Month: February 2011

The Cannabis Closet: Mitch Daniels

The mild-mannered Midwesterner had some wild days at Princeton:

Officers found enough marijuana in his room to fill two size 12 shoe boxes, reports of the incident say. He and the other inhabitants of the room were also charged with possession of LSD and prescription drugs without a prescription. … “I don’t make excuses for anything. Justice was served,” he said in an interview on Monday. “I had used marijuana and I was fined for that, and that was appropriate,” he explained.

Aaron Houston adds context:

Daniels was also busted about six months prior to President Nixon signing the Daniels-arrest Controlled Substances Act of 1970 (on October 27). If that law had been on books in May 1970, Daniels could have faced an array of charges, including several felonies. And if he had been busted after 1998 when the Higher Education Act’s Aid Elimination Penalty took effect, he could have lost any federal financial aid as the result of a drug conviction.

I hope that when Daniels says fining him was an “appropriate” punishment he means that a fine should be the maximum penalty for possessing several pounds of marijuana and LSD. If not, does he believe it’s right to punish drug arrestees more harshly than he was treated?

Paul Waldman digs up an anti-drug op-ed written by Daniels in 1989 and calls it “a pretty extraordinary combination of whitewash and hypocrisy”. Waldman:

The comically mild penalty he received — a $350 fine, no jail time, no probation — was a salutary wake-up call that allowed him to go on to a productive career. And he presents this as evidence in favor of laws that would absolutely destroy the career of anybody caught in 1989 (or today) doing what Daniels was caught doing. A couple of hundred thousand students have lost their financial aid, in many cases meaning they had to drop out of college, because of a conviction for possession or sale of drugs. If Daniels were in college today, and thus had actually served time as a convicted drug dealer, not only would he have no political future, he wouldn’t have much of a future at all.

“Allah help me”

Twitter user Abukhit is trapped in his house in Tripoli:

ohhhhh my god 2 pepole where hoted in the head god help us … i couldnt stay in the street after one head shot in a person infront of me that was bad really bad … i couldn't upload the video a need more time to calm down after what i saw … bomb guys i heard bomb alot of gun shot please help … a gun shot on my house … this pic inside my house … one of the people had AK47 and shoot back the merciners i think one of them is down …( in front of my eyes ) … guys i'm keeping my self in safe area … and if i died i don't care i did my prayer … i see guns with people …. shots r everywhere … i'll send the video and allah be with me

View the video here. Check his constant updates here.

(Hat tip: AJE)

Qaddafi: Getting Even Weirder, Ctd

Gaddafiqueen

Dan Amira reacts to Qaddafi's latest rant:

Seriously, why are you guys even directing this rage at Qaddafi to begin with? He's just a gentle old man who smiles and waves to people and drinks tea and wears white gloves to protect his delicate hands and hosts foreign dignitaries and unleashes mercenary death squads on his people and takes leisurely strolls through floral gardens.

David Ignatius remembers what an "unstable and menacing person" Qaddafi has always been:

In the early 1980s, I traveled to Tripoli with several other journalists hoping to interview Gaddafi. When the appointed date arrived, we were taken to a large hall, frisked several times and then made to wait for the "mercurial" leader, the euphemism reporters used in those days to describe the Libyan strongman.

First, Gaddafi's bodyguard blew into the room brandishing his automatic weapon. He was barefoot and had wild, unkempt hair and was genuinely scary-looking, even by Middle East-bodyguard standards.

Then came Gaddafi.

He marched straight toward me (was it the fact that I worked in those days for the Wall Street Journal?), stopped about a foot from my face and stared at me with bulging, bloodshot eyes. Then he shouted something in Arabic to his aides and bolted from the room, never to return. Sorry, no interview, his terrified aides told us.

It was one of the oddest encounters I've had as a journalist. Honestly, I thought at the time that Gaddafi was high on drugs. Those eyes were popping with unnatural intensity. And he had a self-dramatizing manner that was unusual, even for a Third World dictator.

(Image via Twitter user Noura)

Tucson Relapse Watch

I guess it was just a matter of time. It also seems to me that by not responding forcefully and angrily to a horrifying question from the audience, “Who’s going to shoot Obama?” Congressman Broun should resign. This is not an acceptable response:

The thing is, I know there’s a lot of frustration with this president. We’re going to have an election next year. Hopefully, we’ll elect somebody that’s going to be a conservative, limited-government president that will take a smaller, who will sign a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare.

Nor is this follow-up:

“Obviously, the question was inappropriate, so Congressman Broun moved on,”

Turning Tides

TIDESonnyTumbelaka:Getty

It may be that high water-mark of the GOP tide has been reached in Wisconsin:

In Ohio, Republican lawmakers agreed to modify a bill that would have banned collective bargaining, allowing state workers to negotiate on wages. Michigan's GOP governor offered to negotiate with public employees rather than create political gridlock. Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) called on GOP lawmakers to abandon their "right to work" bill that would have made it a misdemeanor for an employer to require workers to become or remain members of a labor union.

