Greek returns for a new season, legalizing the hippie lettuce in D.C. and Riot Watch! in Venezuela

- Greek returned for another season last night and things picked up right where they left off at the end of last season. The Zeta Betas continued to worry over being caught responsible for burning down Gamma Psi house, for starters. Tensions in the house were high and as one sister after another remarked about the problem and how it could affect them, Casey decided that she would go visit GP officer and Pan-Hellenic chairperson Katherine to dig for information on how the investigation into the fire was going and if the ZBZ’s really were responsible for starting it. Crammed into a crummy dorm room with an annoying roommate by the university for now, Katherine informed Casey that the investigation was ongoing but that she hoped ZBZ would support GP at the fairy tale-themed party they were hosting to raise money to rebuild after the fire. The next day, a ZBZ chapter meeting is interrupted by a local fireman who is passing out literature warning all sororities on campus about the dangers of burning too many candles in their houses. The fireman informs them that the investigation into the GP fire is complete and it was determined that the fire was caused by a candle left burning in the common room – the room where ZBZ member Rebecca Logan left a candle burning when the ZBZ sisters snuck into the house to find proof of GP cheating in the campus Song Fest competition. Casey’s worries over the fire investigation also spill over into her relationship with Cappie, although the two apparently talked, texted and kept in touch all during break and are doing great. Cappie has problems of his own, most notably dealing with the fallout from having three Kappa Tau brothers expelled after they were left holding the bag during what was supposed to be a joint prank on the campus security officer last semester. After debating whether to appoint a new KT pledge educator to replace the expelled Wade, Cappie takes Rusty’s offer to be the new pledge educator. However, Rusty struggles right from the start. First, Cappie sends in Beaver as an enforcer to assist Rusty, undermining Rusty’s authority with the pledges, then Cappie bans Rusty and pledges from meeting in Wade’s room where Rusty takes them in an attempt to help them bond. For help, Rusty tries reading leadership books but finally turns to his roommate Dale, who has somehow managed to find himself two new “interns” to assist him with whatever he needs in anticipation of winning the prestigious engineering grant that he and Rusty are both competing for. Dale attends the next pledge meeting and uses his newfound confidence to whip the pledges into shape. It works like a charm – right up to the point when Rusty decides to use Wade’s meat cleaver, used to intimidate pledges, to do some intimidating of his own. Instead, he drops it on a pledge’s foot and sends him to the hospital. As bad as that was, Rusty’s plight was overshadowed by that of his best friend Calvin, who returns from breaking expecting to hear his boyfriend Grant share how he did in coming out to his family over break. Instead, Grant admits he couldn’t go through with it and because of that, he isn’t ready to come out to the rest of the Omega Chi brothers either. A frustrated Calvin declares their relationship over and packs his bags to stay with Rusty until he can be assigned a new roommate at the Omega Chi house. Spurred on by losing the guy he loves, Grant decides to step up and come out at the fairy tale party by asking Calvin to dance in front of everyone. When Omega Chi president Evan Chambers sees it, he urges the other OC brothers to find a girl to dance with and get out on the dance floor to support Calvin and Grant. The party is also a site of tension between Casey and Cappie. When Cappie is late to help Casey in decorating, she snaps at him and when they both admit that there is something wrong between them, she doesn’t want to deal with it and tells him that he can come to the party or not, she doesn’t care. Casey drives off and Cappie heads back to the KT house, where he hangs out with the pledges and tells them they don’t have to go to the fairly tale party if they don’t want to. This infuriates Rusty, who is dressed as the Pied Piper and needs the pledges to be the piper’s rats. He berates Cappie for continually undermining him as pledge educator and urges him to get over whatever is bothering him. Rusty also dispensed some advice on the same thing to Casey when she stopped by his apartment asking about how to deal with a problem she was facing without saying what it was. Rusty’s advice gets through to Cappie, who decides to costume up and attend the party. He actually arrives there before Casey because she and her fellow Zeta Beta’s find out while getting ready that they must bury Katherine’s clipboard with the Song Fest results that they took from the GP house when they broke in and accidentally burned it down. Stupidly, Ashleigh still has the clipboard and the ZBZ’s know they can’t just throw it in the trash because someone might find it. They hike out into the middle of the woods to bury it, then nearly get lost on the way back to the party. Along the way, Ashleigh admits that she has been so negative lately about Casey’s relationship with Cappie because her own relationship with boyfriend Fisher ended over break because he cheated on her. At the party, Casey and Cappie finally talk and work things out when both come clean about the secrets they’ve been hiding. Cappie taunts her about being an arsonist, but it’s all in fun. Evan and Rebecca also share a dance and a kiss during the party and clearly they aren’t over each other or art least still enjoy hooking up at a minimum. The episode ends the next day when Rusty and Dale get a call telling them the results of the competition for the engineering grant they are both vying for. Rusty is declared the winner, stunning both of them and leaving Dale devastated. Now, their friendship is back on the rocks, it would seem. How will Dale react? Tune in next Monday at 10 p.m. to find out as the new season keeps rolling…………

