January 2, 2014

Those Michigan State Spartans aren't half bad.......

January 1, 2014

Chris Christie on track to break his own record for vetoes

TRENTON — The legislative session that wraps up in two weeks could be the least fruitful in recent memory, with the fewest bills signed into law in at least 25 years.

That’s in part because Gov. Chris Christie is on track to break his own record for vetoing bills that he set just two years ago.

"This governor has more power than any other governor in the nation, and he uses every inch of it," said Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester).

Since the current two-year session began in January 2012, Christie has signed 270 of the bills placed on his desk by the Democratic Legislature and taken his veto pen to 92 bills — striking down 49 outright and conditionally vetoing 43. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2013/12/chris_christie_on_track_to_break_his_own_record_for_vetoes.html

January 1, 2014

As Colorado legalizes recreational marijuana, hopes soar in other states

from the Detroit Free Press:



New Year’s Day is a shining moment for those who’ve shouted Free the Weed in Colorado. And many in Michigan are voicing similarly upbeat sentiments about broadening the access to recreational as well as medical marijuana.

Colorado kicks off legal sales of recreational marijuana Wednesday at state-licensed stores. Meanwhile, three cannabis bills are awaiting action in the Michigan Legislature.

But a bevy of prominent drug-abuse specialists from across the country, including several in Colorado, countered today with a call for marijuana to remain illegal.

Patrick Kennedy, the son of Robert Kennedy and a former U.S. representative from Rhode Island, said Americans are rushing recklessly toward legalizing a dangerous substance. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.freep.com/article/20131231/NEWS06/312310105/marijuana-cannabis-medical-marijuana-patrick-kennedy

January 1, 2014

Robert Scheer: NSA, Benghazi and the Monsters of Our Own Creation

from truthdig:


NSA, Benghazi and the Monsters of Our Own Creation

Posted on Dec 30, 2013
By Robert Scheer


If we are so smart why are we so dumb? I am referring to the “intelligence” that our spy agencies have gathered at great cost in both massive secret black box budgets and, much more important, the surrender of our personal freedom to the snooping eyes of our modern surveillance state.

“We know everything but learn nothing” would be an honest slogan for the NSA, CIA and lesser-known spy agencies that specialize in leading us so dangerously astray. For all of their massive intrusion into the personal lives of individuals throughout the world, it is difficult to recall a time when the “intelligence” they collected provided such myopic policy insight.

Take the revelations in The New York Times’ exhaustive six-part investigation published Saturday demonstrating that the devastating 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, was an intelligence disaster. The Times “turned up no evidence that Al Qaeda or other international terrorist groups had any role in the assault” that led to the death of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. Instead, a local militia leader on the side of the U.S.-supported insurrection in Libya with no known affiliation with al-Qaida is a prime suspect, and he and others allegedly responsible were not on the radar screen of the 20-person CIA station in Benghazi because they were part of the insurgency the U.S. supported.

As for the vast collection of phone and email intercepts maintained by U.S. spy agencies, it turned up only one bit of information, a phone call from someone involved in the mob attacking the U.S. post. He called a friend elsewhere in Africa who allegedly knew some folks in al-Qaida, but the friend “sounded astonished” at the news from Libya, “suggesting he had no prior knowledge of the assault,” according to U.S. officials. In short, the only evidence turned up by the vast spying apparatus was evidence that inconveniently contradicted the al-Qaida connection, so it was not made public. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/nsa_benghazi_and_the_monsters_of_our_own_creation_20131230