Obama Chokes on Marijuana

President Obama's experiment Thursday with an otherwise traditional town hall format flecked with questions posted and voted on at whitehouse.gov was a useful experiment with interactivity. But it was a relatively small step forward, and the online crowd did not provide much of a disruptive alternative to topics Obama certainly would have been asked about anyway.

How did the tech president do? Fine. He genuinely took popular questions and he certainly took many of the top-rated ones. His answers were long, which meant he took only five of the 104,000 questions submitted and, more important, only a tiny fraction of the approximately 1,000 questions that the public seemed truly enthusiastic about.

But it wasn't exactly as if he took penetrating, unanticipated questions from "Open for Questions," which the administration set up two days ago to solicit questions in advance. In fact the only subject that might not have otherwise been addressed came from an organized campaign to ask Obama his position on legalizing marijuana.

Obama obeyed the spirit (and letter) of the event by entertaining the question while blunting the troll effort that had put it to him: "No, I don't think that is a good strategy to grow our economy," he said to laughter in the room.
Other than that bit of comedy relief how exactly would it have differed if this town hall were to be entirely scripted by the White House? They would have touched many of the same subjects — health care, veterans, outsourcing — and Obama would have given his regular stump points.

That's more or less what happened.

Obama's First Online Town Hall: Drama-Free OKness | Epicenter from Wired.com

Change my ass! I'm insulted as an American that the President would only offer a one liner on the marijuana issue...I'd even give it a reverse Michelle Obama. "Up to this point I was a proud American..."

I'd rather see 10 bridges to nowhere built than see another penny wasted on marijuana enforcement. The hell with the money gained from taxation. What about the money saved at every level of government from not enforcing, prosecuting and/or incarcerating people for smoking weed?

I'll even play devil's advocate here for a second..."What about all those poor cops across the country who would lose their Federal funds they use to buy new cop cars and weapons to chase all the potheads? Some of them might even lose their jobs!"

I say fuck em'. Welcome to the real world. I hear they need cops in Mexico.

I say now is the time for public outrage on this issue. Are we going to let the President give 40% of the population lip service? I certainly plan on giving him my two cents. I'm tired of spending billions of dollars on this when there is no measurable progress. It's not working no matter how much money we throw at it. It's simply time to move on. Prohibition doesn't work.

New Project Attempts to Return Political Power to the People

The Change Congress project's first mission is to diminish the influence of money in the legislative body by influencing the outcome of the 2008 election campaigns of 67 members of congress which are up for grabs. As the Change Congress project founder Larry Lessig noted in the project's launch Thursday afternoon, there haven't been so many seats open up for challenge in more than a decade.

"The problem we face is ... the problem of crony capitalism using money to capture government," he said on Monday during the launch of his project in Washington, DC. "The challenge is whether in fact we can change this. The political experts tell you that it can't be done, that process always win over substance."

The professor wants legislators to promise to do four things which he says will reduce the influence of money on policymaking: To promise not to accept money from lobbyists and political action committees; support public financing of elections; commit to passing legislation to permanently ban the funneling of money to their districts' projects of questionable worth; and to commit to "compel transparency in the functioning of congress." The project will rely on engaged voters to record and map responses by candidates who are running for open seats. The idea is to make what seems like an abstract idea visually tangible through a Google mash-up.

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This is the type of "outside the box" thinking we need in this country to loosen the grip of powerful lobbying groups in Washington D.C. It's true that the internet has made it possible to accomodate many voices on multiple issues. The next question will be how to harness that power in a meaningful way. In the past two election cycles we have seen candidates on both sides of the aisle tap into that collective power base with suprisingly good results. This new found grassroots movement has been gaining steam in recent years and looks to continue that trend in the future. Candidates like Ross Perot, Howard Dean, Ron Paul and Barak Obama have proven that this is a viable option for voters who feel their voices simply put, are never heard above the din of the big money lobbying machines.

With any luck, the Change Congress will take hold and affect a change on both sides of the aisle. If nothing else, if successful, it will give us an effective yardstick to determine which candidates are truly commited to real change in Washington.

Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig Bets 'Wikipedia' Approach Will Transform Congress

Get to Know Barak Obama...

I've been looking to gain insight into the candidates on both sides of the aisle. I started with Barak Obama because he seemed to the most compelling candidate for real change. He also seems to be gaining Howard Dean-like momentum with the younger age groups and grass roots internet types. Unlike Dean, Obama seems to be more well accepted by Democrats as a whole. Even many hard-line party old timers will concede that Obama is a "real" and viable candidate. Many of them will hold off a whole scale endorsement until they see what he can do in the primaries.

Obama has not only succeeded in reaching the well-entrenched folks in his own party, but he also has proven his ability to reach out "accross the aisle" in a way that siphons some moderate Republicans over to his side. This fact was yet again demonstrated in Iowa where he beat Hillary by getting the young vote and the crossover voted. It's these two categories that put him over the top.

The real question now is, "Can Barak Obama Sustain the Momentum?". Obviously time will tell. As we wind through the political season and approach the Vermont Primaries, this blogger (and many others) will be watching them all to see who can close the gap that has been widening between us, fueled by stupid crap like Monicagate and The Contract with America.

I hope that this election cycle brings us a closing of the chasm that has divided us for so long....



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