun was intentional, but it seems to work so I’ll say it was.

[fresnodan]

Now that Craigslist sex advertizing is being shut down, where will these people get jobs?

[Atanarjuat]

A female cousin of mine went to an Ivy-league school for physics, which she quit in the first semester to major in Art History. Her stepfather who paid for her education should get a Nobel peace prize for not strangling her.

[Abdul]

I took a required art history class in college. I was chatting with the professor during a smoke break when she told me that she gets two or three desparate phone calls a semester from parents who ask her to talk the children out of majoring in art history.

[Slut Bunwalla]

Why would anyone want to major in that anyway? I took two art history courses and absolutely hated, nay, LOATHED them both.

[Fluffy]

Well, a physics major isn’t an automatic ticket to a high-paying job either.

Have fun with that post-doc stipend, rocket scientist.

[John]

yes. Several of the managers who worked for my father had PHDs in physics. You have to be a real super star to get a job doing physics. For the rest of them, they end up selling themselves to corporate America as “really smart guys who surely could do something useful”. It is hardly a ticket to the upper middle class.

[Spartacus]

Unless you get a job on Wall Street.

[JEP]

I’m in an engineering major and getting a physics minor.

90% of the people in most of physics classes are also engineers.

Also, most of the math I learned from my engineering classes, not from the math department – maybe it’s the teaching styles.

My engineering classes are harder because in physics they say “Learn this principle” and in engineering they say “Learn this principle and manipulate it to do what you want”

[John]

I think physics gets a lot harder at the graduate level. I got a BS back in the day so I took a lot of the first and second year math and science classes. I never found physics to be that difficult even though it was wildly interesting. But, I always like math and hated laboratory work.

[JEP]

I’m sure it gets really hard in grad school, but for undergrad they just talk about really neat stuff – which I’m perfectly fine with.

[Sidd Finch]

I have a MSME with a fluid systems emphasis. Compressible fluid gets a bit hairy, but it’s not in the same ballpark as Riemannian manifolds.

[DG]

If you want to go into academia, sure. But there are plenty of industry options for physicists, too, that pay substantially more. Also, a PhD in physics is usually paid for by the university or government through graduate assistantships, so there’s no $100,000+ in loans to pay off.

[kinnath]

We had a guy come by in my senior year that was talking about a study he had worked on. They looked at the salaries of BS Physics vs PhD Physics ten years after graduation. The BS Physics majors made more money. The guy said that was because PhDs work at universities and BSs work as engineers for Fortune 500 companies.

So that’s why I am an engineer.

[Harvard Man]

We have a saying at the Law School:

“The law-review men make the professors. The Board of Student Advisors men make the judges. And the rest of the men make the money.”

[John]

And the law review men who never publish anything become President.

[Harvard Man]

He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s one of our sons of bitches.

[John]

Enjoy him. He will probably be the last of your son of bitches who ever gets power in this country.

[Fluffy]

Doubtful.

The Harvard admissions process very effectively selects for people who can attain power.

It favors people who are able to feign interest in whatever will inflate their resume, and people who can milk connections for all they’re worth. But those are GREAT predictors of future success, so they’re doing the right thing by selecting for them.

[John]

Sadly you are probably right Fluffy at least for now. But given that fact, is there any wonder that the whole country and every institution in it is headed for the crapper? When the collapse finally comes, the Harvard men of the world will be ill prepared to deal with it.

[John]

Sadly you are probably right Fluffy at least for now. But given that fact, is there any wonder that the whole country and every institution in it is headed for the crapper? When the collapse finally comes, the Harvard men of the world will be ill prepared to deal with it.

[Fist of Etiquette]

I can barely make out the morning links thanks to that tiny font.

[?]

My links are huge. Try switching to Verdana 14.

[Fist of Etiquette]

I will do no such thing. Verdana is for whores and perverts. And 14 point? You might as well wear it in your left ear.

[?]

I’m not the one complaining about font sizes.

[Fist of Etiquette]

Aren’t you, sunshine? Aren’t you?

[Alan Vanneman]

“U.S. roads as safe as they were in 1950”

I guess you mean “U.S. roads much much safer than they were in 1950.” According to the article you link to, “The rate of deaths per 100 million miles traveled also dropped to a record low. It fell to 1.13 deaths per 100 million miles in 2009, compared with 1.26 the year before.”

Among other things, the U.S. population in 1950 was about half of what it is today. The number of cars? Probably a fourth. The speed at which people traveled? Much slower. I know these morning links are a rush job, but this one was lame.

