My expectation is the Democrats suffer huge defeats in 2010 and 2012. The Republicans leave in the individual mandate but strip from the bill any cost containment (if there actually is any enforceable containment in the bill). And we end up back at square one only with 40 million people being forced to buy overpriced insurance.

Rather than repeat my own feelings on the subject here, see the following link:

http://www.martinhash.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=164

www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkDQN0j2Oys

I don’t think either of us desires that.

I’ll also say that I was shocked to see Deb Wallace drop out so soon with her being well ahead of her party members running, save Denny Heck. I honestly thought Pridemore would fall out before she did.

If we eliminate all parties and just have people run on their own merits, the top two system works. We could eliminate the primaries altogether. He/She who gets the most votes win. But absent some kind of revolution, this will never happen.

Of course, using Marijuana does have it’s consequences – if an officer of the law suspects that you use Marijuana, you could lose your car, your home or even your freedom. For the terrible crime of using a substance that a Commission in Richard M. Nixon’s Administration in 1972 (38 years ago) already knew, and reported to President Nixon, should be decriminalized.

What is even more compelling:

The National Commission on Marihuana and Drug Abuse found that the constitutionality of marijuana prohibition was suspect, and that the executive and legislative branches had a responsibility to obey the Constitution, even in the absence of a court ruling to do so:

While the judiciary is the governmental institution most directly concerned with the protection of individual liberties, all policy-makers have a responsibility to consider our constitutional heritage when framing public policy. Regardless of whether or not the courts would overturn a prohibition of possession of marihuana for personal use in the home, we are necessarily influenced by the high place traditionally occupied by the value of privacy in our constitutional scheme.

Most damning of all? Harry J. Anslinger was principally responsible for global prohibition of Marijuana, via his role as, first, the Assistant Prohibition Commissioner in the Bureau of Prohibition, and eventually, from 1930-1962, the Commissioner of Federal Bureau of Narcotics – the forerunner of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA). A great resource on Anslinger and his decades long pursuit of Marijuana Criminalization is the 1999 documentary (narrated by actor Woody Harrelson) Grass.