Free Republic

Retail sales of state-licensed weed in Washington topped $12 million by Sept. 8 … and sales keep climbing. The improvement of sales in recreational marijuana here mirrors the steep growth in sales in Colorado, where the recreational market out-sold medical for the first time in July (the latest numbers from that state). The Cannabist reports: “In July 2014, customers purchased more than $29.7 million in recreational marijuana — up from $24.7 million in June. Medical marijuana patients spent more than $28.9 million on marijuana in July — comparable to June’s $28.6 million in sales.” In Washington, there are now 55...

.....“While a crowd of several thousand Democrats waited on a sloping, grassy field below, Mrs Clinton, her husband and Senator Harkin staged a mini-grilling of steaks for the press at a single barbecue grill in a fenced-off enclosure, framed by a handsome tree and a picnic table filled with some patient Iowans. Mrs Clinton gamely posed, pretending to grill a steak that had been pre-cooked for her.”

...Obama will visit U.S. Central Command, headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base, on Wednesday for a briefing from his commanders on battle plans against the Sunni insurgent group Islamic State. ....White House officials made it clear that there would also be no U.S. military forces on the ground in Syria to coordinate airstrikes, nor have any done so in Iraq. But as the President continues to coalesce U.S. and international efforts to “degrade and ultimately defeat” IS, and Pentagon officials say they are making headway against IS in Iraq, two former Centcom commanders offer mixed reviews of his plans. “I...

Milk futures rose to a record high price Monday as exports by the U.S. climbed amid shrinking inventories of cheese and butter, signaling higher costs for pizza and pastries. The U.S. shipped a record 17 percent of milk production in the first half, according to Alan Levitt, a spokesman at the U.S. Dairy Export Council. Cheese stockpiles in July dropped 8 percent from a year earlier, and butter supplies tumbled 42 percent, the Department of Agriculture said last month. U.S. dairy costs are higher than world prices, signaling imports will increase, said Jon Spainhour, a partner at Rice Dairy LLC.

Yeah, it's not as if the poor guy ever gets to go on vacation or play a round of golf . . . On her MSNBC show last night, Rachel Maddow fretted about everything that was on President Obama's plate, from devising his immigration amnesty, to dealing with Putin, to Ebola, to a US plane forced to land in Iran. Concluded Maddow: "aren't you glad you're not President?" Really? When Barack Obama ran for the office back in 2008, think he figured the Oval Office would be a bowl of golf balls? Not to mention those few perks that come...

People in Malawi are buying life-saving antiretroviral drugs meant for people living with HIV, and misusing them to brew gin as well as fattening livestock. Some brewers who are fermenting maize husks in the antiretroviral drugs (ARVs) to produce a traditional gin known as ‘kachasu’ claim the resulting gin is very strong and matures quickly. There are also some small-scale commercial chicken and pig farmers misusing ARVs, adding them to broiler feed believing it will enhance weight gain so they can sell them quicker. The farmers’ activity has resulted from their observations made of people living with HIV who gain...

KAMLOOPS, B.C. - A 22-year-old B.C. woman is suing her ex-boyfriend to pay tuition for a class she says she failed due to distress over the breakup. Roopam Plawn, a marketing student at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, says in her notice of claim that she is seeking $500 for the class, $600 for anxiety, depression, insomnia and loss of working time and performance and $250 for "severe distress." She also wants Jasmeet Ahluwalia to pay court costs. Plawn says in the court document that she met the international student in September 2013, they broke up in early 2014, got...

A newly released video showing the Islamist terror group ISIS’ execution of American Steven Sotloff has been deemed authentic, President Obama confirmed today at a joint news conference in Estonia.

'This is a part of becoming a sexual person in this decade', says psychologist... The generation of those not raised in the digital media era of the "selfie" may be shocked at the news of the celebrity photo hack — not so much that someone would leak such pictures, but that a number of young actresses would have naked or intimate pictures of themselves.

I could have swore I just heard Obama talking about how great his death panels web site was....did anyone else catch that? I couldn't rewind it...

Michael Sam is flying into Dallas on Tuesday night and will take a physical for the Cowboys on Wednesday, a source told ESPN NFL Insider Adam Schefter. If Sam passes his physical, the Cowboys intend to sign him to their practice squad, the source said.

It’s that time of year again – when the little juvenile delinquents, future prison inmates, and functionally illiterate junior members of the free shit army pick up their “free” backpacks and “free" school supplies they will never use and shuffle off to the decaying prison like schools in the City of Philadelphia to eat “free” breakfasts and “free” lunches, while being taught government sanctioned pablum by overpaid mediocre union teachers. It’s a repeat of every year for the Phila school district. As the school year approaches they are shocked to report a massive deficit and beg the State of PA...

.... Biden is scheduled to be in Detroit on Labor Day for the second time in three years. Biden is expected to address the crowd at 9:30 this morning during the annual parade.

White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest took great lengths to explain why President Obama’s comment about having no strategy to defeat the Islamic State in Syria. “I don't want to put the cart before the horse,” Obama said during his press conference yesterday. “We don't have a strategy yet.”

Kicking off the annual Labor Day Friday News Dump, Chelsea Clinton has announced, via People, that she will no longer pretend to be a reporter. The once (and future?) First Daughter has been a “special correspondent” for NBC News since 2011, when she was dubbed, following her debut, “one of the most boring people of her era.” For the occasional feel-good segment or interview with the CGI Geico gecko, Clinton earned a reported annual salary of $600,000, or approximately $26,724 for every minute she was on-air.

Rhode Island is finishing preparations Friday morning for a visit from President Barack Obama. Obama is expected to headline three events in the northeast on Friday. Two are scheduled in Westchester County, New York, and the third is set for Newport, Rhode Island.

resident Obama doesn't know much about history. In his therapeutic 2009 Cairo speech, Obama outlined all sorts of Islamic intellectual and technological pedigrees, several of which were undeserved. He exaggerated Muslim contributions to printing and medicine, for example, and was flat-out wrong about the catalysts for the European Renaissance and Enlightenment. He also believes history follows some predetermined course, as if things always get better on their own. Obama often praises those he pronounces to be on the "right side of history." He also chastises others for being on the "wrong side of history" -- as if evil is vanished...

A lawyer in the IRS ethics office is facing the possibility of being disbarred, according to records that accuse her of lying to a court-appointed board and hiding what she’d done with money from a settlement that was supposed to go to two medical providers who had treated her client. The disciplinary arm of the D.C. Court of Appeals has recommended that Takisha McGee, a section manager in the IRS Office of Professional Responsibility, lose her law license over the charge, which stems from a personal injury case she worked about a year before she joined the tax agency. Ms....

Rep. Paul Ryan is seeking to distance himself from last year’s government shutdown and counter his image as an unsympathetic budget negotiator in a new memoir released as the Wisconsin Republican weighs a presidential run in 2016. In "The Way Forward: Renewing the American Idea," the 2012 Republican vice presidential nominee writes that he warned his fellow GOP that the shutdown “can't be the full measure of our party and our movement” and called it “a suicide mission.”

FORE! Score? And seven trillion rounds ago, our forecaddies brought forth on this continent a new playground, conceived by Robert Trent Jones, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal when it comes to spending as much time on the links as possible — even when it seems totally inappropriate, like moments after making a solemn statement condemning the grisly murder of a 40-year-old American journalist beheaded by ISIL. I know reporters didn’t get a chance to ask questions, but I had to bounce. I had a 1 p.m. tee time at Vineyard Golf Club with Alonzo...