According to data released by the U.S. Border Patrol, 2015 saw the lowest amount of marijuana seized at the U.S./Mexican border in a decade, and Mexican manufacturers of (illegal) marijuana say that drug prices have dropped dramatically since some states have legalized the recreational use and production of the drug.
The U.S. Border Patrol has released 2015 data showing that the number of marijuana seizures throughout the southwest U.S./Mexico border has fallen to the lowest level in a decade, the Washington Post reports.
Mexican manufacturers of illegal marijuana bricks have driven down prices as residents in California, Colorado, and Washington state now have safe access to reasonably affordable medical marijuana and/or recreational cannabis.
“Two or three years ago, a kilogram [2.2 pounds] of marijuana was worth $60 to $90,” a Mexican marijuana grower told NPR news in December 2014. “But now they’re paying us $30 to $40 a kilo. It’s a big difference. If the U.S. continues to legalize pot, they’ll run us into the ground.”
Additionally, the quality of marijuana has increased as […]
SilencerCo CEO Joshua Waldron fires a handgun with a suppressor in West Valley City, Utah Credit: Reuters/Jim Urquhart
The U.S. gun industry is trying to shake off the Hollywood hitman image of the gun silencer and rebrand it as a hearing-protection device in a campaign to roll back regulations that date to the 1930s.
Industry lobbying has led to more than a dozen states legalizing silencers for hunting since 2011. Now gun advocates are pressing Congress to repeal a Depression-era law that requires a months-long screening process for silencer buyers – far more scrutiny than gun buyers face.
Sales of silencers – or “suppressors,” as the industry prefers to call them – are booming. The number of silencers registered with the U.S. government more than doubled to 792,282 in February […]
Former Gov. Bobby Jindal drove Louisiana off a fiscal cliff.
Credit: Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
The state of Louisiana has fallen on hard times, and its situation offers some hard lessons. First, don’t let a right-wing ideologue cut your budget to the bone. Second, don’t hang your whole economy on fossil fuel extraction.
The Washington Post reports on the state’s budget crisis:
Already, the state of Louisiana had gutted university spending and depleted its rainy-day funds. It had cut 30,000 employees and furloughed others. It had slashed the number of child services staffers …
And then, the state’s new governor, John Bel Edwards (D), came on TV and said the worst was yet to come. …
Despite all the cuts of the previous years, the nation’s second-poorest state still needed nearly $3 billion — almost $650 per person — just to maintain its regular services over the next 16 months. …
A few universities will shut down and declare bankruptcy. Graduations will […]
As Forrest Gump says in the eponymous 1994 classic film, stupid is as stupid does.
In a YouTube video, media analyst, author and conspiracy theorist Mark Dice took to the beaches of San Diego to ask passersby who our nation’s capital is named after.
Spoiler: The capital is Washington, D.C., and it’s named after George Washington, the first president of the United States.
Several of those who appear in the video can’t name the capital city. Those who can are still stymied by the namesake.
“Our nation’s capital is Washington, D.C.,” one young man says with conviction, “and I don’t know who it’s named after!”
The icing on this deeply disappointing cake: An Italian tourist knew the answer immediately and was shocked that some Americans did not.
Credit: Shutterstock
“The Evangelical “brand” has gone from being an asset to a liability, and it is helpful to understand the transition in precisely those terms.”
Back before 9/11 indelibly linked Islam with terrorism, back before the top association to “Catholic priest” was “pedophile,” most Americans—even nonreligious Americans—thought of religion as benign. I’m not religious myself, people would say, but what’s the harm if it gives someone else a little comfort or pleasure.
Back then, people associated Christianity with kindness and said things like, “That’s not very Christian of him,” when a person acted stingy or mean; and nobody except Evangelical Christians knew the difference between Evangelicalism and more open, inquiring forms of Christianity.
Those days are over. Islam will be forever tainted by Islamist brutalities, by images of bombings, beheadings, and burkas. The collar and cassock will forever evoke the image of bishops turning their backs while priests rub themselves on altar boys. And thanks to the fact that American Evangelical leaders sold their congregations to the Republican Party in exchange for political power, […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
