Moe Lane

See, this is problem with liberal-libertarian “alliances:” God help the latter if the former disagree with them on something. Like, you know, pot legalization:

Colorado’s medical-marijuana dispensaries can sell the stuff just fine — and would-be vendors of the recreational variety hope to do the same once rules are put in place this year.

But there is little that those businesses can legally do with their cash other than put it in a safe or bury it. No bank, credit union or financial-services company can knowingly accept business accounts with any trace of a marijuana connection. If they do, it’s a federal crime.

Note the emphasis on “legal:” illegally there’s a bunch of stuff that businesses can do, starting with money laundering.  I will avoid belaboring the point that it is somewhat surreal to ban a business operating legally under state law from essential and elementary business transactions, but I will make two points:

• If you are upset that the federal government is apparently capable and eager to interfere in a particular arena that should be strictly state business and arguably none of it its own, guess what: it does that everywhere else, too.
• The US Supreme Court case you should be cursing at this point is Wickard v. Filburn.  In more ways than one.  Still love that “The Commerce Clause lets us do anything we dang well please” strategy, o ye recreational marijuana users? – Because, again, it’s not just restricted to pot policy.

(more…)

This isn’t a told-you-so. Yet. But it’s a good way to bet:

Votes making Colorado and Washington the first U.S. states to legalize marijuana for recreational use could be short-lived victories for pot backers because the federal government will fight them, two former U.S. drug control officials said on Wednesday.

They said the federal government could sue to block parts of the measures or send threatening letters to marijuana shops, followed up by street-level clampdowns similar to those targeting medical marijuana dispensaries the government suspects are fronts for drug traffickers.

(more…)

Shorter Penn Jillette (very, very profanely), about President Obama’s smirking about his past drug use and current status as the head honcho for the War On Some Drugs: “It’s not a G*d-d*mned joke!”

Oh, it’s a joke, all right.  The technical term for it is “Dark Humor,” and I when write that you should take into account that I used to write amateur gaming material for a roleplaying setting that had that concept be a literal evocation of Evil. (more…)

I normally more or less ignore whatever shenanigans that specific members of the Online Left get up to – you run your plays against the rival team, not their cheerleaders – but this news from Chris Good is too entertaining to pass up.

Jane Hamsher, the online progressive maven who heads the influential blog Firedoglake and its accompanying activist/political arm, Firedoglake (FDL) Action, is entering new territory today: she’s getting into the marijuana legalization game.

[snip]

[Hs launching a $500,000 (according to her estimate) coordinated campaign to support marijuana legalization on the whole and to influence a handful of propositions on ballots this November–California’s Prop. 19, which would allow counties to legalize and tax marijuana within certain guidelines plus medical marijuana initiatives in Colorado, Arizona, and South Dakota.

(more…)

…Episode MCMDLVIII.

I understand what Jimmy is arguing here about how we can make something illegal, yet not enforce it without actually breaking the social compact (his example is speeding, which everybody who owns a car does).  I just don’t agree with it when it comes to pot.  There’s money in pot; if you have some, you can usually sell it.  Which is my clumsy way of noting that there’s an economic factor when it comes to the War On Some Drugs; and when money comes into something, well, that complicates matters.

Personally, if it was up to me I’d make pot legal for over-21s and not-quite-literally crucify anybody caught selling or giving it to a kid, or using it while operating heavy machinery (explicitly including cars and military equipment).  That’s more or less what we do with booze, and the Republic seems to have survived thus far under that particular regulatory regime.  Of course, it’s not up to me: it’s up to Barack Obama and Joe ‘BFD’ Biden, so I guess that the potheads are more or less stuck for right now.

Hey, don’t blame me.  I voted for THAT WOMAN, remember?

Moe Lane

I refuse to believe that Matt Welch doesn’t already know all of what I’m about to write already.

Obama Loses His “Cool”
With his glib dismissal of pot legalization, the president looks less like the man, and more like The Man.

When the generation of Americans under the age of 30 gets around to realizing that this handsome young president might not be nearly as cool as they’d hoped, it won’t be hard to affix a date on when the milk began to sour. It was March 26, 2009, when Barack Obama conducted a live town hall press conference featuring questions submitted online.

Near the beginning of this hip and mildly groundbreaking interaction, the president said this: “We took votes about which questions were gonna be asked.…Three point five million people voted. I have to say that there was one question that was voted on that ranked fairly high, uh, and that was whether legalizing marijuana would improve, uh, the economy and job creation. And, uh (chuckles), uh, I don’t know what this says about the online audience (laughs), but I just want—I don’t want people to think that—this was a fairly popular question; we want to make sure that it was answered. Uh, the answer is, no, I don’t think that is a good strategy to grow our economy.”

The live audience laughed and applauded. The kids online? Not so much.

To those in a hurry, let me summarize my response: If you’re surprised, you have no right to be. (more…)