Relaxed Focus: "You are."

Crime is down in Denver after pot’s legalization, but AP still wants to scare us:

"After three months of legal pot, Denver has not turned into an urban wasteland. In fact, as Vox reports, crime in the first quarter of 2014 is down across the board from the first two months of 2013. Yes, it’s still early. But so far, the numbers don’t suggest that Denver is about to succumb to a crime wave fueled by pot-addicted hooligans. (Yes, some law enforcement officials actually warned of this.)

...violent and property crimes are down in Denver. And we have no way of knowing how many of the crimes that have been committed are related to legalized marijuana. But the AP goes ahead and quotes law enforcement officials who say the entire region is erupting into chaos — the same group of people who predicted as much before legalization took effect, and so of course have an interest in seeing it come to pass."

Be an individual. Like everybody else.

The Heart of the Matter: The Real Purpose of the CIA Torture Report:

"...note that only portions of the report will be declassified, and that the White House and the CIA will be heavily involved in the decision about what those portions will be. Explain this to a child -- "the subject of a damning report gets to decide how much of the report will be revealed" -- and the child would laugh at the obvious absurdity. In America, of course, such nonsense is simply the oligarchical norm...

Listen to the rhetoric of Diane Feinstein and other committee members:

'This nation admits its errors, as painful as they may be. (This one had me chuckling in its own right). Torture is wrong, and we must make sure that the misconduct and the grave errors made in the CIA’s detention and interrogation program never happen again. We need to get this behind us. '

Not a lot of talk there about America being a party to the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, signed by president Reagan, ratified by the Senate, and by virtue of Article VI of the Constitution, the Supreme Law of the Land.

...most pernicious effect of the release of some portions of the report is that the release will solidify America’s prevailing narrative on torture, which is that the appropriate question to ask about torture is, “did it work.” CIA critics will point to evidence that torture didn’t work; CIA defenders will counter with evidence that it did. The public will be left with a powerful metamessage that what really matters is the question of whether torture is effective. In fact, if America is indeed a nation under the rule of law (I know, it’s practically a laugh-line at this point), what matters isn’t whether you believe something “works,” but whether that thing is illegal."

Penny. Penny. Penny. Kaley Cuoco-Sweeting: Getting Breast Implants Was the Best Decision I Ever Made | E! Online:

"In the latest issue of Cosmopolitan, the 29-year-old actress admits to getting breast implants back in 2004 when she was on the show 8 Simple Rules. Cuoco-Sweeting has never regretted it and even calls getting her boobs done "the best decision I ever made.""

Bjørn Lomborg - Timeline Photos:

"A lot of people have claimed that ever higher temperatures in the US corn belt would reduce yield increases. Now, Roy Spencer checked the data -- and while climate models definitely expect dramatically increasing temperatures, reality forgot to play along. Standard caveat: global warming is real and temperatures will long-run rise, but the current models seem to way too hot..."