“We were very close to war with Pakistan, which easily could have turned into a nuclear war, which could have destroyed all of us. The Obama administration was willing to take that chance, though there were other ways of finding and apprehending bin Laden.”

Noam Chomsky - The Raw Story

“So the scandal—the real scandal—is that 501(c)(4) groups have been engaged in political activity in such a sustained and open way. As Fred Wertheimer, the President of Democracy 21, a government-ethics watchdog group, put it, “it is clear that a number of groups have improperly claimed tax-exempt status as section 501(c)(4) ‘social welfare’ organizations in order to hide the donors who financed their campaign activities in the 2010 and 2012 federal elections.” …

Campaign finance operates by shaky, or even nonexistent, rules, and powerful players game the system with impunity. A handful of I.R.S. employees saw this and tried, in a small way, to impose some small sense of order. For that, they’ll likely be ushered into bureaucratic oblivion.”

Jeffrey Toobin, The Real I.R.S. Scandal - The New Yorker

WaPo's Ezra Klein: The scandals are falling apart

shortformblog:

justinspoliticalcorner:

[the entire article]

H/T: Ezra Klein at Washington Post

We shouldn’t publish full articles unless we have to (say, if the article gets taken down).  A couple of key paragraphs is fine. People can click to read the rest. And the folks that don’t want to will just miss out. 

You like Ezra Klein as a writer? Don’t take away his traffic. I don’t mean to pick on anyone, and this isn’t directed at anyone in particular, but it happens far too often on Tumblr. We have to start somewhere, right? So why not here? — Ernie @ SFB

“The most significant differences between those who smoked marijuana and those who never or no longer did was that current smokers’ insulin levels were reduced by 16 percent and their insulin resistance (a condition in which the body has trouble absorbing glucose from the bloodstream) was reduced by 17 percent.”

The Atlantic’s Lindsay Abrams, reporting on the results of a recent study on the health effects of marijuana. In addition, regular pot smokers were skinnier than those who abstained, “even after adjusting for factors like age, sex, tobacco and alcohol use, and physical activity levels,” and had higher levels of HDL (“good cholesterol”). source (via shortformblog)