Introduction: Below is an excerpt from a writing project of mine, presented as a historical interlude. It is not presented, however, as any sort of commentary on recent events in Baltimore. For the time being, I leave that to others. I am drawing no parallels here, and not in any way attempting to tie events 200 years ago with what is happening now. I just had this piece of writing available and thought it'd be an interesting detour through the past, that's all.

The year was 1812, and the political parties of the time were in violent disagreement over whether America should go to war or not with Great Britain. One Baltimore newspaper publisher wrote a scathing anti-war editorial, and as a direct result unruly mobs and rioting took place in Baltimore for an astounding period of two months. The mobs ruled the streets at night, and all sorts of ugliness was unleashed. This story is, somehow, almost unknown today and is considered no more than a footnote in history (and who actually reads the footnotes?). So I thought it was worth a slight detour into history today, just to remember that Baltimore has seen riots before, even if few today remember it.

One piece of context is missing from this excerpt -- a conclusion. What happened afterwards (on a national scale) was that the Federalists went so overboard in their condemnation of the war that they actually disappeared as a political party (then called a "faction") almost immediately thereafter, ushering in the so-called "Era of Good Feelings" (essentially, one-party rule in America). One other technical note: if anyone is truly interested in my own footnotes and citations which accompany this piece, please ask and I'll post them as a separate page (there's a lot of formatting necessary to do so, which is why I didn't). That's enough of an introduction, I think, so please now sit back and enjoy the following historical interlude.

One of the journalists was killed on the spot and the others left for dead

Jefferson's embargo did set the stage for the next major American political crisis, which proved both the Federalist and Antifederalist political factions were equally capable of radicalism in showing their distaste at being the Out party. In 1809, Jefferson was succeeded in office by fellow Antifederalist James Madison, who then led America into what some historians consider one of the most pointless wars the country has ever fought: the War of 1812. The Federalists' over-reaction to this war would bring an end to America's first partisan era.

Federalists, ignoring their previous fervor for the Alien and Sedition Acts, now saw the value of having their own newspaper network capable of attacking the sitting administration. The factional struggle for American public opinion was now to be fought in the editorial pages, and the Federalists quickly adopted their rivals' tactics in an effort to stay relevant and influential on the American political scene. This was a complete reversal of the Federalist position when they passed the Alien and Sedition Acts in the first place, of course. But strict logic and partisan politics have never shared all that close a relationship in American history -- neither then, nor now.

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We've had a President Jimmy and a President Ronnie, so why not a President Bernie?

That was my first thought on hearing the news that Senator Bernard ("Bernie") Sanders is going to formally announce his candidacy for president tomorrow. Often, first thoughts are not the most profound, as I seem to have proved here. But upon reflection, a deeper meaning can be teased out of my sophomoric response: why not a President Bernie? I'm pretty sure there will be many in the media who laugh Sanders off as some sort of "not serious" candidate, and attempt to pigeonhole Sanders into the role of court jester to Hillary Clinton: there to amusingly point out foibles, but in a way that cannot be taken seriously. This is a mistake. Bernie Sanders is a serious candidate, no matter what his chances at the ballot box may ultimately be. He cares deeply about the issue of inequality, and he is not afraid to say exactly what he thinks. You can question how viable a candidate Sanders will be, but no matter what the answer to that turns out to be, Sanders will be a serious candidate. The issues he will raise on the campaign trail deserve serious discussion and consideration, from not only Hillary Clinton but also from the media themselves.

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Today, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges. Now, admittedly the name "Obergefell" is going to be quite a mouthful for future students of constitutional law to stumble over, but then who am I to criticize hard-to-pronounce (or hard-to-spell, for that matter) Germanic last names? Pot, meet kettle, in other words.

Sorry, I do not mean to make light of the historic nature of today's case, far from it in fact. I have to admit being personally stunned at how fast events have developed. Almost exactly two years ago I wrote a column predicting that America had reached the tipping point on marriage equality. I've re-run this column a few times, and last October I pointed out that when I wrote the original article, the following was true:

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The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments on a marriage equality case tomorrow. At this point, it almost seems anticlimactic. Either the Supreme Court will rule that gay marriage is a constitutional right everywhere in America, or they'll try to punt and say that all states have to recognize all marriages from other states, but don't have to perform their own gay marriages if they don't want to. Either way, gay marriage will become a reality in some awfully conservative states (whether couples have to take a vacation to another state to achieve it or not). The only question now is whether marriage equality will achieve a final and total victory, or just a partial victory. Either way, losing the progress that has already been made seems almost inconceivable at this point.

Perhaps that's too optimistic a read on the situation. We'll see what gets said tomorrow. In June, we'll see what the justices decide. Fair enough. But it's not too early to speculate about the shockwaves this is going to create in the Republican Party. Because as the recent state-level skirmishes have shown, the business community is now diametrically opposed to the Republican Party -- something that doesn't happen every day.

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We'll get to other political news in a moment, but since last week contained the date 4/20, we're going to first run down all the marijuana news. Coincidentally or not, there was a lot of it this week. So let's just begin by "getting into the weeds" of politics, as it were (the ponies come along later, never fear).

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Apparently, Ben Affleck's distant relatives once owned slaves. Now, in the history of this blog I don't think I've ever started an article by dishing celebrity dirt, but this story unfortunately goes a little deeper. Because I didn't learn that fact on PBS. I learned it as the spark which set off yet another integrity problem for both New York's WNET and the Public Broadcasting System in general.

