"Is sexual desire a human right?"

"And are women entitled to a little pink pill to help them feel it?"

Those questions are being raised in a campaign that is pressing the Food and Drug Administration to approve a pill aimed at restoring lost libido in women. The campaign, backed by the drug�s developer and some women�s groups, accuses the F.D.A. of gender bias for approving Viagra and 25 other drugs to help men have sex, but none for women....

The drug, flibanserin, has been rejected twice by the F.D.A. on the grounds that its very modest effectiveness was outweighed by side effects like sleepiness, dizziness and nausea....

I don't see how women are "entitled" to a drug in the general area of Viagra as some kind of gender equity proposition. The standard for approval of all drugs should be the same � some balance of effectiveness and unwanted effects. And obviously, there's a big difference between wanting to have sex and the capacity to physically carry out the act. Why is not wanting to have sex even regarded as a dysfunction? I want to want what I don't want. What the hell kind of problem is that? Or is it that my partner wants me to want what I don't want and I want to satisfy him? Drugging women so we'll be able to do what men want? How did that get turned into a women's rights issue? I guess you could say that it's for women to decide � don't take away our choice! � whether we want to want what he wants when we don't want it.

�Our usual patient is someone who is fearful of losing the relationship they have been in for years,� said Dr. Irwin Goldstein, director of sexual medicine at Alvarado Hospital in San Diego and a consultant to many drug companies. �It�s tragedy after tragedy after tragedy.�

One of his patients, Jodi Cole, 33, of Porter, Okla., said her lack of desire �tends to cloud my thoughts of everything related to my husband.� She said that �replacing the dread I have for intimacy with desire would be life-changing.�

Meanwhile, on college campuses, Cole's frame of mind � needing to have sex out of fear of losing the man � would be enough to brand her husband as a rapist if he proceeded to have sex with her knowing that's how she felt. And yet we're asked to think a drug that causes sleepiness, dizziness and nausea should be approved � in the name of women's rights � so she can blot out her lack of true consent.

This flibanserin is like those rape drugs frat boys are said to put in the unguarded drink. Oh, but if the woman chooses to take the drug? Well, isn't that like choosing to get drunk at the party? The man isn't supposed to exploit the opportunity of a drunken and seemingly willing sexual partner. Why is it okay to have sex with a woman who's taken the flibanserin?

"Mr. Ulbricht�s high-tech drug bazaar was novel and full of intrigue, operating in a hidden part of the Internet known as the dark web..."

"... which allowed deals to be made anonymously and out of the reach of law enforcement. In Silk Road�s nearly three years of operation, over 1.5 million transactions were carried out on the website involving several thousand seller accounts and more than 100,000 buyer accounts, the authorities have said. Transactions were paid for using the virtual currency Bitcoin, and Mr. Ulbricht, operating under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts, took in millions of dollars in commissions, prosecutors said... 'He developed a blueprint for a new way to use the Internet to undermine the law and facilitate criminal transactions,' the office of Preet Bharara, the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a sentencing memorandum this week. 'Using that blueprint,' the office said, 'others have followed in Ulbricht�s footsteps, establishing new "dark markets" in the mold of Silk Road, some selling an even broader range of illicit goods and services.'"

Dread Pirate Roberts � Ross W. Ulbricht, 31 � faced a minimum sentence of 20 years. The judge � Federal District Judge Katherine B. Forrest � gave him life.

"Scientists have figured out how to brew morphine using the same kit used to make beer at home."

"They have genetically modified yeast to perform the complicated chemistry needed to convert sugar to morphine."

A Facebook page asks people "to report where you see Matt Kenny. Where he eats and where he works. Anywhere you see him in town when on duty."

Matt Kenny is the police officer who shot and killed Tony Robinson and who, we learned a few days ago, will not be prosecuted.

Facebook has apparently responded to criticism and taken the page down. It doesn't display there, but I can see it in Google cache. I won't link to that. I can see that it had 172 "likes" and said:

This is a page to report where you see Matt Kenny. Where he eats and where he works. Anywhere you see him in town when on duty. It is a community protection service. This cop has killed two people already, he should not be on the streets with a gun....

