Why so sober, Heath?

Shortly before his death, Heath Ledger stopped doing illegal drugs:

Cinematographer Nicola Pecorini, who worked with Ledger on his last film, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, says Ledger “used to smoke marijuana on a regular basis, like probably 50 percent of Americans.” But after it became an issue, Ledger “went clean as a whistle.”

But Ledger suffered chronic insomnia, so he took prescription sleeping pills and anti-anxiety medication. He died at age 29 when he overdosed on a cocktail of prescription medication.

If Ledger had just smoked a joint to get to sleep like millions of Americans often do, he would probably still be alive.

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A recent study shows that during the 1990s, alcohol was a factor in about half of the deaths of Russians aged 15-54. Obviously, alcohol and prescription drugs are far more dangerous than marijuana.

I can understand why many say that legalizing marijuana outright would do more harm than good. But given the fact that it’s a safer alternative to alcohol and many prescription drugs, it makes no sense to have a mandatory sentence of 1-6 years for first time possession of an ounce of marijuana. Nor does it make sense to deny federal student aid to people who have a single marijuana conviction.

Go ahead and fine first and second time marijuana offenders, and deny federal benefits to people who have recent convictions. But don’t ruin people’s lives over a commonly-used drug that’s relatively harmless.

Fox News, where environmentalism is treason, and rooting for Bin Laden is patriotism

Check out this discussion between certifiable lunatics Glenn Beckkk and Michael Scheuer. Beckkk is one of the craziest and most ignorant people at Fox News, which is saying a lot. Scheuer served as the Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station under Bill Clinton, and as Special Advisor to the Chief of the bin Laden unit under George W. Bush:

Yes, that was a former CIA official saying that he hopes bin Laden succeeds in launching an apocalyptic attack on the US, and a Fox News analyst agreeing.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen right wingers go on Fox News to say that they hope Bin Laden succeeds in attacking the US, only to have a Fox News analyst agree. At this point, can there be any doubt that Australian transplant Rupert Murdoch secretly hates his adopted country?

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The canvassing board including two Republican State Supreme Court justices who sat on it was unanimous.

So was the appeals court.

Now so was Minnesota Supreme Court.

Al Franken legally won the most votes in last fall’s Minnesota Senate race.

Coleman has conceded and dropped any further challenges.

Pawlenty has signed the election certificate.

Franken goes to Washington.

It took a long time but the result seems to have been so ironclad that Coleman didn’t have enough wiggle room to find grounds for an appeal, and he is already assessed a bundle to cover much of Franken’s expense to fight the appeal. The rulings by both the appeals court panel and the Supreme Court were explicit that Coleman had presented no proof to back up his claims only conjecture. It took a long time, and it was very easy to get impatient, but I think the courts did an extremely thorough job of presenting rulings that could not be appealed to the federal courts. There was no knee jerk ruling and I, for one, think the time needed was well spent. As close as the vote count was, it deserved to be handled as thoroughly as it was, nor you going to find any election close to this size that was handled so publically either. While I personally might have liked Franken to have been seated immeditely and working with the rest of the freshmen Senators, I much prefer that the Minnesota courts did a deliberate and thorough job on their rulings.  I think it was time well spent.

Iraqis danced in the streets to celebrate what they see as the first step toward a complete withdrawal of American forces:

Iraqi forces assumed formal control of Baghdad and other cities Tuesday after American troops handed over security in urban areas in a defining step toward ending the U.S. combat role in the country. A countdown clock broadcast on Iraqi TV ticked to zero as the midnight deadline passed for U.S. combat troops to finish their pullback to bases outside cities.

“The withdrawal of American troops is completed now from all cities after everything they sacrificed for the sake of security,” said Sadiq al-Rikabi, a senior adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. “We are now celebrating the restoration of sovereignty.”

The Pentagon did not offer any comment to mark the passing of the deadline.

Fireworks, not bombings, colored the Baghdad skyline late Monday, and thousands attended a party in a park where singers performed patriotic songs. Loudspeakers at police stations and military checkpoints played recordings of similar tunes throughout the day, as Iraqi military vehicles decorated with flowers and national flags patrolled the capital.

Actually, there were a couple of bombings, and four Americans were killed in combat. The American press has been pretending that the Iraq War is virtually over, but the reality is that the war is still raging. Violence is down 60% from the 2007 peak, but executions and car bombs are still quite common. If any other country on earth suffered as many car bombs, it would be front page news in every major newspaper in the world, and the leading cause of death in Iraq is execution. The fact that present levels of violence are thought of as a cause for celebration shows just how horrific Bush’s war became.

One person who’s not happy about the prospect of an American pullout is Dick Cheney. The former vice president said that he “would not want to see the U.S. waste all the tremendous sacrifice that has gotten us to this point.”

Cheney’s newfound concern for the troops is touching, especially considering the fact that he and his pal Donald Rumsfeld urged President Bush to invade Iraq in early 2003 rather than waiting until weapons inspectors had finished searching for Iraq’s nonexistent chemical weapons facilities, despite the fact that invading in Spring 2003 would require American soldiers to patrol the streets of Baghdad without armored vehicles and without body armor.

At any rate, it appears that the Iraqis believe they’ll be better off after the Americans are gone.

(cross posted at This Old Brit)

(click to embiggen)

Looks like Libyan dictator Muammar al-Gaddafi has a crush on former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice:

Libya’s leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi showered then-US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice with gifts during her historic visit to Tripoli last year, according to a government report. Gaddafi, who did not hide his admiration for the woman he called “Leeza” rather than her nickname “Condi,” gave her a diamond ring in a wood box, a locket with his photograph and a DVD with a musical instrument.

The value of the gifts amounted to $212,225, according to the 2008 annual report of gifts given to members of the US administration that was published in the Federal Register.

All the presents become public property as US law bars any representative of the US government from receiving a present from a foreign government.

Gaddafi also reportedly referred to Rice as “my little black African woman“.

From the Washington Post:

Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) would like to amend that little joke he made earlier this week about Sarah Palin when he said he wished it had been the Alaska governor who had gone missing instead of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford.

“Too bad, if a governor had to go missing, it couldn’t have been the governor of Alaska. You know, Sarah Palin,” Kerry told a group of civic and business leaders on Tuesday, according to the Boston Herald. That, of course, was before he and the rest of us learned Sanford had lost himself in Argentina with his secret mistress.

Conservative women rushed to Palin’s defense after the Kerry joke. Ethel Fenig at American Thinker wrote, “Tee hee! Letterman, Kerry — all afraid of strong, independent women! Kerry should find a job with David Letterman — who would miss him?”

Kerry’s spokeswoman now tells The Sleuth the senator really didn’t mean what he said, though his clarification would hardly qualify as an apology.

“We stand corrected, the truth is every Democrat hopes Governor Palin is in the public eye for a long, long time, especially on the 2012 presidential ballot,” Kerry spokeswoman Jodi Seth says. “Lately it’s been Vice President Cheney that everyone hopes would lose the cameras and go for a long leisurely hike on the Appalachian Trail. And good grief, if anyone thinks John Kerry is afraid of strong, smart women, they sure haven’t met his brilliant wife and two independent daughters. It sounds like getting crushed these last two election cycles cost some of these Republicans their sense of humor.”

We’ll see how funny Palin finds this.

If we’re all really lucky, Sarah Palin, Fox News, and every blowhard on talk radio will decide that John Kerry is old news, so there’s no need to spread the word about his latest idiocy. I’m pretty sure we won’t be that lucky, though.