Gallup has published its 2012 list of the top ten states with the most liberals in the country. To a strong degree this same list can be used as a stand in for the list of states most likely to support marijuana legalization. And success will likely come in those states that allow voter initiatives on the ballot.

This November the voters of Washington state will likely have a chance to vote to legalize marijuana in the state. The marijuana legalization initiative, I-502, has been certified by the Secretary of State’s office. It was determined that New Approach Washington, the campaign behind the initiative, had turned in enough valid signatures for the initiative to advance.

In a big move today for medical marijuana, Washington state Governor Christine Gregoire (D) and Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee (I) requested that the federal government re-schedule (reclassify) marijuana. The policy change would allow marijuana to be legally prescribed as a medicine under federal law.

A ballot initiative in Washington State to legalize and regulate marijuana just got a big boost. New Approach Washington, the campaign that has been working to get enough signatures to get the initiative, I-502, on the ballot recently received two significant donations.

I still marvel at the lack of attention to this case when our Gateway Media went wall-to-wall in November over the Portland ‘bomber’ at our city’s Xmas tree lighting. I suppose we need to wait for a suspect to be in custody before the current case in Spokane — where there was a real bomb with real, or even historic, lethality — deserves that kind of attention.

Yesterday, in Spokane, Washington, a ‘potentially lethal destructive device’ concealed in a backpack on the route of the Martin Luther King parade was disarmed and destroyed before anyone in or viewing the parade was hurt.

The Washington primary can serve as a useful predictor on a macro level. Partisan swings in the Washington primary vote closely mirrored the national Congressional swings we saw in November.

I’ve previously posted on my research showing a very high correlation between the results in Washington State’s “top two” primary and the results in the general election. The system makes the “primary” more like the first round of the general election in a traditional runoff election system. Washington has a history of very high primary turnout–this year it was 40.63 percent–and because of the previous use of the “blanket primary,” voting for members of both parties in the primary was common. Assuming this correlation holds up this year, my analysis points to an extremely bad November for Democrats.

The “top two primary” system now used in Washington and to be used in California starting in 2012 is not like a traditional primary, where people vote to select a nominee for each party. Since the top two primary system is much more like a general election than a traditional primary, the question is can the vote in these “top two primary” states serve as a good predictor for what will happen nationwide in November.

Rep. Mike Rogers, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee’s incumbent-retention program, has pinpointed the nine most vulnerable GOP House members up for re-election and wants supporters to focus only on them. All represent districts that carried President Obama in 2008. Here’s a look at the endangered nine.