A now familiar but still remarkable fact about 21st Century America:
Obama's favorability-unfavorability rating in the South is 28-67, while it is 68-23 in the rest of the country.
America is not just two countries right now; it sometimes feels like two universes.
My London column today is on the dramatically shifting landscape for marijuana in the US, with growing acceptance of medical cannabis, growing numbers of states allowing it, California's consideration of outright legalization and taxation, and the Obama Justice Department's decision to let states govern themselves on the question, without federal interference. It comes after the Labour government has actually tried to increase penalties for pot – against the advice of its own chairman of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). The wonderfully named Professor David Nutt was fired by the government after he noted certain quite obvious facts:
Professor Nutt had become a thorn in the side of ministers with his criticisms of drugs policy. He clashed with former home secretary Jacqui Smith when he suggested ecstasy, which causes 30 deaths a year, was less dangerous than horse-riding, which causes 100 deaths a year. He also argued that, to prevent one episode of schizophrenia linked to cannabis use, it would be necessary to "stop 5,000 men aged 20 to 25 from ever using" the drug…
The Home Secretary asked him to consider his position after a recent lecture in which attacked what he called the "artificial" separation of alcohol and tobacco from other, illegal, drugs. Last night Professor Nutt said he stood by his comments. "My view is policy should be based on evidence. It's a bit odd to make policy that goes in the face of evidence. The danger is they are misleading us."
"The scientific evidence is there: it's in all the reports we published. Our judgements about the classification of drugs like cannabis and ecstasy have been based on a great deal of very detailed scientific appraisal.
"Gordon Brown makes completely irrational statements about cannabis being 'lethal', which it is not. I'm not prepared to mislead the public about the harmfulness of drugs like cannabis and ecstasy. I think most scientists will see this as an example of the Luddite attitude of governments towards science."
He repeated his view that cannabis was "not that harmful" and that parents should be more worried about alcohol.
They should. Alcohol is far more dangerous to the individual and to society than marijuana. Brits, of all people, should know this. If pubs served pot rather than beer, violent crime in Britain would plummet. Mercifully, the science establishment is fighting back against the firing of someone for telling the scientific truth. Two other scientific advisers have now quit in protest.
(Photo: Various types of marijuana are on display at Private Organic Therapy (P.O.T.), a non-profit co-operative medical marijuana dispensary, on October 19, 2009 in Los Angeles, California. The city of LA has been slow to come to agreement on how to regulate its 800 to 1,000 dispensaries. Californians voted to allow sick people with referrals from doctors to consume cannabis with the passage of state ballot Proposition 215 in 1996 and a total of 14 states now allow the medicinal use of marijuana. By David McNew/Getty Images.)
Beutler explains. Money quote:
If it's just a separate, but unequal insurance plan for people who need a lot of medical care, and won't put downward pressure on premiums in the private market, what's the point? Well, it's possible that without the public option, these same, sick people would be paying yet more still. Additionally, as the insurance exchanges grow to include a broader, healthier segment of the population, the mix of people will be healthier, and the public plan's negotiating power will increase. But it's certainly a weaker animal than it could have been.
"HRC might, one day, have a hand in enacting the remaining types of gay rights legislation, like ENDA, UAFA, and killing DOMA and DADT. But their delays and weak pressure increasingly appear to be based more on the organization's commitment to having a purpose in the coming decades than on ensuring gays have their rights right now," – Queerty.
Marc Lynch has a new article in The National on Islamic groups' participation in democracy and how certain governments have discouraged them. The current lull may be misleading:
The Jordanian, Egyptian and American governments may see all this as something of a success story: the influence of the Islamists has been curbed, both in formal politics and in the social sector, and the restraint exercised by the Brotherhood leadership has meant the states have not faced a backlash. But this is dangerously short-sighted. The campaigns against Islamists weaken the foundations of democracy as a whole, not just the appeal of one movement, and have had a corrosive effect on public freedoms, transparency and accountability. Regardless of the fortunes of the movements themselves, the crackdown on the Islamists contributes to the wider corruption of public life. The growing frustration within moderate Islamist groups with democratic participation cannot help but affect their future ideological trajectory.
"Neoconservatism has become a set of attitudes that might be summed up as, 'somewhere, shaggy kids might be having sex or smoking dope—so let’s cut interest rates and invade Iraq!'” – Daniel McCarthy, TAC.
Jerry Coyne summarizes a study on contemporary and future evolutionary change in humans:
Several traits did indeed appear to be undergoing selection. From the amount of this selection, we can predict the percentage change in the trait that we expect to see after ten more generation of reproduction (roughly 300 years from now).
Total cholesterol: going down. Projected to drop 3.6% in ten generations
Weight: going up a tad, projected to increase 1.4% in ten generations
Height: we’re getting shorter projecting a drop of 1.3% (2.1 cm) in ten generations.
Systolic blood pressure: Going down, as predicted. Projected to drop 1.9% in ten generations.
Age at menopause: Going up; projected to rise 1.6% (0.8 years) in ten generations.
Age at first reproduction: Going down. Projected to drop 1.7% (from 26.18 to 25.74 years).
So women, at least, are getting shorter, stouter, and reproducing earlier and over a longer period of time. This is evolutionary change. Based on this study, we can tentatively say, with more assurance than I used to, that yes, our species is still evolving.
He adds a few caveats to the data later on in the post.
A quiz.
The Dish 