Free Republic

This is the seventh installment of a nine-part series excerpting the chapter on medical care from the new edition of economist Thomas Sowell's "Applied Economics." All parts of the series can be seen at IBDeditorials.com.It is illegal for a pharmaceutical company to begin selling a drug without prior approval by the Food and Drug Administration. The drug-approval process tries to reduce the risks of new and untried medicines before they are made available to the general public. In addition to being reasonably safe for most people, pharmaceutical drugs must also be shown to be effective for whatever medical conditions they...

HUNTINGTON, W.Va. (WSAZ) -- Former Cabell County Magistrate Candidate Amy Walker Irwin, formerly known as Amy Daugherty, was arrested Sunday night and charged with possession of a controlled substance. According to the criminal complaint, Irwin was in her car outside a "known crack house" on 17th Street and Dalton Avenue in Huntington when officers approached the car and saw a small piece of apparent crack in plastic next to the gear shifter. The complaint goes on to say Lt. J.T. Combs conducted a field test on the substance and it tested positive for the presence of cocaine. Magistrate Dan Goheen...

The Middlesex County Democratic Organization has fired a paid canvasser who falsely claimed to be the assistant deputy director of Governor Corzine’s re-election campaign when arrested by East Rutherford police Friday night. < snip > Silverstein also confirmed that the vehicle that Shih was driving when he was pulled over Friday night in East Rutherford was rented by the organization. He said he did not know whether Shih was in Bergen County on official MCDO business or on a personal errand.

The US is to open seven military bases in Colombia. The deal was sealed in Bogota today, a relatively swift passage to signature after the idea was only suggested at the end of August.

Heightened efforts by the Drug Enforcement Administration to crack down on narcotics abuse are producing a troubling side effect by denying some hospice and elderly patients needed pain medication, according to two Senate Democrats and a coalition of pharmacists and geriatric experts.

WASHINGTON – The Food and Drug Administration has allowed drugs for cancer and other diseases to stay on the market even when follow-up studies showed they didn't extend patients' lives, say congressional investigators. A report due out Monday from the Government Accountability Office also shows that the FDA has never pulled a drug off the market due to a lack of required follow-up about its actual benefits — even when such information is more than a decade overdue. (excerpted)

MATAMOROS, Mexico — This border city near the mouth of the Rio Grande is eerily quiet on most days — eerie because its streets are largely the lair of the Zetas gunmen, the most feared and savage gangsters in Mexico. On other days, gunbattles ensue in broad daylight between heavily armed Zeta enforcers and those who get in their way — as happened last month when soldiers stopped a suspicious carload of men on a street that runs along the Rio Grande levee through a wealthy Matamoros neighborhood. The gunmen opened fire, tossed grenades. Bullets tore into houses and businesses...

A trio of illegal male immigrants from Mexico were found to have arrest records in California when they were processed by Border Patrol agents from the Douglas Station. Tucson Sector spokeswoman Colleen Agle said the three were found to have significant criminal arrests when their fingerprints were checked against records Thursday. One individual had been accused of intercourse with a minor and rape by force/fear, another of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and the third of threatening crime with intent to terrorize, child cruelty, and possible injury/death and battery of a spouse,...

U.S. Border Patrol agents discovered a smuggling tunnel under the border in Nogales, Ariz., on Wednesday. It was the first passageway agents have found in the Tucson Sector in nearly four months. The 30-foot tunnel, 150 yards east of the DeConcini Port of Entry, was fortified on the Mexican side with shoring, but on the American side it appeared unfinished, U.S. Border Patrol spokes-man Mario Escalante said. The tunnel was not connected to the drainage system. Escalante said there was no evidence as to who was using the tunnel. "They already had an opening on the north side at the...

Northwestern research finds drugs aim at wrong target CHICAGO --- More than half the people who take antidepressants for depression never get relief. Why? Because the cause of depression has been oversimplified and drugs designed to treat it aim at the wrong target, according to new research from the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. The medications are like arrows shot at the outer rings of a bull's eye instead of the center. A study from the laboratory of long-time depression researcher Eva Redei, presented at the Neuroscience 2009 conference in Chicago this week, appears to topple two strongly held...

They decapitate, torture, and extort. Then they pray, and donate to charity.The "Familia" cartel is perhaps the most extreme example of the paradoxical enemy which Mexico faces as it tries to defeat organised crime. It is a fight which would be much easier if the cartels were simply maverick gangs on the fringe of society. But they are, in many areas, part of society. "La Familia was originally a social structure. And in many ways it still is," says a former Mexico deputy attorney general and organised crime expert, Prof Samuel Gonzalez Ruiz.

