Weed is magical. It cures nausea. You can make rope and sails with weed and explore the sea. You can make garments fit for stoned Mayan chieftains. And of course, you can watch the "Knife Show" on QVC for hours with a fascination normally reserved for children, children who like knives.

Weed was too magical for 1920's-era racists, who cruelly snatched it from the poor, calloused hands of the Mexican immigrant and from the poor, jazz hands of black jazz players. Damn the man who snatches the weed. Damn the man.

Fin.

P.S., Now give me an editors choice star.

Speaking of Newsweek, Howard Fineman, on Bob Edwards Weekend, just opined about whether terrorist suspects are "people" and concluded that habeas corpus for terror detainees is still up in the air. The worst part is (and if Bob Edwards tried to intentionally spring a trap here, I am forever indebted to him) that they were talking about the slavery argument and then it shifted to terror detainees, and Fineman just seamlessly translated the intractable debate of slavery before the Civil War to Bush terror policies. Both of which, I guess, were/are intractable. Amazing.

Thank you, Joan, for a perfect description of establishment-worshiping pundits. They need to leave questions of political etiquette to the professionals and get back to work.

Among the ideological concerns of the legalization debate I would not have included letter "c", the cost of the drug war. It seems to me that the cost is the other half of an empirical cost-benefit equation. As in, "The costs of the drug war clearly outweigh the benefits!"

Sometimes I wonder if the Obama administrations problem (and this applies to most Democrats) is not that they are cowards, but that they are undisciplined and don't prepare for battle like Republicans do. Anyone with the slightest political IQ could have read some of the stuff that Freeman said or wrote publicly, and told Obama, "Hey, there's gonna be hell to pay from the right-wing Israel lobby if you nominate Freeman. Are you ready?" Obama would have answered, "No", and that would have been the end of it. No controversy. No political price paid. What was the point of this if at the end, we are deprived of the best and brightest public service? I mean, are we supposed to believe that this was one of those "feeler" appointments? Couldn't Obama have asked a group of Democratic Congressional leaders, including Schumer, what they would do or who they'd complain to if he had nominated Chas Freeman? Does Schumer not have a "D" on his back, like Obama? Are they children? Can they not coordinate? I mean, it's politics, not rocket science!

Oh my goodness! I was just joking before about how Rocky seemed genuinely interested in "other avenues of thought", but if you had any doubt I give you:

"let's layoff the Mormon Church, they are not the problem, terrorist gays are." - rockybalboa on Prop 8

HAH! Excellent rebuke of Rocky. I hope he reads that. He actually seems genuinely interested in exploring new avenues of thought.