Economists See Big Bucks In Legal Dope, TSA Gets an Eyeful, White House Has Doubts About CISPA: P.M. Links
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The U.S. would save $7.7 billion in enforcement costs if marijuana was legalized, and gain another $6 billion in taxes, according to a petition signed by 300 economists.
- After months of painting Mitt Romney as a centrist flip-flopper, the Obama campaign has now decided to tag him as a rigid right-winger. Next week, they'll see if they can convince us he's a Martian.
- A 50-year-old frequent-flyer who had enough of TSA attention gave the security detail an eyeful when he stripped naked at Portland International Airport to protest the harassment.
- The Occupy movement is returning with something a bit less strenuous: sleeping in public. Nighty night, kids.
- After nationalizing the YPF oil company, Argentina's government is poised to discover how hard it is to peddle gas under its own rules, and what it means to scare off investors.
- The White House is voicing doubts about the privacy-threatening CISPA "cybersecurity" bill.
- U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan took posed snapshots of themselves with dead insurgents. The Pentagon is … embarrassed.
- Scientists say that dinosaurs may have been done in by the wide differential between the size of their young and adults, which squeezed out smaller species.
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Dinosaurs were wiped out by an obesity epidemic? Thank goodness we have Michelle Obama.
She saved the Wookies from their imminent, bloated doom.
I read that as “shaved the Wookiees” and thought of Brock Samson.
Well, shaving them is only the first step towards acceptance by mainstream culture.
Brock? Wasn’t it was Col. Steve Austin who shacked up with the ‘squatch?
Well, it was “Steve Summers,” but Brock helped them escape.
…as “a shaved Bigfoot and Steve Summers in a wig…made out of shaved Bigfoot!”
The U.S. would save $7.7 billion in enforcement costs if marijuana was legalized, and gain another $6 billion in taxes…
All of that wiped out by the costs of dealing with 350 million teen pregnancies and terrorists.
That number seems amazingly low to me. Surely all of the nation’s law enforcement in the WoD costs more than that.
Just pot.
Ah, I see my error now.
It is unfortunate that the government does not see ITS error(s) in this matter.
Government means never having to say you’re sorry.
( See Hilarity’s drunken remark about ‘too much money in it’.)
When they finally realize there is more money in legalization than prohibition, just like booze, it will become legal.
It seems not that simple. Perhaps we don’t consider sunk costs (e.g., of anti-MJ programs) the way the warriors do.
I believe you are referring to the sunk cost fallacy?
Correct.
Maybe I’m just an old paranoid bastard, but sleeping in public seems like it would invite harassment. And urine.
I’ll be pissing on more random strangers sleeping in the park, if that’s what you’re hinting at.
And apparently not to send any message at all, other than, “Yes, your initial assessment of this group was correct.”
Hahaha.
Finally, something about Boston sports I can like. Bruins goalie Tim Thomas is an apparent Ron Paul supporter.
I’m not surprised. There was a big deal about him declining to attend an invite for the team to go to the White House for personal political reasons.
My first question is: doesn’t our president have more important things to do than congratulate athletes?
Yeah, in fact the fans at the Capitols game in Washington were taunting Thomas by waving cutouts of Obama’s face.
But I don’t understand the outrage because Thomas declined to attend. The liberals who complain that Obama gets no respect act as if he is an absolute monarch and you must attend when he summons you to court.
I’m assuming that they largely overlap with people who were ecstatic when Bush was dodging shoes.
Say what you want about Bush, but the man’s dodging abilities were uncanny. That was like Shaolin monk elusive. I recall even Bushitler-mad liberals giving him respect for that move.
Bush Matrix Shoe Dodge
He had a lot of practice during ‘Nam.
Have you seen the footage? What he does borders on the impossible. It’s amazing. He’s got a career with Ringling anytime he wants.
The Amazing Bush!
The Amazing Bush!
That’s what she said?
Dude ran a 5k in 20:29 when he was president. That’s way too in-shape for a president.
Seriously, if it turns out that Bush was an alien sent to Earth to achieve some mysterious alien purpose, I’d not be the least surprised.
I wish that welcoming athUHletes to the Caucasian House was the most-important thing he had to do.
