House GOP Knows DC Voters Didn't Mean to Legalize Weed

• We all know how important it is to Republicans that the will of The People is never,everoverturned by some arbitrary branch of the eeeeevil Big Government. Like, say, when The People vote to ban rights for The Gay? Yeah, the government should stay the hell out of that. However, when the people vote to legalize marijuana, well, that's a whole nother thing entirely, and it is obviously obvious that voters are idiots who need the government to step in and fix that for them:  

  House Republicans are fighting to roll back Washington, D.C.'s recently passed marijuana legalization initiative in the midst of high-level negotiations over the national budget, according to several Democratic and Republican sources.

  Republicans are insisting on including a provision in an omnibus spending bill that would ban the District of Columbia from using local funds to carry out the legalization measure, which was passed overwhelmingly by ballot initiative in November.

  A proposal to disallow the city from using local funds to carry out the decriminalization of marijuana was attached to the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill when it passed the full committee this summer, and this latest measure being discussed would carry a similar ban.

  No, we do not understand how exactly Republicans are going to defund the district's ability tonotprosecute people for smoking doobies. The whole point -- besides letting people get high if they wanna get high -- is that decriminalizing marijuana is actually ... oh, what's that phrase conservatives love? ... fiscally conservative. No more wasting money on cops busting potheads, no more wasting money on prosecutors prosecuting potheads, no more wasting money on jailing potheads. Plus, also too, all that sweet sweet tax revenue from legalizing marijuana, like in Colorado, where the state is raking in all the millions from legalizing marijuana. But apparently none of that matters -- not the fiscal conservatism and definitely not the will of the voters, who passed the initiative by a mere 40-point margin -- because Republicans know that at least this one time, Big Government knows best.

• Your friendly reminder that Thomas Jefferson thought the Bible was crap:  

  American Founding Father Thomas Jefferson, who authored the Declaration of Independence and served as the third president of the United States, also took a pair of scissors to the Bible, publishing a thin volume of the parts he thought worth keeping. The original Jefferson Bible exists to this day, and is available online. But did Jefferson actually call the Good Book a dung hill, like some say?

  The answer to that question is kind of yes, kind of no.

  Yes, Jefferson thought that most of the Bible was, in modern vernacular, a load of crap, and yes, he did, by way of analogy, use the term “dunghill.” No question: If Barack Obama repeated Jefferson’s words, conservative Republicans would leap to their feet and the dunghill would hit the fan.

• Texas is missing some brains:  

  The University of Texas at Austin is missing about 100 brains -- about half of the specimens the university had in a collection of brains preserved in jars of formaldehyde.

  One of the missing brains is believed to have belonged to clock tower sniper Charles Whitman. [...]

  The university said in a statement that it will investigate "the circumstances surrounding this collection since it came here nearly 30 years ago" and that it's "committed to treating the brain specimens with respect." It says the remaining brain specimens on campus are used "as a teaching tool and carefully curated by faculty."

•  We're going to Mars:  

  In a live webcast, NASA has announced that it’s on its way to taking humans further than they’ve ever been before, with the planned December 4 test flight of their Orion space capsule - the spacecraft that they say will soon take humans to the Red Planet. [...]

  If all goes well, the four-person capsule will be set to carry a crew to an asteroid and then to Mars, and NASA predicts they’ll land on the Red Planet by mid-2030.

• Anyone who has lived in the Bay Area totally gets this:  

  

• Looking for the latest bewb tube shenanigans and snarky recaps of your favorite teevee shows? Go show some love to our gone-but-not-forgotten kid sister Happy Nice Time People. And be sure to follow Happy Nice Time People on Twitter.