Free Republic

STERLING, Va. - A close inspection by Customs and Border Protection officers at Dulles International Airport turned up something unexpected. Inside a fully-cooked chicken they found cocaine with an estimated street value of $4,300. The 60.4 grams (2.3 ounces) of coke was found inside two small, clear plastic bags inside the chicken's cavity. Officers discovered the white powdery substance during a secondary inspection after a flight from El Salvador arrived shortly after midnight Saturday. It tested positive for cocaine. "CBP officers have seen many unique narcotics concealment methods, and they all present the same challenges to discover them. Our officers'...

PALMVIEW, Texas (CBS/AP) President Barack Obama's approval rating may be hovering in the 50 percent range, but that doesn't mean America's Commander-in-Chief isn’t catching on with new constituents There is now a line of Ecstasy pills made in the image of the 44th president of the United States, according to Texas police who have snatched a batch off the streets. Ecstasy is known for a sense of elation, diminished feelings of fear and anxiety, and ability to induce a sense of intimacy with others. Perhaps a good Election Day strategy to get out the vote? A stash of the brightly...

What a difference a week can make. Last Friday reports were just starting to surface of Tiger Woods automobile accident. Since that time at least three women have come forward saying they were Woods' mistresses. Also rumors of domestic violence causing the car accident are running rampant. Tiger's life has definitely changed. Rachel Uchitel, the first woman who was romantically linked in the Tiger Woods affair scandal was reportedley paid off to keep quiet about the situation. Now RadarOnline is reporting that Uchitel told friends that she and Tiger would do drugs before having sex. Whether it is a coincidence...

PALMVIEW, Texas - President Barack Obama's approval rating may be hovering in the 50 percent range, but that doesn't mean America's Commander-in-Chief isn't catching on with new constituents. There is now a line of Ecstasy pills made in the image of the 44th president of the United States, according to Texas police who have snatched a batch off the streets Ecstasy is known for a sense of elation, diminished feelings of fear and anxiety, and ability to induce a sense of intimacy with others. Perhaps a good Election Day strategy to get out the vote? A stash of the brightly...

A Kingsport man was arrested Tuesday on felony drug charges after police discovered 3.66 ounces of marijuana in his box of Lucky Charms cereal. According to an incident report from Kingsport police, officers were dispatched to Kings View Apartments, 901 Larry Neil Way, at about 10:40 Tuesday morning. The police report says officers were called due to a "possible disturbance" in apartment no. 8. Officers report hearing "some noises" from the apartment when they arrived, and knocked on the door. It was answered by the resident, Mitchell Cody Johnson, 22. Police explained why they were there, and Johnson allegedly appeared...

Bob Mazur won't be showing up at bookstores to sign copies of his new book. * * * Twenty-one years ago, after learning that the notorious Medellin drug cartel had sent a hit squad to kill him, Mazur had to assume a new identity and move his family from their Tampa home. * * * Mazur's book about the investigation code-named "Operation C-Chase" is a white-knuckle tale of how he gained the trust of crooked bankers and Colombian drug traffickers who would have killed him without a second thought if they knew he was one of "los feos." * *...

Here is how CBS News reported, in September, on the death of a census worker in Kentucky. “Terror in Kentucky: Census Worker's Murder. Body Found Naked, Hanging From Tree in Cemetery; Had Been Gagged, Duct Taped, 'Fed' Scrawled on Chest.. "'He was murdered,’ Weaver said. ‘There's no doubt.’ ... I said, 'Bill you be careful when you go over to eastern Kentucky to do your census work. Some of the people over there may not understand that you're just collecting statistics,' friend Gilbert Acciardo told CBS News.. “Although anti-government sentiment was one possibility in the death, some in law enforcement...

Sherry Johnston was sentenced Friday to three years in prison for dealing the prescription painkiller OxyContin. [...] Johnston made a deal with prosecutors to plead to a single felony count in exchange for dropping five other felony drug dealing charges against her. The deal called for the 42-year-old Wasilla woman to be sentenced to three years of prison time plus three years of probation, which is what the judge gave her. Johnston received less time than the normal five to eight years for a second-degree felony drug charge because the amount she was dealing was so small. Johnston is slated...

Democrats in Congress asked for two separate investigations of drug industry pricing Wednesday as they continue working on legislation to overhaul the nation’s health care system. Responding to news reports of unusually high wholesale price increases in brand-name prescription drugs, four House leaders and one senator asked for government reviews of the pricing practices. Although drug makers challenge the theory, some experts say the run-up in wholesale prices may be partly related to the industry’s concerns about future cost containment under any health care legislation. “Recent studies have indicated that the industry may be artificially raising prices for certain pharmaceutical...

