Free Republic

The truly interesting part is around the 2:26 mark where Kirk notes that the State Police Revocation Enforcement Arm is getting increased funding. Not doubled. Not tripled or quadrupled. Quintupled. From $2 million to $10 million. That is disturbing, because there aren't five-times the amount of gun crimes nor five-times the amount of FOID revocations that we've noticed anywhere. As far as we can tell, FOID applications are at all time highs and renewals so intense that the ISP delays are running afoul of statutory requirements. So why five-times the amount of money? That is disturbing, because there aren't five-times...

2020 presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke ate dirt after losing his Senate race against incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, last year. The revelation comes in a lengthy Washington Post report which divulged new details on the road trip the former congressman took after his defeat in the midterm elections and the ensuing "funk." During a January stop in New Mexico which did not make it into his blog, O'Rourke, 46, ate the local dirt, which the report said is believed to have "regenerative powers." He also brought some of this New Mexican dirt home to his family to eat.

Pediatricians have to deal with all kinds of interesting situations in their daily work with children, and kids eating random objects is one of them. Children just love to stick stuff in their mouths, and while parents do their best to keep tiny toys away from eager eaters thereÂ’s always a chance that something like a Lego finds its way into the stomach of a youngster. A half-dozen pediatricians decided to see what effect, if any, a tiny yellow Lego head would have on their own bodies by volunteering to swallow them. Their findings were reported in the Journal of...

A mother-of-one who developed cravings for sponge during her pregnancy has spoken out about her unusual addiction to foam. Vicky Cullen, 28, not only eats the padding in her own armchair but buys washing-up sponges to snack on and likes to add foam to her recipes when cooking. The single mother from Wakefield, South Yorkshire, estimated she has eaten her way through 2000 sponges since she developed the obsession when she was five-months pregnant with her daughter Olivia, now five. Vicky, who has been diagnosed with pica, an eating disorder which means adults ingest non-nutritive substances, said: 'It's weird to...

Hannah Overton was charged with capital murder, found guilty and handed down a life sentence. This week the 35-year-old was back in a Texas courthouse to try and get her capital murder conviction overturned and convince a judge she did not intentionally poison the four-year-old but that he did it to himself. The defense argued that Andrew had Pica an eating disorder characterized by an obsessive appetite. Overton and her husband told ABC's 20/20 that the boy would eat anything he could get his hands on. The day he collapsed in their home, Andrew was found in the pantry by...

Most people struggle to use a box of corn starch in a month, but one woman's bizarre addiction sees her eat up to 2lb of the thickening agent every day. Nikki Myles who is profiled in the latest series of TLC's Freaky Eaters, loves corn starch so much, she eats it from the box with a spoon. The 34-year-old, who consumes up to 3,300 calories a day, reveals in a clip from the show how the addiction first started when she was pregnant 16 years ago. Before long she was eating three boxes a day. She said: 'Mostly people when...

Most of us never considered eating the mud pies we made as kids, but for many people all over the world, dining on dirt is nothing out of the ordinary. Now an extensive meta-analysis forthcoming in the June issue of The Quarterly Review of Biology helps explain why. According to the research, the most probable explanation for human geophagy—the eating of earth—is that it protects the stomach against toxins, parasites, and pathogens. The first written account of human geophagy comes from Hippocrates more than 2,000 years ago, says Sera Young, a researcher at Cornell University and the study's lead author....

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau. The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene shares...

Swallowed Magnets Attract Trouble In Boy's Stomach, Surgeons Urge VigilanceFour-year-old Braden Eberle of San Jose holds a pair of small, rare-earth magnets, similar to the ones he swallowed in 2007. The magnets snapped together in his intestinal tract, pinching the tissue. (Credit: Lucile Packard Children's Hospital) ScienceDaily (Feb. 6, 2008) — Four-year-old Braden Eberle was worried. “Mom, I swallowed something,” said the San Jose boy. His mother, Jill, reassured him when she learned that it was just a tiny magnet that had slipped loose from a construction-type toy. But the next day, he swallowed another. “I didn’t think anything of...

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti - It was lunchtime in one of Haiti's worst slums, and Charlene Dumas was eating mud. With food prices rising, Haiti's poorest can't afford even a daily plate of rice, and some take desperate measures to fill their bellies. Charlene, 16 with a 1-month-old son, has come to rely on a traditional Haitian remedy for hunger pangs: cookies made of dried yellow dirt from the country's central plateau. The mud has long been prized by pregnant women and children here as an antacid and source of calcium. But in places like Cite Soleil, the oceanside slum where Charlene...

One day last month, animal welfare extremists followed the wife of a pharmaceutical company executive to her job, went into her car and stole a credit card to buy $20,000 in traveler's checks that they then donated to four charities. A Web site announcement boasting of the act included a more sinister threat: ``If we find out a dime of that money granted to those charities was taken back we will strip you bear (sic) and burn your (expletive). This is OUR insurance policy.'' The actions by the radical Animal Liberation Front appear to be the latest salvo in an...

Hypocrisy is the mother of all credibility problems, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has it in spades. While loudly complaining about the "unethical" treatment of animals by restaurant owners, grocers, farmers, scientists, anglers, and countless other Americans, the group has its own dirty little secret. PETA kills animals. By the thousands. From July 1998 through the end of 2003, PETA killed over 10,000 dogs, cats, and other "companion animals" -- at its Norfolk, Virginia headquarters. That's more than five defenseless animals every day. Not counting the dogs and cats PETA spayed and neutered, the group put...

Hundreds of coins found in patient's belly07:26 PM CST on Wednesday, February 18, 2004Associated Press BOSTON – French doctors were taken aback when they discovered the reason for a patient's sore, swollen belly: He had swallowed around 350 coins – $650 worth – along with assorted necklaces and needles. The 62-year-old man came to the emergency room of Cholet General Hospital in western France in 2002. He had a history of major psychiatric illness, was suffering from stomach pain, and could not eat or move his bowels. His family warned doctors that he sometimes swallowed coins, and a few had...