Comedian David Cross brought his stand-up routine to Washington's Warner Theatre Wednesday night and made a shocking confession (assuming he wasn't joking...) at the end of his routine: That he snorted cocaine while seated just yards away from President Barack Obama at this year's White House Correspondents' Association dinner. "So I got to go because my girlfriend is a fancy Hollywood actress and she got an invitation to go this last time, so we went," the "Arrested Development" star told the crowd. He went on to say that he has an ongoing competition with a friend in which the two...

A 1-year-old boy whose mom noticed he was lethargic and unresponsive on his birthday earlier this month was high on marijuana, doctors determined. Now the man who was taking care of him at the time is behind bars. Vacaville police arrested Jonathan Velasquez Sr., 29, on Tuesday on suspicion of child endangerment for the Oct. 11 incident. The Police Department's Family Investigative Response Services Team and Solano Child Welfare Services investigated and discovered the infant either inhaled or ingested enough marijuana to require immediate medical attention, Sgt. Charlie Spruill said. Velasquez is the baby's father, Sacramento-area TV station Fox 40...

Buckley on marijuana National Review ^ | William F. Buckley Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great. The laws aren't exactly indefensible, because practically nothing is, and the thunderers who tell us to stay the course can always find one man or woman who, having taken marijuana, moved on to severe mental disorder. But that argument, to quote...

WASHINGTON -- Federal drug agents won't pursue pot-smoking patients or their sanctioned suppliers in states that allow medical marijuana, under new legal guidelines to be issued Monday by the Obama administration. Two Justice Department officials described the new policy to The Associated Press, saying prosecutors will be told it is not a good use of their time to arrest people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state law. The guidelines to be issued by the department do, however, make it clear that agents will go after people whose marijuana distribution goes beyond what is permitted under...

Planned Parenthood Used Underage Girls in 10 Clinical Trials Pushing Abortion Washington, DC (LifeNews.com)-- A new report from a Planned Parenthood watchdog group finds the abortion business used underage girls in at least 10 clinical trials over the last two decades to push abortion, birth control, and STD testing. The news comes at a time when Planned Parenthood is facing criticism for videos showing it ignoring potential statutory abuse cases. http://www.LifeNews.com/nat5548.html

SNIPPET: "For all his public activity, Bray has rarely, if ever, discussed his life story in detail. His own MAS biography offers vague descriptions of his work as "a long time civil and human rights advocate." A charismatic African-American convert to Islam, Bray spent this entire decade working for Islamist organizations. Prior to joining MAS, Bray was political director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). Those jobs have helped him build a growing public profile and given him access to politicians and policy makers. And that may explain his reluctance to discuss his life before political activism. The Investigative...

CHICAGO (Reuters) - A vaccine helped block the high felt by cocaine users in 38 percent of people who took it, U.S. researchers said on Monday, offering promise of a new approach to treating those addicted to the drug. The aim is to prevent cocaine’s rewarding effects -- the high -- in order to reduce cravings that trigger drug relapses. “The concept works,” Dr. Thomas Kosten of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, whose study appears in the Archives of General Psychiatry, said in a statement. Cocaine molecules on their own are too small to draw the attention of...

Milton Friedman puts forward a compelling case for the legalization of drugs

Note: Photo included. "2 Canadians slain in Mexico tied to drug trade: police 3 gunmen believed responsible for shootings" Last Updated: Monday, September 28, 2009 | 9:56 PM ET The Associated Press SNIPPET: "Gang investigators in British Columbia say two men gunned down in Mexico were involved in the drug trade, and had been on the radar of gang investigators before they were found shot to death in a Puerto Vallarta condo complex."

....This article is not another polemic about why it should or shouldn't be (legalized). Today, in any case, the pertinent question is whether it already has been -- at least on a local-option basis. We're referring to a cultural phenomenon that has been evolving for the past 15 years, topped off by a crucial policy reversal that was quietly instituted by President Barack Obama in February....

