More good news for California’s marijuana legalization initiative: UFCW’s Western States Council, representing more than 200,000 union members in the Western US, endorsed Prop 19 yesterday.

PhRMA got everything it wanted in the health care deal, and paid for it with $150 million in political advertising for Democrats. Harry Reid kept drug reimportation off the floor of the Senate until its failure was assured because it wasn’t part of the deal cut by the White House, and he was handsomely rewarded for his efforts.

I caught the drug-addicted draft dodging thrice divorced sex tourist on the radio the other day, and he had an interesting theory about Toyota and their unexpected acceleration recalls.

Democrats have failed to govern despite occupying large majorities in Congress and the Presidency, while placing the blame for their failure on Republican Senate obstructionism. Yet “ignorant” average voters who are uninformed about the filibuster fantasy have correctly put the blame for failure squarely on the majority party.

My suspicion is that the Republicans will allow a final vote on financial regulation legislation tomorrow and make it out of town for the weekend, dealing with unemployment benefits extension next week after a replacement for West Virginia’s Sen. Robert Byrd has been named.

On February 13, 2010, the management at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch Mine ordered an electrician to disable a methane alarm that kept going off, according to NPR. This is the equivalent of being annoyed that your fire alarm is going off, so you turn it off; then your house burns down and kills you and almost everyone inside.

A series of documents released on July 14 in the UK Binyam Mohamed civil case point to collusion by the UK government with the American torture rendition program. One of the revelations argues for the existence of extrajudicial murders as part of that system.

It’s a nice trick, WellPoint: send your VP to write a law mandating that the middle class buy shitty products like yours, then watch that VP move into the executive branch to “oversee” the implementation of the law. What could go wrong?!?!

I got a call yesterday from a telecommunications lobbyist who had an interesting and very plausible theory regarding the handling of the decision on net neutrality: What if Julius Genachowski, chairman of the FCC, is simply running out the clock?

Former vice president Richard B. Cheney, who has long suffered from cardiac issues, underwent surgery last week to have a pump implanted in his heart, he announced Wednesday. [...]