Discreet and of Good Character

What is in Today's New York Times?
A Ban With Roots in Myth and Xenophobia: An atmosphere of hysteria in the 1930s took hold and shaped a national policy on marijuana that lives on today.

Evolving on Marijuana

Highlights from the Editorial Board’s changing view of marijuana over six decade

Editorial Observer: The Federal Marijuana Ban Is Rooted in Myth and Xenophobia

Editorial: Let States Decide on Marijuana

Repeal Prohibition, Again

What Science Says About Marijuana by the Editorial Board
While marijuana is not harmless, it is less dangerous to human health than alcohol and tobacco.

Oh, and there are problems in the Middle East...

But the most important thing the Times wants you to know about is dope.


In a Line
After the military ouster of the Islamist government in Cairo last year, Egypt has led a new coalition of Arab states — including Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — that has effectively lined up with Israel in its fight against Hamas, the Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip. (New York Times, 7/31/2014)

So with Arab governments on the side of Israel, those opposed now include only Liberals in the U.S. and Europe.


Countless
The real utility of the body count is that it offers reporters and commentators who cite it the chance to ascribe implicit blame to Israel while evading questions about ultimate responsibility for the killing. Questions such as: Why is Hamas hiding rockets in U.N.-run schools, as acknowledged by the U.N. itself? What does it mean that Hamas has turned Gaza's central hospital into "a de facto headquarters," as reported by the Washington Post? And why does Hamas keep rejecting, or violating, cease-fires agreed to by Israel? (Bret Stephens, Wall Street Journal, 7/28/2014)

The fact is that Liberals only use "body counts" when it is to their advantage. Hence, we heard endless recitations of body counts when George Bush was president or when Israel fights Palestinians terrorists, but nothing about how many soldiers have died during Obama's reign.


JV President
This much is certain: The president did not take the Islamic State threat seriously. In a January 2014 interview with the New Yorker, Obama glibly dismissed the Islamic State as a bunch of junior varsity terrorists who posed little danger to Iraq or the United States. “The analogy we use around here sometimes, and I think is accurate, is if a jayvee team puts on Lakers uniforms that doesn’t make them Kobe Bryant,” Obama declared. He brushed aside the rise of the Islamic State as just internal Iraqi sectarian violence, something that is not “a direct threat to us or something that we have to wade into.”
...
Obama’s own attorney general, Eric Holder, recently told ABC News that the rise of the Islamic State is “more frightening than anything I think I’ve seen as attorney general,” adding that “9/11 was something that kind of came out of the blue. This is a situation that we can see developing.” (Marc A. Thiessen, Washington Post, 7/28/2014)

Obama must have thought himself enormously clever with his basketball reference. Now even his own attorney general takes time out from searching for racism in America to go on the record about ISIS. One guesses that - should the unthinkable happen again and America is attacked - Holder wants to distance himself from Obama's dismissive remarks.  


Peach Pelosi
In June 2008, 12 House Democrats—including committee and subcommittee chairmen and close allies of Mrs. Pelosi—introduced a bill to impeach President George W. Bush. (Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal, 7/31/2014)

Thanks to Rove for this reminder amid all the Democrat hysteria.