Drug arrests, more than one per minute

I just saw these stats in a new post by LEAP:

Just over one week before voters in three states will decide on ballot measures to legalize and regulate marijuana, the FBI has released a new report today showing that police in the U.S. arrest someone for marijuana every 42 seconds and that 87% of those arrests are for possession alone. A group of police, judges and other law enforcement officials advocating for the legalization and regulation of marijuana and other drugs pointed to the figures showing more than 750,000 marijuana arrests in 2011 -- more than 40 years after the start of the "war on drugs" -- as evidence that this is a war that can never be won.
To be clear, I'm not advocating the use of drugs. I'm criticizing the criminalization of the use of drugs. Characterizing the use of drugs to be a law enforcement issue has been a massive failure.

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Neo-Humanist Statement of Secular Principles and Values.

With today's announcement of the death of Paul Kurtz, I have republished (below) his Neo-Humanist Statement of Secular Principles and Values. I decided to publish the content of this defining document regarding secular humanism (with permission to republish that Paul Kurtz gave in the original document), to make sure that it remains widely available. As you can see below, I was one of the signers of this document. I took an active interest in this document, which I consider to be well-drafted (I offered alternate phrasing for a tiny bit of the language, which Paul accepted and approved). This document, more than any other that I have seen, articulates the values by which I try to live my own life. I would invite all readers to take a bit of time to review the Neo-Humanist Statement, and to share it widely. [More . . . ]

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Ways in which the Bible outlaws homosexualty, with a twist

The scene is the Springfield Missouri City Council, where the Council debated whether to pass a new rule adding LGBT people to those people protected from discrimination. the following video features an impassioned speech against homosexuals with a twist toward the end:

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Plain Broun Wrapper (or, What’s Really In That Bag?)

I thought I might write about something other than politics this morning, but some things are just too there to ignore.  But perhaps this isn’t strictly about politics. Representative Paul Broun of Georgia recently said the following.  I’m pulling the quote from news sources so I don’t get it wrong. “God’s word is true. I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. It’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior. There’s a lot of scientific data that I found out as a scientist that actually show that this is really a young Earth. I believe that the Earth is about 9,000 years old. I believe that it was created in six days as we know them. That’s what the Bible says. [More . . . ]

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