NORML: 'This Week in Weed: March 7th-11th (New Hampshire Moves Towards Decriminalizing Marijuana)'

Source:NORML- New Hampshire is supposed to be the live free or die state.

"This week in weed: new research looks into how availability and legality of alcohol effects cannabis use and New Hampshire is on its way to decriminalizing marijuana possession." 

From NORML 

"Denver, CO: Many adolescent consumers of cannabis increase their use of alcohol and decrease their use of marijuana shortly after turning 21 years of age, according to data published in the Journal of Health Economics.

A team of international investigators from the United States and Mexico estimated the causal effect of legal access to alcohol on marijuana consumption.

They reported: "Our results show that alcohol and marijuana are substitutes. At age 21, we observe a sharp increase in alcohol consumption but a decrease in marijuana consumption. … Our estimates suggest that the MLDA (minimum legal drinking age) at age 21 decreases the probability of having consumed alcohol in the past 30 days by 16 percent and increases the probability of having consumed marijuana by 10 percent. … This suggests that policies that restrict access to alcohol cause an increase in marijuana consumption."

Authors stated that this purported substitution effect "is substantially stronger for women than men."

They concluded, "Our results show that legal access to alcohol causes a significant decrease in marijuana use among young adults close to the age of 21."

Separate studies of older cannabis consumers in states with limited legal access to both marijuana and alcohol yield a less consistent trend, with data indicating that many subjects that consume cannabis use reduced levels of alcohol or other intoxicating substances. For example, a 2011 study of qualified medicinal cannabis consumers in California found that respondents’ "prevalence of alcohol use was significantly lower" than that of the general population.

Most recently, authors of November 2011 Institute for the Study of Labor paper, "Medical Marijuana Laws, Traffic Fatalities, and Alcohol Consumption," determined: "[The] legalization [of cannabis] is associated with a nearly nine percent decrease in traffic fatalities, most likely due to its impact on [reduced] alcohol consumption."

For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director, at: paul@norml.org. Full text of the study, "The effect of alcohol availability on marijuana use: Evidence from the minimum legal drinking age," appears online in the Journal of Health Economics." 

Source:Toronto Star- with a report about marijuana.

From NORML

If it wasn't for the frigid winters in New Hampshire where you can get 6 months of winter there, I would consider living in New Hampshire, assuming I'd consider ideology when deciding where I should live. Because of New Hampshire's live free or die motto, I'd fit in very well there ideologically as a Classical Liberal (or real Liberal) where it's if anything it's considered to be cool to be a Constitutional Conservative, Classical Liberal, Libertarian even, instead of feeling like you were looked at like you're from Planet Mars, if you were in Greenwich, New York or San Francisco, just because of your constitutional beliefs. 

Decriminalization of marijuana in any state is a good first step, especially considering the alternative would be arrest, jail, conviction, prison, and perhaps leaving prison being addicted to other drugs or getting an extended sentence because you commit further felonies that are probably drug related as well. 

The first step is never a completion or the end of the story. It means you've taken the first step in the right direction. We should be treating marijuana like alcohol, tobacco, and other narcotics that are currently legal in America, simply because all these narcotics have similar consequences. Actually, tobacco might be the worst of them. But also because we shouldn't as a country arrest people for what they do to themselves, or what they might do in the future. We should only be arresting people when they hurt innocent people. 

Associated Press: '2nd Woman in NYC Madam Case Pleads Not Guilty'

Source:Associated Press- Jaynie Baker's attorney speaking to the press.

"A matchmaking recruiter charged with helping to run a brothel in a high-profile NYC prostitution case has been on vacation, not the lam, her lawyer said Tuesday.   Jaynie Baker returned to New York and pleaded not guilty at her arraignment." 

From the Associated Press 

You would think with all the other issues that Mayor Michael Bloomberg's New York City has to do with, like with their education system, poverty, and their economy, they would have better things to do than to arrest free adults for consensual sex. Or at least arresting people who run prostitution rings where consensual sex is sold. 

But I don't live in New York City (and proud of that) and I'm not picking on them either, this story just happens to take place there. Prostitution is still illegal everywhere in America, outside of the Free State of Nevada. 

Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. 'Abortion Laws: Pro and Con'

Source:Firing Line With William B. Buckley- discussing abortion in 1972.