On the day before the D.A.'s announcement (which detailed why Kenny's action was justified), the Landmarks Commission approved a mural honoring Robinson:

"[T]he mural itself will depict no violence, no guns, no 'RIP.' It will show people in happy moments, skateboarding, sitting on the front porch, playing the guitar. Things anyone in the neighborhood would do."

The mural will appear on the side of the Social Justice Center (which is very close to the place where Robinson was shot).

And here's a 27-page summary of the results of the investigation. If you read it, I think you'll agree with me that it's a story of a young man having a terrible drug experience, losing touch with reality, and endangering himself and others: "I took shrooms. I'm freaking out. I shouldn't have done this."

I googled that quote and got to a Reddit discussion titled "'Oh shit, I shouldn't have done this' on heroic mushrooms doses." ("Anyone else get that type of anxiety? Sometimes during my trips I tell myself 'I will never try mushrooms ever again' but I always come back haha.") From the comments:

My only heroic dose (above 3.5 grams) was 7 grams. There wasn't even a "me" to think that. At one point, I looked at everyone in our group (who all took the same dose) and they weren't speaking English. It was as if their voices were put on reverse and through weird delays, it wasn't even remotely close to English. But the whole thing was shits and giggles and it was the greatest fucking day of my life....

It's hard to imagine what Robinson was perceiving and what he thought he was doing when he encountered Matt Kenny and punched him in the head in that narrow stairway. It's very sad to think that this is someone who earlier in the day said � page 7 of the summary � "I want to get on some spiritual shit." 

Did he search the internet and find things like: "There are many reasons for going to the heroic level; such as wanting to understand the fabrics of the soul, the universe, and just for general curiosity. It deeply cleanses the soul and keeps the ego at bay. Ego death at a heroic dose level is nearly unnoticeable because it happens so fast and the ego is unable to hold onto itself."

ADDED: Robinson was shot in that narrow stairway, and earlier the same day, something else happened there. "Robinson stepped off the top stair without looking and continued towards the door" at the bottom as if the stairs weren't even there. "J.L. described Robinson's jump as being 'like super human." (Page 13 of the investigation summary.) Outside, he lay down on the sidewalk, then got up and ran and "jumped so that his body was in a horizontal position." Sounds like a description of Superman flying. But Robinson landed in the street, in front of a car that stopped "1 to 1.5 feet" in front of him. 

"Lawyers for Reed College have fired back at a former student who has accused the school of wrongly kicking him out and falsely labeling him a sex offender."

"The school alleges that even before 'John Doe'... filed his lawsuit last month, he admitted that he used cocaine, violated Reed's honor principle, provided alcohol, Xanax and ecstasy to other students (to be the 'cool friend who facilitates a fun night'), made vile statements to his ex-girlfriend accuser and retained a sexually explicit video of her on his cellphone until Reed ordered him to delete it...."

Doe accuses [another student, "Jane Roe"] of lying to school officials about their consensual relationship and he alleges that The Reed Institute - better known as Reed College - railroaded him through a disciplinary process intended only to expel him.

He maintains that he and Roe dated and later engaged in group sex with other young women, sometimes under the influence of ecstasy, a psychoactive drug better known as "Molly." But, he alleges, things blew up when he broke up with Roe and she later punched him in the face and went to school officials, telling them she didn't consent to one of their evenings of group sex.

Reed takes the position that "ingesting impairing substances renders consent void."

IN THE COMMENTS: Ignorance is Bliss said: "So did John Doe ingest impairing substances? If so, is the school treating Jane Roe as a rapist too?"

"Madison police reported no problems related to protests" after yesterday's announcement that there will be no prosecution of the police officer who shot Tony Robinson.

The Wisconsin State Journal reports:

The decision by Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne set off a late-afternoon march from the Williamson Street site to the Capitol Square by a couple of hundred people, with clergy members and young people heavily represented....

The dozens of people huddled together on Williamson Street hovered over cellphones listening to Ozanne�s afternoon news conference. There was no audible reaction when Ozanne rendered his decision....

The silence was broken when a Unitarian Universalist minister got people singing a hymn, "Guide My Feet."