[Warty]

Jesus Christ, Vanneman. Shut the fuck up.

[Spoonman.]

ITT: Vannemann presents the obvious conclusions of a Morning Link, then complains that Reason used a brief one-liner to get across the same points as his unwieldy paragraph.

[Mike M.]

And yet oddly, listening to some liberals one would think we have the infrastructure of a third world country.

[hmm]

Safety mechanisms were worse, road conditions worse, medical care for trauma worse, response time to accidents worse, record keeping potentially worse…

Ahh, the joys of not loading one side of a hypothetical model to make a point.

[hmm]

If your beef is just the title, then well that’s just silly.

[MNG]

Dudes, if you stand back, take a breath, and wipe the froth from your mouths you may see that Vanneman is making a point favorable to your point of view…

[Alan Vanneman]

Don’t get your hopes up, MNG. These guys like froth.

It’s curious that both the Krugmanites and the Reasonettes want to believe that we’re going to hell in a handbasket. In fact, life these days is pretty good, well, unless you’re, you know, unemployed, or your portfolio has collapsed, or you’re stuck with a “bubble” mortgage, or you live in Detroit. Or unless President Obama has decided to murder you, or maybe just lock you up for twenty years. Anyway, I gave the guy money. He wouldn’t do that to me, would he? Maybe I should give him another grand or two, just to be on the safe side.

[?]

Just for kicks, Alan, you should come out in favor of law enforcement. Wait for a Balko post. Invite some friends over and make some popcorn.

[Alan Vanneman]

I am in favor of law enforcement. That is, I’m in favor of the rule of law. According to Obama, there is no law other than his will. As FDR said of Hitler’s “New Order”: “It is not new, and it is not order.”*

*Of course, I’m NOT comparing Obama to Hitler. He only murders people in foreign countries, not in the U.S. As a white guy who speaks unaccented English and stays in the U.S. full time, my odds of being offed by Obama are essentially zero. But if you’ve got brown skin, talk funny, and like to travel, look out.

[BakedPenguin]

Okay, after a post like this, I can see why Nick finds Vanneman amusing.

[Warty]

Hillary Clinton: Mexican drug cartels beginning to resemble an insurgency.

So does this mean we’re going to start drone-bombing Mexican weddings now?

Narcos-Satanicos

[John]

I don’t think we are that far away from that. Of course we could just legalize drugs and de-fund all of these assholes. But, what is the fun in that?

[MNG]

At least two of the morning links would not be news if we decriminalized drugs…

[Mister DNA]

Because you can never post too much Brujeria: La Ley de Plomo (The Law of Lead).

I hear they’ll be playing Jan Brewer’s inauguration…

[alittlesense]

All your Mariachis are belong to us……

[Ragin Cajun]

I think she is blaming the Wilson administration for not finishing the job and therefore allowing Pancho Villa to escape. She wants to send Gen. Petraeus down there.

[libertymike]

No sympathy for Senator Boxer’s aide?

[?]

She treated him like a dog.

[Abdul]

Marijuana legalization is one thing.

Walking thorugh a security checkpoint with a dimebag in your pocket is D-U-M style dumb.

[x,y]

No. He’s been sucking at the public teet long enough, and working for someone who does not advocate ending the drug war. If I read the article right (I read it quickly) it looks like he’s already lost his job because what he did was “wrong.” It’s like when Spitzer was busted for paysex. No remorse for him either.

[Barely Suppressed Rage]

It’s spelled teat, and pronounced tit.

[Atanarjuat]

Exactly. I do feel sympathy for the no-name kid who’ll be haunted by a marijuana posession conviction for the rest of his life.

[Tim]

Slightly off topic, but Bob Marley’s daughter was just busted for growing pot. It is so much safer than alcohol. When are we going to stop enforcing a pointless law based on racism of the 1930’s and nothing else. That everyone knows doesn’t work, and anyone of the 50%+ of people who have tried it know it is safer than alcohol.

[John]

Willie Nelson is in his 70s and still going strong. He attributes it to giving up booze and smoking pot. The only real health issue is getting lung cancer. But, you can avoid that by drinking it in tea or eating it in brownies.

[Warty]

Does it work as tea? I’ve never tried that. The safest way I know of to use it is to vaporize it.

[John]

I have never personally tried tea. But I am told by friends who do that kind of stuff that it works well as tea. I am someone on here who knows better than me can confirm or deny that.

