By Scott Wilson @ WashingtonPost.com, March 17

ARCATA, Calif. [.....] The shops trade largely in cash with customers who are paid in cash — the marijuana growers, distributors and “trimmigrants,” seasonal workers who cut back the flowering plants for market each autumn. But business is stalling as marijuana’s dark cash economy comes into the light, pushed by the state’s legalization of the drug earlier this year.

Humboldt County, traditionally shorthand for outlaw culture and the great dope it produces, is facing a harsh reckoning. Every trait that made this strip along California’s wild northwest coast the best place in the world to grow pot is now working against its future as a producer in the state’s $7 billion-a-year marijuana market.

A massive industry never before regulated is being tamed by laws and taxation, characteristically extensive in this state Nowhere is this process upending a culture and economy more than here in Humboldt, where tens of thousands of people who have been breaking the law for years are being asked to hire accountants, tax lawyers and declare themselves to a government they have famously distrusted. [....]

The first female speaker of the House has become the most effec­tive congressional leader of modern times—and, not coinciden­tally, the most vilified.

by Peter Beinart

IT’S NOT EASY to say which country America will fight in its next ill-advised war. It’s easier to say what one of the major causes of the war will be.

Marcia and Millie Biggs say they’ve never been subjected to racism—just curiosity and surprise that twins could have such different skin colors.

@ NationalGeographic.com, part of their special issue on race for April, 2018; this excerpt by Patricia Emmons:

[....] In genetic terms, skin color “is not a binary trait” with only two possibilities, Martin notes. “It’s a quantitative trait, and everyone has some gradient on this spectrum.”

Historically, when humans have drawn lines of identity—separating Us from Them—they’ve often relied on skin color as a proxy for race. But the 21st-century understanding of human genetics tells us that the whole idea of race is a human invention.

Modern science confirms “that the visible differences between peoples are accidents of history”—the result of mutations, migrations, natural selection, the isolation of some populations, and interbreeding among others, writes science journalist Elizabeth Kolbert. They are not racial differences because the very concept of race—to quote DNA-sequencing pioneer Craig Venter—“has no genetic or scientific basis.”

And yet 50 years after the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., racial identity has reemerged as a fundamental dividing line in our world.

We’re devoting the April issue of National Geographic to the complicated issue of race.

The Race Issue includes a story about how scientific ideas of race originated, a letter from our editor exploring National Geographic’s own checkered history on race, and a video-driven feature documenting the phenomenon of black men getting stopped by police while driving.

This month’s issue is just a starting point. We’re doing stories on the evolving identities of key ethnic, religious, and racial groups throughout 2018.

....The fact that a sitting president is pursuing over $20 million in bogus ‘damages’ against a private citizen, who is only trying to tell the public what really happened, is truly remarkable — likely unprecedented in our history,” Mr. Avenatti said. He added, “We are not going away and we will not be intimidated by these threats.”....

 "The suspected nerve agent attack upon former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal, which also affected his daughter in the English city of Salisbury last Sunday, has given rise to too much speculation, too much hysteria, and too little analysis or insight. It has provided ammunition for the Russophobic Western media to make accusations that it was another example of Russia in general and Vladimir Putin in particular disposing of a supposed enemy of the Kremlin."

Consortium News has all the appearance of an FSB disinformation asset.

Who will justify voting for this person?

Well illustrated with past photos and video, by Jina Moore @ NYTimes.com, March 14

NAIROBI, Kenya — With their meeting last week, Kenya’s political archrivals have been hailed for calming ethnic tensions in East Africa’s most vibrant democracy and ending a monthslong stalemate that had brought the region’s biggest economy to a near halt.

But Benna Buluma, 48, just feels that she has been left further behind.

Her son Victor Okoth was killed by the police the day after Kenya’s presidential election in August — a vote whose contested result pushed the country to the brink of a democratic crisis and set off protests and violence that human rights groups said led to roughly 70 deaths at the hands of the police.

“This new marriage between the two men is not in good faith,” said Ms. Buluma, speaking of the rapprochement between President Uhuru Kenyatta and his longtime rival Raila Odinga, who met on Friday for the first time in more than half a year.

“It keeps the wound in my heart alive,” she said [.....]

Phillip Kennicott, going back to January 26, WaPo.  574 comments at this writing.  Apologies if someone already posted about this earlier and I missed it...

The Guggenheim has said no to the president of the United States, which is a powerful gesture in itself. But it has also presumed to offer him something “more” valuable according to the value system it imputes to him: a tawdry love of gleaming gold fixtures, common to vulgar despots all the way back to Midas himself. The subtext here is: We assume you only want the van Gogh painting as a status symbol, which we refuse to endorse; but we will give you what you really crave, which is crass gold. If he accepts the golden toilet, he confirms their view of him. If Trump declines the golden toilet, by implication he would seem to believe that there are things (such as van Gogh paintings) that transcend money and commerce. And thus, he may undermine his own worldview, in which all things have their price and anything can be exchanged for something else if the money is right.

Conor Lamb’s success could provide a blueprint for other Democrats in tough races.

By Elena Schneider & Heather Cagle @ Politico.com, March 14

PITTSBURGH — Conor Lamb weathered $10 million in attack ads cartoonishly calling the Democratic candidate in Pennsylvania’s special election a member of Nancy Pelosi’s liberal “flock.”

Now other Democratic hopefuls are looking to adopt Lamb’s strategy — he repeatedly and bluntly disavowed the Democratic leader — in their own competitive races. It raises the prospect of a slate of Democratic hopefuls running against the party’s House leader as they try to neutralize one of the GOP’s go-to attacks — a pillar of Republicans’ plan to keep the House majority in November.

A half-dozen Democratic House members and candidates told POLITICO in interviews that they had been closely monitoring how Lamb handled the Pelosi attack [....]