I don’t smoke the stuff because I’m a devoted Irishman, and therefore usually too busy drinking to want to waste time rolling a joint (plus lighting it might set my glass of Bacardi 151 on fire), but there are arguments on both sides worth taking into account. For example, nothing seems dumber than having to release rapists from prison early to in part make room for people who got caught smuggling bales of marijuana. This is kind of like letting Jeffrey Dahmer free to make room to put the guy who didn’t pay his parking tickets.

Plus, without pot, somebody wouldn’t have figured out that Dark Side of the Moon sort of syncs up with The Wizard of Oz.

On the “against” side, I’m hesitant to think it’s a good idea to legalize pot just so the government can further cover for their irresponsible ways by giving them yet another thing to tax. Our laws should be based on morals and ethics, not on our fat-assed politicians’ inability to control their spending habits.

And who wants pot that will be “regulated” and ultimately processed by the US government? It’ll cost $250 and ounce and you’d get a better buzz smoking pencil shavings.

In any case, here’s the “3 Reasons” list, to which I’d add a 4th item: “It seems rather silly that killing your unborn baby is a “legal and very personal choice” but you can get sent to jail for smoking pot:

Wanted: A hangman. High school education required. No experience necessary.

Zimbabwe’s last executioner retired after carrying out his last execution in 2004. The departure of the hangman, who was said to be struggling with his conscience, leaves about 50 inmates on death row at Chikurubi maximum security prison outside Harare.

Zimbabwe’s government has learned that finding a replacement is not so easy and, according to a prisoners’ advocacy group, it has even prepared a want ad to help its search.
[...]
The job requires only a high school education but extra training would seem in order since studies have shown execution by hanging involves knowledge of body weight, human physiology, ropes, knots and basic mechanics.

Shouldn’t that be “hangperson“?

For the “how much vacation do I get?” types, there’s this:

Work for the hangman was spotty. One some days he would execute between two and four prisoners at dawn then months would pass before other hangings were carried out.

So it’s kind of like working for the Post Office on standby time. Apply here.

From the AP:

Sen. Orrin Hatch says he’s heard Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s name mentioned in connection with the Supreme Court vacancy brought about by the retirement of Justice John Paul Stevens.

Hatch didn’t elaborate in an interview Monday. Appearing with Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy on NBC’s “Today” show, the Utah Republican said only, “I heard Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s name today and that would be an interesting person in the mix.”

Another argument against Hillary being picked for the Supreme Court is that it’s a demanding job and Bill would miss her too much. Oh come on… who doesn’t need a laugh on a Monday?

Cokie Roberts said Obama should nominate Janet Napolitano to the SCOTUS, which would thus render all future rulings as “court-caused disasters.”

SCOTLAND YARD has bowed to Islamic sensitivities and accepted that Muslims are entitled to throw shoes in ritual protest — which could have the unintended consequence of politicians or the police being hit.

News of the concession by the Metropolitan police has come to light amid a series of trials of more than 70 mostly Muslim demonstrators who were charged with violent disorder after last year’s Gaza protests outside the Israeli embassy in London.

Aquib Salim, 21, an IT student at Queen Mary, London University, who was involved in a shoe-throwing incident, is almost certain to avoid a prison sentence as a result.

Chris Holt, Salim’s solicitor, said he was likely to get a suspended sentence after he pleaded guilty to a single charge of throwing a stick at police lines.

“The court accepted that the earlier shoe-throwing incident was simply a ritual form of protest and therefore not a criminal act of violence,” Holt said.

Judge Denniss agreed that the act of shoe-throwing should not be considered in a charge of violent disorder against the student because it was “a symbolic” political gesture.

The ruling would have been different had the shoes been thrown at Judge Denniss.

So violence, provided it’s part of your religion, isn’t illegal. What could possibly go wrong? In any case, Muslim demonstrators are happy about the ruling that is likely to cost them their soles:

The concession has already been taken up enthusiastically by Muslim demonstrators, who pelted Downing Street with shoes in protest at the Israeli bombing of Gaza last year.

Dozens of ski-boots and clogs were also hurled at the US consulate in Edinburgh in a related protest, in which three policemen sustained minor injuries.

So the next time somebody whips a shoe at you, understand that it might be an important part of their religion, and if you duck, you might be accused of Islamophobia.