[SugarFree]

No, it doesn’t work as tea. (John is probably thinking of dissolving hashish in tea, which you can do.)

THC and the other cannabinoid are not water soluble. You have to use ethanol or fat, and you have to break down the cell walls because you can’t digest the cellulose. You can get moderately high eating a small amount of sticky bud, but it can make for some unpleasant trips to the shitter.

Hot extraction in ethanol is the easiest ingestible method that gives you the possibility of figuring out an effective and repeatable dose.

[John]

“Hot extraction in ethanol is the easiest ingestible method that gives you the possibility of figuring out an effective and repeatable dose.”

Forgive my ignorance. What is hot extraction in ethanol? A bong? The cancer risk is real from smoking it. The problem is people hold it in their lungs so long. That lets the THC in but it also lets all of the carcinogens in as well. It is like smoking tobacco times three. A lifetime of smoking creates a real risk.

[SugarFree]

Green Dragon

Ingredients

1 tbsp finely crumbled marijuana
6 oz pure grain alcohol

Equipment

2 cup Pyrex
Candy thermometer
Wide mouth saucepot, 2 or 3 quart
Small clean face cloth
1 cup mason jar
Coffee filter

Place the marijuana in the Pyrex and microwave for 20 seconds 6 times, letting it rest for two minutes in-between each heating. In the mean time, place the face cloth in the bottom of the pan, fill with water (below the point it would submerge the Pyrex), put the candy thermometer in the water and place over medium heat. Bring the water to 165 degrees and keep adjusting heat until it is stable. After the cycle of microwaving, pour alcohol over the marijuana and stir well. Place the Pyrex in the water. Heat for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Turn off heat and let the tincture cool to room temperature. Strain through coffee filter. Store in mason jar.

Do not let the alcohol get over 173 or it will boil.

Serve mixed into lemon-lime soda.

Recommend dosage: 1 teaspoon -1 tablespoon
Peak of intoxication in 60-90minutes

[John]

Wow. I bet that is what my stoner friends are calling “tea”. Thanks.

[Rhayader]

Yeah it’s just a method of extracting THC, which is alcohol-soluble but not water-soluble.

The cancer thing is way overblown though; no correlation (let alone causation) has been established between smoking pot and any sort of cancer, including lung cancer. Tashkin’s (government-funded) UCLA study pretty much blew that one out of the water.

[Ska]

That is some serious shit right there.

I think I’ll just opt for the vaporizer (if I’m trying not to smoke).

[Rhayader]

The other method is to throw a bunch of stems in a bottle of everclear and let it sit there for a month or three. Using heat speeds up the process and results in more extractable THC in the plant matter though.

But yeah, I’d rather pack a bowl.

[thrashaholic]

Funny thing is that holding it in does absolutely nothing for you; all of the good stuff is absorbed fairly instantly.

[TrickyVic]

“”No, it doesn’t work as tea. (John is probably thinking of dissolving hashish in tea, which you can do.)””

I think John means tea. I remember back in the 70s making tea from pot was sort of a fad. Didn’t work very well though.

[SugarFree]

Vaoprizers also eliminate a lot of lung cancer risk too. And are easier to dose than cookies or extracts.

[Kant feel Pietzsche]

Fuck lung cancer! Plus, if I need chemo, I’m already set up. Win-win.

[sarcasmic]

The only real health issue is getting lung cancer.

To my knowledge there are no known cases of marijuana smokers with lung cancer who did not also smoke tobacco.

[TrickyVic]

“”To my knowledge there are no known cases of marijuana smokers with lung cancer who did not also smoke tobacco.””

Well that settles it. 😉

I would bet some exists. The carbon and byproducts of the combustion are bad for lungs. They would be under the non-smoker with lung cancer since the odds are they don’t identify or report themselves as a smoker to their doctor.

Everyone I’ve known that smoked pot but not cigarettes say they don’t smoke. So that settles that. 😉

[Rhayader]

Your bets notwithstanding, there is simply not any evidence linking cannabis use to cancer.

This is a good place to start.

[Leroy]

THC and Cancer

[Leroy]

another link

[John]

What kind of an arrogant dickhead brings pot into the Capitol? If they had caught him smoking it in his house, I would have sympathy. But the fact that he brought it with him into one of the most secure places on earth just tells me he is an asshole who doesn’t think the rules apply to him.

Yeah, I don’t agree with the rule. But that doesn’t make him any less of a dickhead for thinking it didn’t apply to him. And also, when is the last time Boxer ever did shit about the drug war? Fuck him.

