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I don't know if anyone ever reads this stuff but you may have noticed I haven't posted in a while.After the arrests of the Bacon brothers and several UN gang members and the crew that worked my area,t

CBS News has a pro/con feature today on marijuana legalization with a great piece from Ethan Nadelmann and an opposing view coauthored by Stephen Baldwin and Kevin McCullough. Pete Guither properly demolishes the later here, but I just want to reiterate how crazy it is that Stephen Baldwin has become the poster boy for the war on marijuana. It's ridiculous.

Fortunately, Baldwin totally lives up to everyone's expectations by ceasing to make sense the instant he gets started:

America doesn't want its pot...American potheads do!

Sure the debate is raging presently, but it's as fictional in its need as whether pigs can fly or whether Superman was or was not faster than that bullet.

In the modern trumped up controversy over whether marijuana should be legalized for the masses, the biggest canard of all is the supposed demand that exists. As a team that produces a weekly talk radio show now heard on 195 stations, we can earnestly say one thing is definitively true in the discussions we've launched about the revival of the "Should pot be legal?" question: "America doesn't want its pot...American potheads do!"

It's hilariously false on multiple levels:

1. There's an online poll embedded right there on the same page showing 94.86% support for legalizing marijuana.

2. Baldwin claims only potheads want to legalize marijuana, despite having recently gotten his ass kicked in a debate with Ron Paul, who has never tried it.

3. If the press could find someone more famous than Stephen Baldwin to oppose legalization, he wouldn't even get the opportunity to say these things.

As Mexican President Felipe Calderon continues to escalate the Mexican drug war to previously unthinkable levels of death and destruction, his predecessor is saying we should think about ending prohibition:

Fox also said it's time to renew the debate about legalizing some drug use — an idea he proposed while still in office. It is gaining ground in Mexico amid increasing violence that has killed more than 10,500 people since Calderon launched a military-led offensive against powerful trafficking cartels in 2006.

Fox said strict controls and high taxes would be necessary under legalization. He said levels of drug use might remain the same but violence would be significantly reduced because the cartels would no longer control the supply. Families and schools should bear much of the responsibility to educate against drug use, he said.

"I am not yet convinced that that's the solution," he said. But he added, "Why not discuss it?" [AP]

This "let's talk about it" line is going viral. Keep an eye out for this. We'll be hearing it more and more. As a willingness to discuss and debate drug policy slowly replaces knee-jerk opposition to reform, we are presented with an entirely new political climate in which to make our case. Let's do so gracefully.

Can someone please explain to me what this means?

White House spokesman Ben LaBolt said the administration isn't yet ready to lift the ban - but Obama still supports needle exchange.

"We have not removed the ban in our budget proposal because we want to work with Congress and the American public to build support for this change," he said. "We are committed to doing this as part of a National HIV/AIDS strategy and are confident that we can build support for these scientifically-based programs." [Huffington Post]

So they're going to build support for needle exchange by telling Congress to continue the federal needle exchange ban? How's that supposed to work? And what's up with this:

The White House website no longer features the president's support of the program, however. See the before and after here.

"It's hard to imagine how removing mention of support for a proven lifesaving program from the White House website is part of a grand strategy to 'build support' for syringe exchange," said Tom Angell, a spokesman for the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition.

Exactly. If Obama wants to promote needle exchange, he should consider not making it illegal for the government to support needle exchange.

The administration is arguing that supporting the ban at this time is necessary to avoid politicizing the budget process, yet opposing needle exchange is just as political as supporting it. You're taking a political stance either way, obviously. The only difference is that Obama is choosing the wrong side and lending legitimacy to crazy idiots who oppose needle exchange.