The sea lanes of the South Atlantic have become a favored route for drug traffickers carrying narcotics from Latin America to West and North Africa, where al Qaeda-related groups are increasingly involved in transporting the drugs to Europe, intelligence officials and counternarcotics specialists say. A Middle Eastern intelligence official said his agency has picked up "very worrisome reports" of rapidly growing cooperation between Islamic militants operating in North and West Africa and drug lords in Latin America. With U.S. attention focused on the Caribbean and Africans lacking the means to police their shores, the vast sea lanes of the South...

The Texas Department of Public Safety is warning parents across the state that violent Mexican cartels and transnational gangs are actively recruiting Texas youngsters in schools and communities. These criminal organizations are luring teens with the prospect of cars, money and notoriety, and promise them that if they are arrested, they will receive light sentences. The gangs are responsible for massive drug deals and related slayings, and authorities say that they will often use youths in their crimes because juveniles are typically treated with more leniency by the criminal justice system.

DALLAS—Standric Choice, 36, a former Dallas Sheriff’s Deputy, was sentenced today to 180 months (15 years) in federal prison, to be followed by eight years of supervised release, for his role in a cocaine trafficking conspiracy, announced U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks of the Northern District of Texas. In March 2009, Choice pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute 500 grams or more of cocaine, possessing a firearm during and in relation to a drug trafficking crime, and possessing with the intent to distribute in excess of 500 grams of cocaine while...

Um, you've got the wrong state, Boss. Legendary rocker Bruce Springsteen made an onstage geography goof Friday when he bellowed "Hello, Ohio!" to adoring fans at the Auburn Hills Palace -- in Michigan. The "Born in the USA" crooner referred to the neighboring state several times before trusty E Street Band guitarist Steven Van Zandt whispered their actual location into his ear.

The Atlantic Foreign Affairs December 2009 In the almost three years since President Felipe Calderón launched a war on drug cartels, border towns in Mexico have turned into halls of mirrors where no one knows who is on which side or what chance remark could get you murdered. Some 14,000 people have been killed in that time, the worst carnage since the Mexican Revolution, and part of the country is effectively under martial law. Is this evidence of a creeping coup by the military? A war between drug cartels? Between the president and his opposition? Or just collateral damage from...

This presentation presents information obtained from a National Park Study and a Department of Interior Threat Assessment report about the devastating impacts of designated federal Wilderness on our country's southern border: http://www.peopleforwesternheritage.com/PFPOWH_WildernessOnTheBorder/Presentation_Files/index.html According to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, "Law enforcement work in the National Park Service is the most dangerous in federal service. National Park Service officers are 12 times more likely to be killed or injured as a result of an assault than FBI agents. Overall, NPS law enforcement has a morbidity rate triple that of the next worst federal agency."

Singer Joss Stone recently sat for an interview with Britain’s Star magazine and it has anti-drug campaigners freaking out. You may have guessed it…the 22-year-old admitted to smoking weed on a regular basis, calling it “fun”. How often does Stone do drugs? Well she said it depends on the day and if the studio allows smoking or not and what song she is working on. Joss said, “I smoke weed, but I don’t think it’s really a drug. It’s more an herb. I don’t regret saying that at all. I think everyone smokes weed and people who say they don’t...

In the story making the rounds here in Mexico's drug capital, the setting is a beauty parlor. A woman with wealth obtained legally openly criticizes a younger patron who is married to a trafficker. The "narco-wife" orders the hairdresser to shave the first woman's head. Terrified, the hairdresser complies. Urban legend or real? It almost doesn't matter; it's the sort of widely repeated account that both intimidates and titillates. And it highlights a disturbing trend: As drug violence seeps deeper into Mexican society, women are taking a more hands-on role. In growing numbers, they are being recruited into the ranks...

A Boston TV station discovered that Barney Frank was present in 2007 when police raided his boyfriend's home in Maine and confiscated marijuana, bongs and marijuana plants. Somehow this didn't come out until now. In the TV interview below, Frank professes ignorance of the contents of his boyfriend's house--he was on the porch when the police arrived!--and says he wouldn't recognize a marijuana plant if he saw one. It's a wonderful image, really: the boyfriend has these weird, spiky house plants scattered around the premises and Barney thinks they're ferns or something. And he didn't recognize the bags of marijuana,...

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.