Mitt Romney Is STILL Never Going To Be President, Pot Saves Lives, And Other News You Can Maybe Use

It is a day. Of the week. Here is some news:

• Mitt Romney gave an interview to Hugh Hewitt. He promised really a lot that he is not going to try to not be president for a third time, really, he swears, unless the entire Republican Party that never liked him begs him to run and lose again, pretty please, with a cherry on top. That is not going to happen. People are talking about it anyway. He's still not going to be president. The end.

• Who's the smelly pot-smoker now, huh?

  The chief of the Jonesboro, Arkansas police resigned on Monday, three days after being suspended by the mayor for making derogatory comments on Facebook about a local news reporter he called “smelly” and a backer of marijuana smoking. [...]

  “I let my anger and pride override my wisdom and judgment by saying a number of things that are unacceptable given my position,” he said in a resignation letter.

  The reporter, Sunshine Crump, who resigned from the Jonesboro Sun last week after complaining she no longer felt safe, will rejoin the newspaper, its editor said.

• Speaking of smelly pot-smokers, bad news for Maureen Dowd, excellent news for the rest of us:

  A new study suggests that medical marijuana could provide some relief from the national epidemic of prescription painkiller overdoses, which kills more Americans each year than car crashes do.

  States with medical marijuana laws on the books saw 24.8 percent fewer deaths from painkiller overdoses compared to states that didn't have such laws, according to the study published in JAMA Internal Medicine. That meant 1,729 fewer deaths than expected in 2010 alone, and states saw their overdose rates generally improve each year after their medical marijuana laws were passed, researchers found.

  Sadly, there is a but:

  The study isn't exactly a slam dunk for medical marijuana advocates, though. The authors say they can't make a direct causal link between state medical marijuana laws and lower painkiller overdose rates. There are other limitations to the study — for instance, researchers couldn't adjust for factors like socioeconomic status, race and patient diagnoses.

  That's okay, science. You do your further research, we'll be over here smoking medical marijuana. For our health.

• Poor Gov. Sam Brownback. It's hard to be a Kansas Republican andstillbe so disliked. And yet, according to this shiny new poll , he's losing his re-election. Sure, it's only August, but it seems a whole lot of Kansans have realized he blows a lot.

• This hot new trend of criminalizing pregnancy seems like sort of a bad idea, don't you think?

  A 33-year-old woman from Indiana, has been charged with the feticide and fetal murder of her unborn child after she endured a premature delivery and sought hospital treatment.

  Purvi Patel faces between six and 20 years in prison for feticide and up to 50 years imprisonment for neglect of a dependent when she goes to trial, currently scheduled for 29 September. She is the second woman in Indiana to be charged with feticide following the prolonged criminal prosecution of Bei Bei Shuai, who lost her baby when she tried to kill herself.

  Women’s rights advocates see the decision by prosecutors of St Joseph County, Indiana, to apply feticide laws against Patel as part of the creeping criminalization of pregnancy in America. At least 38 of the 50 states have introduced fetal homicide laws intended to protect the unborn child and in a growing number of states – including Alabama, Mississippi and South Carolina – those laws have been turned against mothers.

• AtThe Times, An "Up Yours" To Gov. Cuomo .

•  BOOM :

  

Your turn. What has you hot, bothered, or going back to bed?