DEA Chief evades simple questions

WTF . . . the head of the DEA can't say whether meth, crack cocaine or heroin are "worse than marijuana." And she looks not quite right (probably for reasons other than marijuana) as she struggles with this really basic line of questions. Oh, I get it. She's not actually saying what she thinks. She's being political, meaning dishonest. She is not going to help American exorcise its long-running and horribly destructive drug war demon. Addendum: Check out the low-wattage amoral head of the DEA. I would have enjoyed seeing Steve Cohen grill her for another hour. And then we should fire her. And then the DEA should publicly apologize for all of the pain they are causing users of medical marijuana.

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Bicyclists mowing down pedestrians

I often commute by bicycle, so this article caught my eye. In three separate incidents, three cyclists in San Francisco have killed pedestrians by running into them. This most recent example suggests flagrant and reckless conduct on behalf of the cyclist. I sometimes tell people that I prefer riding a bike to driving a car, because although I might get myself killed, it's not like I'm going to kill someone else on my bike. Well, I need to rethink that.

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Onion: Elder offers terrible advice

The Onion "reports" on this grandfather's terrible advice. This resonated with me. How often do you hear someone claiming that, "Of course I know what I'm doing. I've been doing it for 45 years." Really? You should be deemed proficient because you've been hacking away at it for a long time? It's certainly true that a lot of people who are excellent at an activity have been doing it for a long time. This is not the same thing as claiming that one is excellent because they've been doing it for a long time. This sort of claim violates basic rules of logic. Just because this is true: "If it rains on me, I'll get wet", it does not follow that "If I'm getting wet, it is raining on me." You could be in the shower or at a swimming pool.

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Eisenhower must be turning in his grave

At Truthdig, Bill Boyarsky reminds of of the words of Dwight Eisenhower, a man who both experienced war and understood the urge to go to war. Boyarsky offers this Eisenhower quote:

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberty or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

We've been warned, but we have not heeded the warning, according to Boyarsky:

Even in the face of this warning, we have become complacent. A small, insular group of security advisers and State and Defense Department officials, working out of public view and supervised by President Obama, are waging cyberwar in Iran and drone war in other countries. Behind them is a huge commercial apparatus of arms manufacturers, private security and logistics contractors and others who have an economic interest in war. Oversight is impossible; stiff penalties await leakers or whistle-blowers.

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