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When it comes to marijuana, I always go back to the question: Has the legalization of weed in any city made that city better? You might ask: What do you mean by better? Well, is that city now a better place to live — for anybody? Has it solved any problem? Has it helped anything? Give me something that has been helped. Show me a city where they’ve legalized weed and something about that city, something tangible, has improved. Show me. You can’t, because it hasn’t. It has not made anywhere a better place to live. There is no example, because it always works the opposite way and we all know it. Having people walk around stoned all the time has made everything worse. It has improved nothing, absolutely nothing. It has created problems and solved none. So it’s a bad idea. If you’re going to do something that is guaranteed to make nothing better, while making a lot of things worse, then you shouldn’t do it. It’s really that simple. And this, by the way, is why I changed my mind on it personally. I was recently debating this on X/Twitter — where all the very fruitful debates happen. Somebody pulled one of my favorite moves where they say, “This is what you’re saying on this topic now, but let me see if you’ve always said this exact thing.” And someone “scandalously” discovered that back in 2018 I sent out a tweet where I was advocating for legalizing marijuana. They didn’t have to go search through my tweet history; they could have just asked me and I would tell them, “Yes, that used to be my position.” I used to be in favor of legalizing marijuana. I was. And I was wrong. I changed my mind; you’re allowed to do that. Just because you say something now, you don’t have to say exactly the same thing forever until you die. Not only are you allowed to process new information and change your opinion, but you also should. You should be open to new information and your opinion should be open to change depending on that new information. That’s what happened with legalizing marijuana. I was never militant about it. It’s not something I personally want to engage in but I was generally persuaded by the arguments people made in favor of it. What changed my mind? Well, it really wasn’t an argument anybody made on the other side. I simply saw in practice what happens. I heard all the arguments from the weed advocates saying, “Oh, yeah, we can legalize it, and here’s what the results will be.” Foolishly, I believed that argument. Then, when we did legalize it, I saw that none of that happened. In fact, everything the prohibitionists said would happen did happen and none of the positive results that the advocates promised panned out. So, of course I changed my position. It’s not even a valid position anymore to be in favor of weed legalization because we’ve all seen the results in front of our faces. There’s really nothing else to say about it, which is why you then get a bunch of clichéd slogans shouted at you by the potheads. As an example, I was having this debate recently when someone tweeted this — and I’m using this because it is like a rundown of the most clichéd arguments. They tweeted: Badcall, alcohol and cigarettes are far worse. God created it. [Weed] It hasn’t killed anybody. Veterans need it for PTSD, etc. A Democrat made it illegal decades ago. Joe Biden is against it and thinks it’s a gateway. Drug prohibition is unconstitutional. Bad call. Alcohol and cigarettes are far worse. God created it. It hasn’t killed anybody. Veterans need it for ptsd etc. a democrat made it illegal decades ago. JoeBiden is against it and thinks it’s a gateway drug. Prohibition is unconstitutional. — Bobby (@Bobby1493401) March 29, 2024 I’m using this as an example because this is the classic rundown of pro-weed arguments we hear all the time. Every tweet that anyone puts out in favor of weed legalization, it’s always like that or some variation. There are a few problems with these arguments. First of all, there are many substances that exist in the natural world that you’re not supposed to put in your body. So, saying, “God created this stuff” is dumb. Even back when I found the pro-weed argument, legalization argument persuasive, I was never persuaded by that because it’s so stupid. What? God created it, so therefore it’s automatically a good idea to light it on fire and inhale it? There are a whole lot of things God has created that you should not light on fire and inhale. There are a lot of things God has created that you should not consume in any form. If you’re lost in the woods, for example, and you’re starving, and you stumble across some kind of a bush with