As I woke early Wednesday morning, I noticed Deanna's concerned expression as she looked at her cell phone. While she's been very busy these past few months starting a business, she's not one to initiate phone calls before she's even gotten out of bed. I walked downstairs and three minutes...

[Update 3, 11:45 AM: Xeni Jardin of BoingBoing explains why this is important and why you should care.]

[Update 2, 10:15 AM: The volume of angry email I woke up to this morning has astonished me. People, think about this: I pointed out a blooper & was threatened...

On Tuesday night, I received an aggressive and threatening letter from Martin Singer, Demi Moore's attorney. It is marked "Confidential Legal Notice - Publication or Dissemination is Prohibited". However, since Mr. Singer and I have no confidentiality agreement, and it provides essential context to the matter at hand,...

There has probably never been a more confusing legal environment regarding marijuana than there is right now in California, and last Wednesday's multi-agency raids on two Los Angeles medical marijuana dispensaries serve as perfect illustrations.

In February, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said that the DEA would no longer...

A new advertisement produced by the Marijuana Policy Project was launched this week with the intention of catalyzing new debate about marijuana policy. But in a move the ACLU describes as "bad citizenship," several major television stations -- including NBC, ABC, and FOX affiliates in Los Angeles and San Francisco...

What if you were worried about your heart and your doctor said he wanted to perform a "stress test" on you - then he sends you home to fill out a questionnaire. Upon returning the questionnaire, you steel yourself for the physical exam, the EKG, the treadmill, and all the...

At the Milken Institute Global Conference tonight, a techie friend of mine and I pondered (over cocktails, of course) whether the evening dinner panel would be worth seeing. It wasn't a question of interestingness; the speakers were former San Francisco mayor Willie Brown, Congressman Harold Ford, entertainer-commentator Rush Limbaugh,...

The Milken Institute's 2009 Global Conference has again assembled an impressive group of business and political heavyweights. It's clear that Wall Street has descended on these generally laid-back hills; the last time the Beverly Hilton saw this many wingtip loafers was surely during a movie filming.

Milken's ambitious agenda...

As many of my HuffPo friends know, I don't have a socialist worldview and am a believer in free, functional, and fair markets.

But the last few years have shown us how - and how spectacularly - a poorly-operated market can fail. And contrary to the religious tenets of a...

Today, California state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco) introduced Assembly Bill 390, titled "The Marijuana Control Regulation and Education Act".

The bill's language is not yet available on the Assembly's bill retrieval system, but according to reporters who were at the press conference, the bill enables the...

During the President's transition to power, his "Open For Questions" web site received thousands of questions. The most popular question concerned marijuana decriminalization. While many were deemed worthy of serious, nuanced responses, the marijuana question was dismissed with a single sentence: "President-elect Obama does not support the legalization of marijuana."...