Free Republic

Oh, oh, oreo. Ever feel like you could eat the whole bag yourself? According to a new study — you’re not a glutton, you’re addicted. A student at Connecticut College found lab rats that ate oreos were just as strongly associated to them as lab rats that were injected with cocaine or morphine. (Via WNCN) And, this sounds even more dangerous — eating Oreos activated even more neurons in the “pleasure centers” of rats’ brains than those addicted drugs did. (Via YouTube / Oreo)

Study: Oreo Cookies As Addictive As Cocaine Research Indicates High Fat, High Sugar Foods Trigger Pleasure Center In Brain October 15, 2013 4:59 PM NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – Research out of Connecticut College shows that “America’s Favorite Cookie” may be as addictive as cocaine. Connecticut College psychology professor Joseph Schroeder and four students studied in rats whether high fat, high sugar foods can be as addictive as drugs of abuse. The research looked at the behaviors and the effects the cookies had on the brain. “We found that the behavior they exhibited was equally strong for Oreo cookies as it...

Holy smoke! Police set light to $250 million of cocaine seized from an international organized crime ring. Armed officers stood by as others burned 2,551 lbs of the Class A drug inside a military base in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. According to the attorney general, the 1.2-ton haul was confiscated from a drug smuggling gang in a recent police operation in Peravia Province. …

How did Jay Z develop the business acumen he needed to become a music mogul? By dealing crack, of course. “I know about budgets. I was a drug dealer,” the hip-hop titan boasted to Vanity Fair magazine, referring to his days on Brooklyn’s mean streets. “To be in a drug deal, you need to know what you can spend, what you need to re-up.”

President Obama knows something about being a low-level, nonviolent drug offender, such as the kind the Justice Department today exempted from harsh mandatory prison sentences. In a sense, he was one himself once, although the young Barry Obama was never arrested or charged with a crime. Obama wrote openly in his 1995 memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” about using marijuana and “maybe a little blow” during his high school days in Hawaii in the 1970s. Biographer David Maraniss reported that Obama was even a pot-smoking trend-setter and leader in the “Choom Gang.” But decades later, openly reflecting on the “stupid”...

HBO's resident left-wing comic Bill Maher drew disapproval from late night host David Letterman's audience on Tuesday after he told a pair of jokes mocking George Zimmerman in the wake of his acquittal for the shooting death of black teenager Trayvon Martin. Maher was in New York City to watch the Major League Baseball All-Star Game. When Letterman mentioned that Maher was among the owners of the New York Mets, whose stadium hosted the annual mid-season classic, Maher noted that he was only a 'minority owner.'

FORT WORTH (CBSDFW.COM) - Relatives of a man who was killed after police entered his home and tased him are struggling to come to terms with how he died. “They physically pulled him off the couch because, like I said, he was asleep. They pulled him off the couch and they tried to put him on his stomach. He can’t breathe on his stomach. He don’t even lie on the bed on his stomach,” said Donna Randle, the mother of victim Jarmaine Darden, 34. Zero tolerance officers were executing a search warrant at his southeast Fort Worth house on May...

KABUL -- The U.S. wants to keep nine bases in Afghanistan after American combat troops withdraw in 2014 and the Afghan government will let them as long as it gets "security and economic guarantees," President Hamid Karzai said Thursday in his first public offer in talks about the future relationship between the two uneasy allies. U.S. officials have made no final announcement about how many troops might remain in Afghanistan after 2014, although they have said as many as many as 12,000 U.S. and coalition forces could remain to train and advise Afghans and continue counterterrorism operations against al-Qaida and...

Customs agents thought something didn't seem right with the coconuts that arrived at Port Everglades. When they looked closer, they found 90 of them were hollowed out and stuffed with pounds of cocaine. The routine inspection of a container of produce shipped from the Dominican Republic to Fort Lauderdale turned up bags that were missing labels. Federal agents put tracking devices into some of the fruit and let them be delivered to a produce-importing business in Miami, leading investigators to two men who unloaded and separated out the suspicious bags and a third man who took them to his home.

NOTE The following text is a quote: www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl1908.aspx Treasury Identifies Kassem Rmeiti & Co. for Exchange and Halawi Exchange Co. as Financial Institutions of “Primary Money Laundering Concern” 4/23/2013 In First Use of Section 311 Against a Non-Bank Financial Institution, Treasury Acts to Protect the U.S. Financial System from Foreign Exchange Houses Tied to Global Narcotics and Money Laundering Networks and Hizballah WASHINGTON – The U.S. Department of the Treasury today named two Lebanese exchange houses, Kassem Rmeiti & Co. For Exchange (Rmeiti Exchange) and Halawi Exchange Co. (Halawi Exchange), as foreign financial institutions of primary money laundering concern under...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Wednesday he has introduced a bill to repeal mandatory minimum sentencing for drug use and told the story of two young men—Barack Obama and George W. Bush—who were said to use drugs but did not go to jail. “In this story, both young men were extraordinarily lucky. Both young men were not caught using illegal drugs, and they weren’t imprisoned. Instead, they went on to become presidents of the United States. Barack Obama and George Bush were lucky,” Paul said in a speech at Howard University, a historically black college in Washington, DC. “The law...

