Free Republic

A marijuana brand bearing the name of one of the world's most famous stoners has pulled out of California as the state's cannabis taxes gut legal operations and allow the black market to thrive. Garcia Hand Picked - founded by the relatives of Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia - removed its products and operations from California as the state's laws coupled with Federal taxes have left legitimate producers paying as much as 80 percent in taxes. As businesses jump through hurdles to produce and sell marijuana, black market operations and illegal farms have managed to operate without legal barriers and...

MSNBC co-host Joe Scarborough said Friday on his show “Morning Joe” that Republicans are being too “harsh,” which will cause them to lose elections. The panel was discussing Republicans criticizing the circumstances surrounding the release of WNBA star Brittney Griner from Russia, including Griner refusing to stand for the national anthem in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death in 2020. Scarborough said, “Americans get it; Americans are smart enough to get it. There are people that care protesting during George Floyd. There are a lot of Americans that didn’t really get black athletes and some white athletes kneeling during the...

Frustration is boiling over in Shanghai, as residents increasingly chafe under weeks of draconian coronavirus lockdowns. On Chinese social media Saturday web users fought to share a six-minute video called “The Voice of April.” The footage showed a panorama of the city’s empty streets, while also featuring voices of locals complaining about food and medical shortages that have plagued the metropolis.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) on Monday flagged the possibility of a series of harsh restrictions to be imposed on revelers heading to Times Square to welcome in the New Year. The crackdown threat follows an announcement last month from de Blasio that prohibited unvaccinated individuals from attending the annual mass public event. “Right now, it is on, fully vaccinated, outdoors of course,” de Blasio told ABC on Monday. “That’s the plan. And if we need to make any more modifications, we will decide that within the course of this week.” De Blasio is an avid supporter...

President Joe Biden is set to unveil new actions to reverse harsh immigration policies championed by Donald Trump. .....

I’m a big believer in dealing with things from a standpoint of reality, and this ongoing vote “counting” in which the President’s leads in several key states just continue to steadily disappear is no different. There are several items of reality we all must acknowledge and deal with. So, let’s get started: The first reality is that we all knew this was going to happen months ago, and so did everyone in the Republican Party. Yet, the GOP obviously had no plan whatsoever in place to deal with this reality as Election Day dawned, and frankly, neither did the Trump...

If you were the GOP congressional leadership and WANTED to lose both the House and the Senate in 2018, how would you do it? I would suggest that there is no better way than to turn the GOP into the party that "finally delivered gun control." And this is after an eight-year stalemate under Barack Obama, when the anti-gun movement suffered one demoralizing defeat after another. Not anymore. Senator John Cornyn, the Senate's number two Republican, is doing the "happy dance" with his new friends and cosponsors Chuck Schumer, Dianne Feinstein, Richard Blumenthal, and Chris Murphy -- over their new...

On the right, we’ve grown to pride ourselves on our greater openness to debate and ideas, on having no need to toe a Politically Correct line or crawl into a “safe space” like pampered college kids who just can’t handle hearing from anyone who disagrees with them. For myself, I am so personally dedicated to this ideal that I even perform the great personal sacrifice of reading the comments field beneath my articles. Yet somehow I wasn’t surprised to see Donald Trump supporters, those swaggering tough guys, turn one of their favorite Internet forums into a safe space where they...

BAMAKO, Mali — Isolated for centuries by the harsh desert that surrounds it, Timbuktu now finds itself even more cut off from the rest of the world. Rebels who captured the city in northern Mali in April have imposed a form of hard-edged Islamic rule, prompting many residents to flee in fear and changing the face of what had been a tolerant and easygoing destination that drew tourists from around the world. Women are now forced to wear full, face-covering veils. Music is banned from the radio. Cigarettes are snatched from the mouths of pedestrians. And the look of the...

June 07, 2010 I SUPPOSE IF I SUGGESTED SUMMARY EXECUTION I WOULD BE CALLED "HARSH"? SNIPPET: "U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks Video Probe Note that he didn't just lift a video and send it to Wikileaks. He also stole and released 260,000 classified US State Department diplomatic cables."

It's hard to feel any sympathy for Sholom Rubashkin, who will be sentenced April 28 for his part in a multimillion-dollar bank fraud scheme. He stands convicted of some very serious federal crimes, and deserves to spend time behind bars. But if you believe that the punishment should fit the crime, you might find yourself arguing for a little compassion instead when it comes to prosecutors recommending Rubashkin should spend life in prison.

