We’re not going to take it anymore.

“What the drugs themselves have not destroyed, the warfare against them has. And what once began, perhaps, as a battle against dangerous substances long ago transformed itself into a venal war on our underclass. Since declaring war on drugs nearly 40 years ago, we’ve been demonizing our most desperate citizens, isolating and incarcerating them and otherwise denying them a role in the American collective. All to no purpose. The prison population doubles and doubles again; the drugs remain.”

On the eve of the final episode, the writers of The Wire — Simon, Burns, Lehane, Pelecanos, and Price — argue in favor of jury nullification as an act of civil disobedience against America’s failed drug war. “If some few episodes of a television entertainment have caused others to reflect on the war zones we have created in our cities and the human beings stranded there, we ask that those people might also consider their conscience. And when the lawyers or the judge or your fellow jurors seek explanation, think for a moment on Bubbles or Bodie or Wallace. And remember that the lives being held in the balance aren’t fictional.“

World in My Eyes.

“Thoughtcrime is death. Thoughtcrime does not entail death. Thoughtcrime IS death. I have committed even before setting pen to paper the essential crime that contains all others unto itself.” The shape of things to come? Scientists at Berkeley conceive a way to use MRI imaging to “map” images in the brain. “Our results suggest that it may soon be possible to reconstruct a picture of a person’s visual experience from measurements of brain activity alone. Imagine a general brain-reading device that could reconstruct a picture of a person’s visual experience at any moment in time…It is possible that decoding brain activity could have serious ethical and privacy implications downstream in, say, the 30 to 50-year time frame.”

Rewriting the Legend.

As y’all might remember, I quite liked I am Legend last year, despite the fact that it pretty much falls apart in the last half-hour or so. (It still made #18 on the 2007 list.) Well, fwiw, the original ending to the film is now online, and it’s definitely more Matheson-esque (and sidesteps the goofy New England Utopia at the end, although I guess it is still implied.) Worth a look, if you saw I am Legend in the theater.

Union Now!…or maybe later.

Busy, busy…The brothers Coen develop Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union as their next project after Burn after Reading and A Serious Man. “Chabon sets up a contemporary scenario where Jewish settlers are about to be displaced by U.S. government’s plans to turn the frozen locale of Sitka, Alaska, over to Alaskan natives. Against this backdrop is a noir-style murder mystery in which a rogue cop investigates the killing of a heroin-addicted chess prodigy who might be the messiah.” Now that sounds like Coen territory.

That’s what Bilbo Baggins Hates.

“The Tolkien trustees do not file lawsuits lightly, and have tried unsuccessfully to resolve their claims out of court,” Steven Maier, an attorney for the Tolkien estate based in Britain, said in a statement. ‘New Line has not paid the plaintiffs even one penny of its contractual share of gross receipts despite the billions of dollars of gross revenue generated by these wildly successful motion pictures.’” Uh oh. The Tolkien estate sues New Line Cinema, putting the potential Hobbit films at risk. “The plaintiffs seek more than $150 million in compensatory damages, unspecified punitive damages and a court order giving the Tolkien estate the right to terminate any rights New Line may have to make films based on other works by the author, including ‘The Hobbit.’” Obviously, this thing has to go to trial, but in light of PJ’s earlier suit, one has to wonder: What the hell has New Line been up to?

The Maine Event.

Wow. Make that 5-for-5. Senator Obama wins the Maine caucus going away. (Final tally: 59%-40%.) I have to say, I didn’t see this one coming — I expected Sen. Obama to lose close. Either Obama’s starting to pick up real momentum, the Clinton campaign is just terrible at caucuses (which doesn’t speak well of Sen. Clinton’s ability to “manage the bureaucracy”), or everyone severely misunderestimated the impact of the King endorsement.

Well, at any rate, good job by Team Obama in Maine, and hopefully the completed weekend sweep bodes well for Tuesday’s big Chesapeake/Beltway primary: Virginia, Maryland, and the District of Columbia. Sen. Obama is favored in all, but, of course, nothing’s certain, and the margins matter. (By the way, New Hampshire and Massachusetts? Not to rub it in, but the Pine Tree State just made y’all look kinda silly.)

Chabon: Fear is the Mindkiller.

“The point of Obama’s candidacy is that the damaged state of American democracy is not the fault of George W. Bush and his minions, the corporate-controlled media, the insurance industry, the oil industry, lobbyists, terrorists, illegal immigrants or Satan. The point is that this mess is our fault. We let in the serpents and liars, we exchanged shining ideals for a handful of nails and some two-by-fours, and we did it by resorting to the simplest, deepest-seated and readiest method we possess as human beings for trying to make sense of the world: through our fear. America has become a phobocracy.“

In the WP, author Michael Chabon makes his case for Obama, and argues we should vote against fear. “Thus in the name of preserving hope do we disdain it. That is how a phobocracy maintains its grip on power. To support Obama, we must permit ourselves to feel hope, to acknowledge the possibility that we can aspire as a nation to be more than merely secure or predominant.”

Barack, Beloved.

“This letter represents a first for me–a public endorsement of a Presidential candidate. I feel driven to let you know why I am writing it. One reason is it may help gather other supporters; another is that this is one of those singular moments that nations ignore at their peril. I will not rehearse the multiple crises facing us, but of one thing I am certain: this opportunity for a national evolution (even revolution) will not come again soon, and I am convinced you are the person to capture it.”

Author and Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison endorses Barack Obama for president. “In addition to keen intelligence, integrity and a rare authenticity, you exhibit something that has nothing to do with age, experience, race or gender and something I don’t see in other candidates. That something is a creative imagination which coupled with brilliance equals wisdom. It is too bad if we associate it only with gray hair and old age. Or if we call searing vision naivete. Or if we believe cunning is insight. Or if we settle for finessing cures tailored for each ravaged tree in the forest while ignoring the poisonous landscape that feeds and surrounds it. Wisdom is a gift; you can’t train for it, inherit it, learn it in a class, or earn it in the workplace — that access can foster the acquisition of knowledge, but not wisdom.“

Also, since Toni Morrison’s invoking of Clinton as “the first black president” has been getting a lot of run lately, it helps to remember it in context. “Morrison was not saying that Bill Clinton is America’s first black president in a cute or celebratory way, nor was she calling Clinton an ‘honorary Negro.’ Rather, she was comparing Clinton’s treatment at the hands of Starr and others with that of black men, so often seen as ‘the always and already guilty “perp.”‘”

Land of Lincoln.

“With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan — to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.” From deep within the Library of Congress, new photos emerge of Lincoln’s second inauguration.

Lisa Gherardini musta had the highway blues.

“‘All doubts about the identity of the Mona Lisa have been eliminated by a discovery by Dr. Armin Schlechter,’ a manuscript expert, the library said in a statement on Monday…’There is no reason for any lingering doubts that this is another woman,’ Leipzig University art historian Frank Zoellner told German radio. ‘One could even say that books written about all this in the past few years were unnecessary, had we known.’“

After studying notes scribbled in a 1503 book, German art historians argue they’ve definitively pinned down the identity of the Mona Lisa. “Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a wealthy Florentine merchant, Francesco del Giocondo, has long been seen as the most likely model for the 16th-century painting…[the notes] confirm once and for all that Lisa del Giocondo was indeed the model for one of the most famous portraits in the world.” [Via Daily Dish.]