Free Republic

The chasm between those who want President-elect Barack Obama to produce his birth certificate to verify his eligibility to hold the nation's highest office and those who simply support the Democrat is widening. "The Constitution means what we today decide it means," opined one participant on a new WND forum that offers readers an opportunity to express their opinion on the birth certificate dispute.

ATHENS, Greece (AP) - Police uprooted thousands of cannabis plants on the island of Crete after a tip from police who saw three fields of the crop as they shadowed the Olympic torch relay in a helicopter, authorities said Wednesday. Officers from a police narcotics unit have destroyed more than 6,500 plants over the past three days, after the weekend discovery. Crete's mountainous landscape with its deep ravines is favored by cannabis growers, and police raids have increased in recent years after the deployment of police helicopters on the island. The Olympic flame is on a tour of Greece after...

ISTANBUL MY FATHER, Dr. Mujaddid Ahmed Ijaz, was an early pioneer in Pakistan's "Atoms for Peace" cooperative nuclear program with the US during the late 1960s. One of the most vivid memories I have of him was the stream of tears flowing down his cheeks as our Pakistan International Airlines Boeing 707 took off from Karachi Airport in the winter of 1972. It would be our last visit to Pakistan as children. I returned to Islamabad in the summer of 1992, the year my father died, to receive the condolences of his colleagues, former students, and friends at Pakistan's key...

Cannabis poses a greater threat to health than tobacco, lung experts have warned. The warning comes on the day that Home Secretary David Blunkett is due to make a Commons statement about the future of government drug policy. Many young people are simply not aware that smoking cannabis may put them at increased risk of respiratory cancers and infections . Dame Helena Shovelton: The Home Affairs Select Committee has recommended that cannabis is downgraded from a class B drug to class C. This would mean that possession would lead to a caution, rather than arrest. The British Lung Foundation is...