berries and without any prior knowledge say, “Well, God created these berries, so they must be okay to eat. God created them.” If you make that assumption enough times, you will definitely die because God has created a lot of poisoned berries. There are a lot of poisonous things in the world that you’re not supposed to consume. So the “God created it” line is true, but that doesn’t mean that it’s okay to consume. As for alcohol and cigarettes, even if alcohol and cigarettes are worse, that still doesn’t mean that weed should be legal. By that logic, all you’ve done is add to the problem. And saying that it hasn’t killed anyone is just false. For one thing, it ignores the deaths caused by people under the influence and ignores all the volumes of research about all the negative health side effects. Even if I agree that alcohol and tobacco products are just as bad or worse, that’s not an argument for legalizing yet another bad thing. It’s sort of like, if I was morbidly obese, but I didn’t drink alcohol, and then you said, ”Well, you’re already obese. You might as well be a binge drinker too.” That logic doesn’t make any sense. That only makes sense in a kind of defeatist suicidal way. That’s quite literally a suicidal argument when you’re saying, “Well, these other bad things are happening.” So let’s just add another bad thing? Let’s give up, basically? That doesn’t make sense. Also, alcohol and tobacco have been a part of American culture since the beginning of this country. That’s one of the reasons why any effort to totally ban them has not been successful — because it’s just an ingrained part of American culture. Tobacco in particular helped build this country from the very beginning. So did alcohol. Now, I’m not saying that this is a definitive reason to not ban them, but it is a reason not to ban them. And it’s a pretty good one, actually. Tradition matters. History matters. Tobacco and alcohol have been a part of our culture. Historically, marijuana has not. WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show Somebody brought up that Native Americans smoked it and so it is part of American heritage. I think it’s true that Indian tribes had marijuana — I haven’t done a lot of research on this — but I don’t think that they had it prior to contact with the New World. As far as I’m aware, marijuana was introduced to the native tribes in the 15th or the 16th centuries. But even if they didn’t smoke marijuana, the native tribes did smoke peyote. They had other kinds of drugs with hallucinogenic properties. So it is probably true that even if it wasn’t exactly marijuana, it’s probably true that the drug habits of Native American tribes were closer to the drug habits of Americans today. Think about that for a second. Native tribes were 5,000 years behind the civilized world. They were stuck in the Stone Age. Many of them didn’t have the wheel. They didn’t have written language. Many of them — not all — were nomadic tribes, hunter-gatherers. They were extremely primitive, even by 16th century standards. So the fact that they were also high all the time perhaps should tell us something. We know that a society with people smoke tobacco constantly and drink whiskey from morning to night can also be a highly functional, highly successful society. We know that because that was our society. That was our society in the 20th century when we accomplished all of the things we accomplished — we were winning world wars and landing on the moon. We went from horse and buggy to the moon landing. So we know that the greatest civilizations in the history of the Earth have at least had booze, and people were constantly drunk. Our own civilization had tobacco and booze. Now, I’m not saying that tobacco and booze made us great, exactly, but it did not prevent our greatness. There is no evidence on a societal scale that having easy access to legal tobacco and booze will precipitate a societal collapse. There’s no evidence of that because we’ve seen a society that is drowning in nicotine, caffeine, and booze — America has run on those things. So we’ve seen that. We know that. What about a society full of stoners and druggies? Can that kind of society thrive? There’s no evidence of that. There has never been a society of people who are drugged out of their mind, stoned, that has thrived. There are plenty of societies that have engaged in those sorts of activities and they live in mud huts. They struggled to invent the wheel. That’s what that kind of society looks like. And if we want to end up back there, if we want to just decline all the way and take this thing full circle, then that’s what’s going to happen.

