Commenting...

Julie Warlick makes an agrument for the legalization of Marijuana. Based off of her article...
I would personally like to see more evidence supporting the claims made in this article before I would honestly be swayed one way or the other. While much of it seems plausible the way one would sway another's opinion about such an issue would be through solid evidence.

Well written and otherwise my opinion stays on the fence with this one. While Marijuana legalization could help if properly introduced there's a point where it's too much. I will however agree that I believe it's nowhere near as bad as alcohol has become in our country.

As stated previously though. For someone like me who is neither for or against the legalization of marijuana I need more evidence in the form of links, testimonials, and scientific/economic studies to make a decision. Other than that your points are strong and your logic is clear. Well written, and other than my complaint of support I can't say much else. People like seeing numbers to get a clear scope. Perhaps find some statistics to use.

Foreign U.S. Work in The Middle East

I've touched up a few times on America trying to introduce Democracy to foreign nations. While I can't say that all of these things I may disagree with like if you looked at my previous post I said we shouldn't shove our entire arm into foreign policy and we should let them figure a lot of things out on there own I guess this can't be entirely true if I said it again. According to this article one of these people were helped with for a lack of a better terms meddled. I don't use this word in any negative connotation.

Ms. Qadhi, the Yemeni youth activist, attended American training sessions in Yemen.
“It helped me very much because I used to think that change only takes place by force and by weapons,” she said.
But now, she said, it is clear that results can be achieved with peaceful protests and other nonviolent means.

I'm a huge supporter of diplomacy before war and it seems that these funded organizations, while teaching Democracy which is what I somewhat disagree with, still show these people how to solve things by a peaceful means. I guess even I can be somewhat black and white about these issues but I'd really have to say that a diplomacy group can be instated in a few countries. Not necessarily to teach people about democracy but to teach people that debating and diplomacy are much better alternatives than violence. When you think about what the woman above stated that she used to think that there were only violent means of going about bringing change then you have to worry somewhat that other countries might think the same way.

In the end I'd have to say teaching knowledge is a powerful tool to help people with, but manipulating them into following Democracy is still a bad thing. The whole process of inception and the placing of Democracy. Humans are intelligent creatures by nature and I'm sure that they can think up there own way of doing things, and there's no need to give them a foundation. Give them the knowledge to build their own foundation.