Would leave less time for…whatever it is he usually does.
Sometimes the guy has to do his NCAA bracket.
He also identifies as a “sovereign citizen.”
Oh shit, that’s a codeword for terrorist!
Were it only that simple. It is code word for terrorist, but also for racist, white nationalist and a whole host of other dog whistle words for liberals.
They said the same thing about Dan Hampton refusing to attend the 1985 Bears’ trip to the White House to meet BO. And that wasn’t even a traditional visit.
That’s an old story.
He refused to meet with Obama with the rest of the team, when they won the cup, and he had a little Gadsen flag on his mask.
http://dotrat.com/tag/gadsden-flag/
But I don’t give a #$%@ today…
Let’s go Caps!
You can get away with racism in the NHL because it’s the last white boy sport.
Dick Clark is dead.
I didn’t know he was still alive.
Abe Vigoda laughs
Don’t believe it!
He’s died before.
Does he still look 16?
Gary Larson says no.
TSA hard at work patting down and robbing a 95 year old war vet.
“Can you imagine an 85-year-old lady and 95-year-old retired Air Force Major in wheelchairs being treated like terrorists?” Petti asked recently sitting in the kitchen of the Bloomfield Township home he shares with Woodward.
What makes you think you’re special old man? If they’re patting down infants there no way they’re going to let a couple old people sneak through, especially in bomb-laden wheelchairs.
I watched the geniuses at TSA give special scrutiny to a man with 2 Purple Hearts and 4 Silver Stars from WWII. I know I felt so much safer.
I dunno. Dude sounds dangerous to me. Must’ve killed a lot of people to get those medals.
They’ve patted down my crippled 70-year-old mother. I know everyone on that flight breathed easier.
Is she a decorated killer, too? Maybe we’re all wrong about this. Maybe these searches of old people are focused on trained assassins. We must have a good number, what with the Cold War and all.
Hmmmm. MAY BE, now I think of it. She did work at NSA back in the late 50’s and early 60’s!
I think all of libertarianism owes the TSA one big apology. And a hug.
But — if the terrorists knew the TSA would skip your mother, the terrorists would recruit your mother. They are smarter than us as well as irresistible.
My 85 year old mom is afraid to fly because of those cocksuckers.
Old people make the best terrorists. They have nothing to lose. I mean, would you rather go out with a bang and get your 69 virgins or get a few extra years of bingo in the Sunnyside Retirement Community?
(strictly sarcasm, of course – bingo is awesome!)
“The police said they went and reviewed the videotapes but they were too blurry”
I thought they just clicked F3 a couple times to make ’em super sharp.
Every day I have more and more reason never to fly or even go into an airport until the TSA is dismantled.
Had I been witness to that, the offending officer would remember the event every time he looked in the mirror for the rest of his life. Of course I would end up in the clink. Better to just stay away.
They took their social security!!!!
Ralph Nader says some nice things about Ron Paul in the Time 100 list.
After months of painting Mitt Romney as a centrist flip-flopper, the Obama campaign has now decided to tag him as a rigid right-winger.
Sounds like Romney gets to pull out and wave around his own Etch A Sketch.
No, no, no. Don’t you see? Romney has flipped again, and has become a rigid right winger. Duh.
Well, then, he can run on his polarity changing again by the time he takes office. Really, isn’t that what Obama ran on in the first place?
Honda seeks not too dark, nice black actor for commercial
They should have said “Someone who looks like he could be Obama’s son”.
Did they consult with Biden on that?
I now look forward to Congressional Republican knee jerk defense of this crucial legislation in the War on Terror.
I have to admit my heart sank a little when I saw “The White House is voicing doubts about the privacy-threatening CISPA “cybersecurity” bill.” Given his track record on things, I assumed A) he’s lying, and B) he’s wrong.
He did the same thing with the NDAA, voice doubts, then sign it on a Friday afternoon when nobody is paying attention.
ding ding ding
Same thing with SOPA.
BO didn’t make a peep about it while it looked like a sure thing to pass, but once the opposition got large enough to kill it in Congress he had some underlings issue a statement saying that he thought copyright protections should be balanced by privacy and security concerns (though not mentioning SOPA specifically).
