The “Wal-mart of Weed” weGrow is opening a new store in California and Geraldo Rivera is on the case. Interviewing the president of the new enterprise, Rivera learned that the superstore will sell all types of products related to growing and using marijuana at home, but will not actually sell pot.

Ever want to do something fun and seemingly private, like grow a marijuana plant, but weren’t quite sure of the legality of your hobby? A Connecticut man in this precise situation did the ethical thing and inquired of his local authorities whether his marijuana was illegal– except the “local authorities” he contacted were 911, and he had the emergency officer on the phone for several minutes after answering the question “Is this an emergency?” with varying degrees of “not really.”

Montel Williams has made appearances in multiple states this week in support of legislation to legalize marijuana for medicinal usage. On Tuesday, he was brought to tears while speaking in his homestate of Maryland as he described the immense pain he’s felt every day for the past 10 years due to multiple sclerosis. Later, in Delarware, he told lawmakers that, the night before, he couldn’t even stand up in his hotel room.

Pat Robertson more commonly garners media attention for blaming various things he doesn’t like on things that have little or nothing to do with them (e.g. the Haitian earthquake on the nation’s supposed pact with Satan, or the September 11th attacks on the ACLU and “the gays”). Yet this week he’s making headlines for comments that sound a lot less Pat Robertson and a lot more Cheech and Chong. Apparently, Pat Robertson supports decriminalizing marijuana.

Over at Mother Jones they had a tough decision for their January/February issue. They had two big stories inside, one on the still slow-to-arrive relief in Haiti, the other on the marijuana business and the push for legalization. They liked both articles, but which one to put on the cover; the depression one or the fun one? In the end, they chose both (kind of) and have written an interesting article detailing why.

Bill Maher was in the Situation Room clarifying some of the moments that went viral from last Friday’s Real Time. Sure, he talked about that whole “Mohammed thing,” but, more importantly, he answered the question everyone was dying to know: No, it was not real pot that Zach Galifianakis was smoking. His proof? If it was real, he would have joined it.

Whoa. I’ve never seen a marijuana supporter this excited about anything, and I remember when Halo 3 was released. This campaign video from Vermont Senatorial candidate Cris Erickson, running for the Marijuana Party, is all sorts of incredible as Erickson gives an energetic performance depicting what a random phone call from the “California Ultra High Marijuana Company” might sound like. Jeez, if this is the Marijuana Party’s video, I’m truly afraid what the Cocaine Party is going to do to my laptop speakers.

Dude, do you want to see what it looks like when 134 tons of marijuana is destroyed? It’s not cool, bro, not cool.

The enormous bust earlier this week likely cost the Sinaloa drug cartel $200 million. So what do we get out of all this? Amazing pictures from the Los Angeles Times of the ceremonial burning of the weed.

Marijuana legalization has become a major election issue this year, and is on the ballot in South Dakota, Oregon, Arizona and, most notably, California.

CNN’s Don Lemon had on former U.S. surgeon general under Pres. Bill Clinton, Joycelyn Elders, and asked her a unique, very personal question: would you smoke weed if it was legal?

About a month and a half ago, Facebook (that little website that inspired a recent movie and is currently making an announcement that half of the internet is buzzing about) inspired some controversy by banning a number of pro-Proposition 19 ads from their site purportedly for committing the unthinkable sin of featuring cartoon marijuana leaves. However, while the giant behemoth organization that is Facebook is anti-legalization, it looks like one of their founders isn’t, as Dustin Moskovitz has donated $50,000 to the cause.

With the vote on legalizing marijuana in California only a month and a half away, the state has also officially decriminalized it. Late yesterday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill effectively making possession of up to an ounce of the drug equal to speeding. With this news, opponents of staunch drug laws are now holding their breath, wondering what’s next.

Marcus Stanley, senior economic adviser to Senator Barbara Boxer, found himself on the wrong side of the law and the Senator after he tried to enter the Hart building with “a green, leafy substance which tested positive for marijuana,’’ according to Capitol Hill police.

Considering Facebook was created by and for college students, they appear to have a surprisingly negative view of marijuana. The social networking giant has apparently changed positions and banned previously accepted ads from Just Say Now and the Libertarian Party that supported marijuana legalization in general and California’s Proposition 19 specifically. Perhaps the website was trying to appear anti-drug before a certain movie hits theaters.

In the 2008 election, the Democrats had an enormous surge of support from voters who would normally never be seen in a polling booth. A general unhappiness with the Republican rule of the previous eight years, matched with the fears of the burgeoning recession and (most importantly) the ability to actually vote in America’s first black president made people feel like they were part of something truly important. Now that the 2010 and 2012 elections are coming up fast, the left is looking for another big social event to pull in those fair-weather Democrats again and Ryan Grim, writing for the Huffington Post, thinks he may have found it in marijuana legalization.

I was going to write an post on this fascinating study that predicts that, if Proposition 19 passes and recreational marijuana use is legalized in California, prices of the drug will plummet. I was going to write that until I noticed one of my biggest current pet peeves. Why the heck does every single article or news segment about marijuana legislation have to feature a terrible pun? What is it about weed that makes otherwise legitimate journalists suddenly think they’re writing for Leno?

It’s not every day one expects to read the Economist endorsing Sarah Palin on….well anything. But that is just what they have done in a recent blog post regarding Palin’s thoughts on the criminalization of marijuana.

Left-wing multi-millionaire George Soros may have once called Fox News’ John Stossel a “market fundamentalist,” but they’ve finally found a position they agree on– along with Sting and Montell Williams. Stossel visited Megyn Kelly earlier today to talk about the failures of the War on Drugs, and a new ad by the Drug Policy Alliance with celebrity pleas to end it.

The cable news channels are certainly letting their freak flags fly this week. Yesterday on Fox News, we discovered that Megyn Kelly knows what a Sybian is and, today, those groovy guys down at MSNBC let everyone know the history 4/20, the holiday for marijuana connoisseurs everywhere. We suppose that, as the graphic in the upper-right corner claimed, green really is universal.

Did you wake up this afternoon in a room you didn’t recognize, surrounded by used drug paraphernalia and with an email from Sting in your inbox? For once, chances are you’re not an aging groupie— just a member of the Drug Policy Alliance. The legendary musician went on the offensive today against the War on Drugs and sent a friendly note of support to every subscriber to their newsletter (and publishing the letter at the Huffington Post).

Hey man, you’ve heard about this new K2 stuff? It’s just like pot, except totally legal (for now). That’s because it’s a synthetic potpourri-like substance that just happens to work on the same cannabinoid receptors in your brain that THC, the active ingredient in marijuana does. And since we haven’t had a good War on Drugs story in awhile – because we won, right? – news channels are going cuckoo for K2.

The pot aficionado’s handbook High Times has almost singlehandedly owned the marijuana magazine beat for going on 35 years now. But curiously, they’ve had a little bit of competition lately, with Harper’s, New York, and Fortune all running long-form cannabis articles. But how does the newfound mainstream approval feel for veterans of the field like High Times senior editor Bobby Black? He’s rolling in the green.

Grab the latest issue of New York or Fortune magazine, roll it up and smoke it — you might get high. This week, they’re full of weed. Both titles ran full-length features about marijuana, exploring the relationship between pot and the law in our country. Is the “Great Pot Moment” upon us? Well yes, at the newsstand at least.

News reporters like to catch readers’ attention with a few zingy lines at the start of an article. Sometimes, these so-called “ledes” go horribly wrong. But sometimes, they’re great! In Today’s Best News Ledes, we highlight the cream of the crop: