THE MEDICAL MARIJUANA ISSUE

First of all .. on this there can be no argument.  I've studied the issue, I've debated the issue before audiences of thousands .. and there is no valid argument against the fact that marijuana can bring relief from acute pain and severe discomfort to someone suffering from disabling and killer diseases such as cancer. 

This case is a dramatic victory for the concept of big government.  It is the Supreme Court's notice to all Americans to abandon any ideas they might have about returning government to the local level. 

I'm for drug legalization. That doesn't mean that I'm for drug abuse.  I'm not.  I think that people who use drugs to alter their emotional state absent a medical need are pathetic addicts.   I'm convinced that we can do a better job ... at a lower price ... of handling our drug problem in this country through treatment rather than through law enforcement. 

Now that we have that drug legalization thing out of the way, let's talk medical marijuana.  There is no question whatsoever that using marijuana can help critically ill patients avoid severe discomfort and acute pain.  For terminally ill patients medical marijuana can be the difference between spending their final days or weeks in a drug induced coma, or in a comfortable and conscious state where they can still interact with friends and loved ones who come to pay final respects.

The federal law needs to be changed.  There is no victim here, and there should be no crime.  It's time to stop pandering to hyper-moralists on this issue, and to start thinking about the ill, the dying and their families.  

THE CURRENT DEMOCRATIC PARTY LINE

I guess they do it by email.  Maybe fax.  Maybe they have a minimum wage courier running around Capitol Hill .. but somehow, every few weeks or so, the Democrats manage to spread the latest theme.  Whatever manner of distribution they use .. it works.  The latest Democratic Party theme?  Why, didn't you know?  Republicans want total power!  They want complete and absolute control!  They're power mad!  This, of course, stems from the recent filibuster fight in the Senate.  There was nothing complicated about that skirmish.  The Republicans thought that judicial confirmations ought to be based on a majority vote.  The Democrats wanted a super-majority vote.  A temporary agreement was reached whereby some judicial nominees that Democrats didn't like were confirmed by a majority vote.  This was indicative of the Republicans desire for total control, evidence of their lust for power!

Read on ... let's look at Hillary and Teddy:

HILLARY SIPPING HOWARD DEAN'S KOOL AID

New York Senator Hillary Clinton is running for president.  She says otherwise....after all, she still has to snooker the citizens of the state of New York into handing her another six-year Senate term, of which she intends to only serve a third.  But she's running for the White House anyway.

Hillary is a real champ when it comes to parroting the latest Democratic Party line.  The Hildabeast recently told a fund-raiser crowd in New York that Bush and the Republicans are "mad with power."  She added:  "There has never been an administration more intent upon consolidating and abusing power to further their own agenda.  It's frustrating for me:  Why can't the Democrats do more to stop them?  I can tell you this:  It's very hard to stop people who have no shame about what they're doing. It is very hard to stop people who have never been acquainted with the truth." 

Well ... you have the power thing there .. but let's not overlook that statement about honesty either.

Let's see now .. .Hillary says that Republicans are people who have never been acquainted with the truth.  Now ... work with me here ... Didn't Bill Clinton admit to lying under oath? Didn't he admit that he intentionally said things to mislead investigators and prosecutors?  Just wondering.  Oh, and hey!  Didn't he lose his law license over his dishonesty!  By golly, I think he did!  And what about the White House travel office staff!  It didn't take the jury long to throw out those Clinton lies, did it?  And then we have the FBI files scandal .. and who hired that Livingstone chap?  Hillary just doesn't seem to remember.  How honest of her!  And who was it who told a congressional committee for two years that she didn't have certain subpoenaed documents ... and that she didn't know who had them or, in fact, if they existed at all: only to have those very documents show up in her private living quarters in the White House with her handwriting and her fingerprints all over them?  Would that be Hillary!  Why, yes! I do believe it was!

Remember ... it's the Republicans who have never been acquainted with the truth.

TED KENNEDY .. BY THE NUMBERS

Ted Kennedy has also picked up on the "mad with power" theme:  Kennedy has placed his name on a poisonous little fund-raising letter that has been mailed to hundreds of thousands of voters around the country. In that letter Kennedy parrots the current Democratic line ... that the Republicans are trying to gain "absolute power" over our government.  In that mailer Kennedy says that "The far right knows no bounds, and neither does their lust for unchecked power.  Kennedy then puts forth "13 numbers that tell how bad George Bush and the Republicans have been for America." 

We're not going to go through all 13 of Kennedy's enumerations here ... but I'll cover just a few of them to set up a point I wish to make about Kennedy's little numbers game.  Here we go on a brief mystical Kennedy ride through the alcoholic fog:

No. 3:  $1 billion -- how much the Bush Administration has under funded domestic port security. 

Now .. if you are possessed of the least bit of intellectual curiosity -- in other words, if you didn't attend government schools --- you might want to know just how one will determine that something is "under funded."   Well, Mr. Insensitivity is here to answer your question.   Step 1.  Demand increased government spending for some friendly constituent group or political stronghold.  Step 2.  When the Republican congress refuses to meet your funding goals, immediately make a finding that your friendly constituent group or political stronghold is "under funded."  Two easy steps .. and you have No. 3 on Kennedy's list.

No. 5: $98 billion -- how much the Bush Administration has under funded first responders since 9/11. 

Same deal --- ask for the money, and when the money isn't forthcoming, scream "under funded!"

No. 11:  20,000 -- the number of premature deaths annually resulting from the Republicans gutting the Clean Air Act. 

Bear in mind that the Bush administration has done absolutely nothing that will cause our air to become dirtier.  The Clean Air Act has not been gutted.  Some moves have been made that will allow some power plants to make minor repairs that would allow a more efficient generation of electrical power with virtually no increase in pollution levels per kilowatt hour generated.  Under the Clinton rules these plants would have either had to operate without the needed repairs, thus producing more, not less pollution per kilowatt hour, shut down, or undergo repairs and renovations so expensive that the price of electricity would have gone up appreciably.  This is "gutting the Clean Air Act?"

OK .. Now it's my turn.  Here's Ted Kennedy, by the numbers.  Or, by the number.

No. 1.  1 -- the number of young women who have died by suffocation in the back seat of Ted Kennedy's car as it sits in four feet of water after having run off a bridge on Martha's Vineyard while Ted Kennedy, who was driving when the car ran off the bridge, wanders aimlessly up and down the highway trying to figure out a way to save his political future when news of the dead girl finally hits the newspapers.

See how easy this is?  Of course, my offering can stand up to any quest for the truth, while Kennedy's cannot.

So ... keep your eyes and ears open.  Until this theme is replaced with another one you will hear more and more about the Republicans mad, diabolical quest for absolute power!

BASHING THOSE POOR HISPANICS

Yesterday I had a few comments to make about our porous border with Mexico and the lack of any political will in Washington to do anything whatsoever about it.  That brings a call from a listener accusing me of "Hispanic bashing."  Oh boy .. the "bashing word" again.  The goal here is to create an atmosphere where any suggestion that we ought to actually protect the integrity of our border with Mexico is tantamount to bashing Hispanics.

END POVERTY IN AFRICA??

Tony Blair will be visiting George Bush this week.  He wants to talk about ending poverty in Africa.  This is a stage-setting visit for the upcoming G8 summit in Scotland.

End poverty in Africa?  The first step here has to be ... must be ... removing those petty dictators who rule throughout that continent.  Dictatorial giants such as Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe.  Yes .. there's hunger and poverty in Zimbabwe; but the blame is to be placed squarely on Mugabe, not on a lack of help from the west.  

The G8 summit?  Don't look for any discussion on getting rid of Africa's dictators and warlords.  It will all be about wealth redistribution.  Hide your wallets.

AL GORE'S LATEST CAUSE

Former Vice-President Al Gore, when he's not medicating himself with Twinkies, has been keeping quite busy lately.  He made all of those over-the-top speeches against President Bush and said some insane things that made everyone question his state of consciousness.  He's also been working on getting his cable channel off the ground.  Not bad for somebody who could barely live with himself after losing the presidency by 537 votes.  Oh, and Al Gore did lose, fair and square.

But ever the environmental nutcase, Gore spoke at an assembly of mayors over the weekend urging them to...what else...fight global warming.  That's right...Al Gore wants the mayors of cities to fight global warming.  He then went on to make all of his usual doom and gloom predictions...cities falling into the ocean, the end of life as we know it, etc. There's only one problem with Al's pitch. The mayors of cities have about as much control over global warming as the dog catcher does.  They're more concerned with what mayors do...police, fire, trash pickup, zoning, etc.  Seems Al Gore may have stopped by the wrong conference to make his remarks.

We can cut him a little slack, though.  It hasn't been an easy time for Al.

COOKING THE BOOKS

If you listen closely with an ear toward our nation's capitol,  you can hear the sounds of 535 members of Congress racing back to their offices to check their travel records.  Time to see if they accepted any free trips from lobbyists.  So why all the hub-bub?

Two words: Tom DeLay.

The House Majority Leader has been on the skewer for some weeks now over some trips and travel that were paid for by lobbyists.  In their thirst to dethrone their nemesis, the media and the left thought they had him....except there was only one little problem.  Tom DeLay wasn't the only one doing it.  Turns out quite a few members of Congress were at the free travel nipple.  The list includes prominent Democrats and Republicans.

Except...you won't see the media highlighting any of the Democratic offenders.  To the mainstream press, Republicans are the evil ones....so we'll only highlight those.  But nevertheless, more than 200 lawmakers are scurrying to cook the books and "correct" their travel disclosures.  The most notorious offender?  Democrat Harold Ford of Tennessee, who is running for the Senate.

Will you hear much about this in the media?  Probably not.  But maybe the Democrats will finally be quiet.  After all, if you live in a glass house, you shouldn't throw stones.

REDNECK SCRAP BOOK

Hmmm....I can't put my finger on it, but something isn't quite right about this camper. More from the redneck scrap book.

READING ASSIGNMENTS

The Fairtax book Neal and John Linder have been working on is now available for pre-sale on Barnes & Noble's website.

It's official...the Democrats have stolen the governor's race in Washington State.  Congratulations, guys!

Since Amnesty International insists on comparing the prison down at Gitmo to a Gulag, David Limbaugh brings us all up to speed on just exactly what the Soviet Gulags were like.

CNN continues their musical chairs...this time they've canned Bill Hemmer in the mornings.  Ever notice with CNN that every personnel move is designed to increase the ratings, but never does?

Here's a little good news.  Despite the series in the New York Times, Dick Meyer says most people aspire to be rich and don't begrudge rich people their riches.  We can only hope.

The mainstream media is purposely ignoring the facts regarding the Koran "abuse" at Guantanamo Bay just so they can  bash the Military as much as possible.  John Hinderaker reports.

By the way, there is good news in the War On Terror.  It's just not being reported by the leftist media.  Arthur Chrenkoff cuts through the media bias and delivers some good news from Afghanistan.

How will history judge us when they look back on our era? Thomas Sowell says we'll be judged harshly when people see how obsessed the media was with the treatment of Islamic terrorists.

Sex, porn and guns.  Now that he has your attention, Professor Mike Adams handles a complaint from one of his recent speeches.

Looks like MSNBC's Norah O'Donnell has been moonlighting at a second job.  Or at least MSNBC's graphics department thinks so.

Fox News' Ceci Connolly is accusing the United States or murdering 100 prisoners.

Bush and Kerry's grades at Yale.

WHAT THE HECK ARE THOSE POINTY HAND THINGS?

These are links to each individual story on the Nuze, p-links for the geeks out there. Plus, they work today and they'll work tomorrow. Now you can easily discuss/debate/rip apart the Nuze without worrying about the links going bad. Enjoy!

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