The Dish

Brian Doherty checks in on the pot wars of Los Angeles:

The medical model attaches great importance to motive and state of mind, which is why dispensary operators often say, when justifying themselves to politicians or the press, that they’re in the business “for the right reasons,” unlike some of their competitors. Combined with the federal ban on marijuana, medicalization leads to a world where customers can shop at only one store; where the cash they pay for a product is not the price but a “contribution to the collective”; where businesses are expected to avoid turning a profit; where a medicine is subject to sales tax, unlike other pharmaceuticals, and isn’t regulated like any other pharmaceutical; where you are complying with the law if what you possess is “reasonable” related to some need that may have been invented by a doctor to begin with; where it’s legal for you to have pot but you are still apt to be arrested for growing or transporting it. 

The medical model also fosters a weirdly contradictory attitude toward pot use, one that seemed to animate the L.A. Weekly’s surprisingly negative coverage of the issue: Even people who don’t care about pot smoking in general get upset when they think stoners are gaming a system that is supposed to serve patients with doctor-certified needs. The L.A. Weekly angrily reported in November that 70 percent of the people its reporters saw entering dispensaries were “young men—corroborating D.A. Cooley’s claim that the real market for all this activity is everyday users, not people suffering serious disease.” (Medical activists tend to respond to that sort of talk with the riposte that all sorts of maladies for which pot provides relief aren’t diagnosable by strangers watching from yards away.)

Today on the Dish, Jason Berry continued to expose the evil of Marcial Maciel just as we caught wind of another case out of San Antonio. A reader dissented over Andrew's approach to the scandal, Julian Sanchez jumped in the debate, and a female blogger explained why now is the best time to be Catholic. Meanwhile, the Internet continued to lampoon the Church.

In election coverage, the Tories released their own manifesto. Massie scrutinized its approach to civil liberties and Drum demurred over its view of referendums. The Conservatives targeted Brown's supposed smugness and Paul Waugh figured Cameron will win by default.

In other news, Palin raked in $12 million, Medvedev flattered Obama, and Massa got creepier. Colbert grilled the co-founder of WikiLeaks, Larison tackled Jackson Diehl over the "snubbing" meme, and a new book in Israel targeted the settlers. Kristol approved of Elena Kagan, Andrew Bacevich compared Al-Qaeda to the mob, and Andrew articulated his South Park doctrine. More Kyrgyz commentary here.

Colin Dayan confronted canine profiling, readers sounded off on women getting high, and others recommended some smooth remixes. Hewitt Award here and Malkin here. Cool ad here. 

— C.B.

Paul Johnson reviews John Casey’s book: 

Many writers on heaven, from Philo of Alexandria onwards, are inclined to stress the intellectual delights of heaven. Philo seems to think that all the saved will be able to indulge in philosophy seminars, making heaven a kind of Oxford graduate college, like All Souls. My own favourite is the image of some medieval rabbis, who saw heaven as a vast, quiet, peaceful library, where books jumped down from the shelves when you nodded to them, and soft-footed librarians dispersed cooling mint drinks. There is a comparable vision of a scholarly heaven in the writings of Isaac Watts, though his paradise is more like the Royal Society, with the stress on scientific discoveries. Casey, who enjoys himself by covering a vast amount of spiritually imaginative territory, also goes into spiritualist concepts, and even the taxidermist dreams of Hubert Eaton, who, in 1917, created Forest Lawn Memorial Park in California.

What Casey thinks himself he does not tell us. But he believes that such visions give us ‘a sense of how deeply they mirror our most sincere self-consciousness … our image of heaven and hell is finally an image of how we judge ourselves’

Earlier coverage of Lisa Miller’s book on the same subject here.

After reading it, Drum demurs:

I don't have a huge dog in this fight, but I will say this: David Cameron's pledge to offer "California-style referendums on any local issue if residents can win the support of 5% of the population" is the most willfully wrongheaded idea I've heard in a long time. I mean, have you checked out the Golden State lately, David? "California-style referendums" have not exactly done California any favors.

Paul Waugh downplays new polling that shows Cameron slipping again:

In the privacy of the voting booth, the electorate in key marginal seats may come to that point of decision and simply think this: "I can't face five more years of Labour/Gordon Brown. I'm not sure about Cameron. But, sod it, I'll give him a try." This is, in my opinion, the most powerful weapon the Tories have in this election. Not just desperate mood of 'time for a change', but a resigned willingness to at least try something else.

We saw something similar in London in the 2008 mayoral elections. On the doorstep, there was a sizeable amount of suspicion and doubt about the idea of Boris as Mayor. But in key swing areas, people had had enough of Red Ken and they simply decided to give the Blond bombshell a go. "He's a bit of a risk but he can't be any worse, can he?" was the frequent message I picked up on the campaign trail.

This is the new neocon meme on Israel. So the WaPo drags it out for Karzai and now, according to WaPo's  Jackson Diehl, it includes Saakashvili, the somewhat nutty president of Georgia. Larison tries to figure this out:

The most irritating thing about Diehl’s post is that he is fully aware of the significant nonproliferation gain that Ukraine’s commitment represents, he knows perfectly well that Turkish-Armenian rapprochement is an important priority, and he understands that Georgia has almost nothing to contribute to the securing of nuclear materials, but he still tries to find some insult towards Georgia in all of this.

The McCainiacs don't die. But all this makes more sense when you realize this is a drumbeat designed to create a narrative in defense of Israel's permanent control of the West Bank. This is Jackson Diehl.

This got sent to me recently,

I hadn't seen this video and no doubt it shows only fringe characters and posters. But, in some cultural respects, the movement really does look increasingly like some last rather desperate and sad coda to the Civil War.

Jonah Lehrer passes along some research:

Eric Barker recently referred me to this interesting study, which looked at how elementary school teachers perceived creativity in their students. While the teachers said they wanted creative kids in their classroom, they actually didn't. In fact, when they were asked to rate their students on a variety of personality measures – the list included everything from "individualistic" to "risk-seeking" to "accepting of authority" – the traits mostly closely aligned with creative thinking were also closely associated with their "least favorite" students. As the researchers note, "Judgments for the favorite student were negatively correlated with creativity; judgments for the least favorite student were positively correlated with creativity."

This shouldn't be too surprising: Would you really want a little Picasso in your class? How about a baby Gertrude Stein? Or a teenage Eminem?

A reader writes:

If we are going to engage in unexpected styles, how about some lush big band (à la Nelson Riddle or Henry Mancini) and Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun"?

The unnamed male voice in the video is most likely Richard Cheese, the master of the lounge-music remix. His hottest YouTube hits are here. His rendition of Sir Mix-a-Lot's "Baby Got Back" is especially smooth. Update from a reader:

That’s not Richard Cheese. It’s Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, whose cover of Black Hole Sun was included on a CD called Lounge-a-palooza, released sometime in the late ‘90s.

Paul Anka also covered the alt-rock classic.