From a public health perspective, alcohol taxes are important. "Quite simply, alcohol taxation and other measures that increase the price of ethanol are effective in promoting the public health and safety, " writes Duke University's Philip J. Cook in his 2007 book Paying the Tab. "Higher prices are conducive to lower rates of underage drinking, traffic fatalities, and sexually transmitted disease."

The logic here is simple. Higher taxes make alcohol more expensive. More expensive alcohol makes people drink less of it. And when people are drinking less, they're less likely to suffer costly health problems or do stupid things like drive drunk.

"The qualitative conclusion -- that higher alcohol taxes save lives -- is well established in studies by economists and public health researchers," Cook said in an email. New research just published in the American Journal of Public Health adds to that body of evidence.

In my house I currently have propane, butane, fertilizer, soldering tools, and an extensive collect of tools including a welder.

I bought the Anarchist cookbook when I was like 15.

It's getting ridiculous to say the least.  You have one group hiding behind the constitution to own military grade guns, and the other can't buy a pressure cooker without getting a visit from the FBI.

I better toss the cookbook before some idiot gets it in his head that I am dangerous.  But hot damn if I can't buy assault riffle, a silencer, and enough ammo to wage my own private war.  

My local mini mart sells 20 kinds of knives, crack & weed pipes, every kind of boner supplement know to man, but damn if I can't get a beer before noon on Sunday at the same mart.  But I can go to a Mexican restaurant and start drinking Margaritas at 6am.

Where has common sense gone ?

This business with the FBI feeding people bomb making plans and pushing them towards something they may or may not have done is bothersome to say the least.  Let's get back to making arrests after an actual crime has been committed, let people decide, and if the decide wrongly, arrest them.  But pushing people into something is so GD un-American I want to vomit.

I bet if you dig deep enough you would find that the number one driver behind all this madness, is personal agenda, aka promotions.  Creating a terrorist to arrest isn't making any of us safer, if anything it's diverting resources and having the opposite effect.

It seems the practice of not naming rape accusers in media reports has led to a presumption of guilt to the accused and a lack of investigation before reputations are ruined.

Ederly could not even manage an apology to the frat house that was vandalized by the mob her pack of BS incited.  

JB...Hope to give you a run for the NL East money this year, but your Nats are uber-stacked!  But my Mets may have the second best starting rotation in baseball after your club.

I've always wondered about the backstory of this particular vessel. And thanks to an intrepid local reporter who so happens to work for the Los Angeles Times, along with some equally determined colleagues in Washington, D.C., now we know that the ship should rightfully be called the USS Boondoggle:

Los Angeles Times | April 5, 2015
The Pentagon's $10 billion bet gone bad - "Leaders of the U.S. Missile Defense Agency were effusive about the new technology. It was the most powerful radar of its kind in the world, they told Congress. So powerful it could detect a baseball over San Francisco from the other side of the country. If North Korea launched a sneak attack, the Sea-Based X-Band Radar -- SBX for short -- would spot the incoming missiles, track them through space and guide U.S. rocket-interceptors to destroy them. Crucially, the system would be able to distinguish between actual missiles and decoys. SBX 'represents a capability that is unmatched,' the director of the Missile Defense Agency told a Senate subcommittee in 2007. In reality, the giant floating radar has been a $2.2-billion flop, a Los Angeles Times investigation found. Although it can powerfully magnify distant objects, its field of vision is so narrow that it would be of little use against what experts consider the likeliest attack: a stream of missiles interspersed with decoys. SBX was supposed to be operational by 2005. Instead, it spends most of the year mothballed at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii."

And when you're done with that piece, please read Part II, which explains how "Lawmakers pushed to keep troubled defense programs alive." These are our tax dollars at work -- or more correctly, on a Defense Department binge junket, to the benefit of certain well-placed and -connected contractors.

It seems that the tentacles of Bibi are long and powerful.

I have never quite witnessed this kind of intrusion by a foreign power into our domestic politics. Right out in the open, that is.
Of course we have had ourselves coerced by the Saudis, and others... including (in my opinion) Kuwait...

But I haven't seen anything like Bibi.

And I read that Mr. Nadler, also from that liberal bastion, New York, is trembling in his boots and hedging his bets.

In expanding on the subject, he mentioned that Iran was fkd up with Israel, and with Jews in general. He mention some other things as well - all of them to the detriment of the Iranians.

He did not choose to mention, although he is presumably aware, that the CIA overthrew their elected government and installed a brutal dictator, the Shah of Iran - until he was overthrown in the Iranian Revolution.

From Wikipedia:

The 1953 Iranian coup d'état, known in Iran as the 28 Mordad coup, was the overthrow of the democratically elected Prime Minister of Iran Mohammad Mosaddegh on 19 August 1953, masterminded by the United States (under the name TPAJAX Project) and backed by the United Kingdom (under the name 'Operation Boot').

Following the coup in 1953, a military government under General Fazlollah Zahedi was formed which allowed Mohammad-Rezā Shāh Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran (Persian for an Iranian king), to effectively rule the country as an absolute monarch. He relied heavily on United States support to hold on to power until his own overthrow in February 1979. In August 2013, 60 years after, the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) admitted that it was in charge of both the planning and the execution of the coup, including the bribing of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, as well as pro-coup propaganda. The CIA is quoted acknowledging the coup was carried out "under CIA direction" and "as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government."