- Every state in the U.S. is dealing with the same budget crunch and dire financial straits. The degree to which your state is suffering may vary, but the bottom line is that no state is soaring financially and all must find ways to make their budget work. Having said that, you cannot be serious, state of New Hampshire. Your fiscal hopes are now pinned on a t-shirt featuring three wolves howling at the moon? Sadly, it’s true. State economic officials are looking to gravy-train off a Keene, N.H., company's T-shirt that has gained some attention on the Web. The Three Wolf Moon T-shirt has been on Amazon.com's Top 100 list for more than six months and it features a rather ordinary scene of three wolves howling at a moon. The shirt became something of a cult favorite after one online review alleged that it had the ability to attract beautiful women, among other powers. Others took up the thread, somehow managed to hook a whole lot of suckers and suddenly demand for the shirts was so high that printing company The Mountain had to work extensive overtime to handle the sales. That has led to one of the ultimate cheeseball political plays of all time the state Division of Economic Development designating the shirt the official T-shirt of New Hampshire economic development. "The Mountain's Three Wolf Moon is a true New Hampshire success story," said Steve Boucher of the Division of Economic Development. "What started off as a tongue-in-cheek take on a cool T-shirt has resulted in worldwide acclaim for a very creative and growing Granite State business." Good thing there are a lot of idiots out there to buy ugly t-shirts and allow you to seize upon that popularity in a lame attempt to boost your state’s flagging economy, S. Sure, actors Rainn Wilson of "The Office" and Allan Hyde of "True Blood" have worn them, as have members of the U.S. Marine's Bravo Company 1st Combat Engineer Battalion. That being said…….it is a butt-ugly shirt that I wouldn’t be caught dead in. But don’t let that dampen your enthusiasm, New Hampshire Division of Economic Development! Go ahead with your online campaign featuring local business officials and celebrities wearing the shirt. And someday, when your state is still slumming it in the ditches of economic ruin and depression, you can proudly say that you are there in large part because your state had nothing better to revive its rotting financial carcass that an ugly t-shirt with a picture on it of wolves howling at the moon…………

- That bitchin’ dorm fight that took place Nov. 22 at a campus residence hall on the Michigan State University campus is the gift that keeps on giving. The brawl resulted in eight MSU football players being suspended from the Valero Alamo Bowl on Jan. 2, a game the Spartans lost. Some of the players were hit with criminal charges for their role in the brawl and it seemed like things were slowly simmering down and dying out. But like the villain in a bad horror movie, this story just keeps coming back to life. The latest development occurred Tuesday when two more players were indefinitely suspended after being charged in connection with the brawl. Junior defensive tackle Oren Wilson and redshirt freshman receiver Myles White both face misdemeanor charges of assault and conspiracy to commit assault. Michigan State coach Mark Dantonio on Tuesday indefinitely suspended both players from "all football-related activities" and Wilson and White must turn themselves in for arraignment. "As with the previously suspended players, their status with the team will be re-evaluated on a case-by-case basis as their legal issues are resolved," Dantonio's statement reads. All told, police have charged 11 football players with assault and conspiracy, more than 10 percent of the team. On top of that, four players who were present at the fight but did not participate (or at least their participation can’t be proven) have also been suspended by the university. How ironic it is that this incident started following a fraternity potluck event, because this is truly a stroke of amazing luck for each and every one of us. Glenn Winston and Roderick Jenrette were thrown off the team, two other players who face charges, Ashton Leggett and Jamiihr Williams, will transfer to other schools. This thing is snowballing into a ginormous debacle and I could not be happier about it. What’s better than knuckleheaded football players not being bright enough to walk away from a brawl and having their football careers end because of it? Way to show that you appreciate the opportunity given to you, fellas. I know you want to have your guys’ backs when something goes down, but do what you have to do to extricate them from the fray and get the heck out of there. Your inability to keep your head in a skirmish at a campus function with some frat boys taunting you doesn’t bode well for your life from here forward………….

