Decide if you’re the Party of Caligula or Brewster's Millions.

Vladamir Putin: Reread the Communist Manifesto, and stop bribing Republican politicians who cut social programs and taking measures to create greater class disparities in hopes of collapsing our economy. Oh wait; I get what you’re doing.

Pedophiles: Barely Legal Magazine is not child porn for a reason. Follow this logic.

The Constitution: Campaign finance reform. Pass 28th Amendment to overturn Citizen's United which was a Supreme Court ruling that allowed corporations to pump money into elections in a manner that corrupts the process into not working for American citizens’ best interests. This would also make shopping easier.

Humans: Don’t fall for false equivalencies or weird name games. At best they can be non-logic-based coincidences utilized for further exploration. Like most languages, they should be viewed as attempts to communicate instead of truths.

In late November, Ohio marijuana aficionados waited with excitement to see which 12 companies would receive a coveted Level 1 mega-grow cultivation license. To everyone’s surprise, of the 109 applicants, 73 were “disqualified.” Other irregularities in the selection process began to appear.

Another surprise came on December 11 when Jimmy Gould of ResponsibleOhio fame, whose company CannaAscend was “disqualified,” announced at a Cincinnati press conference that he and fellow RO founder Ian James were preparing a “Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Amendment” for the fall 2018 ballot.

I caught up with Ian, a long-time colleague, to learn more:

MJB: How does it feel to be back?

IJ: I love this stuff.

MJB: Is Ohio ready for adult use marijuana?

IJ: I trust the voters before the bureaucrats. Our research shows that 6 in 10 Ohio voters support legalizing marijuana for adult use. And the numbers keep growing. A Pew (Research Center) poll from 1998 had 81 percent opposed. Both Pew and Gallup now find 64 percent/34 percent in favor nationwide showing that marijuana has strong unflappable majority support.

Can a record collection have a soul and does it reveal the man who owned it?

In my time on earth as a music dealer, I've bought a number of record collections from those who’ve passed and whom I’ve know sometimes quite well.

Which isn't to say you've got to die for me to buy your records. I buy shamelessly from the living and the dead – a real bone collector like the medieval days. Remember that scene in Monty Python's “Life of Brian” where there was a not-quite-un-living person in the hereafter cart? But we're talking records here, not cadavers.

On a number of occasions in my decades buying and selling on High Street a particularly fine collection would come in--vinyl, compact disc, cassettes even – after I purchased I’d lament what a shame it was going to be to bust up such a sweetly assembled, beautifully woven, tasteful palette of music. Years if not decades in the purchasing and appreciating and absorption went into it. The man (I'm assuming) went for depth in sidemen like I have never seen: Art Tatum, whom I’ve never liked, showed up in at least a dozen titles.

Twenty years ago, the Columbus Free Press came back into print backed by donations from the pro-hemp/medical marijuana movement. Our underground anti-war publication originated on the Ohio State University campus as an as a reaction to the Kent State killings in October 1970, and after 25 years we went strictly online. Through donations from hemp festivals at Rainbow Farm, arranged by legendary local activist Cannabis Kenny Schweickart, the Free Press was resurrected in 1998.

One hundred forty-five years ago on Jan. 1, Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, helping to transform this country from a union of states into a nation, from a country stained by slavery into one moving at great cost closer to “liberty and justice for all.”

On Jan. 1, 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln, the Republican president, issued the proclamation on his own authority as commander-in-chief “in time of actual armed rebellion” against the United States. The emancipation was grounded on his wartime powers, as a “fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion.”

The emancipation did not end slavery in the United States. It applied only to the states still in rebellion, exempting the slave owning border states such as Maryland, Missouri and Kentucky that still had slaves. Lincoln was desperate to keep the border states from joining the South. Some abolitionists ridiculed him for this. “Where he has no power, Mr. Lincoln will set the negroes free, where he retains power we will consider them as slaves,” declared the London Times.