The media, of course, reported this as “Obama comes out in opposition to SOPA”. Result: twitty little Obamatrons on college campuses who spew leftist rhetoric like mother’s milk don’t have to suffer cognitive dissonance over SOPA, which the prez surely would have signed had it made it to his desk.
The U.S. would save $7.7 billion in enforcement costs if marijuana was legalized, and gain another $6 billion in taxes, according to a petition signed by 300 economists.
How much saved by emptying the prisons of non-violent drug offenders and firing the guards hired to watch them?
To self-described armchair “Keynesians”, isn’t saving money a bad thing?
It will be balanced out by counting MJ sales in GDP. I think.
It won’t save you shit ’cause we will just replace them with smart-ass internet blog whores, catch our drift Francisco? Now, STOP RESISTING!
I find it interesting that all the bullies from high school grew up to be prison guards or cops.
Think there’s a correlation?
Seems to me it’s more often the bullied who end up as cops.
Nothing makes me happier than seeing Occupy Wall Street wallow in impotent futility while Ron Paul supporters actively work and in many instances succeed in commandeering the Republican party apparatus. Shows you which side has a future.
If shriek was still alive that statement would earn you a “christfag”!
Wait, Shrike was Dick Clark?
I don’t see alot of revenue from legal pot.It’s as easy to grow as tomatoes,and would be just as cheap to buy I see small growers supplying local markets.That’s a good thing.Plus the saving due to the end of the war on a plant could reign in some of the erosion of rights we have seen over the course of this ‘war’.
It’s as easy to grow as tomatoes,
That doesn’t stop most people from buying their tomatoes at the mercado.
Ultimately, it depends on the price of commercial pot. If its cheap enough, nobody (much) will bother to grow their own.
I grew up in the 70’s in northern California. We grew a lot of our own, but “home grown” was not considered as good as the commercial stuff. I imagine that’s still the same, given that I haven’t smoked pot in over 25 years and have no desire to do so. I can grow better tomatoes at home than I can get in the store, but a lot of that is issues with transportation and spoilage. Pot is dried and crushed anyway, so those aren’t issues for the commercial growers.
Always wanted to ask…
What does the “H” stand for?
I always thought it stood for Harold.
“Harold be thy name?”
That doesn’t stop most people from buying their tomatoes at the mercado.
Ultimately, it depends on the price of commercial pot. If its cheap enough, nobody (much) will bother to grow their own.
Imagine hundreds of square miles in tobacco growing country and the Central Valley switching to growing weed, and the subsequent plummeting in price.
I suspect the result would be like what we endure with tobacco — a product that can be grown and distributed for next to nothing, the cost of which is perhaps 90% due to taxes.
Just think of the jobs that will be created for all the security these great fields of pot will need.
It’s probably from the old IHS logo used by really early Christians, where the “H” is the Greek eta. I think the letters in Greek are the first few in “Jesus.”
I’ve seen other explanations.
Mom said it stood for “Holy shit, I’m pregnant!”, but she may have been pulling my leg. She said it at that wedding where I made water into wine, and she was pretty hammered.
Haploid.
“No, It’s Harvey. Imaginary people who live inside my head get called ‘Harvey’.”
crushed? not intentionally.
My memory of these things is old. I do remember attempts at “rapid drying” of the pot leaves. For example, taking the fresh cut leaves and laying them flat on the inside surface of a utility light; one of those lights that is basically a reflective metal dish with a light bulb at the bottom/center of it? Dried that stuff out pretty quick.
Why would you give a fuck about the leaves?
You must be a “stems and seeds” kind of guy. We knew kids like that. We called them “poor”. Go ahead, enjoy those chicken necks and celery tops. I’m sure those lumpy joints you roll in newspaper really bring on the munchies!
No, that’s shit too. I’m calling bullshit on you ever being a grower. You do understand that the THC is in the buds, right?
in the 70s there was a lot of “shake” going around, people hadn’t really learned how to grow those monster buds yet. It may be that he just hasn’t been up on MJ growing for the past 40 years.
