didn’t some snowboarder get disqualified for failing a pot test? If it is listed as performance enhancing, then it doesn’t matter what the actual effect is- fail a test and you can’t compete.

So smug and condescending. So ready to ascribe motives to others, so sure you understand their objections to what you approve of – arrogance. Is “puritanism” really such a big deal in this country, Sean? Porn is a national pastime and is widely available, half the Internet is streaming porn videos, 26% of adult New Yorkers have genital herpes (look it up). So even these detestable Americans haven’t reached the creamy sexual ideal you judge them by, but is it really “puritanism”? I know many hispanic Catholics families who are much more “sexually uptight” than loose WASP girls I went to school with (more directly related to the Puritans, but even so the analogy is asinine from a historical perspective). Modern America has shifted so far from the early Puritan settlers who formed but a part of its early history. So unpoint your finger.

It will help business be more efficient in a global market and simplify education etc, etc … but there seems to be a right wing taboo against it be cause ‘it ain’t ‘mericun!’

Really? I think the direction is crystal clear. As Christopher Hitchens says, “Religion poisons
everything.”

I think they should plan out business cycles in a more effective way next time. The government should literally have ready to go big project plans already setup for stimulating recesionary phases in case monetary policy fails as opposed to wasting billions of dollars on less effecient spur of the moment shovel ready projects that don’t really have big multiplier effects.

Hopefully you don’t have to use them, but its never a bad idea to actually have the groundwork in place.

Hyperbole fails me. This is the quintessential ICEBERG issue of which 80% is sub-surface, yet with political warming in DC, more of the iceberg becomes visible, and will hopefully all melt one day.
The Phelps Phiasco is particularly, painfully poignant ! He did indeed have it all in the palm of his hand, but did not possess the testicular fabric to thrust it into the air, in a gesture which would’ve ranked with the John Carlos/Tommie Smith black power salute in the 1968 Olympic games.

Pot is a recreational drug, not one that enhances performance, and is completely irrelevant to Phelps prior Olympiad achievements. But the `image thing’ is what they have crucified Phelps over: young Americans should hold their Olympians `high’ as moral role-models, or so the hypocrites demand. Burning the scepter, burned those bridges, and the powers that be threatened to burn Phelps if he did not recant.

It was a sad day when he missed the opportunity of a lifetime, as the linked letter made clear, but perhaps this is the first shot across the bow of puritanical America, that a new Boston Tea Party is waiting in the wings to happen, and cast off the 40-year hamperings of an utterly failed 10-Billion$$ per year drug war against otherwise law-abiding Americans, a multi-billion dollar prison industry, and a S.of the border horror-story which will only continue to get worse.

Citizens of the US tend to have no conscious awareness regarding the substantive difference between the extremely-thin line dividing intellectual levels of competency regardless of age. I know 40 year olds that should never gamble or drink. I know 14 year olds with substantively greater maturity. Arbitrary designations of age are as fake as CGI f/x

No, all marijuana users should all be treated the same, black or white – they should be let off.

http://www.worldcasinodirectory.com/gambling_age_chart.htm

It’s 21 or 18 most places, though.

To wit (just off the top of my head):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/7903784.stm

http://article.wn.com/view/2009/01/11/une_majorit_de_fran_ais_d_sapprouvent_le_retour_au_travail_t/?section=BigPhoto&template=cheetah-photo-search%2Findex.txt

That said, the fact that the rest of world can be just as idiotic, in their fashion, is no excuse for us to be.

Well, the reality is that both attitudes are incorrect. Even though there might different ways of understanding God, let us atleast understand that God exists and that there is goodness in controlling our passions.

All your other points are great though! Nice to see someone else read’s Balko’s wonderful blog.

The Los Angeles Times — February 20, 2009:

The Pentagon has concluded that the military detention center at Guantanamo Bay meets the standards for humane treatment of detainees established in the Geneva Convention accords. . . .

The administration official said the report’s primary conclusions supported the Department of Defense’s long-standing contention that Guantanamo was in compliance with the global convention, including Article 3, which requires the humane treatment of prisoners taken in unconventional armed conflicts, such as the war on terrorism.

“The bottom line is that the report found that Guantanamo is in compliance with the Geneva conventions, which we have maintained for several years. So the report essentially validated our procedures and processes,” the official said.

The Guardian, today:

Revealed: full horror of Gitmo inmate’s beatings

Binyam Mohamed will return to Britain suffering from a huge range of injuries after being beaten by US guards right up to the point of his departure from Guantánamo Bay [on Saturday], according to the first detailed accounts of his treatment inside the camp.

Mohamed will arrive back tomorrow in the UK, where he was a British resident between 1984 and 2002. During medical examinations last week, doctors discovered injuries and ailments resulting from apparently brutal treatment in detention.

Mohamed was found to be suffering from bruising, organ damage, stomach complaints, malnutrition, sores to feet and hands, severe damage to ligaments as well as profound emotional and psychological problems which have been exacerbated by the refusal of Guantánamo’s guards to give him counselling.

Mohamed’s British lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, said his client had been beaten “dozens” of times inside the notorious US camp in Cuba with the most recent abuse occurring during recent weeks. He said: “He has a list of physical ailments that cover two sheets of A4 paper. What Binyam has been through should have been left behind in the middle ages.”

[U.S. Army] Lieutenant colonel Yvonne Bradley, Mohamed’s US military attorney, added: “He has been severely beaten. Sometimes I don’t like to think about it because my country is behind all this.” . . .

For reasons that human rights groups and detainees’ lawyers immediately pointed out, this self-exonerating Pentagon report, from the start, was suspect in the extreme. But a sign of how broken our discourse is and how in love with ourselves we continue to be is that, on the question of current Guantanamo conditions, the conclusions of the United States Pentagon released this week were treated not only as credible, but authoritative. If the DOD — which has long overseen Guantanamo and continues to do so — says that everything is great there, well, that’s the end of that. What else is there to know?

Of all the defining practices and policies of the Bush administration which the Obama administration has already enthusiastically embraced — and they’re piling up so quickly, it’s becoming difficult to keep track — one of the most disturbing is the Obama administration’s press management approach. The administration is singling out particularly supportive journalists to whom they anonymously leak purely favorable pro-administration spin; giving access to others who are have a history of such sycophantic behavior that they predictably produce profiles so one-sided and glowing that even People Magazine would be embarrassed to publish it; and — worst of all — they are systematically hiding behind anonymity to disseminate their claims in order to evade accountability, the exact opposite of the “transparency” Obama continuously promised (read David Cay Johnston’s superb account of dealing with the Obama White House Press Office to see what a real journalist — as opposed to one desperately jockeying to serve the White House in exchange for favored access status — does when faced with baseless demands from administration officials for anonymity and off-the-record chatter).

These allegations that Binyam Mohamed was brutalized at Guantanamo in the last several weeks — while the Obama DOD was “concluding” that conditions there comported with the Geneva Conventions — are coming from highly credible sources. The Obama administration has the obligation to make available an official in a position of real authority to speak on the record and attempt to reconcile these seemingly irreconcilable stories. The pledge to end the brutality and secrecy of the Bush detention regime was one of the centerpieces of Obama’s campaign. One would think, on their own, they’d be eager to address these allegations in a forthright and candid way.