US Politics Mega-thread - Page 2262

Yellow Springs is a small college town in Ohio that has more than one head shop and a lot of tie-dye and hemp.

Many would consider it ground zero for likely supporters of the referendum on the ballot this November that could make Ohio the fifth state to legalize recreational and medical marijuana.

But the proposal is drawing some unusual opposition — and it's coming from residents who generally support legalizing marijuana.

Samantha Van Ness is among them. While she's all for legalizing marijuana, the 25-year-old says she's dead set against the amendment that will be on the ballot.

"I would rather take the minor misdemeanor fine than let someone have such a massive monopoly in my state," she says.

And that's the word lots of liberals and old hippies in Yellow Springs don't like: monopoly. Many people who generally support legalization have a problem with the group ResponsibleOhio that's pushing this initiative.

That's because it specifies just 10 locations in the state where growing pot would be allowed. And 10 groups of investors already have dibs on those sites.

These same investors are sinking $20 million into the campaign. So in essence, they are paying to try to amend the Ohio Constitution to grant themselves pot growing rights.

On September 03 2015 02:53 Yoav wrote:



So I really don't mean to go after Plansix in particular, since I think we're at similar places on a lot of this stuff, but it's that point in the debate where the Bible guy has to point out that these cliches aren't really true.

Yes, if you take the fundamentalist position that "if the Bible says it, it must be true and valid" you end up having to pick and choose between all sorts of things. But if you really think you can quote any bit of scripture completely out of context and without reference to the overall narrative, you also end up thinking that "crucify him" (Mk 15.13 etc.) is also the "word of God." But no, obviously the Bible is a huge narrative, and each line has some purpose in that story.

Star Wars isn't ambiguous on atheism just because Han says "There's no mystical energy field controlling MY destiny" before saying "may the Force be with you." Those two lines are part of a character's progression from nihilistic ego-centrism to a religious and revolutionary faith.

In Christianity, the Bible is "Progressively Revealed." That is, humanity got to know God better progressively, with Jesus' life and teaching representing the culmination of that. The later letters show some acculturation away from Christ's message, and the struggle since then has been to fully comprehend what Jesus was on about. Most Protestants would see this continuing act of discovery/revelation in the Reformation, and most mainline Protestants would also see it in the Church's in-progress embrace of homosexuality.

TL;DR-- Bible is a story of humans getting to know God, not a rulebook.

On September 02 2015 23:13 KwarK wrote:It took about 200 years to convince conservatives that black people were human, and another 50 to get gays included too. One thing at a time.

On September 04 2015 00:05 Cowboy64 wrote:

Modern conservatives are the ideological children of the abolitionists. In fact, the vast majority of politicians from the Dixiecrats remained Democrats for the rest of their lives.

Not that it matters, but I do think that particular smear should be answered.

Hillary Clinton has unveiled a $10bn plan to help contain substance abuse across America, as the nation grapples in particular with a growing opioid crisis that in some states cost more than 1,000 deaths last year.

The Democratic presidential candidate on Wednesday laid out an approach to tackling both drug and alcohol addiction that shifts the emphasis away from incarceration and toward treatment, and would bolster preventative programming at the state and community level. Clinton’s plan would notably invest $7.5bn in funding toward new federal-state partnerships over 10 years, under which states that present a comprehensive plan for treating substance abuse could qualify for a grant from the federal government.

“It’s time we recognize that there are gaps in our health care system that allow too many to go without care – and invest in treatment,” Clinton wrote in an op-ed in the in the New Hampshire Union Leader late on Tuesday that previewed her proposals.

“This is not new. We’re not just now ‘discovering’ this problem. But we should be saying enough is enough,” she wrote. “It’s time we recognize as a nation that for too long, we have had a quiet epidemic on our hands. Plain and simple, drug and alcohol addiction is a disease, not a moral failing – and we must treat it as such.”

Substance abuse has emerged as a key issue in the 2016 presidential contest, especially in the early voting state of New Hampshire where state officials have dubbed the heroin epidemic “the Ebola of northern New England”. Clinton noted in her op-ed that she did not envision drug abuse would become a major tenet of her presidential campaign, but through her travels to states like New Hampshire she heard about just how pressing the issue had become.

The former secretary of state started to address addiction more frequently on the campaign trail in the early months of the summer, citing conversations with voters in Iowa about meth and prescription drug abuse and heroin abuse in New Hampshire.

Another mine has just detonated. In a remarkably incoherent and injudicious opinion favoring the anti-abortion organization March for Life, U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon of Washington, D.C., ruled Monday that the religious rights of employees of a secular anti-abortion organization are infringed because they're required to buy health insurance that covers contraception, even though nothing forces them to actually acquire contraceptives if they don't wish.

Because the contraception mandate applies to secular employers but not religious groups, he found that it "violates the equal protection clause of the Fifth Amendment" and is therefore "unconstitutional." (Leon is typically sloppy here. The Equal Protection Clause is found in the Fourteenth Amendment, not the Fifth; it's applied to the federal government by the Fifth, but via that amendment's Due Process Clause. Shouldn't a federal judge know this?)

On September 04 2015 01:51 farvacola wrote:
It's always fun to see a Federal Court of Appeals reprimand a district judge The DC Circuit doesn't take kindly to sloppy jurisprudence.

ASHLAND, Ky. — A federal judge here on Thursday ordered a Kentucky clerk jailed for contempt of court because of her refusal to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The clerk, Kim Davis of Rowan County, was ordered incarcerated after a hearing here before Judge David L. Bunning of Federal District Court. The contempt finding was another legal defeat for Ms. Davis, who has argued that she should not be forced to issue licenses that conflict with her religious beliefs.

“The court cannot condone the willful disobedience of its lawfully issued order,” Judge Bunning said. “If you give people the opportunity to choose which orders they follow, that’s what potentially causes problems.”