VOICES

PARDON ME - Blasting "over a century of failed and racist cannabis policies," a trio of progressive U.S. senators on Tuesday urged President Joe Biden to use his executive authority to issue a blanket pardon for all nonviolent federal marijuana offenses.

SUPPLY CHAIN - Out Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg fired back at conservatives attacking him for taking paternity leave after his kids were born – going so far as to accuse him of canceling Christmas for supposedly ignoring supply chain problems – by telling them to get vaccinated.

POLITICS WATCH - Arghh. In desperate response to Biden doing some good and building some roads, the gonzo party of Former Guy and head-spinning, self-serving hypocrisy is ever-more-feverishly fear-mongering,

CALIFORNIA MATTERS - Well, that was awkward.

JUDICIAL WATCH - Beth Robinson will officially become the first out LGBTQ woman in the country to serve on a U.S. appeals court.

COVID POLITICS - I live near Middlefield Ohio, the center of the fourth largest Amish settlement in America.

COMMENTARY - This is the one story that I have not wanted to write.

LGBTQ NATION - Religious right organizations and evangelical leaders are bragging that they are responsible for Republican Glenn Youngkin’s election in this week’s Virginia gubernatorial race.

THE COURT - Ralph Waldo Emerson once told about a guest who came to dinner and spent the entire evening prattling about his own integrity: “The louder he talked of his honor,” Emerson wrote: “the faster we counted our spoons.”

A POV - I waited almost three months for some acknowledgement, but it never came. Not a bottle of champagne. Not a congratulatory note. Not an email of acknowledgement. Not one media request.

ANALYSIS - Populism was the big winner in the Virginia election yesterday, after Terry McCauliffe ran on his past as a Bill Clinton Democrat and Glen Youngkin ran as a rightwing populist.

BORDER WATCH - To: Baja California Gov.-elect Marina del Pilar Ávila and California Gov. Gavin Newsom