"July 25, 1972 

The most visible abortion battleground was New York State, where the legislature had voted to repeal the extremely permissive law it had passed two years before, and Governor Rockefeller had vetoed the repeal. But the case challenging that veto would probably never make it to the Supreme Court, Mr. Lucas explains, for there were others ahead of it in line; in retrospect, we know that one of those, Roe v. Wade, was decided in January of 1973. This show covers familiar ground, but often from angles that are still fresh thirty years later. RL: "Would you favor legislation requiring a woman to submit to strong medical treatment to stop spontaneous abortion and penalizing her accordingly if she didn't? ..." JTN: "No, I think you're again committing what I would say was a fault in moral reasoning. Because you're bound to avoid doing some injury to a person does not mean that you're bound to do everything possible in the world to help him." 

From the Hoover Institution 

"Guests: John Thomas Noonan, Roy Lucas

For more information about this program, see:Hoover Institution." 

From Firing Line With William F. Buckley 

"Taped on July 25, 1972 The most visible abortion battleground was New York State, where the legislature had voted to repeal the extremely permissive law it had passed two years before and where Governor Nelson Rockefeller had vetoed the repeal. But the case challenging that veto would probably never make it to the Supreme Court, Lucas explains, for there were others ahead of it in line; in retrospect, we know that one of those, Roe v. Wade, was decided in January 1973. This show covers familiar ground but often from angles that are still fresh thirty years later. Lucas: "Would you favor legislation requiring a woman to submit to strong medical treatment to stop spontaneous abortion and penalizing her accordingly if she didn't?" Noonan: "No, I think you're again committing what I would say was a fault in moral reasoning. Because you're bound to avoid doing some injury to a person does not mean that you're bound to do everything possible in the world to help him." Summary by Firing Line staff." 

From Amazon

I'm not sure: "Abortion: Pro and Con" is the right question. I think the real questions here should be who gets to decide when a woman has to have a baby or not and what she can do with her own body. The other question being when does a fetus become a baby with the same constitutional and United States individual rights as Americans who are already born. 

For me depending on how you answer the first two questions that I pose, will determine on whether you believe in Rose V. Wade the U.S. Supreme Court case that made abortion legal everywhere in America, should remain the law of the land where every women has the right to make this choice herself on whether to carry a pregnancy to it's full-term, or not. 

Roe V. Wade which was decided about a year after this Firing Line episode first went on the air, gives American women the right to make their own choice on whether they can abort their fetuses or not. But it doesn't say that abortion can't be regulated. We don't have absolute rights in America, including the right to life. If you put someone's else life in danger, especially if you do that intentionally, you are also putting your own life in danger as well. And American women do have the right to decide whether to can get an abortion or not, but that right is not absolute. States do have some leeway and are able to regulate abortion themselves. 

As I said, no individual right in America is absolute. I believe life starts at the late term of all pregnancies, which is why I'm not in favor of late term abortions, other than to save the life or health of the mother. And I do believe in freedom of choice, just as long the choices that individuals make don't hurt innocent people. But freedom of choice becomes too expensive when it doesn't come with personal responsibility. So I'm not in favor of taxpayer funding of abortions, other than to save the life and health of the mother, or when the pregnancy was conceived because of rape or incest. 

Now, if you believe that life starts at conception, which is the position of the Christian-Right in America (Protestants and Catholics) then of course you are going to take the opposite position that I've taken and perhaps even see abortion as murder. And this is where the debate on abortion starts in America: when does life start and who gets to decide, the government or the individual.

Associated Press: Warren Levinson- 'Economy Adds 227K Jobs, Rate Unchanged at 8.3%'

Source:Associated Press- Vanessa Bartram talking about the jobs report.

"U.S. employers added 227,000 jobs in February to complete three of the best months of hiring since the recession began. (March 9)" 

From the Associated Press 

At risk of repeating myself and sound like a politician whose speaking from a broken teleprompter and keeps repeating himself as a result: we're off to a good start in 2012 as far as jobs and growth, even wages. But there's still a lot of work to be done with 12 million people still out-of-work. 

The Great Recession ended during the summer of 2009 and we've been growing ever since and have been adding jobs every month since early 2010. These are good signs but when you are in the economic hole that we've been in since late 2008, it takes a long time to completely dig your way out of that hole. 

CBS News: Jack Otter & Jill Schlesinger- 'MoneyWatch: February 2012 Jobs Numbers'

Source:CBS News- I'm assuming this is Jack Otter (even though I don't know the man personally) just because I think Jill is a strange name for a man.

"Jack Otter and Jill Schlesinger of CBS MoneyWatch discuss the new jobs numbers reported by the labor department for February 2012." 

From CBS News 

I may have already said this for the last 4-5 jobs reports that I've been talking about, but of course American economy is not in perfect shape and there are still real problems dealing with the lack of strong economic growth, even though we've been growing consistently for 3 years now, as well as long-term unemployment, but the tend line is good right now. 

