Weekend Reads 10/19/19

Humans Will Never Live on Another Planet, Nobel Laureate Says. Here's Why.

Well, you might say, plenty of things seemed out of reach until we reached them, such as sending aircraft on intercontinental flights. But "in this case, the required physics to reach the stars, if it exists, is not known to us and it would require a fundamental change in our understanding of the relationship between mass, acceleration and energy."

Trump's GOP impeachment firewall holds strong

Romney, who is Trump’s most outspoken Republican critic in the Senate, declined to comment late last week when asked if the House impeachment inquiry is appropriate or whether he would vote in favor of articles of impeachment should they come to the Senate. He told The Salt Lake Tribune that he hasn’t spoken to any other Republican senator about the impeachment process, making no concerted effort to change the minds of his colleagues.

The Great American cannabis experiment

In 2017, the most recent year for which full statistics are available, the nascent industry neared $8 billion in sales, legal states made $745 million in cannabis tax revenue, and 659,700 people were arrested and charged with marijuana-related violations, including possession.

In effect, cannabis legalization has become a massive experiment in the powers and limits of federalism; it is arguably the first time since the Constitution was adopted in 1787 that states have created and operated entire economies outside of federal law.