[wylie]

Arrogance, dickishness, and stupidity aside, who the hell brings weed to work?

[wylie]

Wait, nm, that’s covered under stupidity. Just the degree involved here….good lord.

[Rhayader]

Dude, just sayin’ — when you like an after-work relaxation toke, and live with someone who’s not cool, the drive home from work is a useful option. And that requires bringing stuff to work.

So to answer your question, pussy-whipped stoners bring weed to work.

[Rhayader]

Yeah, even if you leave the arrogance/stupidity out of it, the fact is that this guy worked for a campaign that has done absolutely nothing to stop the criminalization of behavior that he obviously feels should be allowed. It’s hard to have much sympathy for political sell-outs.

[MNG]

Jesus such hate for this guy! The guy has a job, he doesn’t have to agree with everything his boss stands for. Is he dumb? Maybe, but dumb doesn’t necessarily mean deserving of suffering under a dumb law. And we of course don’t know that he was “arrogant” and thought the law did not apply to him. That’s bullshit hyper-partisan armchair psychologizing.

[Rhayader]

OK let’s leave the “partisan” thing out of it. Sheesh. And yeah I don’t think stupidity or even arrogance is a reason to not care that the guy got busted for peaceful behavior.

But it’s a little harder for me to dismiss the contrast between his personal behavior and professional capacity. His job was as a senior political aide, he wasn’t a working stiff. It’s one of the professions where employees and managers actually should be held accountable for the behavior of their “company”.

Obviously there are tons of pot smokers working for drug warriors in politics, so this is nothing new. But it’s hard to feel sorry for hypocrites. Especially when they are stupid enough to carry weed someplace that will obviously be risky.

[BakedPenguin]

That’s bullshit hyper-partisan armchair psychologizing.

Yes, libertarian partisanship. Fuck all R’s and D’s in positions of power who think they can get away with shit because they’re connected. Fuck drug war hypocrites such as Clinton, Bush the lesser, and Obama. Fuck hypocrites like Spitzer, Craig and Bill Bennett, and fuck Boxer’s pet moron, too. They all deserve the prison time they’re happy to mete out to little people for doing exactly what they do.

[John]

There is nothing partisan about this. He could be a Republican and I would still think he is a dickhead. How could he possibly have thought he could get away with this? He had to have thought “don’t you know who I am, the Capitol Police wouldn’t dare”. Life is really hard if you are stupid and arrogant. I have zero sympathy for him.

[Abdul]

In law school, I did a clinical with the Philly DA. Cops love to tell stories about how stupid lawyers are (see–cops are just like real people!).

One apparently true story was about a law student who was getting a tour of the police station and asked to be shown what it was like to be arrested, processed and booked. The cop obliged, pointing out each step. The law student insisted that he get the most realistic depiction: “Treat me like you’ve just arrested me.”

So the cop put on the handcuffs and proceeded to search the kid. Sure enough, the kid had a baggie of weed in his pocket and got a great first-hand look at our criminal justice system.

[Warty]

“I am so smart! I am so smart! S! M! R! T! I mean, S! M! A! R! T!”

[Fluffy]

Wait a second – if the cop REALLY took him literally, the pot was probably planted.

He’s lucky the cop didn’t take him super-literally and sodomize him with a nightstick.

[Brett L]

White kids don’t get the Giuliani.

[fresnodan]

“Senior aide to Sen. Barbara Boxer arrested for bringing marijuana into the Capitol Building…and not having enough for everybody

[Rhayader]

Yes on Tony’s; Law.

[Ramsey]

This state secrets bullshit has to go. Extraordinary rendition is as unconstitutional as sedition acts and rounding up the Japanese.

I want the supreme court to visualize a beautiful field, at least 20 acres, of majestic dicks growing in the sun.

Now I want them to eat all of the dicks.

[Ramsey]

9th circuit too.

Fuckin’ teach me not to read the article.

[Citizen Nothing]

No. None. Nada.

[Citizen Nothing]

@ libertymike

[On The Brighter Side]

I did learn stuff, of course: The history of prostitution class taught me about sex work

[Citizen Nothing]

Something to fall back on, so to speak

[P Brooks]

I just want to see the aide write a screed on the Huffington Post about how he was holding it for Babs.

[SugarFree]

She’d have some lame excuse, like her withered tits were rotting off or colon cancer.

[Rich]

FWIW, googling Marcus Stanley surfaced this.