“Shake” doesn’t have buds because it’s the leftover from a bag (usually the big one used for transport). It’s what “shakes” off of the buds. Even ditch weed has recognizable buds. For some reason it’s cheaper, despite the fact that many THC crystals end up in the shake and often make it stronger than the buds. Probably because it’s really hard to determine quality without smoking if you can’t see the buds it came from. The only THC in the leaves is what rubbed off from the buds (i.e negligible). Even in the 70’s, dried leaves wouldn’t get you high. Anyone who was growing (successfully, at least) would have known that. He was probably smoking male plants and tricking himself into feeling high. Hence why he feels that “commercial” weed was better. He never actually grew any with THC.
You’d be very, very wrong.
Great, now I’ll have to listen to stoners rattle on about heirloom pot and how it’s superior to the stuff you buy at the store.
You already have to listen to that. At least, I do.
So, just like foodies but with more stammering and uhs?
What?
At least with stoners you can throw a bag of Doritos at them and tell them to STFU.
It’s the stupid laughter I can’t stand. Like a fucking moped that won’t start: “huh huh huh”. BTW, I’m not “dude”. Don’t call me “dude”. I would also like to add, just because a stoner spends most of their life on a couch does not mean they are a good human being. When someone lacks the ambition to do anything, good or bad, that isn’t “mellow”, it’s being a lazy asshole that sponges off of others.
DUDE. Don’t harsh everyone’s mellow. huh huh, huh huh, huh huh!
You got it, babe.
Why is it that you’re assuming that most pot smokers are lazy, do nothing leeches?
Don’t be a dick collectivist.
Maybe that’s a side effect of smoking all those male plants he grew as a kid.
Marc Emery’s U.S. prosecutor urges pot legalization.
On the one hand, it’s good when people come around to the correct side of this issue.
On the other hand, having no regrets for prosecuting people under a law he now recognizes as unjust smacks of douchbaggery.
Especially when he never did anything at all to violate the law of the country in which he supposedly did the horrible crime of selling pot seeds.
U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan took posed snapshots of themselves with dead insurgents. The Pentagon is … embarrassed.
Happy Birthday
Killing them is A-okay…just don’t take their picture.
It would seriously piss us off if they were doing that with our dead. Remember that dead soldier getting dragged around in Somalia? Hell, I remember the kerfuffle over the photos of our own flag draped coffins.
http://tinyurl.com/cj957rb
If people here go nuts about that, how nutty must the Taliban get over photos like that? That’s probably the last thing we need to give them right now–more reason for potential recruits to hate us.
I’m sure it makes things needlessly harder over there.
Not sure.
Heard an interview with a retired Army Lt Col a few weeks ago after our soldier snapped. (I think it was on Jerry Doyle) He said the following (paraphrased):
Watch…they won’t spin through the roof on the killings like they did for the Quran burnings. The reason being, he claimed, is the Taliban will wonder if instead of a one-off soldier snapping, it was meant to send a message. IOW, they care a whole lot more about their religion than human life.
Is it disrespectful? Sure. But I think we (and the media) care a hell of a lot more than the Afghans do.
“I love this job. … I mean, who else gets a chance to see shit like this?”
Actually the dude they posed with was a suicide bomber.
Yes – He proudly turned himself into body parts. Why should we deny him the attention he sought?
Dinosaurs went extinct when Xenu detonated the hydrogen bombs on Teegeeack/Earth to kill all the people who became thetans. Everyone who isn’t a Cult of Science moron/sucker knows this.
You sound like a psychiatrist or something. Why don’t you take some Xanax, you moron?
I’d love to. Got some?
Sorry, I mixed all mine with the rest of my Adderall and injected it into my dong. Feels pretty good.
I bet it does. Now inject 2 liters of saline into your nutsack. That feels pretty good too, or so I hear.
I only use silicone. Feels more natural.
Deviant.
I can’t ever see that word again without thinking of a Chinese phrase, “struggle against the right-deviationist attempt to reverse correct verdicts.”
Apparently in real-people speak it means, “All those people that were jailed by our kangaroo courts really do need to be in jail, so quitcherbitchin’ and if you keep trying to convince people of their innocence, we’ll tag you as a right-wing reactionary. And we all know where that road leads.”
