I appeared on MSNBC a couple of weeks ago and said that what we were calling an immigration problem was really a drug cartel problem.  The video surprisingly traveled all over the internet, so they asked me back to talk about it and let me give Dylan’s “daily rant.”  It was fun.

Last night the United States Senate voted to double the penalties for the nation’s newest existential threat: brownies made with marijuana!

No, really.

The Senate unanimously passed Dianne Feinstein (D-CA)’s “Saving Kids from Dangerous Drugs Act of 2009″ (S. 258) that targets pot brownies and other marijuana edibles preferred by some medical marijuana patients.

Recent polling by Angus-Reid shows that a majority of Americans favor the legalization of marijuana. Moreover, a SurveyUSA poll in California indicates that 74% of people between the ages of 18-34 favor legalization. Young voters historically turn out in low numbers in midterm elections, so you would think that our elected officials might think twice [...]

We learned Wednesday from The Hill that many Democratic Senators don’t actually support all the great things they claim they have “fought for.” They lied to voters. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) doesn’t really support her health insurance rate-review agency as she claims to do. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) doesn’t really want Americans to have the choice of [...]

Earlier this month the DEA conducted several coordinated raids of California medical marijuana dispensaries and collectives. Problem is, these DEA raids are in direct opposition to the directive issued by President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder last year that designated raids on legal medical marijuana dispensaries to “not be a priority” for the DEA. Today, Firedoglake publisher Jane Hamsher joined drug policy reform organizations and a conservative group, led by the Marijuana Policy Project, in condemning the DEA’s raids.

Alice Rivlin’s latest opinion piece on Social Security, “The Right Reason for Saving Social Security,” makes the case for why she and the other members of the Catfood Commission are the wrong people for the job. First, from whom does Social Security need “saving,” other than from her and other self-proclaimed deficit hawks?    Rivlin acknowledges [...]

I was on MSNBC talking about the schism among Democrats regarding Arizona’s new immigration law and the Justice Department’s response. Obama is worried about his plummeting poll numbers among Hispanics (down 12 points this year), while Arizona Congressional Democrats are worried about being voted out of office.  But nobody is talking about pot. When asked [...]

There is strong concern that the lame-duck Congress will be used to pass the Catfood Commission’s recommendations to slash America’s social safety net with cuts to Social Security and Medicare benefits. The idea of a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress allowing cuts to our great social programs that will result in millions of seniors [...]

What is considered “conservative” philosophy in this country (no regulation or social safety net, government helping big businesses and offering low taxes to the rich) is not conservative in the traditional sense of preserving the status quo. It is a radical pro-wealth, pro-corporate control, anti-public-investment ideology. What makes this radical position so dangerous is, as [...]

Radical conservatives in the Senate are contributing to unemployment in their own novel way: They are so devoted to blocking action that they extend it even to filling relatively low-level government jobs. They want to prove that government can’t work, by stopping it from working. They’re dedicated to ruining it as part of their nihilistic, self-fulfilling anti-government prophesies.