Free Republic

As canna-business strategist Elise McRoberts walked across an animal skin rug and into the living room of a Pacific Heights home for the recent San Francisco launch of Beboe, an upscale cannabis brand from Los Angeles, she assumed she would see the usual faces on the marijuana circuit — growers, dispensary owners and cannabis chefs. Instead, the party was a cross-pollination of the worlds of high society, Silicon Valley, politics, fashion and design: industrial designer Yves Béhar, former Mayor Willie Brown, who carried decriminalization bills in the state assembly in the 1970s, philanthropists Katie and Todd Traina, boutique owner Emily...

LAS VEGAS (AP) — The Latest on Nevada becoming the fifth state in the U.S. with stores selling marijuana for recreational purposes (all times local): Minnesota resident Edgar Rosas Lorenzo on Saturday flew with his family to Sin City for a wedding. But even before he checked in to his hotel, he stopped at a pot dispensary on the Las Vegas Strip. The 21-year-old says he learned of the legalization of recreational marijuana in Nevada while he was at the airport waiting for his flight to depart. He waited in line about 40 minutes before he could buy one-eighth of...

In the wake of England’s historic Brexit vote, and during America’s own Fourth of July celebrations, we’re reminded that man’s longing for individual freedom is a contagion, and that to declare independence from overreaching governmental control is a big part of the cure. Still, while the UK’s recent “Declaration of Independence” from a decidedly socialist European Union was largely driven by socio-economic considerations, not to mention a desperate attempt to remedy Britain’s demographic suicide cocktail of political correctness, multiculturalism and deadly immigration jihad, America’s own freedom revolution was driven by a longing for both fiscal independence and, to a larger...

Scotland’s leader says she doesn’t want to use a possible British vote to leave the European Union as leverage to achieve independence. But First Minister Nicola Sturgeon concedes that Scots’ secessionist spirits would be inflamed if English voters forced them out of the EU. Sturgeon spoke Sunday on the second day of her Scottish National Party’s spring conference, which is focused on strengthening nationalist control of Scotland’s Parliament in a May 5 election. […] Sunday’s published poll data suggested that Scottish voters appear much more enthusiastic than their English neighbors about staying inside the 28-nation bloc, with 50 percent planning...

On this weekend as we celebrate America’s independence, the facts are grim for how dependent we’ve become. As one example, in the 1970s one in 50 families received food stamps. Today it’s one in five. That’s is a ten-fold increase. Is America poorer than it was in 1776? Of course not. We’re richer, much richer. Then why are so many people dependent on government? Much of it has to do with how much we’ve permitted government to take over things that are none of its business.

Why Do Some People Accept Dependence? I had a thought I wanted to share regarding why some people accept dependence on government handouts as a way of life. My idea of success is for a person to go through life without becoming a burden on their fellow citizens. This is not always possible but once you do become a burden, your every sense should be to unburden your fellow citizens. Explaining the benefits to mind and body rooted in independence isn’t enough to cause some people to risk the comfort of a handout for the difficult path to independence. The...

The public schools in my hometown of Richmond, Virginia, are not known for superb quality—one of them had so pandemic a rodent infestation that it was subsequently overrun by snakes—but give the incompetent buffoons some credit. They know a good handout when they see it: Richmond Public Schools (RPS) recently signed on to a federal program that “encourages school districts to feed everyone by eliminating many of the restrictions in the National School Lunch Program.” It’s bad enough that we’ll have more students belly up to the government food trough (if you’ve never had a taste of “free” government lunch,...

SIOUX FALLS, SD - U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Annette Bosworth is standing strongly in support of a controversial Facebook post she made on Monday. "The statement is tongue and cheek; it's meant to stir discussion," Bosworth said. Stir discussion it has. Bosworth is receiving national attention for a Facebook post she made earlier this week. The post, which has now been shared by nearly 60,000 people, is a photo comparing the country's food stamp program to a national park warning about feeding the animals, which goes on to say the animals would grow dependent on the handout. "It did ruffle...