The full story, dug out of the Sony emails that were recently leaked on Wikileaks, is that Ben Affleck appeared as a subject on the PBS series Finding Your Roots, which digs into the ancestry of celebrities and presents the findings as (at best) infotainment. I don't watch the show personally, because I found it to be pretty shallow and sensationalistic, which is decidedly not what I tune in to PBS to see. That's just one man's opinion, I should point out. The show seems to be doing quite well without my viewership, so I realize I may be in the minority in that opinion.

The show is hosted by Henry Louis Gates Jr. What happened, as the Sony email leak reveals, is that Affleck (for whatever reason) asked Gates to edit out the segment of his interview where the slave-owning ancestors were revealed. What happened next is, at this point, anyone's guess. When the show aired, the segment was indeed edited out.

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Yesterday, the news broke that the head of the Drug Enforcement Agency, Michele Leonhart, will be resigning her post. Leonhart has long been controversial, openly contradicting the White House and President Obama at times. She was seen as out of step since both Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder have moved the federal stance on marijuana closer to the new reality of states now legalizing it for adult recreational use. But it wasn't her controversial positions that forced her ouster, it was instead the news that D.E.A. agents in Colombia had been accepting from the drug cartels themselves not just gifts of fancy weapons but also "sex parties" with strippers and prostitutes. This, obviously, is unacceptable behavior.

But while Leonhart's exit was prompted by the revelations in an Inspector General's report, my own reaction was similar to the points made in a Marijuana Policy Project press release -- that there were plenty of substantial reasons to get rid of Leonhart. They helpfully listed a few:

During her tenure as D.E.A. administrator, Leonhart:

• refused to answer a congressman's question about whether marijuana poses less potential harm to the consumer than crack, heroin, or methamphetamine and criticized President Obama for acknowledging the fact that marijuana is less harmful than alcohol to the consumer;
• obstructed research into the medical benefits of marijuana by overruling the D.E.A.'s own administrative law judge, who ruled that it would be in the public interest to end the National Institute on Drug Abuse's monopoly on the supply of marijuana available for approved research;
• oversaw raids of medical marijuana dispensaries that were operating legally under state laws;
• reportedly called it the worst day of her 33 years in law enforcement when an American flag made of hemp was flown over the U.S. Capitol Building; and
• criticized the White House for playing in a softball game against a team of individuals from drug policy reform organizations.

The Marijuana Policy Project sponsored a petition that called for Leonhart's resignation, which now has over 46,000 signatures.

When the news broke of Leonhart's resignation, many in the marijuana reform movement rejoiced. Congressman Steve Cohen (who rightly calls himself "a strong voice in Congress for criminal drug policy reform" and who has been calling for Leonhart's resignation for over a year now) put up a press release on his official website, with the statement:

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A few words of introduction are necessary today. I spent most of the day dealing with email (cleaning out my mailbox and fishing for quotes for tomorrow's article), so instead of a fresh column today, I'm re-running a speech from Hillary Clinton from November of 2007.

There are a few reasons why it is worthwhile to re-run this particular column. At the time, I was going on vacation and needed to fill two weeks of space on the blog. So I got the idea of running a campaign speech from each of the Democratic candidates. I contacted all eight candidates' campaigns and asked them for a campaign speech transcript I could run. I got seven speeches, and one position paper from Dennis Kucinich (whose campaign said he always spoke without notes, therefore they had no prepared speeches available). I ran them in the order I received them back: Chris Dodd, Joe Biden, John Edwards, Barack Obama, Bill Richardson, Hillary Clinton, Dennis Kucinich, and Mike Gravel.

At the time, I promised each campaign that the transcript would run on its own, with no editorial commentary by me. Instead I posted an introduction to the whole "Candidate Speech Series" which explained what I was doing (and which was subsequently updated with links to all of the speeches, in case anyone's interested in the others). In it, I explained what motivated me:

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I write today to challenge what is fast becoming conventional wisdom in the political world. In particular, the notion that Hillary Clinton really needs a strong primary challenge to "toughen her up" for the upcoming race with whomever the Republicans decide upon. When you deconstruct the logic behind this idea, however, it falls apart.

There are many reasons for wishing Hillary will have a competitive primary race with at least one other strong Democratic candidate. The biggest of these is the hope that someone will "challenge her from the left," and thus draw Clinton further in that direction. Liberals have a healthy amount of mistrust of Clinton, and would really like to see an Elizabeth Warren (or perhaps a Bernie Sanders) campaign to challenge Hillary on the finer points of fighting income inequality and Wall Street banks.

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Strange but true, the "Scooby van" is now part of our political lexicon. Hillary Clinton herself is apparently to blame for this one, as this was the playful name she came up with for the van she used to get from New York to Iowa this week. The media, as it will be doing for the next year and a half over pretty much any new aspect of Hillary Clinton's campaign (and we do mean "any new aspect at all -- even the laughably trivial"), quite predictably, freaked out.

Looking at the "Scooby van" through the lens of talking points (as we are wont to do, here), we have to say that one thing struck us about Hillary's choice: her inattention to the proper geeky level of detail. Ask any Scooby Doo fan, and they'll tell you the van in question was actually called "The Mystery Machine." Hillary is showing the same level of cultural tone-deafness as when she flubbed her big opening line, saying: "Live from New York, it is Saturday Night!" She may not have been the only guest host in the entire history of the show who failed to properly say "it's" instead of "it is," but she sure was the first one we ever noticed, cringing all the while. Hillary's getting plenty of other grief this week, over all sorts of microscopic things (our favorite: Jimmy Kimmel's alternate logos for Hillary), so we'll quickly move on from that sort of thing. We wouldn't want to get trampled by the rest of the media, chasing after the Scooby van, to put it another way.

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