Facts, figures and hypocrisy regarding marijuana

I've never used marijuana. I'm not promoting the use of marijuana, or alcohol intoxication, or the use of prescription drugs to get high. On the other hand, I know that many people do these things. In my opinion, it is not for me to tell other folks how to run their lives, as long as A) they are not minors and B) these activities don't seriously interfere with their duties to their family or work. How is it that getting high on alcohol or prescription drugs (or runner's high and other natural ways to get high) are OK, yet smoking a joint will cause you to end up in jail and give you a noteworthy criminal record? Yes, if you are arrested on your own property for the crime of trying to escape stress or pain, you can be marched through the same criminal justice system as those who steal cars, those who rape, and those who commit arson. With that in mind consider the following statistics regarding marijuana usage from Huffpo:

While Obama's term began with great promise for drug policy reformers, in the past two years it has been difficult to distin­guish Obama's drug policies from those of his White House predecessors. Although President Obama has acknowledged that legalization is "an entirely legitimate topic for debate" -- the first time a sitting president has made such a statement -- his administra­tion has made a string of increasingly disappointing moves over the last year. Half of all U.S. drug arrests are for marijuana -- more than 850,000 Americans were arrested for marijuana in 2010 alone, 88 percent for mere possession.
Please note carefully that 850,000 is more people than the entire state of South Dakota. America has massively dysfunctional priorities, and it's time to think of a better way to handle urges people to get high. I would propose that we handle marijuana like we handle alcohol. Regulate it and tax it. When people whine that others are getting high illegally, I'm inclined to tell them to shut the hell up, because they are probably getting high on something (most likely alcohol or prescription drugs). And perhaps they are getting high on their feelings of moral superiority and the the excitement they get when they support laws that invade the private lives of their neighbors. The above Huffpo article makes the legitimate point that Barack Obama would not be President if the harsh marijuana crackdown he is supporting had been applied to the young Barry Obama smoking a joint. How many otherwise law-abiding people are thrown into the criminal justice system because of the sin of wanting to feel some pleasure or some escape from the stress of the crazy world, or some relief from serious chronic pain?

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Lantern Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden

What you will see below are a series of four photos I took tonight at the Chinese Lantern Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden. This was a stunning display of dozens of larger than life creations of silk, steel and other materials, that magically transformed the grounds of the MBG.

In the above photo, the foreground is a dragon made of thousands of porcelain plates, cups and other utensils. In the background is the Climatron (a longtime fixture at the Garden containing tropical plants). The festival will run through August 19. Three additional photos follow.

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Faith in secular sacred things

Ever since I was a teenager, it has been my quest to not rest until I figured out everything I could about why I existed and what it meant to live a moral life. This made loads of sense to me, since I couldn't know how to live my life until I knew the rules of the game. But now I'm 56, and I need to admit that it doesn't look likely that I'll have everything figured out before I die. In fact it looks like I'll be lucky to scratch the surface before I die. In writing this, I'm not demeaning the work of thousands of scientists. We've learned an incredible amount about human animals. It's just that each answer to each question seems to raise another question or two. Part of my strategy has been to take a close look at the things people deem to be sacred. These things have always been the head-scratchers for me (e.g. the claim that a virgin could have a baby or the claim that a country that is so politically dysfunction could be deemed "the world's greatest democracy." I’m not certain whether it is helpful in the long run to directly question others' non-questionable beliefs, but that is my faith--I believe that more knowledge is better for all of us, and that exploring these enigmas will help us to understand the kinds of animals we are. Attempting to understand human animals is one of my own sacred endeavors. The saying of Socrates constantly resonates with me: "The unexamined life is not worth living."

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Seven ways for an American citizen to get detained indefinitely

This article at Huffpo summarizes seven ways for an American citizen to get detained indefinitely. These concerns are not made up out of thin air. They are based on positions taken by attorneys for Barack Obama's Department of Justice during the litigation brought by author Chris Hedges and others. Here is Hedges' recap of why he got involved with the suit:

In January, attorneys Carl Mayer and Bruce Afran asked me to be the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit against President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that challenged the harsh provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). We filed the lawsuit, worked for hours on the affidavits, carried out the tedious depositions, prepared the case and went to trial because we did not want to be passive in the face of another egregious assault on basic civil liberties, because resistance is a moral imperative, and because, at the very least, we hoped we could draw attention to the injustice of the law. None of us thought we would win. But every once in a while the gods smile on the damned.

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Bill Moyers: On Memorial Day we should honor our soldiers by honoring the rule of law

We send our soldiers out to fight and die for principles we ignore and disparage. Bill Moyer and Michael Winship suggest that we take time this Memorial day to acknowledge that our government engaged in ruthless and perverse torture in our names. Unless we do this, we will forever be locked to our immoral past:

Facing the truth is hard to do, especially the truth about ourselves. So Americans have been sorely pressed to come to terms with the fact that after 9/11 our government began to torture people, and did so in defiance of domestic and international law. Most of us haven’t come to terms with what that meant, or means today, but we must reckon with torture, the torture done in our name, allegedly for our safety. In this photo of a sketch by courtroom artist Janet Hamlin and reviewed by the U.S. Department of Defense, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed reads a document during his military hearing at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base in Cuba, Saturday, May 5, 2012. (AP Photo/Janet Hamlin) It’s no secret such cruelty occurred; it’s just the truth we’d rather not think about. But Memorial Day is a good time to make the effort. Because if we really want to honor the Americans in uniform who gave their lives fighting for their country, we’ll redouble our efforts to make sure we’re worthy of their sacrifice; we’ll renew our commitment to the rule of law, for the rule of law is essential to any civilization worth dying for.

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