As someone who believes that marijuana prohibition has done significantly more harm than good, I would love to have a serious data-driven national debate about legalization. But unfortunately that is not possible when prohibitionists think it is acceptable to simply make up facts.

This anti-legalization article in The Daily Beast by David Frum is an egregious recent example of that phenomenon.

Pam has already touched on David Freedlander’s piece about the decline of independent blogs 10 years down the road. There are many things that are true in his long piece, but he somehow doesn’t manage to ask the rather obvious question — where’s the money?

Meghan McCain, the daughter of Senator John McCain, has come out in support of legalizing marijuana in her new book. Having the daughter of the most recent Republican presidential candidate publicly supporting the end of marijuana prohibition is another important moment in the process of legalization becoming a mainstream political issue.

Those who observe American media, and observe what passes for Legacy Media’s “criticism” of our American media, have long been irritated by the Washington Post’s declaration that Howard Kurtz’s disclosure of his CNN role (host of “Reliable Sources” and media critic) satisfies WaPo readers that he has no conflict between his CNN role and his WaPo role, even when writing about CNN. Moved up the Versailles foodchain to Washington Bureau Chief (of the Daily Beast, but still….) Howie will retain his CNN Sunday hosting role.

I notice that the Daily Beast decided to do a long PR ad for an interview with Peter Peterson, which tried to make clear just how reasonable the man is. Many of his cheerleaders quickly hailed it as persuasive proof. But the problem is that on the issue of the deficit, Peterson is a self-serving hypocrite.

Vote counting isn’t some novel tactic — it’s what lobbyists do. They line up support early in the game, and then try to hold members of Congress to those commitments. We only did what any lobbyist would. In the third quarter last year, Planned Parenthood paid Baker, Donelson $30,000 for lobbying, and $15,000 to the Glover Park Group. Planned Parenthood Action Fund spent $20,813 on internal lobbying, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America spent $161,885.

Richards makes close to $400,000 a year. Planned Parenthood national has assets in excess of $126 million dollars. Anyone want to explain how they did not, by Richards’ own admission, see this coming?