On Tuesday morning, the Black Leadership Coalition, a newly formed group, announced it had around 100 volunteer peacekeepers ready to observe protests and intervene if necessary as liaisons between protesters and police officers. By evening, the group�s spokesman, Greg Jones, said just one team of seven or eight people had been deployed.

In the evening,"several dozen people gathered for a vigil at Pres House campus ministry on the UW-Madison campus," where there were hugs, hand-holding in a circle, and prayers.

The Urban League of Greater Madison issued a statement that said:

�While we make no attempt to excuse Tony Robinson�s dangerous and aggressive behavior on that afternoon, we believe it is a legitimate question to ask whether the outcome of this encounter would have been different had Tony Robinson been a white, middle-class teen engaged in similar behavior..."

The Wisconsin State Journal opines that the crowd at the time of Ozanne's announcement "likely would have been larger if the Young, Gifted and Black Coalition had put out a call to its supporters."

The group has been at the forefront of previous protests but announced it would hold no official events Tuesday "out of respect for Tony Robinson�s family.�

The coalition is planning a protest Wednesday as part of a national event called Black Out Wednesday.

Black Out Wednesday? Not to be confused with Blackout Wednesday, which Wikipedia says is "the night before the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States, which is always a Thursday."

It is associated with binge drinking since very few people have work on Thanksgiving, and most university students are home to celebrate the Thanksgiving holiday with their families. The name refers to "blacking out," memory loss due to excessive alcohol intoxication.

Is this a national event? My Google news search isn't bringing up anything outside of Madison.

Anyway, "Black Out Wednesday" seems like an unfortunate name, especially since the Tony Robinson incident, as detailed by Ozanne in yesterday's announcement, involved substance abuse:

Toxicology reports found marijuana, Xanax and psychedelic mushrooms in Robinson's system, Ozanne said. And the girlfriend of one of the residents of the Williamson St. apartment overheard Robinson say: "I took shrooms. I'm freaking out. I shouldn't have done this." 

"The country�s rapidly growing marijuana industry has a tax problem."

"Even as more states embrace legal marijuana, shops say they are being forced to pay crippling federal income taxes because of a decades-old law aimed at preventing drug dealers from claiming their smuggling costs and couriers as business expenses on their tax returns."

"David Crosby and Nash claimed they hadn't played 'Page 43' in years..."

"... deciding to add it to the setlist after an afternoon run through. Given the impressive end result, that must have been one heck of a rehearsal."

Crosby, Stills and Nash played in Milwaukee last night.

A stray quoted from David Crosby: "These songs kept coming. So I quit smoking pot. I know, its shocking. But I think if the muse is going to stop by that often, I want to have the doors open and the lights on. ... I'll get back to it I'm sure."

Anyway... I was never a Crosby, Stills and Nash fan. I held them responsible for wussifying rock and roll. (I liked Neil Young though. And I loved Crosby as a Byrd, and I was fine with Stills in Buffalo Springfield, and had no problem with The Hollies.)

But this song "Page 43." I didn't know it. Listened to (half of) it here. And then I got distracted by the existence of a Snopes article on the song. What's the controversy? Is it a reference to the New Testament?
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"David Simon, the creator of the iconic Baltimore-based HBO series The Wire, lashed out in a lengthy interview against Martin O�Malley..."

"... saying in the wake of this week�s riots and curfew that the former Baltimore Mayor and Maryland Governor was the 'stake through the heart of police procedure' in the city."

Speaking with The Marshall Project, Simon traces his wariness back to O�Malley�s time as Mayor between 1999 and 2007, when Simon says he made �mass arrests� of citizens for minor offenses to pad crime statistics. �[W]hat happened under his watch as Baltimore�s mayor was that he wanted to be governor. And at a certain point, with the crime rate high� he put no faith in real policing.�

Simon, a crime reporter at the Baltimore Sun for more than 10 years before he moved to television writing, has been an outspoken critic of O�Malley for years. He has even said that the Wire character Tommy Carcetti, an ambitious politician who manipulates crime reduction statistics, is partly based on O�Malley, a presumed Democratic presidential candidate.

Here's the whole interview. Excerpt:
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"Supreme Court respects Fourth Amendment, protecting meth heads."

The headline at Kos.

