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NEW YORK (AP) — The savage drug war in Mexico. Crumbling state budgets. Weariness with current drug policy. The election of a president who said, "Yes — I inhaled." These developments and others are kindling unprecedented optimism among the many Americans who want to see marijuana legalized. Doing so, they contend to an ever-more-receptive audience, could weaken the Mexican cartels now profiting from U.S. pot sales, save billions in law enforcement costs, and generate billions more in tax revenue from one of the nation's biggest cash crops. Said a veteran of the movement, Ethan Nadelmann of the Drug Policy Alliance: "This is the first time I feel like the wind is at my back and not in my face." Foes of legalization argue that already-rampant pot use by adolescents would worsen if adults could smoke at will. Even the most hopeful marijuana activists doubt nationwide decriminalization is imminent, but they see the debate evolving dramatically and anticipate fast-paced change on the state level. "For the most part, what we've seen over the past 20 years has been incremental," said Norm Stamper, a former Seattle police chief now active with Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. "What we've seen in the past six months is an explosion of activity, fresh thinking, bold statements and penetrating questions."..Link
MSNBC host Carlos Watson appears to believe that claims of a “GOP death spiral” have been greatly exaggerated. As Watson sees it, the news media will make sure that recent self-appointed GOP spokesmen like Rush Limbaugh are swept aside in favor of more traditional party leaders — leading up to a return in 2012 to the familiar Bush brand name...Link
WASHINGTON, June 14 (Reuters) - CIA director Leon Panetta says it's almost as if former vice president Dick Cheney would like to see another attack on the United States to prove he is right in criticizing President Barack Obama for abandoning the "harsh interrogation" of terrorism suspects. "I think he smells some blood in the water on the national security issue," Panetta said in an interview published in The New Yorker magazine's June 22 issue. "It's almost, a little bit, gallows politics. When you read behind it, it's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point." Cheney, who was a key advocate in the Bush administration of controversial interrogation methods such as waterboarding, has become as a leading Republican critic of Obama's ban on harsh interrogations and his plan to shut the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba...Link