Last week’s contest was won by Liberal Scientist. It was the location of the “Cheers” bar in Boston.

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

Last week’s contest was won by milwhcky. It was Asheville’s Fun Depot in Asheville, NC.

This week’s contest is related to a TV show or a movie. Good luck!

I’m not big on posts like this, but 9/11 was obviously one of the most significant events of our lifetime. For someone who’s always been interested in the world both within and outside of America’s borders, the attacks of that day signified for me a new era in how America interacts with the world. It forced all of us to take our ideals and re-shape them for a new era, one in which technology made the world smaller and more interdependent than ever, but the old rules about needing to provide necessary constraints against government never went away.

The one thing I remember about that morning 10 years ago was how quick I just “knew”. It’s not that I ever imagined a terrorist attack like the one we experienced, but it was merely the odd coincidence of my phone ringing at 6:30am and then minutes later hearing a radio news reporter say the words “and one tower has fallen” before I reflexively banged on my snooze button. It clicked in my head instantly that something major was happening and I jumped out of bed, ran to the living room and put on the TV. I made it into work by about noon that day – after frantically calling friends and family out east – and was little more than a zombie, unable to focus on anything other than the realization that America wasn’t immune from spectacular acts of violence.

One thing that I find interesting is that when I hear the stories of others – particularly those of an older generation – talk about it, I’m often struck by how many of them instantly thought: this is war. I never thought that. I still don’t. At the time, I was a 26-year-old who believed that the world was at a point where wars like World War II couldn’t happen again. There was too much interaction in all aspects of our global existence for that to happen again. Five years and a month before that horrible day, I was at a Pizza Hut in St. Petersburg, Russia. The end of the cold war occurred while I was in high school, and the world I began to explore was supposed to be content with free market economies and shitty American pizza. But for those who lived through earlier times, the violence of 9/11 was seen through a lens of many years of concern over an event like that coming from a foreign government hell-bent on annihilating America.

Terrorism is an act born of powerlessness. It’s the most craven expression of political impotence one can conjure. The logic of terrorism is that the average everyday person isn’t sufficiently animated by your plight, and therefore they bear some guilt for it. It’s a twisted pathology that will sadly exist throughout the history of humanity. We can’t defeat it any more than we can defeat other failings of the human condition. But we can make it worse whenever we support policies that leave people powerless. Personal and political autonomy needs to be a focus in everything we do politically, and how we interact with the world.

But very little of that has happened. Instead, we’ve allowed ourselves to be terrified and submissive, giving up many of our own freedoms out of a baseless fear of further attacks. It would be too simple to blame that on one particular group. This was an all-American trend in the days and months after 9/11, but the trend is finally reversing. 9/11 signified the onset of a new mindset of “permanent war” in Washington. We accepted it because that day scared us. But it’s time to recognize that no matter how horrible an act of violence is, allowing our government to be unrestrained in the name of “fighting terrorism” is far worse.

Al Jazeera has an interesting report about the town of Ordos, China, a bustling new metropolis in northern China where almost no one lives – because the vast majority of people who own property there are only doing so as investments.

Last week’s contest was won by Geoduck. It was an historic water ride at the Iowa State Fair.

Here’s this week’s contest, a random location somewhere in the world. Good luck!

I’m unclear how this works, please help me understand:

A Pierce County judge ruled Friday the owners of a Tacoma medical-marijuana dispensary fighting to reclaim pot seized during a police investigation would have to do more than flash their medicinal-cannabis authorization forms to prove they’re qualified to possess the confiscated product.

Superior Court Judge John Hickman did not spell out exactly what Guy Casey and Michael Schaef would have to do to convince him they are allowed to possess marijuana. But he rejected their arguments that their authorization cards should be enough.

If Casey and Schaef aren’t legally entitled to have the marijuana that they were caught with, charge them. Prosecutors didn’t charge Casey and Schaef because their entire case was based upon the testimony of some flaky doofus they eventually realized was unreliable. But to Judge Hickman, none of that matters. Casey and Schaef are guilty until they prove their innocence to him. And even though there’s precedence for cases like this, that may not matter in the great reefer madness metropolis of Tacoma.

Jaime Herrera Beutler appears to be learning a lot in Congress. In particular, she’s learning how to avoid interacting with the people she represents. I’m guessing Dave Reichert is her mentor.

Last week’s contest was won by Siberian Dog. It was Enumclaw.

This week’s contest is related to something in the news from August. Good luck!

Goldy writes:

So here’s a question: Assuming Gaddafi has fallen to a popular rebellion, and Libya is now in the hands of presumable democratic (whatever that means in the region) opposition forces… were the NATO air strikes justified? Morally and financially? Was it worth the cost in both dollars and “collateral damage” to first protect the nascent rebellion, and then to support its offensive?

President Obama has been criticized by Republicans and Democrats alike for our military intervention in Libya, but compared to Bush’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Gaddafi’s ouster appears to have come relatively fast and relatively cheap in both blood and treasure. So does Obama deserve a little praise for his policy, or was this always none of our business?

I do think Obama deserves some praise for his policy here. I supported the initial intervention back in the spring when a massacre of Benghazi was looming, and I think it was morally justified for NATO to see this through until the regime was completely brought down. If the mandate was to protect the civilians of Libya, the only way to truly do that was to get rid of Gaddafi and those loyal enough to him that they’d try to slaughter their countrymen. Did it cost a lot? Sure. But does it cost less than having the world’s most powerful military while only using it for cynical self-interest. Definitely.

As for that last point, I’m still worried that any goodwill generated by the support for the Libyan people is largely overshadowed by our failure to stand up for the Palestinians. The lack of freedom in Gaza and the West Bank is not much different than what others in the region are rising up against. In fact, the Palestinians in the occupied territories are worse off than their neighbors in Egypt and Syria. And our failure to help them will continue to overshadow the times that we get things right in the region.

