Last week I pointed out that mother nature intervened in what usually is a slow news week. This past week, I guess we got one. Nothing much unexpected happened, but there really is no such thing as a slow news week anymore; it’s just that what once was horrifying is now the everyday, predictable collection of stories.

Barbara Boxer stirred the kettle ever so slightly by deciding at the eleventh hour to formally object to congressional certification of the electoral vote count in Ohio. It takes at least one U.S. Senator just to open up any debate in Congress about certifying the Electoral College vote, and Boxer was the only one to step forward. I guess that brands her as the most radical left winger in the U.S. Senate. Her bold and brazen move delayed Dubya’s official election by about four hours.

Apparently, all the other Democrats in the Senate are convinced that Bush’s claim to Ohio’s electoral votes is perfectly legitimate. Even in her shocking dissent, Boxer wimped out like only a Democrat can wimp out. She said she wasn’t challenging the outcome of the election, she merely wanted to draw attention to flaws in the process. Republicans called it the Boxer Rebellion, and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay said it showed that the Democratic Party is dominated by conspiracy theorists. Excuse me Tom, but she didn’t even come close to discussing conspiracies, and one Senator out of 44 is not exactly what I’d call domination. By the way, don’t you think DeLay is a terrific name for a legislator? Right up there with Doolittle.

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The international news media finally caught up to the fact that a natural disaster of epic proportions happened a couple of weeks ago, but neither they nor I have much more we can say about it. I don’t think anyone has a clear idea of how the world is going to recover except on a day-by-day, place-by-place basis. Colin Powell, even as he makes his exit from the Bush administration, didn’t miss the chance to turn disaster into a political stump speech. He wandered around the region in a helicopter, then held a news conference in which he declared that it was a chance for the Muslim world to, "See American generosity, American values in action." I’m sure aspiring suicide bombers all over the middle east were powerfully impressed.

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The U.S. is trying to orchestrate something resembling elections in Iraq, but the people the U.S calls insurgents are expected to do everything they can to undermine the process. Why do you suppose someone would want to undermine democracy? Are the streets of Iraq crawling with people who love tyrannical dictators? I don’t think so. I think they’ve been reading reports about November in Ohio.

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An 80-year old self appointed preacher of the faith ironically named Edgar Killen was busted last week and charged with being the mastermind of a famous incident of racially motivated murder by the KKK in Mississippi over 40 years ago. The murders of two Jews and a black guy named Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney inspired a popular film called Burning Mississippi, and the details of the crime, including who did it, have become common knowledge over the years for anyone who was interested. The three victims were involved in an organized effort to register black voters. Michael Schwerner was the guy the Klan was after, because he was an especially effective organizer for the Congress of Racial Equality and had an especially big mouth. The other two guys were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. That place was Chaney’s car.

A cop pulled ‘em over, took ‘em to jail and held ‘em until Killen could round up the gang. Then he turned ‘em loose so the Klan could chase ‘em down, kill ‘em and bury the bodies. I don’t know if the state of Mississippi now wants to rehabilitate its reputation in matters of race relations, but the fact that Killen went free and pursued his occupation as a KKK preacher for 40 years before he was charged doesn’t do much to improve the image.

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Let’s talk a little medicinal pot. No, I’m not prescribed, so if I wanted to acquire any, it clearly would be an illegal transaction. But for those of you whose doctors say the weed is good for you, the legality of your transactions is, to some degree, in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court. You may recall that the Supremes heard a case late last November brought by a couple of Northern California women, both of whom are critically ill, trying to shut down the feds’ insistence that California’s Prop 215 is in violation of federal law. In other words, they’re trying to stop the feds from busting people who are using the weed legally in California.

An article I read this week made it pretty clear that the chances of the Supremes finding for the plaintiffs is zero. It focused on remarks made by Justice Stephen Breyer during the November 29^th hearing. Part of the plaintiffs argument was that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate a transaction which does not cross state lines. Breyer said, on the record, that the feds have the responsibility to protect public health and safety, even within the individual states. By inference, he was saying that our health and safety is jeopordized when someone smokes weed.

Breyer also trotted out the usual rhetoric about how more research is needed. As we’ve said before on Local Views, marijuana has been researched to death. It’s just that the research doesn’t produce the results the feds want to hear. Two weeks after the hearing on Prop 215, the FDA turned down a proposal by the University of Massachusetts for a marijuana research project.

Finally, responding to the fact that a majority of California’s voters approved Prop 215, Breyer said, "Medicine by regulation is better than medicine by referendum." Wrong, Steve. People were self-medicating for eons before guys with degrees on the wall came along to tell us what’s good for us. Eventually, we got pretty good at it, and some of us still are.