Over at Endless Mode, I wrote about how educators are using off-the-shelf board games in their classrooms for all sorts of didactic purposes.
I held a Klawchat on Thursday. I also appeared on The Menschwarmers podcast, which (obviously) is about the intersection of Judaism and sports, to talk about the Core Jackson story.
I moved my free email newsletter over to Kit this week, and the transition seems to have gone smoothly. If you were already signed up on Substack before Wednesday, you should have received the new edition. If you haven’t signed up, or signed up on Substack after that, you can sign up on my new site at Kit.
And now, the links…
- Long(ish) reads first: A BBC investigation found that images and videos of child sexual abuse are easily found on X/Twitter, including those of a woman who is one of those victims and has directly asked Elon Musk to stop it. Third parties based overseas are using X to advertise the images for sale, then switching to other platforms to exchange them.
- Bolts magazine looks at how two neighboring cities in Arizona have taken opposite approaches to tackling homelessness.
- Israel struck Nasser Hospital in Gaza four times, killing at least 20 people, including 5 journalists. I’m really sick of western media blindly accepting the IDF’s claims that they’re not targeting civilians.
- Taylor Lorenz wrote this investigative piece for WIRED about a dark-money group funding Democratic influencers to spread their messages on social media, although there’s already a correction and at least one of the people she named, Elizabeth Booker Houston, has pointed out what she believes are several errors in the story (example).
- The Trump Administration is ending funding of a pediatric brain cancer treatment network dedicated to early trials of new medications.
- Harvard has removed support titles for proctors and tutors who were designated as support specifically for LGBTQ+ or first-generation students.
- Josephine Riesman ’08 wrote in the Harvard Independent, for which I wrote while I was there, that we should avoid the building that bears her family’s name, the Riesman Center for Harvard Hillel, because that organization has ignored the genocide happening in Gaza and said nothing about the Administration’s attacks against the university.
- Anti-vaxx loons are making excuses for the CDC shooter while their idol RFK Jr. pours more gasoline on the fire.
- The Philly Inquirer’s Will Bunch writes that a politician is finally doing what they promised: Trump is acting just like an authoritarian, raiding the house of critic John Bolton and using the military on his own people.
- Political scientist Don Moynihan writes that the United States is no longer a functioning democracy.
- A “voodoo plan” presented to Georgia’s Republican-dominated legislature claims, against pretty much all of economic history, that cutting 40% of the state’s revenues by ending its income tax will somehow make the state’s revenues grow. We’re on about year 45 of this experiment, and it doesn’t work. If you really want to cut taxes and grow an economy, raise the threshold below which people pay zero taxes. Those taxpayers are much more likely to put that money right back into the economy through consumption.
- ICE detained a mother in Massachusetts for 10 days over a 2003 cannabis charge for which she’d been pardoned. The woman is here legally, and the offense is no longer even a crime in Massachusetts. She was released on August 20th.
- The handpicked chairman of the Surry County (North Carolina) Board of Elections was arrested for putting drugs in his granddaughters’ ice cream. James Edwin Yokeley Jr., a Republican, resigned the day after his arrest.
- A Republican candidate for Arizona Attorney General claimed that the Yuma sheriff endorsed him … and the sheriff says that’s not true.
- Alderac’s Kickstarter for Into the Machine has a novel structure – there are all sorts of expansions for their other titles here as well, and the more items you pledge, the greater the discount you get.
- I’m intrigued by the game Le Vent Rouge, with a relaunched Kickstarter up now, as it looks like a dice-rolling and bag-building game, but a heavier one, with a play time listed at 60-120 minutes.
I don’t condone what ICE did to that woman in Massachusetts, and what I’m about to write is not intended to justify any of ICE’s tactics or practices, many of which are abhorrent, but it is misleading to say that possession or use of marijuana is “no longer… a crime in Massachusetts.” Marijuana possession and use are illegal under federal law, which is the law in all fifty states. A state cannot make “legal” that which is illegal under federal law. There are many things which are not proscribed under state law but which are illegal under federal law. For example, there is no state law in Massachusetts that says that you must pay federal taxes, but that does not mean that it is “legal” to evade federal taxes in Massachusetts, and no one would ever say that it is legal to evade federal taxes in Massachusetts or any other state. (Well, maybe a “sovereign citizen” would say that, but those people are idiots.)
Pointing out the misnomer of “legalization” is not merely a semantic point. Repeatedly referring to marijuana use and possession as “legal” creates a mistaken impression among people that there are no restrictions on marijuana use and possession. In fact, even in states that have relaxed their drug laws, there are still limits on when and where one can partake of the drug. Public consumption generally remains proscribed. John Oliver recently talked about some D.C. residents who were being harassed by some ICE creeps while they were smoking marijuana on their street, something he described as “completely legal in D.C.” But it’s not “completely legal in D.C.” It’s not legal at all. In addition to any possession or use being proscribed under federal law, public consumption is not permitted in D.C. Abuse of this privilege by people who live in jurisdictions that have relaxed their laws alienates folks who might otherwise support further relaxation of marijuana laws but who want to be able to walk down the street or go to a public event without inhaling secondhand marijuana smoke.
When or where did the federal government attain the right to legislate federal marijuana laws?
The horribly failed prohibition of alcohol required a constitutional amendment. Why is that not the case for Marijuana? Seems to be it would fall under the category of “Those powers not explicitly granted to the federal government are by default granted to the states.” Or however it is phrased; I might not be saying it exactly correctly.
Frank, my post was not about whether marijuana should or should not be proscribed. I’m not opining on that. It was simply to point out that, regardless of whether people say that the possession and use of marijuana are legal in certain U.S. jurisdictions, they are not, in fact, legal. As to your other question, the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution authorizes the federal government’s regulation of illicit drugs. Under this power, the U.S. Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act and established the Drug Enforcement Agency.
That’s one interpretation of the commerce clause. I’m not sure there’s agreement on that interpretation.
And, yes, I understood exactly what your post was and was not saying. Notice, I did not claim that you opined about the legal status of marijuana. I was merely asking questions relevant to the link being discussed.
Clearly, the author of that article was referring to Massachusetts state law when stating Marijuana is no longer illegal there.
The interstate commerce clause has been misused by the federal government in various ways in which it should not have been applied.
I will also point out you left unanswered one of my other questions – why was an amendment needed for the alcohol prohibition but not for other drugs like marijuana? The commerce clause preceded both of these events. Why was a constitutional amendment needed for one drug and not another?
As for actual relevance to the story – the fact that marijuana is still technically illegal under federal law is hardly relevant. A majority of states have legalized it, and few states still have it outright illegal.
The technical federal illegality of marijuana in no way detracts from the wrongness of what the ICE did to that woman, and I do believe it is relevant to point out that the charge was 22 years old and was for a crime no longer considered a crime under that state’s law.
Does the federal government still prosecute people under federal marijuana charges? I was under the impression that the federal government has abandoned this nonsense in light of the voice of the people (through changs to states’ laws) shifting away from marijuana prosecution.
Frank, I very clearly stated my disapproval of ICE’s tactics. That’s not what my post was about. Nor was it about the story being linked. It was about the fact that it is inaccurate to refer to something as “legal” when it is, in fact, illegal. Federal law is the law everywhere in the United States. A state cannot “legalize” that which is illegal under federal law. We should not say otherwise because it is misleading. Whether the federal government prosecutes people for marijuana charges is a matter of discretion. A broad exercise of that discretion does not make the behavior legal. It is also subject to change at a moment’s notice.
The government prosecutes people when it’s convenient to do so, or when it’s meant to intimidate.