Last week’s contest was won by Budget Wonk. It was Briarcrest Christian School in Eads, Tennessee, the real-life counterpart to the fictional Wingate Christian School in the movie The Blind Side. Briarcrest was the actual high school attended by future NFL player Michael Oher.

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

Kevin Drum writes about this report on the political origins of the Tea Party movement. Not surprisingly, surveys of Tea Party folks discover that they have only mild interest in small government principles, but far more interest in imposing a religious agenda in Washington.

– So the amount of Border Patrol agents in Port Angeles has gone from fewer than 4 to 40 in the past five years? Huh? Here’s some background on the unpopularity of the Border Patrol out in the peninsula.

– Another victory in the drug war.

– Warren Buffett wants the government to raise his taxes. Isn’t he supposed to fix the economy by giving everyone jobs instead?

– Nouriel Roubini explains why he thinks that our current economy is proof that Karl Marx was right about the potential perils of capitalism.

– Rebels in Libya are closing in on Tripoli and a former army colonel says that the Gaddafi regime is collapsing. And now Syria is turning into the next Libya.

– Yakima attorney and Sensible Washington member Alex Newhouse writes about why we should legalize marijuana in the Yakima Herald.

– This made me laugh (via Reddit, of course)

Last week’s contest was won by Roger Rabbit (who first got the city) and wes.in.wa, who found the location in Belgrade, Serbia.

This week’s image is related to a movie or a TV show. Good luck!

Seattle Weekly’s medical marijuana columnist Steve “banned in China” Elliott has put up two posts about the internal conflict in the marijuana legalization movement in Washington state. This conflict has been my #1 source of headaches for the past year or so, and it’s starting to look like I need to invest in a lot more Excedrin.

With the failure of Sensible Washington to make the ballot for the second year running (disclosure: during the most recent signature gathering effort, I volunteered to help with their media relations and some IT projects, but have stepped back significantly since starting a new job in June), a new group called New Approach Washington (NAW) emerged with an impressive roster of supporters. NAW is headed up by Alison Holcomb and the ACLU of Washington and has some big names on its side, including Seattle City Attorney Pete Holmes, former U.S. Attorney John McKay and TV personality Rick Steves. This should be good news for everyone who wants to see the end of marijuana prohibition, but as Elliott points out, there’s a bit of a problem.

The initiative that NAW put together includes some provisions that aren’t perfect, but still a step forward – like the fact that individuals still won’t be able to grow their own plants unless they’re a medical patient – but it has one big provision that is absolutely toxic. The NAW initiative introduces a Delta-9 THC limit (5 ng/ml) that would become the equivalent to the .08 BAC limit for alcohol. The problem is that Delta-9 THC isn’t an accurate measure of impairment the way that a BAC reading is. As Elliott explains:

According to Alison Holcomb of New Approach Washington, fact sheets found on the FAQ portion of New Approach’s website [PDF] address [Sensible Washington’s Douglas] Hiatt’s objections.

The fact sheets assert that a 5 ng/ml THC level “is analogous” to a .08 blood alcohol content, but that assertion is unproven and quite debatable — with possibly hundreds of patient DUI arrests hanging in the balance.

Cited as evidence on the NAW site [PDF] is a scientific study which, crucially, measured THC levels of recreational — as opposed to medicinal — marijuana users. Typically, medical marijuana users, especially those dealing with heavy nausea and pain, smoke much, much more than recreational users, resulting of course in higher acute and residual THC blood levels.

For example, Denver Westword medical marijuana dispensary critic William Breathes tested three times over the proposed legal limit of 5 ng/ml while completely sober and unimpaired.

Breathes took the test when an identical limit of 5 ng/ml was proposed for Colorado. The Colorado Legislature backed away from the DUI limit when presented with the scientific evidence.

As a result, the reaction from some corners has been downright visceral. Some members of Sensible Washington disrupted a volunteer meeting for NAW last month, and the more moderate factions of the group have been trying to dial back the group’s rhetoric.

At the last monthly public meeting of the Cannabis Defense Coalition, an NAW representative heard an earful from a few folks, but it wasn’t quite as bad as I expected it to be. And CDC founding member Ben Livingston defended the NAW’s approach by pointing out how the issue of driving while stoned can be a difficult one politically. Although he also pointed out how someone he knew – a medical marijuana patient – had been written up for a cannabis-related DUI that morning merely by having a tail light out. Under the law now, any competent attorney can beat that charge. If NAW’s initiative passes, that likely won’t be possible any more.

And now an offshoot of former Sensible Washington members calling themselves Yes End Penalties (YEP) has filed their own initiative to the legislature. YEP’s initiative uses the language from last year’s Sensible Washington initiative (which lacks the part that directs the legislature to regulate it), and they’ll be collecting signatures soon. NAW’s initiative is I-502. YEP’s is I-505.

The conflict will continue to play out at next weekend’s Hempfest. NAW will insist that YEP’s approach is too radical while YEP will insist that NAW’s attempts to appease fence-sitters will alienate the motivated supporters you need to win. Both sides may be right, and that makes me as pessimistic as I’ve been about getting a legalization initiative passed in 2012. An initiative that can both end prohibition in a smart way and win at the ballot box is possible, but I’m not so sure we have one yet.

In case you missed this one, the 84-year-old mayor and city commissioners of Oak Hill, Florida fired their entire police department after police found some pot plants growing in the mayor’s yard. The mayor says they were secretly planted there by the cops, the cops sound like a real life version of Reno 911, and even if I didn’t mention it, you probably could’ve guessed that this all took place in Florida. Just watch the local news report at the bottom of the article. God help us all.