Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was the Whispering Firs Golf Course on JBLM.

This week’s contest is related to something in the news from June, good luck!

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was the resort in Scottsdale, AZ that was used as Nathan Arizona’s mansion in Raising Arizona.

This week’s contest is a location somewhere in Washington, good luck! And Happy Father’s Day!

Over the past year, as I’ve been commuting downtown every day, I’ve become a fan of ESPN Radio. In particular, I really like the 9am show with former NFL QB Brock Huard and Mike Salk. And over the past few days, as the possibility of getting a new arena has slowly gathered steam, they’ve been introduced to something that political nerds like us have known for a while: the Seattle Times editorial board is a complete laughingstock.

It started last week when Salk responded to their editorial by pointing out the poor logic in saying that there’s only a finite amount of money that people will spend on sports and that bringing an NBA team back will threaten the Mariners and Seahawks.

A few days later, Bruce Ramsey gets a few basic facts wrong in a “Civil Disagreements” section discussion with Lynne Varner. Even stranger, he doesn’t even seem to grasp that the things he demands of an arena deal are largely satisfied with what Christopher Hansen is trying to do. So this morning, Ramsey actually agreed to be on their show, and my goodness, it was brutal. You can listen to it here. I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

It does make me feel a little better to know that folks even outside of the political realm are starting to realize what a disaster our last daily print newspaper’s editorial board has become.

Last week’s contest went unsolved. It was in Chatswood, just north of Sydney, Australia.

This week’s is from a TV show or a movie, good luck!

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was the Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, North Carolina, where a crazyperson told his flock of brain-dead followers that gays and lesbians should be rounded up behind electric fences.

This week’s contest is a random location somewhere on earth, good luck!

Scott Morgan has a post up today asking why Democrats continue to defend the drug war. He quotes Paul Waldman at The American Prospect, who wrote this:

At the moment, there remains a strong incentive to support the status quo, lest you be targeted in your next race as some kind of hippie-lover. The incentives on the other side, on the other hand, are almost nil. When was the last time somebody lost a race for being too tough on drugs? The half of Americans who favor marijuana legalization are not an organized voting bloc that gets together to punish its opponents at the polls.

Waldman posted that on Tuesday the 29th. On that same day, Texas Congressman Silvestre Reyes was defeated in a primary by El Paso City Council member Beto O’Rourke. O’Rourke decided to challenge Reyes after the longtime Congressman fought back against O’Rourke’s attempt to pass a city resolution calling for a broader debate on drug policy, including legalization. Reyes ran attack ads trying to paint O’Rourke as being soft on drugs. And it backfired. O’Rourke captured over 50% of the vote and prevented even a runoff.

While some may argue that there were several factors beyond the drug war that led to Reyes’ defeat, the Attorney General’s race in Oregon a few weeks ago was clearly an example of someone losing a race for being too tough on drugs. Former U.S. Attorney Dwight Holton was the early favorite to win the Democratic nomination for Attorney General, but his previous attempts to undermine Oregon’s medical marijuana laws came back to haunt him, as underdog Ellen Rosenblum attacked him over that and won a landslide victory. In that race, medical marijuana was clearly the main differentiator between the candidates, and the “tough of drugs” candidate got demolished.

Morgan sums it up really well:

Really, the whole notion that candidates who support reform will be labeled as “hippie-lovers,” is nothing more than a fictitious cliché without a single good example to justify its utterance. Instead, we’re witnessing the emergence of the exact opposite, a new dynamic in democratic races wherein a history of defending the drug war is a political liability that can be exploited to powerful effect by candidates who side with the majority of voters in favoring reform.

That’s why it’s so frustrating to see observers like Waldman, who supports reforming drug policy, nevertheless endeavor to uphold the notion that political realities require our leaders to do the wrong thing. If Obama were to read that analysis and find it convincing, Waldman would have succeeded in helping the President rationalize his refusal to support reform. We’re hurting our cause when we say stuff like this, and worse yet, the idea itself isn’t even true.

I’ve often argued that Democratic support for the drug war isn’t as much a result of special interest pandering as it seems (although that certainly happens). Much of it is just inertia from a time not long ago when this political calculus was actually true. But times have changed quite drastically in the past 10-20 years, and those who’ve noticed the change are being rewarded by the voters. And those who aren’t are finding themselves like Silvestre Reyes and Dwight Holton, wondering how they managed to lose to “some kind of hippie-lover”.