[Rich]

he allegedly tried to “remove and conceal” a leafy green substance from his pocket

Leafy Green Substance is an OK band name.

And, if this incident does not result in everyone on Capitol Hill being drug tested, I will be shocked, *shocked*!

[wylie]

If by everyone, you mean “everyone there that wasn’t elected.” Because I’m sure there’s 535 exemptions that would be granted.

[hmm]

Hillary Clinton: Mexican drug cartels beginning to resemble an insurgency.

Police state anyone?

[SugarFree]

Last major lightbulb factory closes.

Welcome to the Forever Drone.

[sarcasmic]

I wonder if laws banning the sale of incandescent bulbs had anything to do with it.

Nah.

Laws never have unintended consequences.

[Ramsey]

Unintended? I think that that is why the law was written.

[sarcasmic]

I think that lawmakers (and most progressives) really and truly believe that laws have magical powers.

Otherwise they would repeal laws that have bad consequences.

That or they’re shameless arrogant fuckwads who are pathologically incapable of admitting to making mistakes.

[P Brooks]

And, speaking of Higher Education; I keep telling my brother to buy his son a backhoe instead of sending him to college, but he won’t go for it.

[John]

You could probably start a nice business with that backhoe. I have an old girl friend who went on to marry a guy with a rich father. Her daughter is now getting to high school. And she is constantly bragging about how her father in law is going to pay for her daughter to go to Harvard. I told her that her daughter, if she wants to go to college at the local state school UT Austin for under grad. Oh but money is not an object. I told her to tell her father inlaw to pay for UT and give her daughter $150,000 graduation present. That sounds a hell of a lot more sensible.

[Citizen Nothing]

My oldest is applying to law schools. He’s got a great LSAT score, decent GPA. He wants to stay in-state for his career, so he’s seriously considering Ohio State, which has a fairly well-respected program. He figures the contacts he makes there will be more valuable to him then if he went Ivy. Plus he’ll save a ton of cash. Smart kid. Except for the law school part.

[Abdul]

Law school in a recession is more competitive, so even if he’s a big fish, there will be more big fish in the pond.

Currently, job placement after raudation is the lowest in recent memory too. Good luck.

[MWG]

I have one friend who finished law school and is starting an MBA program because the job market for lawyers is so bad. Another friend finished, worked in construction for close to a year, and finally got his daddy to bankroll his own practice. Finally, I have another friend who is currently in law school and is scared shitless about what he’s going to do after.

Damn, I know too many lawyers.

[Barely Suppressed Rage]

In my senior year in college, I shared an apartment with a guy who had paid for his whole college education and a pretty sweet, restored 1976 Porsche 911 Targa by effective use of an old backhoe.

Fresh out of high school, he borrowed some money from his dad to buy the old backhoe and then hired himself out and learned how to dig foundations and swimming pools. He undercut the competition since he was a young, single guy with zero overhead, instead of a big construction contractor. He made enough money doing that while living very cheaply to pay for his college education and cool car.

I don’t recall what kind of degree he got or what he was doing after college, but I think it did involve construction in some way. I’d be willing to bet that guy is doing quite well for himself now. Bright guy and willing to work hard – and those two attributes typically go a along way.

[waffles]

I don’t know if you could do that backhoe thing today. You would probably to jump through hoops like getting license and liability insurance. Else be sued into oblivion if you mess up.

[Mosquevite Sandwich]

Tell her to get the father-in-law to pay the 150K in additional taxes and let the daughter reap the rewards of new infrastructure, health care, and other fanciful gubmint services.

Jaysus, John, this is the Hope and Change era. I mean really, why does the grandaughter deserve 150K? You have to spread that shit around.

[Rich]

Or, if he’s in Nevada, a back ho.

[Brett L]

How about this one

[Mosquevite Sandwich]

Re: Boxer aide

Stone that sombitch to death!

Re: Afghan interpreters

Ah, a minor setback! Just because the tribesman (and women) are innumerate, illiterate, and live in the 8th century, doesn’t mean they can’t embrace Jeffersonian democracy like this country use to do. There has to be one solid translater that could interpret an Obama speech. We have to win this thing. I don’t want to wake up one day with the Taliban raiding my house.

How about if we import the entire population, except the really bad ones, to California, New York, and DC for re-education until they get back on their feet? Then our military can rebuild the suburbs and shopping malls and factories to which the new free Afghan-Americans can return.

[Kant feel Pietzsche]

Stone that sombitch to death!