I was tuning around channels the other morning and tuned into "Imus In the Morning". He had some inane/insane comments and suddenly he went on a rant. He was defending that commie bit*h who said kids should be brought up by the "collective". He also defended the word 'collective' stating it was NOT a communist word. He called Sarah Palin a number of names, he called Rush a fat, pill popping pig plus few other nasty names. His 'sidekick' Colin McShane just sat there and agreed half heartedly (he strikes me as being terminally stupid). He ranted like a village...

Cocaine addicts could be cured using a technique that stimulates the brain with magnets. Experiments on mice addicted to cocaine found they were weaned off the drug after laser beams were used to change neurons in a particular part of the brain. Scientists who report their study in the journal Nature say a similar strategy using magnets could work on human drug abusers—and clinical trials should start soon to see if it works. They showed by stimulating a region called the pre-frontal cortex with light they could wipe away addictive behavior in the lab animals—or conversely turn non-addicted rats into...

Genghis Khan Found Guilty in Rockland Rockland County District Attorney Thomas P. Zugibe announced Tuesday, March 26 that Genghis Khan (DOB 06/01/89) of 1008 St. Marks Avenue, Brooklyn, New York was found guilty following a jury trial of: One count of Criminal Possession of a Controlled Substance in the Second Degree, a class “A-II” Felony One count of Unlawful Possession of Marijuana, a Violation On April 30, 2012, at approximately 4:40 p.m., Khan was traveling on the New York State Thruway (I-87) in the Town of Clarkstown. During a traffic stop, state troopers found the defendant in possession of approximately...

In another case in the annals of conservative "adaptation" to yesterday's liberal innovation, Ohio Republican senator Rob Portman has just announced that he now supports faux marriage. The change was motivated, he said, by his son having come out to him and his wife as a homosexual. Well, it's a good thing his son didn't announce that he was involved in bestiality. Talk about a pandering parent. We can also talk here about letting your personal life influence your public policy. If I were a statesman and learned that a child of mine were hooked on cocaine or had joined...

OCTOBER 17, 2009 Rajaratnam Surfaced in U.S. Terrorism Probe By EVAN PEREZ and MATTHEW ROSENBERG WASHINGTON—The hedge-fund billionaire charged as part of a vast insider-trading case surfaced in an earlier, separate probe into U.S. fundraising by a Sri Lankan terrorist group, people familiar with the probe said. As part of that investigation, federal agents said they uncovered documents showing that Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group, was among several wealthy Sri Lankans in the U.S. whose donations to a Maryland-based charity made their way to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, according to people familiar with the probe. Raj...

Posted by Ann Barnhardt - March 16, AD 2013 8:08 PM MST Here is the full video of Pope Francis' first Mass in the Sistine Chapel. The consecration of the Host happens at 51:47. The consecration of the Chalice happens at 52:32. I cannot believe I am about to type these words. The Pope DID NOT GENUFLECT after either consecration. He did a weird bow thing, but didn't feel the need to bend his knee to God Almighty, physically present in his hands upon the altar. HE. DID. NOT. GENUFLECT. This is absolutely stunning. And unprecedented. Oh yeah, we're in...

Six Boston cops fired after testing positive for cocaine have been ordered reinstated — with back pay — after a state board struck down hair tests as unreliable in a bombshell ruling that could have a far-reaching impact on how city workers are drug-tested. In a stunning, 134-page ruling, the Massachusetts Civil Service Commission this week ordered the six cops back on the job, finding that “the present state of hair testing for drugs of abuse ... does not meet the standard of reliability necessary to be routinely used” to fire someone.

Hundreds of thousands of kilograms (pounds) of cocaine are seized en route to the U.S. every year, and the Defense Department estimates about 850 metric tons of cocaine departed South America last year toward the U.S., down 20 percent in just a year. The most recent U.S. survey found cocaine use fell significantly, from 2.4 million people in 2006 to 1.4 million in 2011. ... Assistant Secretary of State William Brownfield, head of the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs said the goal is to make it so hard for traffickers to move drugs to the U.S. that...

A search of a South Side home Friday revealed about $10 million worth of cocaine and more than $500,000 cash, leading to the arrest of the 21-year-old man who lived there. Two others also face felony charges in the case. Jose Pelayo-Aguilar, of the 3600 block of South Leavitt Avenue, was charged with manufacturing or delivering and possessing more than 900 grams of cocaine. During a Sunday court appearance, Judge Israel Desierto ordered him held on a $75,000 cash bond.