Donations flooded into Donald Trump’s campaign fundraising site on Thursday as the Trump campaign said it received nearly $35 million in small donations within the first few hours after a Manhattan jury handed down a guilty verdict in his hush-money trial. The Trump campaign released a statement Friday morning, announcing a “record shattering fundraising haul following the sham Biden Trial verdict totaling $34.8 million,” which was “nearly double the biggest day ever recorded for the Trump campaign on the WinRed platform.” Team Trump added that a staggering 30% of Thursday’s donations came from “brand new donors to the WinRed platform,” the GOP fundraising website used by the Trump campaign and other Republicans. Small donations are considered to be between $1 and $200. WinRed even crashed on Thursday as people tried to log on to donate, according to the campaign. “From just minutes after the sham trial verdict was announced, our digital fundraising system was overwhelmed with support, and despite temporary delays online because of the amount of traffic, President Trump raised $34.8 million dollars from small dollar donors,” Trump campaign senior advisors Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles said in a statement. “Not only was the amount historic, but 29.7% of yesterday’s donors were brand new donors to the WinRed platform,” the statement added. “President Trump and our campaign are immensely grateful for the outpouring of support from patriots across our country. President Trump is fighting to save our nation and November 5th is the day Americans will deliver the real verdict.” Trump was found guilty of all 34 counts brought against him by Manhattan Democratic District Attorney Alvin Bragg. The former president has slammed the trial as a political “witch hunt” and “election interference.” Trump was convicted of falsifying business records related to hush-money payments sent to porn actress Stormy Daniels to cover up an alleged affair. The former president has denied that the affair ever took place and pleaded not guilty to the charges. Trump released another statement Friday morning, maintaining that he “did nothing wrong.” “My bookkeeper called a ‘Legal Expense,’ on the ‘tiny’ description line of the Ledger, a ‘Legal Expense,’ openly paid to my lawyer, at that time a fully accredited one. I was not involved in that designation, but what else would you have called it? It was, in fact, a LEGAL EXPENSE. That is the so-called ‘CRIME,'” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “On top of that, I wasn’t allowed by the judge to use, in any form, the standard RELIANCE ON COUNSEL DEFENSE (ADVICE OF COUNSEL!). My lawyer, at the time, did virtually everything on the NDA (NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT), and I assumed that what he did was correct. I did nothing wrong, and frankly, there was nothing done wrong – NDA’s are standard, commonly used, and LEGAL. MAGA2024! WITCH HUNT! IF THIS CAN HAPPEN TO ME, IT CAN HAPPEN TO ANYONE!” CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP Despite his criminal trial in New York — along with open criminal cases in Washington, D.C., Georgia, and Florida — Trump continues to lead President Joe Biden in polling, including in each of the seven battleground states, according to the latest data compiled by RealClearPolitics.

The “Wheel of Fortune” contestant who went viral for uttering a vulgar phrase to solve the puzzle is speaking out about the aftermath. Tavaris Williams appeared on the May 23 episode of the popular game show and made the guess “Right in the butt” even though it would not have fit in the blank spaces available. His surprising answer inspired the room to go silent, then fellow contestant Tyra said, “What?” while host Pat Sajak said, “No.” Williams spoke with Fox News Digital about how friends and family have reacted to the gaffe, including the reaction his wife had to the sexually charged guess. “I tried to just beat my contestants by buzzing in first and letting my brain catch up,” Williams told the outlet.  “And when my brain was ready to speak, I saw the R, I saw the B, I saw the T. I went for ‘Right in the butt’… And once [Sajak] said ‘No,’ oh, it was the worst feeling,” he went on. “None of those common sense [thoughts like], ‘Well, there wasn’t enough letters for the word “right”’ [or] ‘This is a family show.’ None of that is going through your head when you have 50 monitors above you, the lights are extra bright, there are 100 stagehands, there’s producers, there’s sound guys,” Williams added. “And I was standing next to Pat, so I had to say something. I wasn’t going to get buzzed without saying something. And the rest is history,” he said. The contestant said longtime host Sajak was understanding after he made the bad guess. CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP “So right then and there he tried to make me feel better and move on, but they immediately cut to break. And in the break, Pat was very gracious and he was very supportive and said, ‘Oh, you made a name for yourself. We’re going to see how we can edit that tastefully. I don’t know how, but we’ll figure it out.’ He was very accommodating, and he made me feel great throughout the process after that. He’s truly amazing,” he said.  “They are consummate professionals,” Williams added of the crew. “I may have exchanged a couple of glances, and I got a ‘He’s going to make us work today’ look. But they were great. They were gracious. They’ve seen it all before. They may not have been expecting that. But, you know, they allowed me to continue with the show and, hopefully, everybody got a kick out of it.” Williams explained how contestants aren’t allowed to discuss show results until the episode airs despite it being taped months in advance. He said friends and family reacted well when they finally saw the show. “I have a wonderful family. I have tremendous friends, coworkers. Everyone has been great. Everybody is joining in the fun with me. You have to be able to laugh and smile at yourself from time to time. No one has been negative or critical, and they know where my heart is.” “I have never in my life said those words in sequential order before the show. I picked a great time to start,” he told Fox News while laughing. “We had a watch party and the room erupted in laughter. They couldn’t believe it, and just the eye contact alone with everybody made them laugh again,” he recalled of watching with everyone.  “They were all fine. It’s more so, the younger kids are like, ‘What did you say? Why did you say that?’” he said. “The older kids are like, ‘I can’t believe you said that.’ And the adults are like, ‘Tavaris, how?’” Williams said his wife of 19 years, Anesha, also reacted to her husband’s answer. “My wife’s like, ‘I’m married to a meme now.'” he said. “My oldest son, he did say that it might be a tough day at school tomorrow. I was like, ‘I’m so sorry.’ But everybody has been great. We’re just enjoying the ride.”

