Thinking the unthinkable

Just a few weeks ago, there was a jocular comment that was circulating along the lines of “Wouldn’t it be funny if the 2016 presidential race ended up being between Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders? Yuk! Yuk!” The reason it was so funny of course was because the very idea was absurd. On the one hand you had someone widely seen as a buffoon (a very rich buffoon but a buffoon nonetheless) and on the other someone who called himself a democratic socialist, seen as the kiss of death in a political climate where even the label of liberal was seen as an epithet. It was felt that the Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton machines would easily crush these upstarts once the going got serious.
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The troubling war on marijuana

While measures to legalize, or at least decriminalize, the use of marijuana are spreading all over the country, we should look at the heavy toll that the war on drugs, and marijuana specifically, is taking on everyone. Because so many people think marijuana is safe to use and do so recreationally, it leads to repeated police-public confrontations by over-zealous police, who can use the excuse that they smelled something to launch highly intrusive searches.
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Iran sanctions already crumbling

The 60-day deadline for Congress to vote its disapproval of the deal arrived at between Iran and the P5+1 nations is September 17, giving them roughly two weeks to do so after they return from their August recess. If a vote of disapproval does pass, president Obama has guaranteed a veto and so much attention is focused on whether the two chambers can muster the 2/3 majority to override the veto.
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When the tables are turned on those who spy on us

Over at The Intercept Peter Maas has a fascinating article that turns the tables on one of the people at the NSA who takes pride in his job conducting surveillance on people and finding out all that they can about them. He had been invited by the NSA to be the ‘Socrates of SIGINT’ (SIGINT stands for Signals Intelligence) and to blog internally and ‘write a philosophically minded column about signals intelligence’.
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Brave Ugandans

Last weekend, Cleveland held its annual Gay Pride parade that had to be rescheduled when the original one a month earlier was rained out due to a torrential downpour. These events are now very festive ones because Cleveland has become a city that is known for being welcoming to gays, even hosting the Gay Games last year, and one rarely hears about any protestors at these events
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More on the use of nuclear weapons

My post on the anniversary of the use of nuclear weapons on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where I unequivocally stated that it was a barbaric and inexcusable act and a war crime, generated some heated pushback and I urge people to read the comments there. I started to respond but realized that it was becoming rather long and decided to make it into a follow-up post.
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