Yes, this one breaks down mostly as you'd expect, if you follow the Court on these matters.  Justice Ginsburg wrote the opinion of the Court, including the Chief Justice and Justices Scalia, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan.  Yes, they acknowledge, officers can do additional tasks which are required for their safety, or which don't prolong the stop, but that's where the line is drawn:

Traffic stops are �especially fraught with danger to police officers,� so an officer may need to take certain negligibly burdensome precautions in order to complete his mission safely. On-scene investigation into other crimes, however, detours from that mission. So too do safety precautions taken in order to facilitate such detours. Thus, even assuming that the imposition here was no more intrusive than the exit order in Mimms, the dog sniff could not be justified on the same basis. Highway and officer safety are interests different in kind from the Government�s endeavor to detect crime in general or drug trafficking in particular.

But what if they do that search really really quickly, asks Eric Holder? No!, responds the Court....

There are 3 dissenters: Kennedy, Thomas, and Alito.

The Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigates a blogger who quotes a lyric from the Beatles' "Magical Mystery Tour."

The blogger � a Democratic activist named Daniel Tilson � made fun of an on-line "tax cut calculator" as "Gov. Scott�s Magical Mystery Tax Cut Calculator" and used the line from the song "Coming to take you away, take you away..."

Some person at FDLE (an �analyst,� the agency said) eyeballed those words on Tilson�s blog and perceived a potential threat to the governor. Could somebody be plotting to take him away, take him away...?

Not since Charlie Manson got mesmerized by �Helter Skelter� has anyone twisted the words of a Beatles song so ludicrously � and Manson, let�s remember, is crazier than an outhouse rat.

Yet the FDLE, the top crime-busting force in Florida, detected possible ominous undertones in the lyrics of �Magical Mystery Tour.� An agent was promptly sent to interview Tilson....

I thought no one took song lyrics seriously anymore. Anyway, "coming to take you away" meant that whatever it is that is coming � the mystery tour or the tax cut calculator � is going to transport you on a journey into ecstasy or madness. The song "Magical Mystery Tour" is quite obviously about going on a psychedelic drug trip. It's hard even to try to project a threat of violence into "coming to take you away" in that very 1960s songs. Other coming to take you away material from those simpler times:

1. "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!," the 1966 novelty single by Napoleon XIV. The "they" who were coming were the "men in white coats" � which is an expression you don't hear anymore � who would take him to "the funny farm" � you don't hear that either.

2. Calgon "Take me away" advertising. For some, it took drugs. For others, a simple bath:

A 10-point list of Easter news.

1. "An Easter Bunny character first hopped up in the 8th century with the English monk Bede's The Reckoning of Time..."

A little girl found a bird that was close to death and prayed to Eostra [the Germanic goddess of spring and fertility] for help. Eostra appeared, crossing a rainbow bridge � the snow melting before her feet. Seeing the bird was badly wounded, she turned it into a hare, and told the little girl that from now on, the hare would come back once a year bearing rainbow colored eggs.

2. In Norway, "Each year, nearly every TV and radio channel produce a crime series for Easter. The milk company prints crime stories on their cartons. In order to cash in on this national pastime, publishers churn out series of books known as 'Easter-Thrillers' or 'P�skekrim.'"

3. The Archbishop of York said: "God is creator of the Cosmos and that includes the Palace of Westminster and the White House. There are followers of Jesus Christ in all the main political parties in the UK. It is not for me to tell their fellow church members how to vote next month, but I will encourage them to use their vote."

4. Police in Tahlequah City, Okahoma nabbed a stuffed rabbit carrying $30,000 of meth: "We�ve intercepted narcotics in the mail before... The Easter Bunny I thought was a strange touch."

5. "When Obama spotted 5-year-old Donovan Frazier distraught after losing his egg roll in 2013, the president gave him a hug and advised him to 'shake it off.'"

6. Pope Francis said: Easter is "so beautiful, and so ugly because of the rain."

He had just celebrated Mass in rain-whipped St. Peter's Square for tens of thousands of people, who huddled under umbrellas or braved the downpour in thin, plastic rain-slickers.

7. In 1926, Time Magazine considered the proposal to fix the date of the moveable feast that is Easter. Was Easter not more about commerce than religion?