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was Tacoma.

This one is related to something in the news from May, good luck!

Last week’s contest was won by Julia (some NSFW content at that link). It was the Century City, CA office tower used in the movie “Die Hard”. Thanks to YLB for finding the link.

This week’s contest is a location somewhere in Washington state, good luck!

Thanks to everyone who sent me well-wishes last month. Baby Ava is doing great and despite being incredibly busy, I’m enjoying every second of it. Here are a few items on my mind these days:

– I just finished reading Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow“, an incredibly well-researched and well-argued book that explains how the war on drugs has created a new form of racial segregation very similar to the original Jim Crow laws of the south. The racial separation in the drug war comes from having much higher levels of drug law enforcement in black communities along with differences in prosecutorial discretion and the inability of many black drug defendant to adequately defend themselves from even totally bogus charges. The end result is a mass incarceration crisis with hundreds of thousands of black Americans saddled with felony convictions for the kinds of small-time drug violations that whites are almost never charged with.

I had this in mind as I heard the news today that THC was found in Trayvon Martin’s system after he was murdered. For a 17-year-old to have THC in his system is far from unusual, about a quarter of all teenagers have used pot in the past month. But because Martin was a young black man using marijuana, the likelihood of him being saddled with a felony for making that choice is significantly higher than it is for a white teenager. And once you’re saddled with that felony, finding employment, housing, and education becomes nearly impossible for the rest of your life. As Alexander points out in her book, people in that situation have all the doors of opportunity closed on them and usually fall into a criminal lifestyle and return to prison. The reality that her book should make clear is that even if George Zimmerman hadn’t ended Trayvon Martin’s life that night, there’s a good likelihood the war on drugs would’ve done it a short time later.

– I don’t think the lawsuit against the liquor privatization initiative has much of a chance of succeeding, but if it did, it would be really bad news for I-502, which also appears to do the “two separate things” that the liquor privatization initiative does. And for good measure, I-502 does a third thing, establish new DUI per se limits for marijuana. But again, I don’t expect this lawsuit to be successful. And as for the DUI issue, the Colorado legislature once again failed to pass a bill that would establish a 5ng/ml limit because of concerns over its lack of scientific backing.

– Scott Morgan has been wondering whether or not Romney would be worse for medical marijuana than Obama has been. As bad as Obama has been (and he’s been terrible), I could certainly envision Romney being worse. Particularly when it comes to U.S. Attorney appointments. Jenny Durkan hasn’t been as aggressive as some of Obama’s other USA’s in going after state-sanctioned medical marijuana distribution. Under Romney, it’s possible we could find someone far less progressive in that post. But it’s also possible he’d tap a progressive Republican in the Dan Satterberg mold. For those of us who actually want the DOJ to respect state marijuana laws, Gary Johnson is likely our only hope.

Last week’s contest was won again by milwhcky. It was Springfield, MO.

Here’s this week’s contest, related to a TV show or a movie. Good luck!

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was the new ballpark in Miami, home of the Marlins, whose manager Ozzie Guillen shoved his foot down his throat by saying nice things about Fidel Castro.

Here’s this week’s, a random location somewhere on Earth. Good luck!

The last contest was won by Geoduck. It was Spokane Falls Community College.

This week’s contest is related to something in the news from April, good luck!

Ava Emeline Rosenberg – born April 19 at 6:51pm – 6lbs 3oz. Now go back outside and enjoy the sun.

Last week’s contest was won by no one. Apparently, Dana and I have TV tastes that don’t resonate with the HA readers. The view was of Cameron and Mitchell’s house from the show Modern Family, located in Los Angeles, CA.

UPDATE: Last week’s contest was won by Coosboy last night after this was posted.

This week’s location is somewhere in Washington state, good luck!

Last week’s contest was won by wes.in.wa. It was Porto, Portugal.

This week’s contest is related to a TV show or a movie, good luck!

Programming Note: My life is generally uneventful enough that I can ensure a contest will be posted every Sunday at noon, but as my wife is due sometime in April with our second child, if a Sunday passes without a contest, you’ll know why…