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Over at TheRawStory, they have covered a story which should be of some interest to every American citizen becuase it concerns their taxes and their government. Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan told Bob Schieffer on Face the Nation that the United States ought to seriously consider legalization of marijuana.

“Those that suggest that some of these measures need to be looked at understand the dynamics of the drug trade; you have to bring demand down and one way to do it is to move in that direction [towards legalization]

In addition to the Mexican diplomat, three former presidents of Latin America – Former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria, former Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, and former Mexican President Ernesto Zedillo – have urged the United States to at least seriously discuss the issue of marijuana legalization. They are, of course, right–but hypocritical. In their own countries, they stifle the legalization movement and are even tougher on drug-related criminals than here in the United States. Of course, that is likely due to U.S. pressure. This is a several billion dollar industry which could supply billions to the economy and millions to busted-budgets nationwide.

Mexican Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan

Johann Hari over at Huffington Post has an interesting perspective on the so-called Pirate Problem. The story takes the side of the so-called Pirates by suggesting that they are simply an impoverished defense force. After many decades of looting, military intervention, and the revokation of property rights–the Somalians have at least some point.

They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia – and it’s not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was “to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters… We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.”

The pirates are well-liked by their countrymen for a reason, with over 70% of Somalians “strongly supporting piracy as a form of national defence of the country’s territorial waters.” It is hard to imagine the citizens of the United States supporting piracy, as the Somalians do now, but in 1776, it was a different story. George Washington and the continental congress paid privateers, pirates, large sums of money to gaurd their territorial waters and fight the British Royal Navy. Local populations in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Texas were known to support various local pirates, too.