Researchers at the University of California’s San Diego-based Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research presented a report to the state Legislature Wednesday that concludes marijuana has a therapeutic value in treating pain.

Following five clinical trials, the researchers found there is “reasonable evidence that cannabis is a promising treatment” for some specific, pain-related medical conditions.

“We focused on illnesses where current medical treatment does not provide adequate relief or coverage of symptoms” said Dr. Igor Grant, the center’s director and executive vice chair of UCSD’s Department of Psychiatry.

“These findings provide a strong, science-based context in which policymakers and the public can begin discussing the place of cannabis in medical care,” Grant said...

Dick Cheney is a war criminal. He belongs in prison.

“I was a big supporter of waterboarding,” Cheney crowed Sunday, on ABC’s “This Week,” adding, “I was a big supporter of the enhanced interrogation techniques … ”

So, what do we do with this information? The former Number Two Honcho in the United States of America has bragged, in public, that the torture buck stopped, or at least paused long enough to be fondled, on his desk.

Here’s what we do with that information: We throw Dick Cheney in prison.

To go on about our collective business, merely to shake our heads and hope it was a one-off (or, more accurately, a several-hundred-off), to call no one to account, does more than set a dangerous precedent: it establishes the shameful, awful, but clearly undeniable fact that we live in a country that tortures.

That’s present tense: We live in a country that tortures. Maybe not right this minute, maybe not tomorrow or a week from Wednesday, but, that’s what we do. The Obama administration claims to have put a stop to it, and they probably have. Well, good for them, and good for us, as far as it goes, which is not very. Until we as a nation, we as a people, make our rejection of this barbarity manifest through the proper workings of our court system, we’re engaging in what used to be called — and should be called again, for my money — just so much chin music: Yeah, we tortured, and a lot of us feel pretty steamed about it, but we’re not going to do it ever, ever again...

In “Chinatown,” private detective Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) is genuinely baffled by the greed of the already unimaginably wealthy Noah Cross (John Huston). Gittes cannot comprehend why the elderly Cross (a fictional take on the very real William Mulholland) would orchestrate a host of illegal activities - murder among them. When Cross says “The future,” he means securing an opportunity to become richer still.

Gittes is hamstrung by a lack of empathy: He really can’t put himself in this man’s Guccis. It’s like trying to understand why Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield has just announced rate increases of up to 39 percent even after reporting a fourth quarter (2009) profit of $2.74 billion. They’re doing it because they want more. They’re doing it because they can.

“They” being the appropriate word, since the Supreme Court has determined that corporations have the rights, if not the responsibilities, of people. But there is, in fact, a living, breathing “they” there, as Gertrude Stein probably would have had better sense than to put it. Officers of insurance companies, like their compadres in the banking world, live Noah Cross-like lives. They couldn’t possibly eat any better. There’s nothing that their $20 million, $30 million, $40 million salaries/bonuses/stock-option packages will allow them to buy that they couldn’t already buy with the goodies they received last year, and the year before that, and the years before that...

Yes, that means government-run health care. As in Medicare.

And let the howling commence: Socialism! To which I can but reply, damn straight. Socialized medicine. A lot of people find that frightening; after all, who’d want to live in a social democratic hellhole like, say, Norway or Denmark? But put the tarred word aside for a moment, and ask yourself if the average 55-year-old American wouldn’t like to become eligible for Medicare tomorrow. You know what he’d like even better? To become eligible for Medicare today. Then ask the average 35-year-old American how he’d like it. Then ask the average 25-year-old mother how she’d like it if she and her baby were covered by Medicare.

...Although Obama has always talked about bipartisanship, with an ambitious and incomplete agenda in front of him, he may have to implement it.

But this call to work along bipartisan lines is neither new to Obama nor to recent modern presidents. During his campaign, Obama pledged to work across the aisle, and SDSU political science professor Ronald King noted that most presidents don’t have the luxury of a filibuster-safe Senate. For example, former President George W. Bush lost the majority in 2006 and former President Bill Clinton lost the Democratic supermajority in 1994 in both the House and the Senate.

“There is nothing new here,” King said. “The Republicans are playing party-unity — which in turn challenges the Democrats to be unified in turn, plus to gain a few break-away Republicans. It is the same situation that was faced by all Democratic Presidents since World War II, with the Johnson exception noted.”

Additionally, Obama’s “thinking” isn’t unique from past Democratic presidents. King said he knows that “appealing to the middle and sounding bipartisan is the best way” to complete his agenda.

Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.) said he has noticed the “majority of Democrats” include Republicans in discussions but the “overall attitude” has been that Republicans are not needed.

With Scott Brown’s victory, Bilbray said, “The attitude will change dramatically and let’s face it — a pothole is not Democratic or Republican but it needs to get solved.”

Under any reasonable interpretation, the decision was revolutionary. It washed away centuries of limitations on corporate political speech. Prior cases on the subject were overruled. The Court actively struck down elements of the popular bipartisan campaign finance law McCain-Feingold...

