Free Republic

Drug overdose deaths soared by 10 percent in 2017 topping 70,000, a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reveals. It means that, in the last 20 years, the overdose death rate has increased nearly four-fold, from 6.1 deaths per 100,000 people in 1999 to 21.7 last year. Fentanyl, the synthetic opioid 100 times stronger than morphine, was the driving culprit, alone accounting for a 45 percent increase in deaths between 2016 and 2017. Those worst affected are white men aged 35 to 44 years old. US Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar insists the...

As I write this from San Diego, the rain is pouring outside my window, a rare winter rain brought on by an offshore tropical storm blowing in from the west. It's heavy, dripping, dropping rain, and it's getting the entire region good. Normally, rain is a cause for rejoicing in these parts, because drought is the norm, and rain makes everything turn green. But you don't want to be out in that rain, which is where the Tijuana caravan migrants are, just south of San Diego, soaking up rain, mud, germs, cold, bacteria, viruses – and picking up diseases. Right...

These are the hellish conditions that are driving members of the Central American migrant caravan to finally turn their backs on their US dream - by 'self-deporting'. Despite traveling as much as 4,500 miles - much of it on foot - hundreds of migrants have already accepted free flights home rather than stay longer in the filth-strewn sports complex that has become their temporary home in Tijuana, Mexico. Lice and respiratory infections are becoming endemic inside the Benito Juarez sports complex and health workers warn that it's a matter of 'when, not if' an outbreak of serious disease sweeps the...

Total student debt hit an astronomical $1.48 trillion this year. The average graduate now leaves school with $40,000 in loans hanging over his head. So is it really a surprise that Senator Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) won over millions of young people in 2016? After all, he campaigned on student-loan bailouts and “free college.” Many students desperate for an answer now support this agenda — in the hope of escaping crushing amounts in debt. Yet government intervention is what created the higher-education bubble in the first place. One of the biggest factors behind skyrocketing tuition rates is the federal subsidization...

I am a U.S. citizen married to a Honduran. Since we said our vows five years ago, we have parented 11 orphaned and abandoned children and teens in this third-world country in response to God’s call on our lives. Seven still live with us and call us Mom and Dad. We intentionally live without air-conditioning, television, high-speed internet and without a washing machine or dishwasher. The cinderblock home we inhabit on the outskirts of our little rural Honduran town is less than half the size of the home in which I grew up in the Texas suburbs.I am not...

RUSH: Well, look at this, folks. CBS has canceled Murphy Brown. Historic low ratings. CBS is saying (paraphrasing), “Hey, there’s no news here. We’re canceling it after 13 weeks. It was only a 13-week order. So we’re just not renewing it. We’re not canceling anything.” That’s their story, and they’re sticking to it. You know as well as I do that if Murphy Brown had been a hit, that they’d be trying to do another Roseanne version of it except not get rid of Candace Bergen. So another “We hate Trump” comedy down the tubes, Murphy Brown, and they’ve canceled...

Many get swept into binge-watching a tv show, but a Minnesota woman took the term to a new level in Minnesota. Minnesota State Patrol posted on Facebook about the incident which took place on October 26 on Interstate 94 near the Minnesota-North Dakota border, stating that a woman was involved in a one-vehicle crash because she was watching Netflix on her tablet in the passenger's seat. Minnesota State Patrol Driving and Netflix don’t mix. A motorist found that out the hard way Oct. 26 when she crashed her car on Interstate 94 between Moorhead and Fergus Falls. Numerous callers reported...

Ah, Leslie Dowdall. Good times. From the 1986 'Self Aid' benefit show in Dublin's RDS to highlight unemployment issues in Ireland. Seven Into The Sea - In Tua Nua

Synapsids Went Extinct, but Did They Evolve? November 27, 2018 | David F. Coppedge Evolutionists call them “mammal-like reptiles,” but a very large fossil synapsid upsets evolutionary ideas. It was as big as a hippo, and apparently very successful as an animal. New Scientist writes, “Ancient hippo-like reptile was a giant to rival the dinosaurs.” Science Magazine writes, “Giant mammal cousin rivaled early dinosaurs.” What was this creature, exactly? And why are evolutionists so startled by it?

Epic Fail: Special counsel Robert Mueller has spent a year-and-a-half and $30-plus million attempting to “prove” that POTUS Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign “colluded” with Mother Russia to “steal the election” from Hillary Clinton, but he’s come up empty-handed. So now, he’s going after Trump associates and allies like Dr. Jerome Corsi and Paul Manafort for ‘lying’ to investigators in order to give the impression that collusion occurred but he just couldn’t prove it. That’s what former federal prosecutor Joe diGenova thinks, and he said as much Wednesday evening during an appearance on Fox News‘ “The Ingraham Angle.” The “original purpose”...

