If you or someone you know is suffering from a debilitating condition or if you are a medical professional, a member of law enforcement, or a public official, your presence during the lobby day could be tremendously influential. Please remember to dress and act professionally; we want to engage legislators, not alienate them.

If you are unable to come to the Statehouse on April 26, you can still take action by sending a letter to your legislators urging them to sponsor medical marijuana legislation this year Website

We've provided sample letters to get you started, but a personally crafted letter is much more effective than a form letter. Please take a moment to personalize the letter before sending it to your legislator.

Please take action now.

Last session, Senator Robert Hagan (D-Youngstown) sponsored legislation that would permit the medical use of marijuana by patients with qualified medical conditions under a doctor's supervision. This legislation would have protected patients, their caregivers, and their doctors from the threat of arrest and

As the media fills with whimsical good-byes to one of America's greatest writers, lets not forget one of the great engines driving this wonderful man---he HATED war. Including this one in Iraq. And he had utter contempt for the men who brought it about.

Kurt Vonnegut was a divine spark of liberating genius for an entire generation. His brilliant, beautiful, loving and utterly unfettered novels helped us redefine ourselves in leaving the corporate America in the 1950s and the Vietnam war that followed.

Having seen the worst of World War II from a meatlocker in fire-bombed Dresden, Kurt's Sirens of Titan, Cat's Cradle, Slaughterhouse Five and God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, cut us the intellectual and spiritual slack to seek out a new reality. It took a breathtaking psychic freedom to merge the interstellar worlds he created from whole cloth with the social imperatives of a changing age. It was that combination of talent, heart and liberation that gave Vonnegut a cutting edge he never lost.

Kurt Vonnegut published over two dozen books, including 2005's "A Man Without a Country." It's a book that is brutally honest in its hopelessness, in fact – I think – overly hopeless, and yet humorous. It may even be hopeless in order to better be humorous. Vonnegut discusses in the book the use of tragedy to heighten laughter. But certainly the humor works to lighten the load of dismay and despair that this book ever-so-lightly dumps on us.

"I know of very few people," Vonnegut writes, "who are dreaming of a world for their grandchildren." Later he writes this epitaph for the Earth: "The good Earth – we could have saved it, but we were too damn cheap and lazy."

The Pentagon’s most likely next target is Iran.

Hillary Clinton says “no option can be taken off the table.”

Barack Obama says that the Iranian government is “a threat to all of us” and “we should take no option, including military action, off the table.”

John Edwards says, “Under no circumstances can Iran be allowed to have nuclear weapons.” And: “We need to keep all options on the table.”

A year ago, writing in The New Yorker, journalist Seymour Hersh reported: “One of the military’s initial option plans, as presented to the White House by the Pentagon this winter, calls for the use of a bunker-buster tactical nuclear weapon, such as the B61-11, against underground nuclear sites.”

For a presidential candidate to proclaim that all “options” should be on the table while dealing with Iran is a horrific statement. It signals willingness to threaten -- and possibly follow through with -- first use of nuclear weapons. This raises no eyebrows among Washington’s policymakers and media elites because it is in keeping with longstanding U.S. foreign-policy doctrine.

It's baaaaaack. The fifty-year multi-trillion dollar failure of atomic energy has resumed its lemming-like march to madness.

Why?

Isn't the definition of insanity the belief that if you do the same thing again and again you'll somehow get a different result?

The first commercial reactor opened in Shippingport, Pennsylvania in 1957. America was promised electricity "too cheap to meter."

That was a lie.

America was promised there'd soon be consensus on a safe way to dispose of high-level radioactive waste.

That was a lie.

America was promised private insurance companies would soon indemnify reactor owners---and the public---against the consequences of a catastrophic meltdown.

That was a lie.

America was promised these reactors were "inherently safe."

Then America was told no fuel had melted at Three Mile Island.

Lie and lie.

Then they said nobody was killed at Three Mile Island

Another lie.