This proposed insurance rule on birth control so strongly bothered Mitt Romney that he declared, “this is a violation of conscience. We must have a President who is willing to protect America’s first right, our right to worship God according to the dictates of our own conscience.” By that absolute logic, he should also oppose rules against religious uses of marijuana, which is common, but that’s not his or the GOP’s position.

The Farm Depression was extremely severe. Families that had recently expected to create long-lasting prosperity for themselves were soon faced with starvation. No region of the country was spared. But, because of a quirk of fate, some regions were given a way to ease the pain and to even achieve prosperity for a few years — though at the price of learning a contempt for the law and societal structures. One of these regions was Minnesota’s Stearns County. The quirk of fate: Prohibition.

For those who have very little insight into drug smuggling and would like to know more, Jackpot is a great book for you. Jason Ryan is a South Carolina journalist and former newspaper reporter who has done his homework. And because of the painstaking effort he put into many interviews, this piece of work is spot on. Let’s peer into the life of marijuana smuggling kingpins of the 1970s with Jason and see why he was so intrigued.

Father and son, Charles Fried (former solicitor general of the United States under Ronald Reagan, legal scholar at Harvard University and author of Modern Liberty) and Gregory Fried (chair of the Philosophy Department at Suffolk University and author of Heidegger’s Polemos) have undertaken the daunting task of examining the limitations and excesses of modern day Presidential power to gather intelligence by torture and surveillance. In order to reach their ultimate conclusions as to the interplay of law, morality, civil community and political leadership, the Frieds review sources and thought from Aristotle to Machiavelli to the Bible, including principles from epieikeia to “dirty hands” to religious and secular precepts relating to human dignity. They have deliberately kept the conversation, “as wide as possible” in recognition that “ours is a nation founded in philosophy.”

Comparisons to the Sopranos are inevitable, but it’s not really fair to measure a series that had eight years to develop its style to the new kind on the block. I’m liking it so far (especially the Magritte-inspired opening credits), but it has some growing to do.

See you in the comments for the watch party. Sponsored by Just Say Now.

In a recent interview with Mike Stark, Florida Senator George LeMieux came down squarely against the rights of individual states to regulate marijuana, indicating that he was against both legalizing medical use and ending prohibition in general. He also believes that it’s the appropriate role of the criminal justice system to deal with marijuana users.

This morning on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Rolling Stone Executive Editor Eric Bates discussed Ari Berman’s latest article on marijuana legalization, appropriately entitled “Just Say Now” (catchy, isn’t it?).

Gary Johnson, the Republican former governor of New Mexico, was on MSNBC with Cenk Uygur to talk about the need to end marijuana prohibition. He knocked it out of the park; catch his interview here.

California state Attorney General and Democratic candidate for governor Jerry Brown has recently displayed a dangerous lack of knowledge about basic economics and the likely effects of marijuana legalization.

Daniel Okrent was the first public editor of “The New York Times.” In his new book “Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition,” he tells the fascinating and often-overlooked story of Prohibition. Despite being one of the most important issues in the country for decades and a dominant force in our nation’s politics, the history of Prohibition is little known to most Americans.