A man who wrote several doomsday books and moved to Idaho because a voice told him to for the second coming of Christ has been convicted of murdering his first wife and his second wife’s children. Chad Daybell, 55, was found guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy charges for the deaths of his first wife, Tammy, and his second wife’s children, 16-year-old Tylee Ryan and 7-year-old J.J., CNN reported. In May of last year, Chad’s second wife, Lori Vallow Daybell, was found guilty of murdering Tylee and J.J. and conspiring to kill Tammy. She was sentenced to life in prison. Relatives had been searching for the children since September 2019, when Lori, along with Tylee and J.J., moved to Rexburg, Idaho, to be closer to Chad, who said a voice told him to move there for the second coming of Christ. On September 8, 2019, Lori and her brother Alex took Tylee and J.J. to Yellowstone National Park. Tylee was never seen alive again. Two weeks later, on September 23, J.J., who is autistic, was last seen at his school in Idaho. The next day, Lori informed the school that he would be homeschooled instead. Shortly after this, Chad’s first wife, Tammy, was found dead in her home. Her death was initially ruled to be natural, but police have since opened an investigation into the matter. Less than a month after Tammy died, Lori married Chad in Hawaii. Three weeks later, after Lori and Chad returned to Idaho, police conducted a welfare check on J.J. at the request of his grandmother. According to police, Lori said that J.J. was with friends in Arizona and that Tylee had gone to Brigham Young University-Idaho. People then began to question where J.J. and Tylee had gone, and suddenly, Lori and Chad packed up and traveled to Hawaii on the same day police began searching for the children, court documents indicate. Not long after, on December 12, Lori’s brother Alex died in Gilbert, Arizona, due to a reported blood clot. His death was not investigated further, as the condition ran in the family. On December 20, police in Rexburg, Idaho, officially announced an investigation into the disappearance of J.J. and Tylee. A month later, Lori was served a court order to produce the children within five days. When the deadline to produce the children passed, police began laying the groundwork to arrest Lori. They did so on February 20, 2020, arresting Lori in Kauai and charging her with two felony counts of desertion and nonsupport of dependent children. It wasn’t until June 9, 2020, when police searched Chad’s property in Idaho, that the bodies of Tylee and J.J. were found. Chad tried to flee the scene but was caught and charged with two felony counts of destruction, alteration, or concealment of evidence. Chad faces the death penalty for the murders.

After battling it out on The Voice, it’s time for winner Asher HaVon to take a breather… well, at least a bit. Now, he’s working on new music — and giving details on what it was like to be on the show. While chatting with Kelly Clarkson, he shared what it was like to work with a legend like Reba McEntire. As you can imagine, he only had amazing things to say about the beloved country singer! When asked what the best advice was that Reba gave him, Asher says, “To just trust my gift. I thought coming on this show I needed to sound like somebody else exactly but hearing her say trust your gift really meant everything to me and I did.” As the first openly LGBTQ+ winner on The Voice, it was especially important for Asher to feel safe with his coach. Thankfully, Reba turned out to be an amazing choice. “I am so proud to be a part of that community. I just pray that everything I have done on this show [has] inspired them all that they can do the same thing,” Asher says, adding that, “Reba created such a safe place for me to come in and be my authentic self. It was so easy to let down walls that I had built over the years.” Reba’s Relationship With The Voice Winner Asher HaVon Melts Hearts At the end of the day, Asher isn’t surprised that choosing to be on Team Reba was such a fantastic choice. Before he auditioned, he already knew that, if given the choice, he’d choose the country singer. It’s like it was meant to be! “Before I left home, I had already made up my mind that I was going to choose Reba,” Asher admits. “And when she turned for me, I just felt like, okay, this has definitely happened for sure.” You can find the source of this story’s featured image here! The post “The Voice” Winner Asher HaVon Opens Up To Kelly Clarkson About Relationship With Reba appeared first on InspireMore.