Are there dinosaur thetans still hanging around, making us eat more red meat than is otherwise healthy?
Dinosaurs have a seat at the Pentavirate.
Not all dinosaurs, just these.
Jim, Voyager is strictly non-canon and non-reality. Like the recent “Star Trek” film.
You don’t get to pick and choose what is canon and reality ProL. I do. And it’s only TOS, TAS, The first 5 seasons of TNG, The first 6 movies and the 8th movie, and all of Shatner’s TekWar series.
Yeah, you can’t even post about cannibals, so we know how high you rank in the hierarchy.
Besides, you’re clearly Herbert in this, as you include Star Trek V. Which not only isn’t canon, it didn’t actually happen as a movie, either.
You fell into my trap even more easily than I anticipated, and trust me, I anticipated it being easy.
Any true Trek aficionado knows that Star Trek V is Shatner’s surrealistic ode to Randy Travis. And you just showed you didn’t know that.
It’s too late. Even now, Mike is deleting every comment you’ve ever made here on Star Trek. Pray that’s all he deletes.
Am I the only one who really liked DS9?
No, I liked it, too.
Yes.
Am I the only one who really liked DS9?
YES!
No.
I’m still trying to get over including Star Trek Fucking IV as canon.
How can IV not be canon when it has so many memorable and campy lines? If anything, Star Trek IV is was Star Trek always wanted to be when it grew up.
Uh, Joe, Spock Vulcan neck pinches a punk on a bus, and Kirk uses twentieth-century curses. That has to be canon.
The Great Rod with it’s Dangling Testicle of Ultimate Devastation was sent by the Galactic Counsel to see if any scientologists were still around.
They were able to use whales to fool it because the noise whales make correspond roughly to the level of erudition and logic that comes out of the typical scientologist pie-hole.
My dad, a hardcore ST devotee from its original run, hates IV. It’s when he stopped watching the movies entirely.
It’s because he hates whales, fyi.
Sometimes, I think the whole TOS franchise should’ve ended with Spock getting shot out of that torpedo tube. Boom, done.
I like the cut of your jib.
That was a damned good movie. Not just good Trek. The next film sucked, the one after that, while entertaining, really was slightly mocking of the seriousness of the old show, five sucked so much that it collapsed upon a singularity of suckiness, and six, while good, was two again, with Captain Von Trapp instead of Khan.
Yeah, VI was them going, “Oh, people liked II. Let’s do that!”
Yeppers. Again, it was entertaining, and it did play things differently, but it had a very Wrath of Khan feel to it. I think Meyer had a somewhat more distinguishable story in mind to begin with, but that’s how Hollywood rolls.
I heard General Chang lost the dogs of war in that movie.
That movie had some moments, and I do like Christopher Plummer. But it was still Khan-like.
So, your dad is a collector of fine slide rules?
Voyager is non-reality? Well, I agree, 7 of 9 was “unreal”. Jeebus, never seen a rack defy gravity like that before! Anyway, I’m all for the Star Trek reboot. I love the original, TNG, and DS9. I grew to tolerate Voyager, and never could warm up to Enterprise. Most of the movies are a bit of a letdown. The cartoon series (what little of it there was) I enjoyed very much.
Still, a major change was needed in order to bring back some life into the franchise. It’s a very rich universe, I’d hate to see it just stagnate.
“Kirok is dead! Long live Kirok!!”
I loved DS9. But not Voayger. Janeway made me want to gouge out my eardrums with an icepick, first because of her voice, second because of her stupid. I did like the Doctor on that show, though.
I’ve never watched the whole series. Enterprise, at least, started getting decent in its final season. Voyager seems to have been sucky all along. I never did much more than catch the occasional episode. I did watch enough of it to see the worst Trek moment ever, though.
The lizard mating thing?
Of course. Fucking stupid seems too tepid a phrase.
I barely watched Voyager. What was this mythical moment?
Devo-lizard-fucking referenced above.
Really, was there anything good about that show? I mean, yes, they had an attractive Borg woman, and I guess I liked Tuvok okay, just because I missed Vulcans. Anything else?