By the way, Muslim shoe-throwers don’t only dislike Downing Street:

Where’s the Hope & Change?

In other UK news, female Muslim doctors will be allowed an exception to the surgical “no sleeve” hygiene rule.

Yeah, let’s be more like Europe!

Joseph Meaney of Human Life International nails Obama and the “pro-choice” left’s real intentions:

“Kenyans are pro-life,” he said. When we see the new articles added to the constitution and approved by parliament under heavy pressure from Western elites, we are seeing an assault on the very heart of the Kenyan people.”

“Perhaps the greatest insult is that this attack is happening under the banner of ‘improving women’s health’. The only ones who believe that killing an unborn child is good for a woman’s health are those who will profit from the slaughter, Western powers who are pouring untold millions of dollars into measures to keep Africa’s children from being born,” he told LifeNews.com.

“This is nothing but population control, an imperialist assault intended to rob Africa of its future by eliminating her children. It is a disgrace,” he said.

Good points. What would the left be calling George W. Bush if he were pushing an African nation to do something that would culminate in a lot more dead black babies? The left gets a free pass on the illogic. The “pro-choice” left can open abortion clinics in minority areas and call it “health care,” but if Sarah Palin bought a building in the same area, put a sign out that said “get help killing your unborn children here,” she’d be ridden out on a racist rail.

US Ambassador to Kenya, Michael Ranneberger, is pitching Obama’s legalized abortion idea to the Kenyan government. Tell me this steaming pile of Pelosi didn’t come straight from the top at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue:

“We urge the leaders of the coalition government, civil society, and religious leaders to maintain positive momentum as Kenya moves towards a national referendum on the draft Constitution,” he added. “Unity in support of the draft will bring the Kenyan people together and establish a framework which will greatly improve prospects for democratic stability and shared prosperity for all Kenyans.”

Well, all Kenyans except the ones that end up in a trash can.

The success of a nation’s democracy and its prosperity depends partly on its ability to legally kill off its most helpless citizens? Using this definition, Cambodia under Pol Pot was one of the most democratic and prosperous nations in the history of the world.

The only thing that would “prosper” from legalized abortion in Kenya is Planned Parenthood, et al, who are financed by US taxpayers and who make millions upon millions of dollars performing abortions in third world countries. But anyway, back to how racist and greedy those darn Tea Partiers are…

Anybody with a knowledge of the history of people whose power went to their heads should shudder at this piece of Hope & Change on steroids:

The Obama administration has taken the extraordinary step of authorizing the targeted killing of an American citizen, the radical Muslim cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who is believed to have shifted from encouraging attacks on the United States to directly participating in them, intelligence and counterterrorism officials said Tuesday.
[...]
It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing, officials said. A former senior legal official in the administration of George W. Bush said he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president.

But the director of national intelligence, Dennis C. Blair, told a House hearing in February that such a step was possible. “We take direct actions against terrorists in the intelligence community,” he said. “If we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.”

Glenn Greenwald at Salon analyzes it this way:

No due process is accorded. No charges or trials are necessary. No evidence is offered, nor any opportunity for him to deny these accusations (which he has done vehemently through his family). None of that.

Instead, in Barack Obama’s America, the way guilt is determined for American citizens — and a death penalty imposed — is that the President, like the King he thinks he is, secretly decrees someone’s guilt as a Terrorist. He then dispatches his aides to run to America’s newspapers — cowardly hiding behind the shield of anonymity which they’re granted — to proclaim that the Guilty One shall be killed on sight because the Leader has decreed him to be a Terrorist.

The juxtaposition is highly confusing. President Obama’s Justice Department is bending over backwards to apply constitutional protections to non-citizens while at the same time stripping a US citizen of his constitutional protections? Obama must think constitutional rights are a zero-sum game (to give them to one person means another has to lose them).

The confusing message being sent to Anwar al-Awlaki is this: If you want to live, not to mention be provided with taxpayer-supplied legal assistance, a laptop computer, and be afforded constitutional protections reserved for US citizens, then renounce your US citizenship now. Dizzying, but true.

As one who has heard Obama-supporting Democrats in Washington describe Tea Partiers as “terrorists,” finding out that, from time to time, it’s okay to kill American citizen “terrorists” without due process tends to be a tad troubling.

