Free Republic

Rep. Patrick Kennedy (news, bio, voting record) crashed his car near the Capitol early Thursday, and a police official said he appeared intoxicated. Kennedy said he had taken sleep medication and a prescription anti-nausea drug that can cause drowsiness. Kennedy, D-R.I., addressed the issue after a spate of news reports. His initial statement said: "I consumed no alcohol prior to the incident."'Later, however, he issued a longer statement saying the attending physician for Congress had prescribed Phenergan on Tuesday to treat Kennedy's gastroenteritis.Kennedy said he returned to his Capitol Hill home on Wednesday evening after a final series of votes...

LOS ANGELES - Actress Thelma White, best known for playing a drug addict in "Reefer Madness," a 1936 anti-marijuana propaganda film that resurfaced decades later as a cult classic, has died. She was 94. She died of pneumonia Tuesday at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in the city's Woodland Hills section, her godson, Michael Homeier said. White played a hard-boiled blond named Mae who peddles "demon weed" to unsuspecting youths in the low-budget cautionary tale written by a religious group about the dangers of marijuana. In the film, she lures high school students to her apartment for sex and...