Star Trek V.
I needn’t say more.
No, the lizard-fucking was worse than even that. At least it had Kirk.
There was a couple of good episodes. I really liked the two-parter (Year of Hell) where the ship is severely damaged by an enemy that can change the timeline. But there weren’t any episodes (unlike DS9) that ripped out my heart or made me think. It wasn’t a very thoughtful show.
I think the moment I decided I was actually a DS9 fan (overall, it had some crappy episodes, too) was “The Visitor.”
Yeah, “The Vistor” was the episode I was thinking of specifically that ripped my heart out.
I don’t know what the hell ProL is babbling about, Jimbo, but the answer to your question is “ask me again when you’ve reached Clear“.
Apropos of a link above, what would Francisco d’Anconia do in today’s Argentina?
Bang on his prison cell?
I spent much of the day fantasizing about destroying all my company’s assets and turning the rubble over to be nationalized.
The really sad part is that YPF was reduced to begging the Argentine government for some kind of compensation for their expropriated assets.
Seriously. Then the Argentines told those ball-less chumps to pound sand.
Go Galt.
Sad where that country has gone.
Texts From Drone
They are all pretty pointed but I liked “Looking Forward, Not Back” best.
“Next week, they’ll see if they can convince us he’s a Martian.”
Secret Muslim vs. secret Martian then, I guess.
Despite court ruling, Islamic butcher in Germany faces hurdles to halal slaughter
I would have posted a longer link, but the squirrels wouldn’t let me.
At least let me post a link:
http://bit.ly/IMgkx6
Anyway, the butcher won in Germany’s Constitutional Court, but a local bureaucrat says that Islam, properly interpreted, permits the regulations he’s enforcing.
Meanwhile, check out the last paragraph of the article, where it says the Jews won’t support the halal butchers for fear of a backlash which might affect their right to engage in kosher slaughter.
Nationalization will go in Argentina the same as it has gone everywhere else every time it has been done. The expats ( americans, canadians, germans, british, aussies ) will leave, then the govt will screw the company into the ground faster than you can say ‘fuck up’.
Then they will beg the expats with skills and money to come back and fix it, which they wont do, so the country will circle ever closer to the drain.
Been there, seen it too many times.
Where is tiny to tell us how justice is served by punishing the rich and taking what rightfully belongs to the people?
It will be fun to watch companies and investors flee Argentina.
What’s ninety years old and has huge brass balls?
This lady.
h/t Balko
So, Green “stood her ground”. Nice.
“We thought we would have a difficult time in front of a city jury, or any jury,” Baltimore City solicitor George Nilson said.
Or any sane person…
”
City Council President Jack Young voted against this settlement and others, saying he is “tired of the Police Department bleeding money.”
The citizenry is apparently tired of bleeding, too.
Baltimore City cops are the worst. THE WORST.
This made me LOL: “We thought we would have a difficult time in front of a city jury, or any jury,” Baltimore City solicitor George Nilson said.
Yeah. They’ll see a sweet little old lady on the stand talking about how the police invaded her home against her expressed wishes, hurt her grandson, and roughed her up.
Also a LOL: City Council President Jack Young voted against this settlement and others, saying he is “tired of the Police Department bleeding money.”
As I say to my kid, who at least has the excuse of being a kid, “Hmmm! I wonder what the solution here could be!”
Judge recuses herself in Martin-Zimmerman case.
The U.S. would save $7.7 billion in enforcement costs if marijuana was legalized, and gain another $6 billion in taxes, according to a petition signed by 300 economists.
The tax “gain” might be illusory, since the extra taxes levied on legal weed might be more than offset by a populace that is on average more laidback than it is now, resulting in less declared taxable income.
This might in fact underlie why the Republocrats love the WoD — they want to extract as much taxes as possible from the serfs who labor for them.
Chicago cops take a bite out of crime.
Thank god they got all that violent crime and police corruption taken care of so they have time to do the bidding of rent-seekers.
he U.S. would save $7.7 billion in enforcement costs if marijuana was legalized, and gain another $6 billion in taxes…
And that’s not even mentioning the $20billion in “Dude”