Given that educating our young people is crucial to our future economic strength, why are we cutting Pell Grants, raising student loan rates, and making college less affordable for working-class and middle-class families, and what is President Obama's plan for increasing college affordability?

Given that the War on Drugs is a wasteful and failed 40-year effort to curtail Americans' enormous appetite for intoxicants that has brutalized and marginalized large portions of our population for generations, making it impossible for many otherwise law-abiding citizens to secure employment or vote;

given that the War on Drugs has engendered and popularized losses of freedoms that Americans should consider anathema -- such as property seizures prior to trial, overuse of SWAT teams for routine warrant service and forms of warrantless surveillance and intrusions that effectively eradicate any meaningful expectations of privacy;

given that the War on Drugs is the proximate cause for increased deadly violence in Mexico and along our southern border in recent years;

and given that whenever the opportunity has been offered to have you answer questions from the public that the legalization or decriminalization of marijuana has consistently been among the most popular topics and that a free people should have the right to make informed and responsible decisions about what we ingest,

Why then, Mr. President, have you been so reluctant to respond to the will of the American people? You should use the power and prestige of your office to bring about an end to the War on Drugs, allow people to grow and market cannibis and hemp (and ideally cacti and fungi that are crucial to the free exercise of religion that are currently also illegal) and to redirect scarce resources away from interdiction and incarceration toward rehabilitation of addicts and the reintegration of offenders into the legitimate economy. You had instructed your Justice Department to leave providers of medical marijuana that complied with their states' laws alone, but raids on dispensaries and grow sites and warnings to landowners and banks who work with these businesses have increased (BTW, this is an industry that has been proven to create jobs, even in a depressed economy). Why?

(Incidentally, Mr. President, you and I are about the same age. While I have read that you've said that getting high as a teen -ager was your worst mistake, I can't say the same. I never had serious drug or alcohol problems or was tempted much to use hard drugs or pills, but my life was more or less ruined by my family's overreaction to my teenage rebellion which included smoking dope and skipping school and which led to my own juvenile incarceration. Suffice it to say that my time in confinement and away from my friends and a real education didn't help me grow or prosper.)

Let's say being leader of the free world is a stressful gig. Blind guess. And what relieves stress more than going without a shave? For most men, a daily or bi-weekly shave is an absolute hastle. Mr. President, if elected to a second term, will you (please) grow a beard? Consider a bearded Al Gore. Much tougher looking. Consider Robin Williams, who can only be taken seriously bearded in roles. Consider Castro. Well...maybe we won't consider Castro. Anyhow, visual rhetoric is so quintessentially American; we'll all know what you're doing, but maybe we'll respect you for...dare I say, keeping it real? So, Mr. President, would you consider it? And don't use the excuse that your stubble grows all uneven and patchy; patchy facial hair is en vogue.

Mr. President, what are your thoughts, if any, on how to remove money from politics and return the U.S.A. to a more compassionate and community-based society?