...[W]e're reprising the harrowing 1977 grand jury testimony of the 13-year-old California girl with whom the director had sex after plying her with Champagne and a Quaalude at the Los Angeles home of Jack Nicholson. Polanski, now 74, fled the U.S. for Europe before he could be sentenced for the sex crime and remains a fugitive from justice. In graphic testimony, Samantha Gailey described the illicit encounter with Polanski, which began with her posing naked in a Jacuzzi for him as he purportedly snapped photos for French Vogue. From there, Polanski approached her in a bedroom of Nicholson's Mulholland Drive...

A Chilton County [AL] woman is fighting an effort by federal prosecutors to seize her home and 40 acres in a marijuana case against her husband, who committed suicide during his trial. Mara Lynn Williams, 56, a cancer survivor who works as a nurse at Jackson Hospital in Montgomery, said she knew that her husband, Royce, 53, used marijuana for chronic pain after multiple surgeries. But she said she did not know he was growing it on their acreage, and she was not charged in the criminal case. Her husband was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot in a car...

Downing Street was involved in a heated row with the BBC last night over the corporation’s “astonishing” questioning of the Gordon Brown's health. Andrew Marr, the BBC’s main political presenter, shocked the Prime Minister during a live television interview on the opening day of Labour’s annual conference in Brighton by asking whether he took pills to help him “get through". Mr Brown’s aides last night said they were amazed that despite issuing denials to an internet rumour in recent weeks, specifically to the BBC, Mr Marr went ahead and still asked the question. Mr Marr told Mr Brown that he...

Health Minister Nicola Roxon wants debate about the moral challenge as the Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee plans trials to determine when costly drugs become ineffective and should no longer be dispensed.

As the drug has poured into the country from Afghanistan in recent years, Russians' relative ignorance about its dangers has taken a huge toll, especially on the young.The young man named Anton is a member of Russia's "lost generation." He's the son of middle-class, college-educated engineers; he studied at a good university and became a truck sales manager in Moscow. He's also a 28-year-old heroin addict. In the years since the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan triggered a sharp increase in poppy cultivation, Russia has been flooded with heroin. The dope has crept along a drug trail stretching from Afghanistan through...

Ralph Nader has been many things: lawyer, consumer-rights bulldog, political activist and perennial third-party presidential candidate. He has now added a new title to his business card: fiction writer. His latest book, Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us!, is a 700-page populist fantasy in which a small group of billionaires and media moguls — led by Warren Buffett and including Ted Turner, George Soros, Bill Cosby, Yoko Ono and Phil Donahue — pool their massive resources to reform the U.S. With the help of a $15 billion war chest and a p.r. campaign starring a talking parrot, the group successfully...

"Don't hate my father," Mackenzie Phillips tells PEOPLE. But in a tell-all book out Wednesday, the former childhood actress reveals that her dad, musician John Phillips of the '60s band the Mamas and the Papas, engaged with her in a long-term incestuous relationship. Phillips, 49, who has survived drug addiction, arrests and divorce, writes in the book High on Arrival that she was already a star playing a boy-crazy teen on the TV sitcom One Day at a Time when her father had sex with her on the night before she was to marry Jeff Sessler, a member of the...

"If there's a blue pill and a red pill, and the blue pill is half the price of the red pill and works just as well, why not pay half price for the thing that's going to make you well?" Sixty percent of doctors feel that if Obamacare is passed, patients will not have President Obama's famous choice of the red pill or the blue pill. They believe that the health care plans going through congress will stunt the development of new drugs, or as one physician said, "It will crush medical research because new and innovative treatments/technology cost money...

As the troops marched to their doom in the First World War they sang a characteristically British military anthem. To the tune of Auld Lang Syne, they intoned “We’re here because we’re here because we’re here because we’re here.” Once human beings are committed to an endeavour and have made sacrifices in its prosecution, they are strongly disinclined to subject it to serious review. The idea of abandoning the course they are on before they have reached its end becomes unthinkable. Far better simply to plough on. That is how people can cheerfully sing that they don’t know what they...

(English-language translation) BOGOTA - On Saturday, Colombia extradited to the United States FARC [member] Nancy Conde Rubio, from whom the authorities intercepted her telephone conversations and thus secured the rescue of 15 kidnapping victims in the guerrilla [organization's] power. There were three Americans among the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC) captives. Thirty-seven-year-old Conde was extradited on an airplane belonging to U.S. anti-drug authorities, said General Luis Ramírez with the Police Criminal Investigation Directorate. He added that the airplane was initially headed for Florida and, from there, the detainee, who was wearing handcuffs and a bulletproof vest, will be taken to the...