DETROIT, Michigan (AFP) – Former president George W. Bush defended harsh interrogation tactics used in the "war on terror" as both legal and necessary to prevent an imminent attack, local media reported Friday. The remarks came a week after former vice president Dick Cheney branded President Barack Obama as soft on terror for repudiating the tactics. In wide-ranging remarks to the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan, Bush defended his decision to allow harsh interrogation of the terror suspect accused of ordering the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States. Bush told the crowd of 1,500 that the techniques were...

Falsely attesting or being attested for is registration fraud and is a class D felony, punishable by a fine of up to $7,500 and five years in prison. Registration fraud also includes falsely registering to vote, attempting to falsely register to vote and registering to vote in more than one precinct. Emmet County Auditor Bev Juhl said any poll worker, poll watcher or member of the public can challenge a voter's qualifications to vote at the polls. The voter who is challenged can still file a provisional ballot and has until 2 p.m. Thursday the week of the election to...

OSLO, Norway - Simmering tension between the U.S. and Russia over European missile defense boiled over Thursday at a meeting of NATO diplomats after President Vladimir Putin threatened to freeze Russia's compliance with an arms control treaty. Hours after Putin and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice traded long-distance barbs on the growing divide between the former Cold War foes, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov added to the fire in a lengthy diatribe against the United States and NATO. Like Putin, Lavrov spoke of suspending participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty, which regulates deployment of military aircraft, tanks and...

WEIRD BUT TRUE By MARSHA KRANES, Wire Services December 7, 2006 -- An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth - but a cell for a cell? A woman in Sterling Heights, Mich., was sentenced to 30 days in jail and two years probation for letting a party guest use a cellphone on her front porch at 4 a.m. Carmen Granata, 23, was cited for violating the city noise ordinance. Her guest, who reportedly stepped outside the house to avoid waking others sleeping inside, apparently wasn't thinking of the neighbors.

BEARS killed and ate a monkey in a Dutch zoo in front of horrified visitors. Several Sloth bears chased the Barbary macaque into an electric fence, where it was stunned. It recovered and fled onto a wooden structure, where one bear pursued and mauled it to death. Witness Marco Berelds posted a detailed report on the incident, including photos, on a Dutch Web site. He said one Sloth bear tried unsuccessfully to shake the monkey loose after it took refuge on the structure, built of crossing horizontal and vertical poles. Ignoring attempts by keepers to distract it, the bear climbed...

WASHINGTON – Congress sent President Bush a ban on harsh treatment of foreign terrorism suspects in U.S. custody and directed him to send lawmakers quarterly reports on Iraq as it completed a voluminous bill Wednesday that rebuffed some of his war policies. The Senate approved the measure on a voice vote and Bush was considered certain to sign it. That would be a reversal for a White House that initially threatened to veto any bill limiting how the United States detains, interrogates or prosecutes terror suspects. Bush reluctantly endorsed the ban on cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of foreign detainees...

Dean has said Republicans never made an honest living in their lives and House majority leader Tom DeLay ought to go back to Houston where he can serve his jail sentence. DeLay has not been accused of any crime. Dean ''doesn't speak for me with that kind of rhetoric, and I don't think he speaks for the majority of Democrats," Biden, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday on ABC's ''This Week." While discussing the hardship of working Americans standing in long lines to vote, Dean said Thursday, ''Republicans, I guess, can do that because a...

I think that it has been well established that "conservatives" or whatever it is they call themselves these days (e.g., storm troopers) in matters concerning politics value little more than the state's power in which they imagine themselves to participate and the supposed glory that war and domestic national securitism brings to them. Now strictly speaking this is a delusion, because their only access to power lies in the accidental agreement of their opinions with those of the managers of the state. This access will evaporate as soon as the state does something that displeases our conservatives. It is always...

New York Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) has long been rumored as desperately seeking the democratic nomination for president in 2008. And while many political observers fully expect the power hungry former First Lady to hit the campaign trail within only a few months of being re-elected as a US Senator in 2006, US News & World report claims to have a confirmation of sorts. From USNews.Com's Washington Whispers: Hillary's in… You don't have to take it from us about Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton 's desire to run for president. Her brothers, Hugh and Tony Rodham, say it's true. Friends...