Colorado, Alaska, Oregon, Washington state and Washington, D.C. have all legalized adult recreational use, and 23 states and the District of Columbia permit some form of medical use. That's despite the fact that marijuana remains an illegal drug and Schedule 1 controlled substance at the federal level.

At least in the papers.  Of all the arguments against legalization - this has to be one of the least-informed:

"legalization may boost the accessibility of marijuana for youth"

WASHINGTON -- The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a conservative challenge to the marijuana legalization laws adopted in Colorado and elsewhere that permit adults to buy, sell or use an ounce of the drug.

By a 6-2 vote, the justices turned away a lawsuit brought by Nebraska and Oklahoma, whose state attorneys complained that illegal marijuana was pouring into their states as a result of Colorado's liberalized laws.

As for all you "investors" out there, Vegas loves you and thanks you. Of all the wagers placed prior to the tourney on who you thought was going to win the national championship, 22% of you said Michigan State, which was a 9-2 favorite. As for the team that sent the Spartans home early in Saturday's first round shocker, Middle Tennessee's chances of winning the title were pegged at 2,000-1.

Best highlight of the tournament thus far? Hands down, it's got to be the half-court buzzer beater shot by Northern Iowa's Paul Jesperson to eliminate Texas on Saturday, 75-72.

Out here, all eyes this afternoon will be on the UH Rainbows as they take on Maryland at 1:10 p.m. HST (7:10 p.m. EDT). Nobody is under any illusions about their chances tonight, because Maryland is very good. But then not many people thought they'd dismember Cal on Friday. After that shocker, everyone was reminded that in last December's Diamond Head Classic, this same team demolished Northern Iowa and Auburn and came within a whisker of beating then-No. 2 Oklahoma, with their own buzzer-beater rimming out as time expired.

The thing is this: Hawaii did not play anywhere close to their best game against Cal on Friday, and yet they still won by 11. They're a deeper team than most people realize, with reserves who can give them quality time when necessary. When Big West Player of the Year Stefan Jancovic and BWC tourney MVP both got into foul trouble and rode the bench most of the second half, their backups Stefan Jovanovic and Sherriff Drummeh stepped into the breech for 14 crucial minutes and they barely missed a beat.

So if the 'Bows can show up tonight with their A-game, anything can happen. And when they're in peak performance mode, they're more than capable of matching up with anybody. But no doubt, the Maryland Terrapins have likely watched the film from Friday's Cal game and probably the Oklahoma game as well, so there'll be no taking them by surprise.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- At least 30,000 Republicans are expected to participate in an online presidential caucus vote in Utah Tuesday.

The Utah Republican Party announced the numbers Saturday morning.

The party says they expect a total of 200,000 Republicans to vote next week, either online or in-person at neighborhood caucus meetings.

In addition to the 30,000 Republicans registered for the new online system, the GOP says they're working to verify voter registration information with 10,000 more who are seeking to vote online.

The decision by the Utah GOP to allow online voting is one of the first prominent uses of the process in the country

......Apple gave the Federal Bureau of Investigation early access to iOS 8 so it could study how the new system would change evidence-gathering techniques, according to people familiar with the software's development. The agency quickly realized Apple had closed an important access point used for years by agents to collect information about criminal suspects. Many in the FBI were stunned. Suddenly, photos, text messages, notes and dozens of other sources of information stored on phones were off-limits.

The new encryption protections set off a behind-the-scenes battle that ultimately spilled into the open last month, when a California judge granted the Justice Department an order requiring Apple to help the FBI unlock an iPhone used by one of the shooters who killed 14 people in San Bernardino, California. Federal prosecutors and Apple will argue their cases before a magistrate judge on March 22.

---

This story, based on interviews with more than a dozen government officials, technology executives and attorneys tracking the case, charts the 18-month period between the iOS 8 release and San Bernardino attacks--revealing the complicated, up-and-down nature of Washington's relationship with Silicon Valley. At times, Apple and the White House enjoyed good ties, even working together to persuade China not to force phone makers to give authorities a key to unlock a handset's encryption.  The administration also didn't give in to FBI lobbying for new legislation that would make it easier to unlock data on mobile devices with warrants.  

But the San Bernardino attack changed the dynamic, ratcheting up tensions that had simmered ever since Edward Snowden's 2013 revelations that the U.S. was collecting Americans' personal data. Law enforcement officials had long warned that stronger encryption would eventually shut out criminal investigators. Now they had a case with national security implications they could use to press their argument that Apple had gone too far with iOS 8

It's not a coincidence that I bring up this subject now, a time when Donald Trump has a realistic chance of, not only winning the Republican Primary, but,  incredibly, a real shot at the Presidency itself.

I read a lot, and, since my father was a psychiatrist, I, naturally, am drawn to article featuring mental illness as its topic. And, recently, more and more articles, from top-shelf, authoritative medical journals are questioning the mental status of D. Trump.

from The Mayo Clinic

Narcissistic Personality Disorder"
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"Narcissistic personality disorders are conditions in which people have traits that cause them to feel and behave in socially distressing ways"

"If you have narcissistic personality disorder, you may come across as conceited, boastful or pretentious. You often monopolize conversations. You may belittle or look down on people you perceive as inferior. You may feel a sense of entitlement -- and when you don't receive special treatment, you may become impatient or angry. You may insist on having "the best" of everything -- for instance, the best car, athletic club or medical care.

At the same time, you have trouble handling anything that may be perceived as criticism. You may have secret feelings of insecurity, shame, vulnerability and humiliation. To feel better, you may react with rage or contempt and try to belittle the other person to make yourself appear superior. Or you may feel depressed and moody because you fall short of perfection."
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Naturally, the backfire will be something like, "Oh, so now you're going to play armchair psychiatrist?" My answer to that would be, "I'm not an attorney either, yet, if I see an individual running around, shooting people for no apparent reason,  I feel confident that it would be in my purview to ask the question, 'isn't that against the law?"

