After casting her ballot for Barack Obama, Amanda Jones said simply, "I feel good about voting for him." Ms. Jones, of Cedar Creek, Texas (a town just south of Austin), is African-American, and what gives her vote some historic punch is that she's 109 years old. Her father was a slave. Her mother was born right after Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. She's been through it all--Jim Crow segregation, women's suffrage, the Great Depression, the poll tax, FDR, the civil-rights movement, desegregation, 13 years of George W (five as guv, eight as prez), and now: Barack Obama. This last change fills her with joy, she says.
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Bill's beer
Coming back from Mexico in February, where he had gone to claim that his international drug war is a great success, Bill Clinton was given a beer by Air Force One stewards. No problem, alcohol is a legal drug. But hold your Clydesdales— they gave him a Hemp Golden Beer. The hemp plant (related to marijuana but without the high) has thousands of great uses, from making paper to beer, but demagoging politicians have banned U.S. farmers from growing it. So Bill's beer was made from imported hemp seed. He won't get another, though. The Office of National Drug Control Policy has now banned Hemp Golden (a legal product) from Air Force One, saying it's an "inappropriate" drink for the president's plane.