Authorities arrested a man they said tried to trade his father's car for $50 worth of crack cocaine. Deputies arrested the 39-year-old man around 4 a.m. Wednesday after his 74-year-old father reported that his Lincoln had been stolen. When deputies arrived at the father's home, they saw the son walking up the street. They determined that the car had been sold for drugs. Deputies later saw someone else driving the Lincoln, and pulled it over. The driver fled the moving car, which hit two parked cars.

Philadelphia police said a man out buying drugs flagged down officers after he couldn't find the car he'd parked with his 6-year-old stepson inside. The man, 31, was charged with endangering the welfare of a child and recklessly endangering another person. Police said the suspect had driven from Lehigh County to Philadelphia to buy drugs before he flagged down a police car around 4:30 Saturday morning. Authorities said he explained that he couldn't find the car with the boy inside.

HIDALGO, MEXICO - Thirty-one police officers have been arrested in the state of Hidalgo, on suspicion of collaborating with a gang of drug cartel hit men. The officers were arrested as part of an almost year-long investigation into alleged ties between police and the Zetas cartel. The investigation began last October, when federal authorities arrested seven suspected Zeta accountants and found evidence of monthly payments from the gang to officers. Back in June, 92 officers were arrested on similar charges.

Far from protecting us and our children, the war on drugs is making the world a much more dangerous place. SO FAR this year, about 4000 people have died in Mexico's drugs war - a horrifying toll. If only a good fairy could wave a magic wand and make all illegal drugs disappear, the world would be a better place. Dream on. Recreational drug use is as old as humanity, and has not been stopped by the most draconian laws. Given that drugs are here to stay, how do we limit the harm they do? The evidence suggests most of...

In the summer of 1996, California’s Maxine Waters publicly accused the United States government of introducing crack cocaine into mostly black South Central L.A. She said the government was complicit in destroying the inner city. Thirteen years later, at the hands of the above, we are witnessing the U.S. actually abetting a drug dealer, Hugo Chavez. Hugo Chavez wanted to expand membership in his “Friends of Hugo” club and needed money to retain power. Oil prices were down but cocaine trafficking could fill the gap. It was becoming difficult to export drugs to the US from Venezuela, Cuba, etc., so...

A housekeeper ...discovered some "goody bags" when cleaning up a motel room. Not long after the discovery of various illegal drugs and paraphernalia in room 126 of the hotel, the Cortez Police Department was called in to investigate the incident. Items seized as evidence by police officers include up to 30 grams of psilocybin mushrooms, 1.2 grams of methamphetamine, 10 glass pipes, four of which contained meth residue and Xanax, Carisoprodol 350 mg and two Fentaynyl Transdermal patches, all controlled substances... The manager ...said two men called his office later Tuesday "asking if they could have their friends' bags,"

I predict that as the Federal Government over-reaches on some issues and fails to uphold its responsibility on other issues, states will begin acting more independently. 10th Amendment Issue: Texas Sends Rangers To Border Because Federal Government Failed To Address Problems 84rules September 11, 2009

This fall, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Alvarez v. Smith, a challenge to the state of Illinois' Drug Asset Forfeiture Procedure Act (DAFPA). (Disclosure: the Reason Foundation, publisher of Reason.com, joined in an amicus brief in the case.) The six petitioners in Alvarez each had property seized by police who suspected the property had been involved in a drug crime. Three had their cars seized, three had cash taken. None of the six were served with a warrant, none of the six were charged with the crime. All perfectly legal, at least until now. ...(snip)... In...

The heart of Glass House Ministries was born during a painful season in our family, when both our sons succumbed to the temptation to use drugs and consequently battled with the force of addiction in their lives. As Christians, Wayne and I raised our four children to honor and respect the Lord, doing our best to train and disciple them to live a lifestyle of integrity. The problems we faced with our boys left us wrestling with anger, hurt, and confusion, as we tried to figure out where we’d gone wrong as parents. We experienced two types of attitudes within...

Before condos in Williamsburg started selling at a loss and weekend flights to L.A. dropped to under $200, New York's cocaine dealers were supplying good times to people who indulged like the party wouldn't end. Before the recession, "I was making deliveries every night of the week," ... "Back then, I could afford to pick and choose. If I didn't know the address — forget it. If I didn't like their accent — forget it. On most nights, there were more people wanting than I could get to." Then the stock market crashed, and people started losing Sammy’s number. But...

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Last month, our Fox News' "War Stories" team was in Colombia, covering the tough fight against a narco-insurgency, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC. This month, we're in Afghanistan, covering another narco-insurgency, the Taliban. In Colombia, cocaine fuels and funds the terror. Here in Afghanistan, it's opium. Despite extraordinary differences in culture, climate and terrain, there are dramatic parallels in the two campaigns. More importantly, lessons learned in the Andean basin are being applied here in the shadows of the Hindu Kush. Both countries have isolated agricultural populations vulnerable to coercion by insurgents financed by...

Border Crackdown Makes Farming in U.S. Forests Attractive; Cartel Links Suspected Marijuana growers, many believed to be affiliated with Mexican drug cartels, are aggressively expanding their illegal farming operations in the U.S., clearing land to plant pot in dozens of national forests from coast to coast. Illicit cannabis farms on public land first sprang up in California more than a decade ago and remain a serious problem in that state. But in the past two years, the U.S. Forest Service has documented a rapid expansion of the practice. Authorities have discovered pot farms in 61 national forests across 16 states...

After a long day at work on a commercial shoot, I decided to unwind with a little internet and cable television. Politics and punditry are my hobby, not my main source of income, so I indulge in a little cable news and internet sites as time permits. I’ve always felt it important to see the world outside the “echo chamber” of like-minded folks, so my television sits for far too many hours on MSNBC and the Huffington Post is bookmarked on my browser. What struck me from a few hours of watching leftist television and reading leftist gobbledygook is how...

Predictably, the push has begun to get a Kennedy into the Senate seat held for lo those many years by Ted Kennedy. The Kennedys favorite newspaper - the Boston Globe - all but annointed Joe in a news story by Frank Phillips that also handily reminded everybody that the seat is, after all, the permanent property of the Kennedy family. Said Philips: [Snip] "All eyes now are on Joseph P. Kennedy II, the former US representative, with family members and political allies expecting him to make a decision very shortly on whether to enter the Democratic primary. "No other Kennedy...

One of the earliest chemotherapy drugs appears to work against a genetic fault that can trigger bowel and other cancers, UK researchers say. In laboratory tests methotrexate, first administered in the 1940s, was found to destroy cells containing the damaged MSH2 gene. This raises the hope of targeted treatments for those whose cancer is driven by the faulty gene. Patient trials have already begun, EMBO Molecular Medicine reports. The genetic condition HNPCC leaves people with a propensity to develop certain forms of cancer: some 90% of men and 70% of women will have developed bowel cancer by the time they...

In a ruling with broad implications for computer privacy, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that federal investigators went too far when they seized the digital records of a drug testing company and kept the results of confidential drug tests performed on all Major League baseball players during the 2002 season. According to published reports, 104 players tested positive for performance enhancing drugs. The names of four of them — Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, and (now retired) Sammy Sosa — were leaked to the press by an anonymous source or sources. The court...

When one first looks at this article in The New Republic speculating about if Ted Kennedy's son, Patrick Kennedy, could grow into a great political leader, you wouldn't be blamed for thinking it was a satirical story written by either Scott Ott or some other humor columnist. However the name of the author is Jason Zengerle and he is being dead serious which actually makes it funnier than any intentionally satirical story could be. What makes Zengerle's article especially funny is that he provides absolutely no proof that Patrick Kennedy displays the slightest bit of political leadership. In fact, Zengerle...

The supreme court in Argentina has ruled that it is unconstitutional to punish people for using marijuana for personal consumption. The decision follows a case of five young men who were arrested with a few marijuana cigarettes in their pockets. But the court said use must not harm others and made it clear it did not advocate a complete decriminalisation. Correspondents say there is a growing momentum in Latin America towards decriminalising drugs for personal use. The Argentine court ruled that: "Each adult is free to make lifestyle decisions without the intervention of the state." Supreme Court President Ricardo Lorenzetti...

(English-language translation) During a meeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in Caracas, American essayist and political analyst Noam Chomsky yesterday criticized the use of Colombian military bases by the United States Army. "The U.S.'s justification to establish military bases in Colombia is narcotraffic. However, this justification is not very serious," the essayist said and added: "There exists an intervention attitude under the pretext of narcotraffic." President Chávez greeted Chomsky at Miraflores Palace, where he received "the warmest welcome". "It was time you visited us and for the Venezuelan people to see and hear you directly," Chávez told the Professor Emeritus...