At the behest of a sponsor, Michael Phelps has recorded a video apology to the people of China, expressing his remorse over the recently published pictures of him using a marijuana pipe and thanking them for their support and forgiveness.

The 52-second video has been posted on several Web sites in China, and one major Chinese newspaper said the video had been sent directly from the Japanese auto company Mazda, which last month signed Phelps to an endorsement deal believed to be worth more than a million dollars. Phelps was signed to promote Mazda cars in China after his record-breaking eight-gold-medal performance at the Beijing Olympics last summer.

But Mazda apparently decided an apology to the Chinese would suffice. The company issued a statement saying it would continue its sponsorship of Phelps. “His expression of remorse and his determination to make amends, and especially his video apology and expression of thanks to the Chinese people, give us confidence that Phelps can make a healthy return to the pool and have even more brilliant achievements,” the statement said.

I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten — how many gold medals and world records did Michael Phelps win for the nation of China again?  Or Japan?

I had been withholding judgment on Phelps apologies.  I was giving him some leeway, being a 23-year-old young man, being socially awkward from years spent in a pool rather than socializing, being in the unenviable position of having the entire world focused on you as you decide “millions of dollars and set for life” vs. “the fallen-from-grace gold medalist who stood up for pot”.  I’m down for the cause and all, but you throw eight figures at me and I might have to think about it.

But apologizing to the Chinese?!?  A country that censors its internet, aborts its unwanted females, imprisons its religious, and generally represses human rights needs an apology over a photo of a bong-smoking swimmer or its people won’t buy a lousy Japanese car the swimmer endorses?  

Forget it, Phelps, I’m done withholding judgment.  You may be the fastest fish in the water, but out of the pool you’ve got as much spine as a squid.  Your pot smoking isn’t something to be ashamed of, in fact, it was the smartest recreational intoxicant choice you could make.  You’re unquestionably the greatest swimmer ever and your financial future would be secure even if every sponsor dropped you (unlike, say, the thousands losing their jobs over a dirty pee test).  USA Swimming would never have banned you from any real competition; you’re their only household name.  You, unlike anyone else caught smoking pot, were in the most unassailable position to finally say, “I smoke pot and I like it a lot – so what?” and maybe be the little boy who cries out the emperor is naked that finally tips the scales in ending adult marijuana prohibition.

Real men stand up for what they believe.  Real men fight for their sacred honor.  Real men don’t cower and submit for a paycheck when their family’s survival doesn’t depend on it.

Sheesh, do we now have to boycott the companies that kept Phelps because they’re supporting the Judas of Ganja?  ”Is this not the third time thou hast denied me,” said Cannabis?

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“You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court’s decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may well ask: “How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?” The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that “an unjust law is no law at all.”

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.”

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Letter from a Birmingham Jail
April 16, 1963

Today our nation honors what would’ve been this week the eightieth birthday of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., on the eve of the inauguration of Barack Hussein Obama as the 44th president of these United States.  I was sixty-four days old when an assassin’s bullet cut down Dr. King in the prime of his life.  Today I am six-hundred forty days older than Dr. King when he was killed.  Tomorrow I will see something few people my age and older thought we’d ever see, yet something Dr. King had dreamed from the start.

There remains a grave injustice to be battled, the most unjust of laws to be disobeyed, a law that by its definition is not rooted in eternal law and natural law: the man made code that declares nature itself to be illegal, the prohibition on cannabis.  Yet when I mention marijuana law reform in the context of the great civil rights struggles in America, so many are quick to dismiss me with snickers of derision.  ”You just want pot legal so you can get high!” is a common refrain.

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Here’s a great slideshow of pictures from the world’s Oldest Marijuana Stash Found in Gobi Desert Grave.

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• World’s oldest stash found in Chinese tomb (5)
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OTTAWA — Researchers say they have located the world’s oldest stash of marijuana, in a tomb in a remote part of China.

The cache of cannabis is about 2,700 years old and was clearly “cultivated for psychoactive purposes,” rather than as fibre for clothing or as food, says a research paper in the Journal of Experimental Botany.

The 789 grams of dried cannabis was buried alongside a light-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian man, likely a shaman of the Gushi culture, near Turpan in northwestern China.

The marijuana was found to have a relatively high content of THC, the main active ingredient in cannabis, but the sample was too old to determine a precise percentage.

2,700 years of humans using cannabis, 70 years of cannabis prohibition.  What has happened to cannabis in the past seventy years to make it so dangerous to the species that’s used it for millennia?  Sounds like the ancient Chinese had the “skunk” – why is it modern man can’t have it again?

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• Oldest Marijuana Stash Found in Gobi Desert Grave (0)
• Michael Phelps apologizes to China, Mazda keeps Phelps (2)
• Cannabis Civil Rights (10)