Free Republic

I know this proposal will be met with strong opposition, but it is my firm belief that the 108-year old 'War on Drugs' needs to come to an end. It has turned into a decades-long war on millions of our young people. It would be replaced with FDA-supervised quality control systems for supplies of comparatively safe recreational drug forms, probably reducing the number of overdose deaths by over 98% (~50,000/year -> ~1,000/year). Manufacturers, distributors, retailers and customers would have to get DEA licenses. There would be three forms of customer DEA licenses: casual user, habitual cocaine user and habitual opiate...

Typical leftists–they want free stuff, but they don’t want to pay for it. In a poll conducted by Vox and Morning Consult during the first week in April, they found that supporters for Sen. Bernie Sanders unsurprisingly have strong support for things like free college tuition and universal health care. They register at 70+ percent in favor for both initiatives. Then, the question turns to how much are they willing to pay for Sanders' agenda. This is where support dips dramatically, especially when two in three Bernie-ites don’t want to pay more than $1,000 for a single-payer health care system....

Work: A new study of government data says that since Oct. 1, federal workers, including bureaucrats and members of Congress, have worked less than three-fourths of the time. To which we respond, how can they tell? Federal workers have long been seen as slack, but they seem to have gotten more so recently.

Here's an enlightening video from Fox News profiling the life of a California food stamp user. They (rightfully) explain how Obama took away the food stamp restrictions and this allow able-bodied adults without children to get free food on our dime.

Alec Baldwin, Stanley Tucci and a bunch of lobbyists are crawling all over Capitol Hill attempting to steal more money out of our pockets to fund "artists" who don't have the talent to survive on private donations and earnings. What a racket: Robert Lynch, president and CEO of Americans for the Arts, the premiere lobbying org for arts groups, said that while "some of the rhetoric is negative," the records of Santorum and Romney both reflect some support for arts funding. He's encouraged by President Obama's request to increase funding for the NEA to $155 million, restoring it to the...

AGUA PRIETA, Mexico — "My wife, my son — I have to get back to them," Daniel kept telling himself, from the moment he was arrested in Seattle for driving with an expired license, all the way through the deportation proceeding that delivered him to Mexico in June. Nothing would deter him from crossing the border again. He had left his hometown at 24, he said. Twelve years later, he spoke nearly fluent English and had an American son, a wife and three brothers in the United States. "I’ll keep trying," he said, "until I’ll get there." This is increasingly...

MEXICO CITY -- As if Mexicans needed more evidence that criminal groups are trying to hijack the political life of the nation, it came with a ferocious triple-whammy punch in the past 24 hours. Assailants shot and seriously wounded the mayor-elect of a town in the border state of Chihuahua on Friday afternoon, less than a day after commandos in Nuevo Leon state executed a sitting mayor, making him the 10th municipal chief slain so far this year. In Mexico City, a fugitive legislator with drug charges pending against him sneaked into Congress and took his seat, automatically obtaining immunity...

In an emergency room in Arkansas, the patient exhibits dark red boils, her skin numb. Another case of leprosy in America. Not far away, a tuberculosis-infected illegal immigrant coughs while on break at the local chicken processing plant – spreading his infectious germs across the break room table. His children, also carrying the disease, which had been all but eradicated from the United States years ago, join hundreds of children at the local public school. Crossing the Mexican border, in a pickup truck filled with “migrant workers” coming to “do the jobs Americans don’t do” in our fields and food...

HOUSTON -- Nineteen months after Hurricane Katrina sent evacuees from New Orleans streaming into Houston, more than 5,000 heads of households among them are still unemployed despite the city's booming economy, officials say. The number of jobless is contributing to the sense among some Houston-area residents that the storm's victims are a drain on the city and have worn out their welcome. After the storm, a quarter-million evacuees were brought to Houston, welcomed by Mayor Bill White, who threw open the Astrodome. Even before the storm, many were desperately poor, unemployed and on welfare or food stamps. Many had been...

This article comes from the Salem Oregon Statesman Journal which doesn't allow posting. However, the story was too good to pass without providing a link. Essentially, the state's left wing governor and this left wing rag challenged anybody to see if they could get by on the state's $21 per week food stamp allowance. Several individuals picked up the glove and found out that people can do this just fine providing they give up eating out several time each week. Furthermore, they discovered that when they stayed home and cooked meals, folks spent more time together as a family. And...

Goodbye, war on smoking. Hello, war on fat.In a span of two months, smoking bans have been imposed in Scotland, enacted in England, Denmark, and Uruguay, proposed by the government of Portugal, and endorsed by the French public. China has banned new cigarette factories. In Virginia, our third most prolific tobacco state, senators voted to ban smoking in nearly all public places. The Arkansas legislature, backed by a Republican governor, passed a similar ban and voted to extend this policy to cars in which a child is present. Tobacco companies have won a skirmish here or there, but always in...

Get a job. Find a place to live. Pull yourself up. These are the things some people are saying about evacuees from hurricanes Katrina and Rita, about 12,000 of whom remain in taxpayer-funded hotel rooms in Georgia. In the weeks after Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, people across the country opened their wallets, homes and hearts to the victims. But three months after thousands of evacuees arrived in Georgia, some attitudes have shifted from compassion to something very different. For Anna Corley, a 39-year-old communications worker from East Point, the change in attitude occurred while she was watching a television...

John Edwards says the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina underscores the "two Americas" theme of his presidential campaign last year. "We see the poor and working class of New Orleans who don't own a car and couldn't evacuate to hotels or families far from the target of Katrina," Edwards said in e-mail messages to supporters Friday "We see the suffering of families who lived from paycheck to paycheck and who followed the advice of officials and went to shelters at the Civic Center or the Superdome or stayed home to protect their possessions." Edwards added, "We have been too slow to...

The Arizona Supreme Court has rejected a plea by the state's Medicaid provider to limit medical coverage for illegal immigrants to emergency room and acute care. The Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, or AHCCCS, manager of the state's Medicaid program, is obligated to provide care to illegals beyond emergency room and other acute care wards, justices ruled unanimously Thursday. According to Capitol Media Services and the Arizona Daily Star, AHCCCS – which currently pays $75 million to $80 million a year in emergency care for illegals – had refused to reimburse hospitals for services it said were not covered....