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Wednesday called on President Trump to sit down for an in-person interview with special counsel Robert Mueller and his team, saying that the president's written statements to the special counsel's office were insufficient. Schiff, who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, said Mueller needed the opportunity to ask follow-up questions based on the president's responses. “There really needs to be a live interview with the president because you need to be able to ask follow-up questions in real time," Schiff told CNN on Wednesday. Schiff also said the committee, under new Democratic leadership next year,...

NEW YORK (AP) — Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former lawyer, has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about work he did on a Trump real estate project in Russia. Cohen made a surprise appearance Thursday in a New York courtroom to enter the plea. He admitted making false statements in 2017 to a Senate intelligence committee about a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. Cohen said he lied about the timing of the tower negotiations and other details to be consistent with Trump's "political message."

Democrat T.J. Cox claimed victory Wednesday over Republican U.S. Rep. David Valadao after an updated vote count increased his lead in a California farm-belt district. Cox, who trailed in the vote tally until Monday, increased his lead to 529 votes out of about 113,000 cast, after updated numbers were released by Fresno, Kings and Tulare counties. The district also cuts through Kern County, which is expected to update its vote count by Monday. While votes still are being counted, the tallies have favored Cox in post-Election Day updates, prompting him to declare the race over. “I am elated to announce...

A 25-year-old mom in Minnesota was charged last week with one count of felony-level child endangerment that could result in substantial harm or death, after authorities discovered she allegedly gave her 9-month-old son laxatives to inflict starvation. Authorities discovered that Megan Lee Kafer of Lewiston, Minn., who is scheduled to appear in court on the charge in mid-December, had searched the web on her phone for ways to poison a baby, including: “MiraLax overdose,” “Can a doctor tell if you overdose on MiraLax,” “How to make a baby really sick,” “Mom gets 20 years to life for poisoning son with...

Following the tragic passing of New York State Senator Jose Peralta, the pro-vaccine Democrat's widow has revealed the cause her husband's sudden death. 47-year-old lawmaker Peralta died on Thanksgiving eve in Elmhurst Hospital in Queens after developing a fever and later became “disoriented and had trouble breathing." Peralta had reportedly been ill for at least two weeks before his death and, according to the Associated Press, Mrs. Peralta had told reporters that her husband felt pressure behind his ears and headaches for a week or more and had gone to see a doctor.

There has been a lot of hand-wringing over the recent revelation that Paul Manafort’s lawyers have been speaking to Donald Trump’s lawyers. Pundits have said breathlessly that such conduct is obstructive and that only mob lawyers engage in such behavior. Nothing could be further from the truth — by itself, there is nothing obstructive about the lawyers speaking with each other and sharing information. Witnesses do not belong to one side or the other. Paul Manafort has pleaded guilty and as part of his plea agreement has promised to answer Mueller’s questions truthfully. Mueller did not ask Manafort to keep...

Sen. Bernie Sanders knows what he wants. In a Washington Post op-ed last week, the democratic socialist from Vermont laid out a legislative agenda for the 116th Congress’s first 100 days. Among the dizzying array of proposals Mr. Sanders pushed were his signature “Medicare for All” bill, tuition-free college, student-debt relief, tax increases requiring “wealthy people and large corporations to begin paying their fair share” and a $15 minimum wage indexed to “median wage growth,” not inflation. Others in the Democratic Party’s increasingly influential democratic-socialist wing are pressing for their own major legislation to pass the House, even if it...

A report out of the University of Alaska Anchorage estimates some of the most certain consequences of climate change in Alaska will cost the state between $340 and $700 million per year over the next three to five decades. That’s “a significant, but relatively modest net economic effect for Alaska as a whole,” the report notes. But co-author Matthew Berman, a professor of economics at UAA’s Institute of Social and Economic Research, said the dollar figures don’t capture the large disparity between climate change’s cost to urban and rural Alaska. But Berman cautioned that the amount the report predicts climate...

While serving time in a South Carolina prison, several inmates created an elaborate online “sextortion ring” that preyed on hundreds of U.S. servicemembers and manipulated them into sending money and nude photos of themselves, according to federal prosecutors. In five separate indictments, prosecutors allege that the male prisoners used contraband cellphones to extort members of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps through online dating websites by posing as young women. The online scheme bamboozled 442 troops out of more than $560,000, prosecutors say. The prisoners developed fake personas as 18 or 19 year-old women on social media forums...

Migrants who came with the caravan are suffering from respiratory infections, tuberculosis, chickenpox and other serious health issues, Tijuana's Health Department warned on Thursday morning.