People have stepped from decorating their altars to decking their bodies, until the Easter Sunday �parade� of fashionables and fops gets more notice in the lay press than does the sanctity of the holiday. This display of clothes and flowers and jewels and carriages, wily merchandisers have gloated over. None the less they have peered with squinted eye at the fluctuating date of the festival, even as they touted a robe as �hot from N� York, lady,� or �new from Paris, madame.�

8. "Do You Really Need Jesus for Easter?" asks Steve Neumann at The Atheist's Life at The Daily Beast.

[T]here simply is no supernatural realm for a God to occupy. Nature is all there is.

America's native philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson... wrote �Too feeble fall the impressions of nature on us to make us artists. Every touch should thrill. Every man should be so much an artist, that he could report in conversation what had befallen him.� Achieving that isn�t easy�if those impressions were too feeble 175 years ago, they�re almost undetectable now that we�re surrounded by a shell of concrete and steel, covered by a blanket of wireless radio waves....

�Time and nature yield us many gifts,� continued Emerson, �but not yet the timely man, the new religion, the reconciler, whom all things await.�

9. David D. Ireland of Christ Church in northern New Jersey indulges in the kind of golf meditation that used to drive me crazy when I went to church in northern New Jersey half a century ago:

Easter is God�s mulligan to humanity. In golf, a mulligan is a stroke that is replayed from the spot of the prior stroke without any penalty. Your error has been forgiven. You may take the shot again. This Easter make a commitment to meet Jesus for the first time � again. Easter reminds you to keep trying to live the God-kind of life.

10. "For Christ�s love compels us, because we are convinced that one died for all, and therefore all died. And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again."

"But the Senate Judiciary Committee is emerging as a serious buzz kill for the pro-reform set."

"The powerful panel is stacked with some of the most senior lawmakers in Congress, many of whom came to power during a tough-on-crime era of the drug wars that saw stiffer penalties for drug possession. Several of them openly gripe about what they call the Obama administration�s lack of enforcement of existing federal drug laws � and they certainly aren�t willing to send a signal that Congress is OK with the movement to liberalize pot."

ADDED: In the last couple days, my position on the legalization of marijuana has changed. Oddly enough, it's because of something I read about Ibsen! I don't have the time right now to explain my train of thought, but I can give you the passage � from Paul Johnson's "Intellectuals" � that got me started on it:

There was one aspect of Ibsen�s vanity which verged on the ludicrous... He had a lifelong passion for medals and orders. In fact, he went to embarrassing lengths to get them...

[T]here is ample evidence for Ibsen�s passion since he insisted on displaying his growing galaxy of stars on every possible occasion. As early as 1878 he is reported to have worn all of them, including one like a dog-collar round his neck, at a club dinner. The Swedish painter Georg Pauli came across Ibsen sporting his medals (not the ribbons alone but the actual stars) in a Rome street. At times he seems to have put them on virtually every evening. He defended his practice by saying that, in the presence of �younger friends�, it �reminds me that I need to keep within certain limits.� All the same, people who had invited him to dinner were always relieved when he arrived without them, as they attracted smiles and even open laughter as the wine circulated....

The young black man who was shot to death by Madison police had set out that day on "a spiritual journey."

According to this report in Isthmus:

[Tony Robinson] asked his grandmother, Sharon Irwin, to "cleanse" him earlier in the day, says Turin Carter, who is Irwin's son and Tony's uncle. She burned sage and drew a bath with sea salt for her grandson.

What his family didn't know is that Robinson's journey involved taking hallucinogenic mushrooms. "It was a terrible choice," Carter says, adding that Robinson was inexperienced with the drug....

An adverse reaction to the mushrooms may have caused Robinson's behavior on March 6, when he reportedly attacked two people and ran out into traffic on Willy Street.... Robinson reacted badly to the drug. Fearing for his safety and unable to handle his reaction, his friends called 911 to get him help.

"The debate over the efficacy of 12-step programs has been quietly bubbling for decades among addiction specialists."

"But it has taken on new urgency with the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which requires all insurers and state Medicaid programs to pay for alcohol- and substance-abuse treatment, extending coverage to 32 million Americans who did not previously have it and providing a higher level of coverage for an additional 30 million," writes Gabrielle Glaser in The Atlantic.
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