Last week’s winner was Julie Anne Kempf, who guessed the correct answer of Charleston, South Carolina in only 11 minutes (link here). Here’s this week’s, good luck!

Exactly how I like games that I’m not personally attending:

A winter storm from the Midwest could dump as much as eight-inches of snow at the Meadowlands, site of Sunday’s Eagles-New York Giants NFL playoff game.

The forecast calls for the snow to fall throughout much of Saturday to be followed on Sunday by sub-freezing temperatures accompanied by a gusty wind.

For everyone here affected by the floods, I hope you find a way to stay warm and dry this weekend.

Last week’s winner was ‘yo’ in an impressive 25 minutes. It was Warwick, Rhode Island (link to view here). Here’s this week’s, good luck!

I don’t know how I’d even look this up, but this has gotta be the first time that all four road teams in a playoff round are favored in Vegas. Weird season.

Against my better judgment, I think I’ll throw out some predictions.

Saturday 1:30pm: Atlanta over Arizona – 38-28

Saturday 5:00pm: Indianapolis over San Diego – 24-21

Sunday 10:00am: Miami over Baltimore – 13-10

Sunday 1:30pm: Philadelphia over Minnesota – 22-6

The story of the young man shot by police at UW is starting to look more and more like a tragic mistake. While it’s still far too early to make any real conclusions, the incident does seem eerily similar to the shooting of Everett man Dustin Willard in November. In both cases, friends and family were shocked to find out that the person they knew to be a law-abiding citizen would point a gun at police. Were they affected by alcohol or drugs? Did they not realize that the people yelling at them were police? Or is there some other explanation? These cases far too often come and go, fading into the oblivion without these questions being answered.

UPDATE: This post at Sound Politics is very disturbing. Regularly following news reports on the drug cartels, incidents like these are happening in greater numbers across the United States…not just in Mexico any more.

The Obama-Biden Transition team has come around for Round 2 of Open Questions at change.gov. Which drug policy question will they dodge this time?

UPDATE: I just submitted a variation of my question from the last post. You can find it by searching for “challenge that decision”.

UPDATE 2: In related news, thank God for Senator Webb.

Last week of the NFL season, here’s what matters:

Miami (10-5) at NY Jets (9-6) – Chad Pennington comes back to the Meadowlands to face his old team. If the Dolphins win, they win the AFC East after going 1-15 last year.

New England (10-5) at Buffalo (7-8) – The Bills looked like the team to beat in the AFC East in the beginning of the season. Now they could end the Patriots playoff hopes.

Jacksonville (5-10) at Baltimore (10-5) – The Ravens can clinch a playoff spot with a win against the Jaguars.

Denver (8-7) at San Diego (7-8) – Whoever wins this game will be the winner of the AFC West and one of the worst playoff teams of this decade.

Chicago (9-6) at Houston (7-8) – The Bears and the Vikings are tied for the NFC North title going into today. The Bears needs to beat the Texans and hope the Vikings lose.

NY Giants (12-3) at Minnesota (9-6) – The Giants have already clinched home-field advantage throughout the playoffs, but the Vikings win the NFC North with a win.

Oakland (4-11) at Tampa Bay (9-6) – The Buccaneers need to win and have the Eagles beat the Cowboys to get the last playoff spot.

Dallas (9-6) at Philadelphia (8-6-1) – If the Cowboys win, they get the last playoff spot. If the Eagles win, they need the Buccaneers and either the Bears or the Vikings to lose to make it in.

Detroit (0-15) at Green Bay (5-10) – If the Lions lose, they’ll be the first ever 0-16 team in NFL history. Mitch Albom excoriates what has become the most embarrassing front office in pro sports.

Last week’s winner was our good friend Daniel K. It was the Plaza de Toros in Murcia, Spain. Here’s this week’s…good luck!

Juan Cole looks at the ten biggest myths about Iraq.

Here’s a compilation of Troll’s funniest lines (and that’s just December…).

When I first set up my old blog, I had the following quote at the top of the page:

“Surprise is the base of all humor, and nothing is more surprising than truth”

It’s by Calvin and Hobbes creator Bill Watterson, and it’s cartoons like this that demonstrate it.

[via The Agitator]

Kudos to Arizona’s Attorney General Terry Goddard for starting to figure out how we can defeat Mexico’s drug cartels:

Attorney General Terry Goddard said Tuesday he might be willing to consider legalizing marijuana if a way can be found to control its distribution – and figure out who has been smoking it.

Goddard said marijuana sales make up 75 percent of the money that Mexican cartels use for other operations, including smuggling other drugs and fighting the Mexican army and police.

He said that makes fighting drug distribution here important to cut off that cash. He acknowledged those profits could be slashed if possession of marijuana were not a crime in Arizona.

This is the first time I can recall a state Attorney General publicly – and accurately – commenting on the connection between the power of Mexico’s cartels (which are terrorizing the U.S.-Mexico border) and the fact that marijuana prohibition gives them the billions of dollars that make them so powerful. Figuring out how to regulate the sale of marijuana to adults is a minor challenge for state governments when compared to the benefits from increased tax revenue and the significant drop in money going to armed gangs along our southern border.

UPDATE: A longer version of the same article is here, which contains this classic comment from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agent Matthew Allen:

“But if we’re going to go down that road, what is the acceptable amount of marijuana that you want a bus driver to have in their system?” [Allen] continued.

“I believe it’s zero,” Goddard said later.

I do too. Just like alcohol, which is legally sold to adults.

Bernard Avishai writes about Hebron and the difficulties that lie ahead in negotiating peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

In Afghanistan, it appears that we are dead set on starting a full-fledged civil war. I’m working on a much longer post about how much of a disaster we’ve made there. It should be posted late January.

We often pick on the Seattle Times here for being comically out of touch, but that’s nothing compared to what Scott Henson found in the Dallas News.

It looks like child-rapist Kenneth Freeman will be spending a long time behind bars (some background on my coincidental connection to this case here).

It’s been an adventure riding the buses through the snow this past week. My total commuting time today was 3 1/2 hours. I especially want to give a big fuck you to the 67 driver who refused to stop for me at 78th and Roosevelt this morning. Buses were stopping across the street (on the very slight downhill slope) all morning. But on the other hand, I also want to thank the 271 driver who waited for me as I ran from two blocks away. And to the guy who I bumped into at 50th and Roosevelt this evening who’d walked all the way there from Westlake Center, please feel free to vent in the comments if you see this. You deserve free bus fares for life.