Increasingly, it seems to me, Scott Walker's political gamesmanship is discrediting the vital cause of tackling deficits and debt in the states. It's a classic case of over-reach.

And the same can be said of marriage equality in Maryland, where extreme rhetoric in the debate turned some previously anti-gay marriage legislators around. The NYT reports on the muted response of the GOP's potential presidential candidates to the Obama administration's decision not to defend Section 3 of DOMA in the courts. I don't for a minute believe that the Christianist base will be satisfied if the House decides to let sleeping gays lie, but the feeling is different now, don't you think?

The genius of the Holder decision is that it forces the GOP to decide very quickly whether to double-down on this issue.

It's the last thing Boehner wants to be thinking or talking about. And Obama has wisely restricted his shift to the federal government's recognition of what states have already done. In other words, Obama's decision can be viewed as a federalist one. Why, after all, should some states not have all their marriage licenses recognized by the federal government, rather than, say, 98 percent of them? Since the DOMA provision protecting every state's right to decide how to define civil marriage remains, this becomes an issue of the states versus the federal government. Which again intensifies the Republican internal conflict.

Meanwhile, the gays are ecstatic – a little too ecstatic in my view. Not to say I am not extremely gratified by the DOJ's decision. Just that I recognize its limits. As Obama used to say: no sudden moves. But his legacy on gay rights is beginning to build into a historic one. Yes, I have complained loudly in the past. My loyalty is to the issue, not the president. But he is coming through – more cunningly than most of us grasped.

Which is not the first time one can say that on many issues, where Obama's caution and incrementalism have begun to create a legacy that is deeply unsatisfying in the present but looks rather substantive from the rear-view mirror.

(Photo: In this photograph taken January 21, 2011 a baby green turtle crawls to the sea after being hatched at a turtle sanctuary in Sukamade island in East Java province. By Sonny Tumbelaka/Getty.)

Up Up And Away

IMAG0200

A reader sends in a shot of yesterday's shuttle launch from his window in Sanford, Florida. John Hudson does some leg work:

It's Had an Amazing Career, writes Sharon Gaudin at Computer World: "Discovery was the shuttle that returned the United States to space flight after both the shuttles Challenger and Columbia accidents. It also was the shuttle that carried the Hubble Space Telescope into orbit, and it has since gone aloft twice so astronauts could maintain the telescope."

This Is the Beginning of the End, writes the CTV News staff: "NASA has decided to bring the shuttle program to an end, ushering an uncertain future for the U.S. space program. The White House has said it wants to retire the 30-year-old shuttle program to free NASA up for grander outer space travel, with plans to explore asteroids and Mars."

TDW Geek has video of the launch. NASA produced a video retrospective.

Yglesias Award Nominee

"Each time I write a post critical of Fox News host Glenn Beck, scores of conservatives e-mail and comment here at Right Turn that he's 'not as bad' as the left portrays him and that, besides, there are worse figures on the left. The 'left is worse' argument doesn't fly. Listen, I am never shy about pointing out hypocrisy by the left — as I did in response to an anti-Beck letter organized by Jewish Funds for Justice. But the argument that 'the other side is worse' is not an argument that justifies Beck's conduct. So what should thoughtful conservatives do? I've said it before, but it is especially relevant here: Police their own side," – Jennifer Rubin.

Will Holograms Change Us?

Mark T. Mitchell is wondering:

Cisco is boasting that its new communications technology will change the way we engage others. Indeed, when a hologram of a man in California appears before an audience in India and has a conversation with a “real” person, things feel a bit odd. Is this a mere gimmick that will confine itself to business meetings of tech companies or will this soon be part of our everyday experience?  What is gained when a holographic figure replaces an image on a screen or a voice on the phone? I have to admit the technology is amazing, but is it significant? With this I could live in a cabin in Montana and teach classes in Virginia and hold regular office hours as well. Would the students find this satisfying? Would I? Could this technology effect the way we think about bodily existence?

A Sign Of Egypt’s Liberation

Tahrir

Nezar AlSayyad, a Professor of Architecture and the Chair of Cal's Center for Middle Eastern Studies, talks about the design of Tahrir square:

Twenty-three streets lead to different parts of it, which is why it was so successful with the demonstrators. There isn’t one big boulevard that you can block off, and there are two bridges that lead to it as well. One of them saw a clash between the regime and the demonstrators. It’s also the case that all of downtown Cairo, which isn’t that big, has a street that leads to [one] side or another of Tahrir Square.

(Hat tip: Utne; Image via Deaf Inspirations)