The African-American entrepreneur describes her disadvantaged life and the convictions that prompted her to overcome the challenges of her past while presenting her personal secrets of self-empowerment. Tour.

A new government estimate shows yet another way how Obamacare may ding the economy, and the law's defenders are at pains to explain how this is a feature, not a bug... It's also important to note the CBO estimate does not include the effects of Obamacare's employer mandate.... ...many employers have already cut workers' hours to get under the 50-full-time-employee threshold, beyond which the mandate kicks in. So some reduction of hours -- and not the voluntary kind -- has already taken place.

KNOXVILLE (WATE) - A temporary increase in food stamps expires October 31, meaning for millions of Americans, the benefits that help put food on the table won't stretch as far as they have for the past four years. Food stamps, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, go to 47 million Americans a month. Almost half of them children and teenagers. The monthly benefits, which go to one in seven Americans, fluctuate based on factors including food prices, income and inflation. Those could affect people right here in East Tennessee as 1.3 million Tennesseans receive food stamps at a cost of about...

Liberals are unwillingly to realize that you cannot legislate the poor into success. When poverty becomes comfortable, it goes from being a condition to a way of life. When liberals decided to increase the amount of benefits provided to the poor (which happens every year automatically) because “with a little more help, they will be able to make it on their own” the poor become more entrenched in their entitlement mentality. They will do even less to change any aspect of their life because they are certain that liberals will continue to provide more for them so they can work...

Bill Whittle thinks that the Freedom of Speech is in peril, and so is the Freedom of Religion. Hear why on this Afterburner as Whittle reminds you of the importance of our most important civil liberties, and how each is threatened by the expanding welfare state.

Food Stamp Nation: A little town in Rhode Island shows where liberalism and all its talk of economic "security" ultimately leads — a stale economy and suffocating dependence on big government. In a surprisingly candid and lengthy expose, the Washington Post described how Woonsocket, an economically depressed town in Rhode Island, has been turned upside down by food stamps. With a third of the town enrolled, food stamps have created a huge boom-and-bust economy in Woonsocket, as residents pour into grocery stores on the first day of each month after the government pumps $2 million into their food stamp cards.

Buenos Aires, Argentina, Oct 1, 2009 / 09:01 pm (CNA).- The Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, has called for an ethical response to solve the problem of social debt, saying that, not only do terrorism, repression and murder violate human rights, but also extreme poverty and the “unjust economic structures that give rise to great inequalities.”

Imagine that you meet a young woman and after introductions, you ask, "What do you do?" "I'm unemployed," she says. "That's too bad. I hope you find a job soon." Nothing unusual so far, but the conversation is about to take an interesting turn. "I'm not looking for a job. Being unemployed is what I do." The look on your face shows your bewilderment. What on earth is she talking about? Welcome to the new United States of America, the Obama model that you voted to give another chance even though he didn't earn it. Yesterday, he said, "So if...

The name of the program now escapes me. Several months ago, while flipping channels with the remote, I stopped on an MTV show about a working mom whose whole life was upended when her partner announced that he was splitting. It caught my attention because this mother lived in a nice apartment that looked like one in my suburban New Jersey town, and she was applying for food stamps. This wasn't your caricature "taker"—the woman had a real job. With her partner leaving, however, she could no longer afford the rent, and she would have trouble providing for her two...

Some nights ago I sat in an emergency room while a 19-year-old heroin addict was brought in. It was after midnight, the witching hour, on a weekend when the zombies and ghosts of the city's party circuit begin drifting in dressed in their best clothes, escorted by police officers, clutching bloodied rags to their faces or lying on stretchers and always at their articulate best. The girl came from a wealthy background and was articulate enough to hurriedly assemble her story. An addict since her teenage years, she had been clean for a while and never used anything but heroin,...

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