It's a shame I missed this nine years ago -- hilarious SNL bit from 2000...

Calif tax officials: Legal pot would rake in $1.4B     
Jul 15 06:20 PM US/Eastern

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - California tax officials say a state proposal to tax and regulate marijuana like alcohol would generate nearly $1.4 billion in revenue.

A State Board of Equalization report released Wednesday estimates marijuana retail sales would bring $990 million from a $50-per-ounce fee and $392 million in sales taxes.

The bill introduced by San Francisco Democratic Assemblyman Tom Ammiano in February would allow adults to legally possess, grow and sell marijuana.

Ammiano has promoted the bill as a way to help bridge the state's $26.3 billion budget shortfall.

As the bill is written, the state could not begin collecting taxes under the bill until the federal government legalizes marijuana.

A spokesman says Ammiano plans to amend the bill to remove that provision

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D99F5CG80

Researchers from the school of psychology at Britain's Keele University have found swearing can make you feel better as it can have a "pain-lessening effect," according to a study published in the journal NeuroReport.

Colleagues Richard Stephens, John Atkins and Andrew Kingston, set out to establish if there was any link between swearing and physical pain.

"Swearing has been around for centuries and is an almost universal human linguistic phenomenon," says Stephens.

"It taps into emotional brain centers and appears to arise in the right brain, whereas most language production occurs in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain. Our research shows one potential reason why swearing developed and why it persists."

Their study involved 64 volunteers who were each asked to put their hand in a tub of ice water for as long as possible while repeating a swear word of their choice.

They then repeated the experiment using a more commonplace word that they would use to describe a table.

The researchers found the volunteers were able to keep their hands in the ice water for a longer when swearing, establishing a link between swearing and an increase in pain tolerance.

Stephens said it was not clear how or why this link existed but it could be because swearing may increase aggression.

"What is clear is that swearing triggers not only an emotional response, but a physical one too, which may explain why the centuries-old practice of cursing developed and still persists today," he said.

(Writing by Belinda Goldsmith, Editing by Miral Fahmy)

http://www.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idUSTRE56C1B320090713

Supreme Court lets Las Vegas man keep 'HOE' license plate

By BRENDAN RILEY
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
AND MIKE BLASKY
LAS VEGAS REVIEW-JOURNAL

CARSON CITY — A Las Vegas man won a court battle today with the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles over his “HOE” license plate, which the agency refused to renew on grounds that he was using a slang reference to prostitutes.

The Nevada Supreme Court ruled that DMV officials based their refusal of William Junge’s vanity plate on definitions found in the Web-based Urban Dictionary, which includes user contributions.

The justices ruled that the contributed definitions “do not always reflect generally accepted definitions for words.”

Junge, whose lawsuit was represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada after it reached the appellate level, said he had the personalized plate from 1999 to 2006, when the DMV refused to let him renew it.

Junge said he wanted “TAHOE” for the plate on his 1999 Chevy Tahoe, but it wasn’t available so he settled for “HOE.” For his plate background, he picked one with a Lake Tahoe panorama.

Junge said his reluctance to comply with the DMV had nothing to do with his preference for the word — it was their attitude.

“I simply went in to renew a plate,” he said. “Ten days later I got a certified letter saying they wanted it. There was no due process, no recourse, anything. They said bring it (the plate) in 10 days, or we’ll pull your registration and driver’s license.”

He decided to appeal the decision to the DMV, and lost. He then hired a lawyer and went to Clark County District Court, which ruled in his favor.

The DMV appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which upheld the District Court’s ruling.

“When it comes down to it, this was all just because the pinheads at the Sahara (Avenue) office of the DMV were on an ultimate power trip,” Junge said.

He invested $1,500 in lawyer fees before the ACLU picked up his case.

“If I had to pay for representation again, I imagine it would have been three times that,” he said.

The high court said the Urban Dictionary “allows, if not encourages, users to invent new words or attribute new, not generally accepted meanings to existing words.”

But “a reasonable mind would not accept the Urban Dictionary entries alone as adequate to support a conclusion that the word 'HOE’ is offensive or inappropriate,” the justices wrote.

Rebecca Gasca of the ACLU said the action by a DMV supervisor to block Junge from renewing his license plate violated constitutional First Amendment protections.

“While the Urban Dictionary might be an entertaining Web site about the English language, the court acknowledged it’s not a reliable source for DMV decision-making about whether a license plate is vulgar,” Gasca said.

In written briefs submitted to the Supreme Court, an attorney for the DMV argued there was no First Amendment violation and the state has a reasonable basis for regulating vanity plates on vehicles. It also said the term “hoe” was derogatory toward women.

Junge said he never relinquished the plate to the DMV, despite many letters ordering him to do so.

What bothered him the most, he said, was that no one he knew ever had a problem with his plate. The reference to his vehicle was pretty clear to most, he said.

“It obviously didn’t mean anything (derogatory),” Junge said.

He was pleased to hear of the final ruling, although the results were unexpected.