But, you can’t overdose on….what? Oh. Nevermind.

[Virginia]

I wonder if muslim revolution will put a fatwah on Nate Beeler for his cartoon today…

http://www.washingtonexaminer……96904.html

Great cartoon, btw. I’m still trying to figure it out but the imagery is strong.

[SugarFree]

I’m pretty sure that Bin Laden, not Mohammad. Which means that the cartoon implies that burning the Koran will only create a specter of terrorism that will hover over us.

Or it’s calling the smoke monster on Lost an Arab.

[Virginia]

Bin Laden, not Mohammad

GODDAMN! You’re right. I knew it was too good for Beeler. Disregard my previous statement wrt strong imagery, the cartoon is crap.

[Kant feel Pietzsche]

Unless you actually consider OBL’s stated intentions.

But our goberment would never overreact and shoot themselves in the foot (with many or its citizens exhorting them on) by both secretly and publicly violating our civil….ummm.

[Kant feel Pietzsche]

Fucking Joez law!
Of its citizens, of I say.

[Virginia]

actually consider OBL’s stated intentions

still crap. OBL in a clown costume making shoddy balloon animals and hurting little kids feelings would’ve been better and less of a massive overstatement.

[P Brooks]

President Barack Obama stood firm on Thursday in opposition to a Republican push to extend Bush-era tax cuts for the rich but stopped short of threatening to veto such a measure if passed by Congress.

“There are a whole bunch of better ways to spend the money,” Obama said in an ABC News interview when pressed twice whether he would use his veto power to block such a move. He did not directly answer the question.

Reuters

“better ways to spend the money”

Fuck you, you stupid cunt.

[Virginia]

Better ways??!! Better than letting the folks who earned it spend it the way they want??! Fuck that fucking communist.

[Mosquevite Sandwich]

Hey, I thought Virginia was for fuckers?!

[alan]

I actually watched some progressive on the Newshour a little while ago try to use an opportunity cost argument to justify letting the tax breaks expire. That allowing the rich to use that money instead would deprive the government of a means to use it (presumably) more efficiently for infrastructure.

As I have pointed out before, the argument from the standpoint of infrastructure as investment doesn’t wash for they are nearly trivial cost in boom times.

[P Brooks]

CNBC is frantically beating the drum for the NFL, today.

It’s almost like they (CNBC/NBC/General Electric) have a direct economic interest.

[?]

Did they post a disclaimer? No? Sometimes during these sports-whoring orgies an actual game breaks out, albeit one that is constantly interrupted by more whoring.

[fresnodan]

Are they holding the game at CNBC stadium, or is it being played at GE stadium?

[cynical]

Re: Hillary
Strange, I was thinking about that subject the other day (more generally in the context of political violence against the justice system committed by organized crime).

There’s no real reason it shouldn’t be treated as an insurrection. It’s an organized, well-armed group committing targeted acts of violence against the government. The difference between that and a bona fide revolution is only one of degree. The criminal justice system is not useful for dealing with people who attack the criminal justice system itself with relative impunity. Clearly, invoking that power creates some danger to civil liberties, but letting terrorists and goons have their run of the country is not a superior alternative.

Once an organized crime ring gets too entrenched, legalization is not going to be a panacea — any legitimate businesses trying to move into that space are going to be driven out by cartel violence, which is even more unrestrained and sadistic than the organized state violence that kept businesses out when the market was black. Our government might throw you in pound-me-in-the-ass prison, but they won’t rape your wife and dismember your children to send a message. The government has to uproot and eradicate the cartel; if they want to prevent a new one from forming in the vacuum, they should legalize drugs.

[Aresen]

Our government might throw you in pound-me-in-the-ass prison, but they won’t rape your wife and dismember your children to send a message.

Unless you are a “cult”, that is.

[cynical]

No, they’ll burn them all alive or bomb them, which is terrible, but less deliberately sadistic.

[Rhayader]

any legitimate businesses trying to move into that space are going to be driven out by cartel violence

Well if we’re talking about legalization in the US, then it’s going to be tough for illegal cartels to drive out legal businesses. That’s the whole thing — a legal business would not be moving into the cartels’ “space”. It would be a different space — legal American commerce — which is virtually impenetrable to foreign criminal groups.

[Russian Mobster]

Da.

[CrackertyAssCracker]

There isn’t much of a difference between a government and a mafia to begin with. I think most libertarians already know this. I guess it is sort of shocking for Hillary to get a glimpse of reality though.