Andrew Sullivan argues that marijuana should be legal because it’s a product of nature: My view – regardless of the arguments back and forth about the effects of marijuana – is simply that it is absurd for any government to prevent people from growing a naturally-occurring plant that requires no processing to provide humans with pleasure. [...]

I call this blogging destiny. Last night the girlfriend and I came across a can of Four Loko on the street. I’d never heard of it before, but I’m boring like that. Four Loko is an energy drink that has a lot of caffeine and a lot of alcohol. So much of so, in fact, that it’s [...]

One of the trending explanations on the liberal blogs today is that the reason Democrats lost bigtime last night is because young voters (who generally vote for Democrats more than Republicans) didn’t turn out to vote. That’s a logical enough explanation. Consider this graph at Jonathan Cohn’s blog: But the truth is, historically, young voters don’t turnout [...]

Over at TPM reader KS send in a this picture and anecdote of a voting station in Kenosha, Wisconsin: I’ve voted in 8 different cities in 5 states, and by far the most beautiful polling place I have been assigned is the Southport Beachhouse, in Kenosha, WI (see attached). It’s a WPA-era, Art Deco-esque park [...]

No matter how intent a person is on exercising his or her civic duty, the actual process of voting is cumbersome and inconvenient. Driving to the polls, waiting in line, losing  precious hours of work time, is hardly the image of patriotic zeal. In addition, despite some notable elections such as the 2000 Presidential campaign in Florida, most individual [...]

Via Dave Weigel (a blog that’s quickly becoming my favorite) here’s a video that puts this year’s negative campaign ads in perspective: In fact, there’s a kernel of truth to this. Presidential campaigns have historically been rather brutal, particularly the election of 1800 between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson depicted in the video. Obviously there were no TV [...]