Over the nine months of his presidential campaign, Donald Trump has yet to step to a podium and read from a script. That changes Monday, when he is set to address more than 18,000 people attending the annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington.
He's also looking to surprise the crowd with something else: substance.

"He has taken input from a number of very significant Jewish influences who have reaffirmed to him the importance of this particular speech," according to a source close to Trump's campaign. "He is taking it very seriously."
As he closes in on the Republican nomination, the unconventional and controversial candidate is taking steps to address concerns about his seriousness and whether he has the policy chops and intellectual curiosity to be commander in chief.
The anti-establishment firebrand is spending the entire day in Washington, D.C. on Monday. He'll meet with two-dozen influential Republican lawmakers and lobbyists and hold a press conference ahead of his speech to AIPAC that evening. The speech, prepared over the last week and finalized last week, will "outline his depth of knowledge about the U.S.-Israel relationship and his 30 years of supporting Israeli causes," the source continued.
But, like most of the raucous, off-the-cuff speeches he delivers at his rallies, Trump's remarks at AIPAC Monday are likely to be marred by various forms of protest from attendees unwilling to let him turn the page on months of controversial statements.

--

There will be a walkout by rabbis who plan to study passages of the Torah focused on tolerance while Trump is speaking. Others are planning to wear buttons signaling their opposition to Trump. Some are mobilizing via social media and urging attendees to sit silently through Trump's speech without reacting at all.
"We didn't want to walk out or be disruptive -- his campaign thrives on that -- but we did want to make a statement about our discomfort with his campaign," said Rabbi Adam Raskin of Potomac, Maryland, who will be among 300 rabbis wearing "Rabbis Against Trump" buttons because his campaign, Raskin continued, "is at odds with Jewish values and American values."

Rather, Levine argues that Scalia's well-documented animus toward gays and lesbians was so overt and over the top, he likely convinced his conservative colleagues Anthony Kennedy and Sandra Day O'Connor to side with the High Court's moderate-liberal wing in Romer v. Evans, and then encouraged Kennedy to bring the legal hammer down in Lawrence v. Texas and Obergefell v. Hodges:

"In his powerful majority opinion in Romer, Justice Anthony Kennedy explained that gays and lesbians could not be singled out for disfavored treatment without some appropriate justification. Given its reach and breadth, Kennedy could find no legal basis for Amendment 2 other than animus - or hostility - toward gays and lesbians. And animus toward homosexuals was not a constitutionally acceptable justification.

"Enter Scalia, who unwittingly became a force leading to the expansion of gay rights that culminated in June with nationwide marriage equality.

"Scalia's dissent was so angry and acerbic that he exemplified the very animus that led the court's moderate conservatives - Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and Kennedy - to join the court's liberals in striking down Colorado's law.

"While Scalia had ample grounds to criticize Kennedy's opinion based on its arguably novel approach to constitutional law, Scalia went much further. He asserted that Coloradans could deprive their gay and lesbian neighbors of protection from discrimination for any reason whatsoever, including their dislike of the group. He belittled those in committed same-sex relationships as "long-time roommate(s)," and likened gay people to murderers and animal abusers.

"Scalia's words oozed animus toward gays and thus nudged Kennedy toward becoming the justice who has furthered gay and lesbian constitutional rights more than anyone in the court's history. Kennedy has authored every major pro-gay decision since Romer."

The Montana Republican Party and eight of its county-level committees have asked the Supreme Court to bar non-Republicans from crossing over and casting GOP ballots in the state's "open primary" election on June 7.  The application (Ravalli County Republican Central Committee v. McCulloch, 15A911) seeks action by the Court by March 31.  The state has been told to reply by Tuesday afternoon.

Potentially, this dispute over cross-over voters could affect all of the eleven states that now have an "open primary" -- that is, one in which voters are not restricted to vote only for a specific party's candidates for state and congressional offices.

The request was filed with Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, who handles emergency legal matters from the geographic area that is the Ninth Circuit, which includes Montana.  Kennedy has the option of acting on his own or sharing the request with the other Justices.

The specific request is for a order by the Court that would free the Montana GOP to conduct a primary in which only members of its party could participate.  If such an order were issued by March 31, the GOP groups said, they would have time to write rules for the party's nomination process that would confine it to registered Republicans only.   Ballots for military and overseas voters who will be absent on election day will start going out in the mail on April 22.

Montana has had an "open primary" since the state's voters approved that approach in 1912.  As it currently operates, a voter goes to the polls to vote, and is free to choose either a ballot on which only Republican candidates are listed, or one  listing the Democratic candidates.

No proof of party affiliation is necessary, and the voter has the option of requesting both parties' ballots.  In that case, the voter must choose one, and throw the other away.  But election officials do not know whether any particular voter has cast a ballot for the GOP or for the Democrats.  No one is asked which of the two ballots he chose.

When I checked back yesterday the order was still the same but some of the numbers had drastically changed: Bernie Sanders had gained close to five thousand votes while Hillary Clinton had lost more than 200,000!

Now I don't suspect foul play, but what could the explanation possibly be for such a rather huge correction in between elections?

Donald Trump is on the verge of two things once thought to be impossible: winning the Republican presidential nomination, and putting Republicans' historically large House majority in danger.
Democrats have for the past year discussed the GOP's 30-seat majority as a long-term problem, solvable only by shrinking it over several successive elections. But Trump's remarkable rise in the GOP presidential race, and the backlash he has already provoked among the broader electorate, has suddenly raised the prospect of a large November wave against Trump and the Republicans who would share the ballot with him