Americans are going back to work, wages are even rising, employers are looking for new workers, thanks to the Budget Control Act of 2011, our deficits are actually coming down now. So yes, we haven't fully recovered from the Great Depression that started in late 2008, but we're recovering, we're growing, and Americans are going back to work. 

The Film Archives: John Kerry- ‘How do You Ask The Last Man to Die For a Mistake’

Source:The Film Archives- U.S. Naval Lieutenant John F. Kerry, testifying in front of Congress in 1971, about the Vietnam War.

“John Forbes Kerry (born December 11, 1943) is an American politician who is the 68th and current United States Secretary of State. More on this topic.

He served as a United States Senator from Massachusetts from 1985 to 2013, and was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Kerry was the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party in the 2004 Presidential Election but lost to incumbent George W. Bush.

The son of an Army Air Corps veteran, Kerry was born in Aurora, Colorado. He attended boarding school in Massachusetts and New Hampshire and went on to graduate from Yale University class of 1966, where he majored in political science and became a member of the influential Skull and Bones secret society. He enlisted in the Naval Reserve in 1966, and during 1968–1969 served an abbreviated four-month tour of duty in South Vietnam as officer-in-charge (OIC) of a Swift Boat. For that service, he was awarded combat medals that include the Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts. Securing an early return to the United States, Kerry joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War in which he served as a nationally recognized spokesman and as an outspoken opponent of the Vietnam War. He appeared before the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs where he deemed United States war policy in Vietnam to be the cause of “war crimes.”

From The Film Archives 

It’s been said that presidents who have military or foreign policy experience, are less likely to commit American troops to combat in foreign nations, then presidents without that previous experience, because they know exactly what they are putting those troops through and what they have to go through. And the sacrifices they and their families will make as a result and perhaps even the ultimate sacrifice they may make.

I’ll give you a perfect example of that: when Dwight Eisenhower became President in 1953, one of the first things he looked to was to get American troops out of the Korean War. Because he saw it as a civil war.

Ronald Reagan a World War II veteran, never committed American troops into combat. We never went to war in his eight years as President. Jimmy Carter, another World War II veteran, never committed American troops to combat in his four years either. President George H.W. Bush did commit troops to the Gulf War in 1991. But for a very limited mission: get Iraq out of Kuwait, not to invade and occupy Iraq. A big country of twenty-five million people, a mistake that his son wasn’t able to avoid twelve years later.

President George W. Bush, who never had combat experience, or foreign policy experience, other than signing up for the reserves to avoid Vietnam service, commits American troops to two wars within seventeen months as President: Afghanistan and Iraq. Two wars we are now trying to get out of ten years later.

We’ll never know what type of president John Kerry would’ve made on foreign policy, or anything else. And I believe that’s unfortunate, because we are talking about a Vietnam veteran from the Baby Boom Generation, who volunteered to serve his country in Vietnam, unlike George W. Bush who did everything he can to avoid service there.

But when you hear Senator Kerry talk about foreign policy as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and as a senior Senator, you know that he doesn’t take these things lightly. And committing American troops to any war is a huge deal and shouldn’t be taken lightly. 

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Maryland General Assembly: Same-Sex Marriage Bill

Source:The Washington Times- same-sex marriage coming to the Free State of Maryland.

Source:FRS FreeState 

“ANNAPOLIS — Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley’s same-sex marriage bill now moves to the state Senate, where floor debate could begin this week, after its narrow passage in the House. 

The bill, which would make Maryland the eighth state along with the District to legalize gay marriage, appears to have majority support in the 47-member Senate, which passed the bill last year by a 25-21 vote. 

After working furiously last week to gain several crucial votes in the House, supporters in the Senate will mainly have the task of protecting the support they already have.” 

From the Washington Times 

"The Maryland same sex marriage bill is now on Governor O'Malley's desk after passing the state senate."

Source:MPT News- the Maryland State Senate chamber.

From MPT News 

Maryland’s State nickname is the Free State. And to have a name like that for yourself to take that name and call yourself the Free State, to me at least as a Liberal, you have a lot to live up to, because it suggests you believe that Marylanders should be free to live their own lives. And not have state restrictions on how you live your own lives. That we are a Free State with free adults, people who live their own lives.

If you are a free stater, you believe that big government should not in our bedrooms or wallets. (As Barry Goldwater used to describe his own politics) That Marylanders would be able to live their own lives as they see fit. As long as they are not hurting anyone else with what they are doing. 

If your only argument against same-sex-marriage is that it violates your religious beliefs and that homosexuality violates your religious beliefs and therefor everyone else regardless of their religious beliefs should be forced to live under your religious values, then you don’t have a real argument against same-sex-marriage. Because America is a republic, not a theocracy. And so is the Free State of Maryland.