Marijuana laws take a hit in Montana.

The war on drugs took an interesting turn in Montana this week. According to the Billings Gazette, members of a jury pool in a Missoula County District Court made it clear they would not convict someone for possessing a small amount of marijuana.

AP: "Random Breath Test Yields 43 Pounds of Ecstasy"

That is a lot of Ecstasy to keep in your breath.

It is about time.

The Senate finally confirmed Susan Nelson's appointment to the federal bench.

Metrodome collapses

Here's the story.

UPDATE:

Video here.

Bill Clinton is back in the White House

You may have heard that President Obama and former President Clinton staged an impromptu press conference today, after they spent some time chatting about Obama's recent tax-cut compromise with Republicans.  In short:  the Clinton approves.

Here are some random musings:

1)  I love this picture -- does Clinton look like a kid in a candy store or what?

2)  I can't help thinking of Clinton as kind of like the Randy Quaid character in the National Lampoon Vacation movies.  Especially "Christmas Vacation" -- where he shows up in the RV, and just won't leave.  As you can see in the next picture, Obama eventually had to leave because he, you know, had "a thing":

3)  Obligatory:  HIDE THE INTERNS!!!!

4)  This little behind-the-scenes article about the press conference is very West-Wingy.

Sex by surprise?

I'll confess I haven't been following the manhunt relating to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange very closely.  I knew that he was wanted for some kind of sex crime in Sweden. And I noticed that he had been arrested in England. But my interest wasn't really piqued until I noticed the headlines and blurbs that seemed to imply that his alleged crime is "sex by surprise."

Sex by surprise‽  Supposedly, the offense had something to do with a broken condom, which somehow constitutes a sex crime in crazy Sweden.

But apparently not.  According to an op-ed by Jessica Valenti in the Washington Post, at least, this "sex by surprise" thing was made up by Assange's lawyer in an attempt to belittle the seriousness of the charges:

Let's get this out of the way: Sweden does not have a "broken condom" law. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was not arrested because his contraception failed mid-coitus. Nor is he charged with "sex by surprise."

* * *

The allegations against Assange are rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion. He's accused of pinning one woman's arms and using his body weight to hold her down during one alleged assault, and of raping a woman while she was sleeping. In both cases, according to the allegations, Assange did not use a condom. But the controversy seems to center on the fact that both encounters started off consensually. One of his accusers was quoted by the Guardian newspaper in August as saying, "What started out as voluntary sex subsequently developed into an assault." Whether consent was withdrawn because of the lack of a condom is unclear, but also beside the point. In Sweden, it's a crime to continue to have sex after your partner withdraws consent.

So, thankfully, it appears that "sex by surprise" is not necessarily a crime in Sweden or anywhere else.  Merry Christmas, everyone!   

Perfect spelling not required

According to the Juneau Empire, an Alaska state court has rejected Joe Miller's attempt to require that the only votes for Lisa Murkowski which spelled her name perfectly be counted. One would like to believe that this will end this inane recount. Given that Miller, as reported by the AP, initially claimed that Alaska should not count votes that correctly spelled Senator Murkowski's name but did so last name first, I doubt it will.

Indiana attorneys should not beat people up.

One might think that one of the benefits of going to law school would be that law students learn the law and are thus able to avoid breaking it. Not everyone takes full advantage of that benefit. Take, for example, this former Kokomo, Indiana city attorney.

And then there was one.

As of yesterday, the United States had two statewide elections that had not been resolved: the gubernatorial election in Minnesota and a United States Senate election in Alaska. These elections were similar in some ways. Both involve margins small enough to mandate a recount. Both also involve significant percentages of people voting for a candidate who wasn't on the ballot as a Republican or a Democrat (although, Alaska's third candidate is, in fact, a Republican). Both elections also involve fewer ballot challenges than the margin of victory. Where these elections differ is in how the loser is handling the fact that it appears impossible for them to win.

In Minnesota, Republican Tom Emmer conceded defeat today. One reason that this concession occurred today is that, yesterday, the Minnesota Supreme Court issued its written opinion explaining why Mr. Emmer's theory of how one counts voters is, to put it mildly, wrong. Voting precincts do not need to count the signatures on the voting registry to determine if the number of votes equals the number of voters. Precincts can simply compare voting receipts to ballots cast.

The other reason Mr. Emmer conceded is that he couldn't come up with 8,700 challenged ballots for the canvassing board to review. After the canvassing board (which includes two sitting Minnesota Supreme Court justices) chastised Mr. Emmer's legal team (which includes a former Minnesota Supreme Court chief justice) about making frivolous challenges, Mr. Emmer withdrew almost all his challenges. Faced with a mathematical impossibility, Mr. Emmer conceded.

That is not how they do things in Alaska. Up north, Republican Joe Miller is continuing his fight in the election he lost to Lisa Murkowski, the incumbent Republican Senator he beat in the primary. After losing the primary, Senator Murkowski decided to run a write-in campaign and became the second person in 60 years to win a write-in campaign for the Senate.

Mr. Miller's strategy for the recount, one that seems perfectly reasonable given Senator Murkowski's last name, was that only ballots that correctly spelled her name should count. However, as the Los Angeles times notes, this strategy is failing because there were fewer misspellings than Senator Murkowski's margin of victory. Some people would find this an insurmountable problem. Those people are not Joe Miller. As the article notes, part of Mr. Miller's argument is that Ms. Murkowski had an advantage because votes for were counted by hand while votes for Mr. Miller were counted by machine. This is the first time I have ever heard that write-in candidates actually have an advantage in elections. It will be interesting to see if that sort of counter intuitive argument can carry the day.

Probably a mistake?

As part three of our ongoing series on phone calls made by wives of Supreme Court justices, Ginni Thomas has decided that calling Anita Hill was "probably" a mistake. Sadly, the article doesn't mention when this particular insight came to Ms. Thomas.