“I expected to lose. You rarely battle the government and come out on top.”

http://www.lvrj.com/news/50306657.html

Nashville lost a beloved sports hero in Steve McNair yesterday.  Speculation is murder-suicide.  If that's the case, I suspect his girlfriend killed him with his gun.  If not, consider this:

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McNair's friend showing up and initially not noticing two dead bodies is a major red flag.  My girlfriend also pointed out that women in murder-suicides generally don't shoot themselves in the head.  Also interesting is this site:

http://www.vpc.org/studies/amertrend.htm

"Women tend to kill their children and themselves, but not their intimate partners"
"Most murderers in murder-suicides are male"
"Most murderers are older than their victims"

Whatever the case, Nashville is mourning tonight.

Here is video of the large dead tree that my Dad and I cut down in Franklin, TN yesterday.

Timber!

The L.A. Times reports that Michael Jackson has died.  The news has blown up Twitter.

Funny thing, I thought this shit would stop when Bush left office.  The economy is circling the drain and we have federal government resources going toward this?!?

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Feds Freeze Poker Champ's Winnings
Federal Officials Order Banks to Freeze Millions in Online Poker Winnings
By RUSSELL GOLDMAN

June 11, 2009—

On the Sunday before Memorial Day, David made the big time.

Winning $10,000 in an online poker tournament made him eligible for the upcoming World Series of Poker, the game's premier event, where hundreds of players -- amateur and professional -- descend on Las Vegas from around the world to play for a multimillion-dollar pot.

To register, he simply had to cash a check cut by a company that processed payments for the poker Web site Pokerstars.com and use the $10,000 to buy into the series.

When he went to cash the check from Account Services Wednesday, it bounced, he said.

What David, a 41-year-old from Virginia who spoke on the condition that ABC News use only his first name, initially thought was a glitch turned out to be part of an unprecedented government crackdown on online poker that affected some 27,000 people.

Late last week, the federal government ordered five banks to freeze a total of $30 million in payments owed to the players from companies that process payments from two offshore gambling sites, according to the Poker Players Alliance, a group that represents the interests of the companies and players.

"It's not like the government went after money that the site made, instead they seized money that belonged to me," David said. "There is no law that restricts citizens from recovering money."

According to the alliance, federal prosecutors working out of New York's Southern District ordered Citibank, Wells Fargo and three smaller banks to freeze funds in accounts belonging to Allied Systems and Account Services, companies that process funds for the poker sites.

Some affected players who gamble at the popular sites FullTiltPoker.com and PokerStars.com first realized they could not access funds in their accounts over the weekend when checks issued from the companies bounced.

Online poker, a $9 billion to $12 billion a year industry, is legally a gray area, experts told ABCNews.com. Washington is the only state with a law on its books that bans residents from playing on the Internet. The sites themselves, however, are not allowed to operate in the United States and are all registered overseas.

Online Poker Players Alliance Criticizes Freezing of Accounts

"There is no legal precedent for what the government is doing," said John Pappas, executive director of the alliance.

"We contend playing online poker is not unlawful. The government is going after the players' money, not the sites'. The fact is, there is no federal law against playing online poker," he said.

Though the government maintains that online gambling is illegal, the U.S. attorney's office in New York would not comment on the case or confirm an investigation was under way.

According to federal documents obtained by The Associated Press, a judge in the Southern District of New York issued a seizure warrant last week for an account at a Wells Fargo bank in San Francisco. The AP reported that the documents also showed that a federal prosecutor told a bank in Arizona to freeze an account.

In a letter dated Friday and faxed to Alliance Bank of Arizona, Arlo Devlin-Brown, the assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York said that accounts held by payment processor Allied Systems Inc. are subject to seizure and forfeiture "because they constitute property involved in money laundering transactions and illegal gambling offenses," according to the AP.

In another letter, Devlin-Brown asks that the bank treat the funds "as legally seized" by the FBI, saying that the government has probable cause that the gambling payments of U.S. residents had been directed to offshore illegal Internet gambling businesses, the AP reported.

A source at Citgroup familiar with the government request, however, confirmed the "bank has been contacted and is cooperating" with the authorities.

According to the alliance, the laws cited by prosecutors "appear to allege violations of the Wire Act and the Illegal Gambling Business Act" and not to a more recent piece of legislation on online gaming called the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act.

Another player, Sam Friedman, a 24-year-old accountant in New York City who plays every night in tournaments on FullTiltPoker.com, said he realized the company had last week removed an option to deposit winnings directly into his Citibank account.

Internet Poker Players Say Feds Are 'Reaching Into People's Bank Accounts'

"There are lots of ways to deposit and withdraw money and payment options are always disappearing, but something didn't seem right," Friedman said.

"I can't believe the government is reaching into people's bank accounts like this," he said. "For a lot of serious players this is their lifeblood. This is how they make ends meet."

Both FullTiltPoker.com and PokerStars.com have reimbursed players who tried to cash out and were unable to.

"In light of recent events involving the freezing of certain accounts, Full Tilt Poker would like to assure all players that their funds remain safe and secure," spokeswoman Michelle Clayborn said in a statement.

"All players who were affected by the current situation have had their funds returned to their accounts," the statement said. David, the World Series hopeful, said he had been reimbursed by PokerStars and given an additional 10 percent credit.

He used his own savings to buy into the World Series and will use the winnings from his championship game online to pay himself back as soon as he gets them, he said.

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=7808131