Archive for June, 2010

Dan Calabrese

It’s almost beyond comprehension to me that anyone could believe a mind-altering substance would not have a negative effect on the overall functioning of the body – particularly the brain. The body is designed to work in a certain way. To think you can barrage the body with foreign chemicals and do no damage simply defies belief.

The usual logic: Something else is worse!

But this is what marijuana-smokers and legalization advocates believe. Talk to them about the harmful effects of marijuana, and they will either deny that any exist, or they will quickly change the subject to alcohol, which they will claim is far more harmful. Then they will tell their counterpart that because he or she surely drinks alcohol (they’re wrong in my case), he or she must be a hypocrite.

At any rate, a new report from the National Center for Biotechnology Information, authored by Dr. Masood A. Kahn and Sailaja Akella, demonstrates how cannabis use can induce bipolar disorder with psychotic features. (Hat tip to my friend Marie Jon.) There is some disagreement among researchers about whether cannabis use causes bipolar disorder or merely exacerbates it, but there is really no debate about the connection:

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Bob Franken

The items would have appeared in the employment sections of the Moscow Times or Moscow News…in those papers because they’re published in English: “Help Wanted. Men and women to live in the United States. Duties include doing whatever it takes to have children set up a life in comfortable suburbs, and make friends with officials. Send resumes and salary requirements (dollars, not rubles) to Vladimir Putin, at the Kremlin.” Talk about truly “Classified Ads”.

Yep, that's pretty much it.

There was probably no shortage of takers, but they could have saved a lot of the moving expense if they’d simply run the same employment ads here in the US. If it sounds like a nice cushy gig, it is. In this country,we call people like that “lobbyists”.

One can’t help but wonder why the SVR, which is what they call the KGB these days, would spend so much time and money on gaining information that is widely available on the Internet, and communicating with equipment that is far less exotic that many iPad apps.

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Oh yes.

Hat tip: Kim Meyer

Joe Bell

If Congress cannot or will not repeal the unsuitably named “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” the states should oppose the law on the basis that it is unconstitutional. In his new book, “Nullification,” Thomas Woods Jr., makes a coherent case that the American people and their representatives have become detached from the original meaning of the Constitution.

Not so fast.

Nullification begins with the conviction that a federal law that violates the Constitution is null and void. The states have a right to defend themselves against Washington overreach.

Woods writes, “If a law is unconstitutional and … of no effect, it is up to the states, the parties to the federal compact, to declare it so and thus refuse to enforce it.”

One of the most successful examples of nullification in recent years is with respect to the medical use of marijuana. Marijuana use is illegal by federal statute yet 14 states are openly opposing the law. Read the rest of this entry »

Ashley Stinnett

The infamous Reverend Jeremiah Wright has again resurfaced with more hate-filled messages, this time taking aim at white Americans under the umbrella of a theological “seminar”.

Yes, this is not a joke.

Apparently the only credentials one needs in order to organize a hate rally at an institution of learning is to label it an educational class on any-given topic.

Whose pastor was he again?

Or so was the case in Chicago this past week when Wright, in front of a small audience, pulled comments out of his greatest hits collection to fan the flames of radical black liberation theology all over again.

The former pastor of President Obama unleashed a litany of bizarre allegations involving the notion that the civil rights movement “was always about becoming white”, while criticizing Martin Luther King for advocating nonviolence, according to the New York Post.

Speaking in one of his ever-so-tasteful and grammatically error-free messages, Wright professed that, “White folk done took this country.”

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Brett Noel

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Large version for newspaper publication.

Greyscale version for newspaper publication.

Dan Calabrese

You can’t be happy that a man died, at least on a personal level. Robert Byrd’s family are surely saddened greatly by his death, and any decent human being’s heart has to go out to him.

But if you want to think about what’s best for the nation, there’s scarcely any other way to get rid of certain people – people who refused to stop doing irreparable harm to the nation.

Not one more red cent.

As the Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto pointed out today, Byrd was like fellow “legend” Helen Thomas insofar as his esteem primarily arose from his longevity. We know what his “accomplishments” are. They are a parade of pork barrel projects brought home to West Virginny, each one with Byrd’s name promimently displayed so no one will fail to give credit for the senator who brought home the federal bacon.

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Andy Hefty

I have had enough of the arrogance of our political class in America. And Vice President Joe Biden is at the top of the list.

If you haven’t heard already, His High Exalted Vice Messiah Joe “Bite Me” Biden decided to waltz into a frozen custard shop in Milwaukee the other day. The media was waiting for him with cameras rolling. Can you say “Staged event”? What’s the first thing he says? “Where’s all the ice cream?”

Got brains?

Excuse me, Mr. Vice President. I realize that you’re smarter than George W. Bush and Dan Quayle combined, but that’s on the level of walking up to a Cheese Steak Stand and asking for a hoagie. Weren’t you briefed on where you were going? But I digress.

When he’s ready to pay, he asks the manager what he owes. The manager says, “Don’t worry. It’s on us. … Lower our taxes and we’ll call it even.”

Apparently, that didn’t sit well with Vice President Thin-Skinned. He eventually walks up to the manager and says (and I quote): “Why don’t you say something nice instead of being a smartass all the time? Say something nice.”

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Bob Franken

If, in fact, we do get to look back after death, Robert Byrd would probably be proud that his came on a day when the United States Senate was once again playing one of its most primal roles.

He had after all, spent more than half a lifetime jealously defending the rules, peculiarities and turf of the Senate and protecting against almost any smart alecky attempt at reform.

Symbolism at its finest.

He succumbed in the predawn hours of a morning when the Senate was scheduled to begin exercising its constitutional mandate to give “Advice and Consent”. Using the current media construct, this is Day One of the hearings leading up to a vote on whether to confirm Elena Kagan, the president’s nominee to join the Supreme Court.

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Mark Watson

What would likely be the reaction of a pacemaker candidate if his surgeon told him the following statement?

“No one will know until this is actually in place how it works.”

Puppetmaster.

Well, after an early Friday morning reconciliation conference, Democratic leaders pushed a 2,000-page banking legislation through the committee. Only Democratic members voted in favor of the reconciliation.

The reconciliation version is not only Orwellian in name, Banking Reform, but Orwellian in substance.

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