An Angus-Reid Public Opinion poll released Wednesday is just the latest to show majority support for marijuana legalization. The poll had support for legalization at 52%, with 44% opposed.
That's in line with a Rasmussen poll released a couple of weeks ago that had support for legalizing and regulating marijuana at 56%, and also in lline with other rec... (more)
The financial pages and popular culture are often strangely aligned.
For example, many young people today are consumed with the seeming emergence of a zombie apocalypse. Evidence seems to be everywhere. I dare not present any of the details. Too gross.
Plus, as a grown-up, I'm a skeptic of the whole zombie apocalypse theory. We are flooded with all kinds of information today that would have been shut off to us in the past. If a homeless lady grabs a baby from a crib... (more)
Sixteen months after it joined the struggling currency bloc, Estonia is booming. The economy grew 7.6 percent last year, five times the euro-zone average.
Estonia is the only euro-zone country with a budget surplus. National debt is just 6 percent of GDP, compared to 81 percent in virtuous Germany, or 165 percent in Greece.
Shoppers throng Nordic design shops and cool new restaurants in Tallinn, the... (more)
Police detained and handcuffed forty innocent bystanders after a bank robbery in Aurora, Colorado, on June 4. Nearly two dozen cars were stopped near a Wells Fargo Bank and the occupants held without probable cause as police searched for a suspect.
Police Chief Daniel Oates demonstrated his ignorance of the Fourth Amendment when he told CBS in Denver "the ends justify the means" after the illegal round-up snared a suspect. He described the mass detainment and handcuffing as la... (more)
Once again, the United States Supreme Court has proven Clarence Darrow, a civil liberties attorney and long-time advocate for the Constitution, correct in his assertion that “there is no such thing as justice—in or out of court.” In meting out this particular miscarriage of justice, the Supreme Court recently refused to hear the case of a pregnant woman who was repeatedly tasered by Seattle police during a routine traffic stop simply because she refused to sign a speeding ticke... (more)
There is this idea in our society that has been bred into us through the media, government schools and culture, where law must line up perfectly with traditions and social convention. If something is frowned upon or taboo, you can rest assured that there is someone out there who thinks that it should be illegal.
When a particular activity or behavior starts to bother people in the kinds of societies that we have today, all too often those people are very quick to suggest that the... (more)
I never tire of looking out the windows of airplanes. For all of human history until just about the day before yesterday, no living person saw the world like this. People could climb up to the top of mountains and see the valleys below. But to see that whole view looking straight down was the privilege of birds and God. Then about 100 years ago, this changed and we could see what we never really experienced directly.
It's not raw nature that enthralls me. It's cities. It's the sma... (more)
In February, the Bureau of Investigative Journalism documented that after the U.S. kills people with drones in Pakistan, it then targets for death those who show up at the scene to rescue the survivors and retrieve the bodies, as well as those who gather to mourn the dead at funerals: “the CIA's drone campaign in Pakistan has killed... (more)
There have been a fair number of references to the subject of "phyles" in this publication. But it occurs to me that I've never discussed the topic myself in any detail. Especially how phyles are likely to replace the nation-state, one of mankind's worst inventions.
Now might be a good time to discuss the subject. We'll have an almost unremitting stream of bad news, on multiple fronts, for years to come. So it might be good to keep a hopeful prospect in mind – although I hat... (more)
There's a national park close to my house that has a large lake and all the swimming accoutrements left over from the 1970s. It's a nightmare for any "safety Nazi." The water is very deep. A diving board is very high and slippery, even slightly broken. There is no lifeguard on duty. If you dive incorrectly and get the wind knocked out of you, you could easily drown. The distances in the lake are deceiving. The shore looks closer than it is. If you are swimming in the middle of the lake, and find... (more)
Many people became convinced that data releases earlier this year indicated that "recovery" in the U.S. was imminent. But as I have been saying for months, this evidence would ultimately be shown to be as reliable as sightings of Bigfoot. Lots of people claim to say they have seen it, some even produce plaster footprints, but in the end all we have is a guy in an ape suit. The economic recovery, that has been discussed so loudly and often in recent months, will be shown to be similarly m... (more)
Juice Rap News: Episode XIII - A NEWS HOPE. Is an honest Fourth Estate the only Force than can restore peace and balance to the Galaxy? To find out, we consult two of journalism's most influential and inflammatory figures: Rebel journalist, enfant terrible, Julian Assange, who awaits a verdict in London which could see him 'Sextradited' to Sweden. And, on the opposite... (more)
