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" (Atypical Musical Accompaniment To This Feature) Welcome back to our semi-regular weekly survey of the state of Our National Dialogue which, of course, is what Duke Ellington would have come up with had he composed Blue Mucilage. All right, it&amp;#039;s time for the denizens of the pundit corral to stop talking about weed and start blowing a whole lot of it. I am accustomed to banality of a Sunday morning, and I&amp;#039;ve even made peace with the fact that so many of these people can&amp;#039;t go 15 minutes without screaming, &amp;quot;THE DEFICIT WILL EAT OUR BALLS!&amp;quot; without contracting the bends. But Colorado has opened up the floodgates by allowing the recreational use of marijuana and, I&amp;#039;m sorry, but the gobshites never have been so simply, transcendently silly about an issue since Martin Agronsky shuffled off to that great Green Room in the sky. Take, for example, our heroes on Disco Dave&amp;#039;Disco Dance Party. The first mistake was calling on Chuck Todd, whom nobody ever has mistaken for an R Crumb cartoon, and of whom the Dancin&amp;#039; Master inquired: GREGORY: It&amp;#039;s fascinating, look at The New York Times today. That&amp;#039;s one of the lead stories. And the other is, New York State is set to loosen marijuana laws. I&amp;#039;m looking at you, Chuck Todd. Only because you-- you cover politics so closely. That&amp;#039;s the only reason. This is in a-- this is a very interesting story about what is a growing public policy debate that the states are having. Where is this headed? Ah, good question, veteran scribe. This is actually a public policy issue, and not just an excuse for us all to laugh at David Brooks, although that is a noble task well undertaken by people of good will. This would be the point where people would stop talking about their kids, and making jokes about Cheeto consumption, and start talking about the vast financial, constitutional, and personal costs of the most stupid engagement in our stupid &amp;quot;war&amp;quot; on drugs. One fairly trembles at the possibility. Alas... MR. TODD: Well, and-- and like many of our social, cultural reforms that end up being more liberalized, culturally, it&amp;#039;s coming from the west, right? It&amp;#039;s coming from these referendums, so it&amp;#039;s Colorado and Washington state being the two most prominent. But of course, medical marijuana, the idea. And-- and we see these movements, they start west and they make their way east. It&amp;#039;s sort of-- almost a rite a passage for this. But I think this is-- this is moving pretty quickly. I think you have a-- an interesting left/right coalition here. Which gives Chuck, who seems deeply convinced that Senator Aqua Buddha is something more than a charlatan, a chance to polish the apple again.  MR. TODD: The Rand Paul, Ron Paul libertarian wing of the Republican Party has no issue with what you do in your home...whether it comes, in-- in some cases, with the issue of-- of a-- of a woman&amp;#039;s body; and in other cases, with things like marijuana. I look forward to the day when Aqua Buddha comes out with a ringing defense of a woman&amp;#039;s right to choose and chastises his party severely for its alliance with anti-choice fanatics. Of course, he&amp;#039;d have to be pretty baked to do it. Luckily, the Dancin&amp;#039; Master was there to put things backon track. GREGORY: Look, I mean-- I look at this, I think about it as a parent with young kids. And whether, you know-- I think it&amp;#039;s acceptable for them to be smoking marijuana, as well as other things that are legal that can be very damaging to them. There is a-- there is a legal aspect of this as well, a deterrent aspect. Talking to an FBI friend of mine who was saying, you know-- there still is a deterrent by making marijuana legal. But here&amp;#039;s something The Denver Post writes in its editorial, where they talk about pot being-- marijuana being legalized in the state. They never opposed-- opposed Amendment 64-- this is their editorial back in the fall-- mainly because of the conflict with federal law-- which exists, obviously, in Colorado-- but we&amp;#039;ve long supported the concept of legalizing marijuana nationwide and putting an end to the massive squandering of resources on prosecuting and punishing people for possessing and using marijuana. It appears many others now agree. Jesus Mary, will you shut up about your kids? All of you? None of Your Kids is going to face the full force of our idiotic drug laws even if they get caught sitting atop a bong the size of the fking Chrysler Building, Out in the world, 30 percent of the marijuana busts are young people who haven&amp;#039;t ever been arrested for anything. That is not going to be Your Kids. That&amp;#039;s poor kids and black kids and Other People&amp;#039;s Kids. If you can&amp;#039;t figure this out without the Denver Post figuring it out for you, well, just don&amp;#039;t bother bringing it up.  We move along to Judy Woodruff, who is Very Concerned. WOODRUFF:.... But when you get down to practical effects, it&amp;#039;s only been in-- in effect in Colorado, legal for a few days. Already, it&amp;#039;s wreaking a little havoc. I talked to a good friend there over the weekend, who lives there. And she was telling me, she said, you know, the police are having to learn how to detect when drivers have been using marijuana. It&amp;#039;s different. She talked about-- you know-- the ski resorts in the state, which are a huge draw, are going to have to figure out what do they do about this. Because they&amp;#039;re on federal lands, there are all sorts of safety issues. Marijuana can be dangerous. Yes, it can be fun, as David Brooks wrote about in his column this week, but there are-- but there are other issues. Honest to god, Judy, I was completely unaware that marijuana could be fun until David Brooks wrote about it this week in The New York Times.