The corporation used to be a rarity. Chartered companies were allowed only under the auspices of the King, and for the first century or so of the United States, they were created only by special legislation in the state houses. Now corporations are more routine. Anyone can fill out the right forms, pay a certain fee, and their state’s Secretary of State will issue them a certificate of incorporation...

Federal securities law regulates how corporations are allowed to set their compensation levels for their top managers. It doesn’t make sense to allow a CEO to unilaterally dictate his annual salary. So Congress could pass a law requiring stockholders to pre-approve by a majority or supermajority, any political expenditures made on their behalf by a corporation.

Presumably, some stockholders would vote to approve significant political expenditures. This is especially possible for smaller corporations with a small number of likeminded stockholders. Such expenditures directly from corporate treasuries would be similar in scope and effect to that same group of stockholders voluntarily pooling their individual profits into an electoral expenditure. This is exactly what stockholders were already able to do prior to Citizens United...

Tune into cable news and watch the GOP take credit for the upset while the Dems point fingers and shift blame, with everyone trying to make sense of what it all means and what the future holds.

But like the quote above, perhaps both sides are wrong, about what the election results mean, as well as the direction each party wants to take the country.

Democrats are wrong to take voters for granted and that Brown’s victory is some sort of fluke due to Martha Coakley’s campaign missteps. Just because they had a few extra seats in the Senate it didn’t give them carte blanche to steer the country toward socialism or to have the hubris to make back room deals and handshake promises about giant new and ridiculously complex federal spending programs. A growing number of people across the political spectrum, not just tea party activists, are suspicious and outraged, including liberals who are disgusted that Democratic leaders haven’t gone far enough.

Republicans are wrong to gloat that this one election somehow signals a seismic shift propelling conservatives to power on a wave of anger. I doubt blue state Massachusetts voters, many of whom voted for President Obama and historically tilt Democratic, suddenly became lifelong red state converts. Did everyone just forget that when Republicans controlled the White House and Congress, they ran up a deficit spending worse than the Democrats ever did? Or that they have absolutely nothing concrete to point to as serious accomplishments during that time? (Some may use the “War on Terror” and how there wasn’t another homeland attack post-9/11, but really this is a minimum job requirement of any president or party to do their best to keep the country safe...)

In January 1973, the Supreme Court ruled that the right to privacy in the U.S. Constitution protects the right of a woman to choose whether to continue a pregnancy to term or to have an abortion.

Yet, 37 years later, almost to the day, we face the remarkable possibility that the Congress will enact health care reform legislation that singles out abortion from all other medical procedures, with unprecedented and unnecessary restrictions. Indeed, these restrictions threaten not only to prevent women who will gain access to health insurance from obtaining abortion coverage, but could also result in women losing abortion coverage they currently have.

Anti-choice organizations and lawmakers still aim to overturn Roe v. Wade, but in the absence of their ability to do that right now, they are working tirelessly to enact restrictive laws and regulations that result in additional barriers to women seeking health care. In that vein, anti-choice legislators have succeeded in the House of Representatives in passing the most dangerous obstacle to abortion care in decades — the Stupak abortion amendment.

In effect, the Stupak amendment, if enacted, would be a ban on private health insurance coverage for abortion for millions of women, many of whom pay for their insurance themselves with their own money. This marks an unprecedented departure from existing federal law affecting individuals who pay for their own health insurance.

Because the majority of private health insurance plans already offer abortion coverage, the House bill will actually cause women to lose insurance coverage that they currently have.

After a four-year stint in the U.S. Navy, Eugene Davidovich started to feel anxious, restless, and suffered migraine headaches.

In 2002, at the end of the third class petty officer’s service — which garnered him 10 medals — Davidovich’s doctor prescribed him various drugs and anti-depressants.

Though the drugs treated his initial symptoms, they caused him to experience worse side effects.

Finally, the hesitant patient accepted a prescription for medical marijuana.

Now, years later, after his arrest in a sting operation conducted by the San Diego Police Department, Davidovich is navigating a complicated maze of murky medical marijuana laws that have plagued the state and San Diego County for years.

“ are complex,” said Jim Lange, director of San Diego State University’s Drug and Alcohol program. “There certainly is vagueness to the law, probably because it is difficult to legislate medical decisions, and in conflict with federal law.”

After a four-year stint in the U.S. Navy, Eugene Davidovich started to feel anxious, restless, and suffered migraine headaches.

In 2002, at the end of the third class petty officer’s service — which garnered him 10 medals — Davidovich’s doctor prescribed him various drugs and anti-depressants.

Though the drugs treated his initial symptoms, they caused him to experience worse side effects.

Finally, the hesitant patient accepted a prescription for medical marijuana.

Now, years later, after his arrest in a sting operation conducted by the San Diego Police Department, Davidovich is navigating a complicated maze of murky medical marijuana laws that have plagued the state and San Diego County for years.

“ are complex,” said Jim Lange, director of San Diego State University’s Drug and Alcohol program. “There certainly is vagueness to the law, probably because it is difficult to legislate medical decisions, and in conflict with federal law.”