• Outspoken evangelical Christian and longtime conservative leader Pat Robertson is calling for the legalization of marijuana. He said the “war on drugs” is costing taxpayers billions of dollars and sending many young people to prison, where they become hardcore criminals. It’s a bit late to welcome Robertson to the right side of this issue, but it’s still nice to see. We wonder how viewers of his TV show have responded.
  • You might remember the story we told you about a couple of days ago about an engineer discovering a flaw in the “naked scanners” that the TSA uses. The TSA pooh-poohed the story, saying there was nothing to it, but now reporters are saying that they have been “strongly cautioned” by the TSA not to cover the story. It sounds like the tactics of an agent that’s never heard of the First Amendment.
  • As gasoline prices keep rising, consumer anger over paying more might become a bigger factor in the presidential election in the fall. Consumers might not have a clue what causes higher gas prices, but they’re more than happy to blame whoever the current president is. (And the opposition party is always willing to help do that.) In a poll of Super Tuesday voters, 77 percent said the rise of gasoline prices was one of the top issues to them. How about they start by learning some economics? Nah, that makes too much sense.

  • The New York City Fire Department has been ordered to hire 293 black and Hispanic applicants who scored too poorly on the department’s exam to be hired in the past.  In a suit brought by the failed applicants, a federal judge ruled that the test was racially discriminatory. Plaintiffs complained that the test unfairly focused on “cognitive and reading skills.” In order words, it’s not fair that the city wants the smartest applicants it can get.
  • A 40-year-old woman who decided to give a puppy as a birthday present had a very odd way of delivering the pup. She put the dog into a box and tried to send him through the mail. Fortunately, postal workers found the animal and rescued him before he was placed onto a cargo plane, where he would have died. The woman was found incompetent to stand trial, and the dog was adopted by someone else, even though she tried to get the dog back.
  • A Republican plan to revive the Keystone oil pipeline failed in Congress after the plan received only 56 votes in the Senate. Even though it had a majority, the measure needed 60 votes to move forward. Despite intense personal lobbying by Barack Obama, 11 Democrats voted with Republicans in favor of the pipeline. Republicans plan to make the blocking of the pipeline by Obama and other Democrats a key issue in the fall — as gasoline prices rise.
  • Welfare officials in Michigan have kicked a woman off of food stamps after learning through media reports that she had won a million dollars in a lottery. The 24-year-old woman used her lottery winnings to buy a new house and car, but she kept taking $200 in taxpayer money each month. The woman said she expected the state to cut her off, but she kept taking it when the money kept coming.