(I swear, these are the mole people.) And, while I understand the complicated jurisdictional issues as regards state and federal law-enforcement in this regard, I don&amp;#039;t quite understand why there are &amp;quot;all sorts of safety issues&amp;quot; about toking up on federal lands. After all, before they became &amp;quot;federal lands, a lot of Native Americans seemed to survive it fine, I suspect the people who run the &amp;quot;ski resorts&amp;quot; are going to be OK with a whole crop (sorry) of new tourists, many of whom likely may light up (sorry,again) the room-service menu.It was left to Steve Schmidt to make sense. MR. SCHMIDT: The-- the-- you know, the-- the reality here is, when you evaluate it over the long term. How much money have we spent in this country trying to enforce the war on marijuana? How many people do we have locked up, non-violent marijuana offenders, in this country? And what percentage of them are black versus middle class white kids? So this era of prohibition is coming to an end. This product should be-- should be legal. It should be regulated, it should be taxed. And we talk about as parents things that we&amp;#039;re concerned about.  The other major topic under discussion was the fate of Edward Snowden, International Man Of Luggage. Over on ABC, Aqua Buddha showed up to talk about the lawsuit he says he&amp;#039;s going to file against the NSA, but ONLY IF YOU ACT NOW, THIS IS A FREE CALL. Meanwhile, liberal Senator Chuck Schumer (D-Hedge Funds) entertained The Clinton Guy Shocked By Blowjobs with a glorious solo version of missing the point. SCHUMER: No, I don&amp;#039;t believe so. Snowden says that he&amp;#039;s in the grand tradition of civil disobedience in this country. It is a grand tradition. Part of that tradition is you pay the consequences. If you break the law because your conscience says you have to, you stand trial. That&amp;#039;s what -- or -- and pay the consequences. That&amp;#039;s what Martin Luther King did, Mahatma Gandhi over in India. The most on-point case is Daniel Ellsberg. Who has said repeatedly that he considers Snowden&amp;#039;s acts to be comparable to his own, and who doesn&amp;#039;t need a Beltway lifer like Chuck Schumer to speak for him. Later, on the Powerhouse Roundtable, which copped its name from a roadhouse/steak joint outside of Cape Girardeau, Cokie Roberts once again issued a plea to the Great God Of Bipartisan Grownup Compromisability that drew a lesson from history that was, ah, interesting. Ben Smith from Buzzfeed just had made the inarguable point that action on anything in the Congress is impeded by the fact that the House of Representatives is sunk deeply in The Great Batshit Mire. Cokie retains hope, though. ROBERTS: There is a legislative way to do it, though, which is to bring up border security in one bill and bring up amnesty in another bill, and that&amp;#039;s exactly what happened, you know, in the Compromise of 1850, when California came in as a free state but the fugitive slave law was part of it as well. And so, you know, you can say this was a terrible thing, but it&amp;#039;s exactly the way it got through. Leave aside the fact that, if the simple act of getting a law passed that somewhere north of 60 percent of the American people support is now comparable to deals struck to keep the country from falling apart, then we&amp;#039;re all pretty much screwed, I won&amp;#039;t say it&amp;#039;s a terrible thing, Cokie, but Frederick Douglass is liable to come back and kick your ass. Alas, we must conclude with a very bad idea from the desk of former Merovingian ghostwriter Bob Schieffer, who generally has more sense than to invite onto his program former IRA yell-leader and well-know crazy person Peter King of New York, who briefly abandoned his career as a raving national-security nutball to provide us with a vivid display of dancing on your own feet as regards an extension of unemployment benefits. KING: I don&amp;#039;t want to have this permanent state of unemployment insurance where you end up like Europe. On the other hand there are people who are looking for work, who need some help. So I would like to find a way to get a compromise to extend unemployment insurance, at least, for a brief period of time. But at the same time the Democrats should make compromise as far as some, you know, burdensome regulations that attempt to unleash the economy because the ultimate answer is not unemployment insurance, the ultimate answer is more jobs. But for a temporary period of time I could see an extension of unemployment benefits, but again with restrictions on it so we don&amp;#039;t have a permanent class of people on unemployment insurance and it doesn&amp;#039;t become an impediment to jobs. He would like to help folks as long as his bullpucky about dependency remains intact, as long as he is free to intimate that people are lazy for his own electoral purposes. And our closing hymn comes from the Lamentations Of Our Lady Of The Magic Dolphins, who wonders where everybody has been on the issue of income inequality, which had been a cause of hers since she found her shoes in of the chandelier on Sunday morning. PEGGY NOONAN: The funny thing about inequality is it&amp;#039;s as if everybody has just discovered this problem of the rich are really rich and the poor are really poor and the middle is not gaining.  After all, it&amp;#039;s not like she hasn&amp;#039;t been ignoring it like a dish of beer nuts for 40 years. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a20095/gobshites-on-colorado-marijuana-legalization-010614/>