Friday, May 17, 2013
Marijuana Use Linked To Reduced Risk of Diabetes
From CBS News: You may have heard that marijuana smokers get hungry after using the drug, and the authors of a new study point out that marijuana users tend to take in more calories than their counterparts. But, their study found that pot smokers aren't any more likely to be obese than non-smokers.
Equally surprising, the researchers found marijuana may actually be a tool in controlling blood sugar -- and may be key in helping diabetics keep their condition in check.
The new study, which was published on May 15 in The American Journal of Medicine, showed that regular marijuana use was linked to significantly lower levels of fasting insulin. Smokers were also less likely to be insulin resistant, a condition where the body's cells no longer respond to a hormone that controls carbohydrates and fat metabolism called insulin. High levels of fasting insulin and insulin resistance could lead to diabetes...
Keep in mind however that despite even with the benefits laid out here, marijuana use has also been linked to strokes in young adults and testicular cancer in young men. Like almost anything in the world of medicine, the risks have to be weighed alongside the benefits.
Why the IRS "Scandal" is Not Obama's Watergate
From The Guardian:
On the Watergate investigation:
The senators were, after all, working with a raft of indisputable material, including the January 1973 convictions of former President Nixon aides G Gordon Liddy and James W McCord, Jr. on charges of conspiracy, burglary, and wiretapping in connection with the June 1972 Watergate break-in, and the April 1973 resignation and firing of other top White House staffers. The senators could afford to be methodical: there had been criminal activity, authorized and carried out at the highest level of the administration, and no amount of grandstanding would further dramatize those already damning facts. The committee set out to establish, in Senator Howard Baker's notorious words, "What did the president know and when did he know it?"
On the Internal Revenue Service incident:
But here's the critical fact: there's been no finding of criminal activity in the Obama administration, and the FBI's opening of a criminal investigation of the IRS should lay to rest accusations that the administration has failed to take the matter seriously.
As Carl Bernstein, one of the reporters who broke the Watergate story, pointed out, there is no evidence the president ordered, much less knew about, the IRS scrutiny of conservative groups' tax-exempt applications. The Treasury Department's Inspector General report concluded that despite the fact that IRS personnel had used "inappropriate criteria" to identify which applications to subject to additional review, personnel told the IG that "the criteria were not influenced by any individual or organization outside the IRS".
Until such time as there is concrete that President Barack Obama orchestrated or had knowledge of what happened with the IRS, calling it his Watergate is a misleading attempt by his political enemies to stir up hatred against him. Yet again, here is an example of the right making claims without the facts to back them up. How predictable.
Today in Responsible Gun Ownership...
From New York Daily News: A Tennessee man showing off the snazzy features of his 9-mm pistol accidentally shot his 13-month-old daughter.Kevin Sayre, 26, now faces an aggravated assault charge and is held in lieu of a $20,000 bond as he awaits a court date Thursday.~"We're always disappointed, astounded, surprised when we hear of someone who is handling a firearm recklessly, neglectfully," Tullahoma Police Chief Paul Blackwell told WSMV-TV.Sayre was allegedly field stripping two Glock pistols at his apartment and showing how their parts are interchangeable when the gun went off, seriously wounding the baby who reportedly was standing with her hands on a coffee table nearby.~“I just imagine like it was my own kid,” neighbor Misty Patterson said as she teared up, holding her own baby. “And it’s sad to know I live close by to this.”
Luckily the baby girl is expected to survive.
Heritage to GOP: More Scandal, Less Doing Your Actual Job
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| House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) |
From The Grio:
In a letter to members of Congress, which was obtained by NBC News, Heritage Action for America, the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation (which recently found itself in hot water over the racial IQ theories of the co-author of their widely panned immigration reform study, Jason Richwine, who resigned from the think tank last Friday), urged Republicans on Capitol Hill not to govern, and instead, to focus on the would-be “scandals” plaguing the Obama administration.
The letter, which is addressed to House Speaker John Boehner and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, trumpets the negative media buzz surrounding the White House, saying that, “for the first time, the activities of the Obama administration are receiving a sustained public vetting. Americans’ outrage over Benghazi is amplified by the Internal Revenue Service’s intimidation of conservative grassroots organizations and a cascade of negative headlines. There is the real sense the Obama administration has been less than forthright with the American people, the press and lawmakers...”
...“To that end, we urge you to avoid bringing any legislation to the House Floor that could expose or highlight major schisms within the conference. Legislation such as the Internet sales tax or the FARRM Act which contains nearly $800 billion in food stamp spending, would give the press a reason to shift their attention away from the failures of the Obama administration to write another ‘circular firing squad’ article...”
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Three States Making Big Marriage Equality Strides
From the Advocate: A recent poll of Michigan voters found that 56.8% of Michiganders support marriage equality, according to The Detroit News. That's a sharp reversal from last year, when just over 44% of Michiganders supported marriage equality. It's an even more stark departure from 2004, when Michigan voters approved a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage...
...A recent Washington Post poll found that 56% of Virginians support the freedom to marry — a 10% increase from support in 2011. In 2006, Virginians approved a constitutional amendment defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman by a margin of roughly 57%, according to the Post. Interestingly, while a majority of Democratic voters in Virginia have supported the freedom to marry since 2006, 40% of Republicans polled also supported marriage equality...
...Although Arizona voters overwhelmingly passed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in 2008, 55% of voters now favor marriage equality, according to a Rocky Mountain Poll released Wednesday and published at TalkingPointsMemo. Opposition to the freedom to marry among registered voters is just 35%, according to the poll...
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