When the IRS is using terms such as “global targeting,” you know that, whatever it is, it will be nothing but fair:

“Through our new global high wealth operating unit we are taking a unified look at the entire web of business and economic entities controlled by high wealth individuals so we can better assess the risk such arrangements pose to tax compliance,” Shulman said at the National Press Club on Monday.

Shulman said the IRS is using “our robust and evolving enforcement program that ensures that everyone pays what they owe.”

“Taking a unified look at the entire web of business and economic entities controlled by high wealth individuals so we can better assess the risk such arrangements pose to tax compliance” is bureaucrat speak for mega-audits. The government wants to get their snouts in the books to figure out what they forgot to tax as much as to see what taxes if any somebody might be avoiding.

But there’s something else to remember. This isn’t a domestic program — it’s a “global initiative.” Let’s not kid ourselves, this is also a threat to rich people who might be thinking of fleeing America due to overexposure to Hopenchange that they can run, but they can’t hide.

Even socialists might admit that they can’t implement socialism without access to wealth (redistribution doesn’t work if there’s nothing to redistribute). There’s simply no way a forward-thinking socialist can put his policies into place without a plan to keep people with money from leaving — or at least to get to their money no matter where they go. Think of it as an economic version of the Berlin Wall.

Obamaland will be like Hotel California: You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

Of course, maybe I’m reading too much into it. Perhaps this far and wide alleged search for tax avoiders and cheats is simply an attempt to compile a list of names from which to fill any future cabinet positions in the Obama administration.

Doesn’t IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman look like a guy who’s hell-bent for payback on those meanies who always picked him last when they were forming teams in Junior Achievement?

From the Guardian:

A cyber-spying operation traceable to south-west China stole classified documents from the Indian defence ministry, obtained emails from the office of the Dalai Lama and compromised a United Nations agency, an eight-month investigation has revealed.

I managed to get hold of one of the Dalai Lama’s hacked emails via a connection I have at Panda Express — see if you can decipher it:

2/18/10
From: dlama@tibetmail.com
To: TheOne@whitehouse.gov

DL

If you see William Ayers with an anticipatory grin on his face today, that might be why — however I tend to think there’s a chance Obama will nominate Hillary just to get her out of the way so she doesn’t challenge him for the nomination in ‘12, provided Obama’s numbers keep falling like they are.

Arizona Republican Sen. Jon Kyl was asked about what kind of judge Obama would nominate:

Kyl stressed that he didn’t want to see “someone coming in with preconceived attitudes… we’ve had too much of that.” The next justice should be there to simply interpret the law, he added.

“I hope he does not nominate an overly ideological person,” Kyl said. “That will be the test.”

Stopped laughing yet? I haven’t.

Seriously though… I’m sure Obama’s next court nominee won’t be an ideologue — don’t let the Mao tattoo fool you.

Oh, and before I forget, have a happy Easter, everybody!

Just obtained this from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia:

Today, a two-count complaint and warrant was filed charging Norman Leboon with threatening to kill United States Congressman Eric Cantor and his family, and threatening to kill Congressman Eric Cantor, who is an official of the United States, announced United States Attorney Michael L. Levy and FBI Special Agent in Charge Jan Fedarcyk. As set forth in the affidavit to the complaint and warrant, in or about late March, 2010, Leboon created and then transmitted a YouTube video to Google over the internet, in which he threatened to kill Congressman Cantor and his family. No harm came to the Congressman or his family as a result of Leboon’s threats.

“The Department of Justice takes threats against government officials seriously, especially threats to kill or injure others,” said Levy. “Whether the reason for the threat is personal or political, threats are not protected by the First Amendment and are crimes.”

Now, I can’t stand it when the left assumes that people who threaten violence toward anything or anyone on their side of the aisle are Republicans, so I try not to return the favor.

So, before just making a blind assumption, I looked to see if Norman Leboon of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania has ever made any political donations, and if so, to whom — and what do you know:

Open Secrets confirms.

What are the odds that much of the media somehow will forget to mention this?

I’ll now await Steny Hoyer to publicly denounce threats coming from people simply because the whacko-in-question happens to be on his side of the argument.

Update: Check out this YouTube video. This guy makes Charles Manson look well-adjusted.