- Riot Watch! Riot Watch! Everyone’s favorite overview of social dissidence and unrest ‘round the world is back and today we have the sheer and total joy of a freaking prison riot to revel in. This particular prison riot comes to us from La Planta prison near Caracas, Venezuela. The riot happened during visitation hours at the capital and left eight dead and 16 injured. Consuelo Cerrada, the country's penitentiary director, confirmed news of the riot, but said that at this point, authorities are still investigating the motive behind the deadly riot. What we do know is that shots were fired in the incident, Cerrada said. All in all, this has me pumped up. Hopefully none of those killed were guards because if only inmates died or were injured in this melee, it becomes even better. A bunch of angry, homicidal inmates brawling over something probably as trivial as being members of rival gangs or someone talking junk in the lunch line end up sparking a massive prison riot that leads to gunfire? The only way this gets better is if the facility was set on fire and major property destruction took place. Prison riots tend to be great because they are self-contained pockets of mayhem that don’t endanger the rest of society. We can sit back, watch these hooligans riot and enjoy the show…………

- Do it, D.C. Legalize the hippie lettuce and do it NOW. For years and years you’ve danced around the issue, but legalizing medical marijuana is as tantalizingly close as it has ever been and it needs to happen, period. Back in 1998, voters in the District voted nearly 7 to 3 for doctor-prescribed tree, which is actually a greater majority than those in any of the other eight statewide ballot initiatives that have passed around the country. Yet the vote wasn’t enough to make the chronic legal for medicinal purposes because poll workers spent that election night fudging the results of the vote, kowtowing to a last-minute congressional amendment pulling funds from D.C. for the processing of any drug-legalization initiative. Ballots were printed prior to the ban, but the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics stupidly decided that to follow the intent of the law it had to withhold the results after the votes had been cast. How a federal entity can tell a local government that it cannot even announce the results of a legitimate election is bogus bullsh*t, to be sure. We’re 12 years past that indefensible decision and it is still infuriating to no end. Ironically, the sponsor of the 1998 congressional ban, Bob Barr, has gone from being staunchly anti-pot to a libertarian who openly supports the legalization of tree. He is even lobbying against the law he once wrote and now that fifteen states have done so, it seems like common sense for D.C. to follow suit. In December 2009, Congress quietly lifted the Barr Amendment, giving the city an opportunity to enact its old law. City council member David Catania proved to be just the hero his city needed, introducing a bill that would implement Initiative 59, with the co-sponsorship of nine of the 13 council members. "As far as I'm concerned, this is an important issue. The evidence I've seen certainly suggests a powerful medicinal use for marijuana that can stimulate appetite and can reduce pain and suffering. So frankly that's my decision, and I'm capable of doing more than one thing at a time, as are my colleagues and as is this government,” Catania said. He readily admits that the details and fine print must still be worked out - how many dispensaries to allow (as many as possible!), whether they'll be nonprofit or private, for which diseases prescription hippie lettuce will be available, where the weed will be grown. The one issue I do have with Catania is that he is thinking far too small and conservative on this issue. He is shooting for more restrictive implementation because he fears future governments would strike down anything too liberal. "The voters approved the medical use of marijuana, not the recreational use of marijuana," he said. "The more professional and controlled and evidence-based our system is, the greater likelihood it will be sustained going forward." Having said that, a plan that would create five to 10 nonprofit dispensaries around the city is better than nothing. A spokesman for the D.C. city council says the bill is likely to get through the council by the end of the spring and may be approved in Congress by the end of summer. Now, you may be wondering if I am rooting for this bill to pass because I assume that the legalized hippie lettuce for medicinal purposes will ultimately lead to some of that pot finding its way into the hands (and bongs of all shapes and sizes) of stoners using the drug for recreational purposes. The answer to that, of course, is that…………