Free Republic

August 21st is what the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recognize as National Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day. It is a day to raise awareness about the dangers of fentanyl, share ways to prevent fatal overdose and remember those who have lost their life to the drug. Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid up to fifty times stronger than heroin and up to 100 times stronger than morphine, making it one of the most common drugs involved in overdose deaths. So far this year, there have been more fentanyl-related deaths here in the Coachella Valley than in any other...

As a social media platform, Twitter is regularly wielded as a political battleground and debate forum. But it also presents an opportunity to inspire kindness and encourage heroic actions – actions that reveal the goodness of humanity. Joanne Mason – a self-identified Christian wife, mother, and daughter – recently took that opportunity when she asked others on Twitter to share their personal “stories of kindness.” She started with her own: She remembered when she once “burst into tears” in public after her brother died. Her tears moved an “elderly gentleman” to reach out, hold her hand, and sit with her....

Greta Thunberg more or less had the last word at the congressional environmental hearing - at least the last meaningful word. California Democratic congresswoman Katie Porter asked the Swedish activist what she should tell her nine-year-old daughter who comes to her fretting that “Earth is on fire and we’re all going to die soon”? That’s like Throwback Thursday for Boomers who grew up amid the Cold War and US-USSR nuclear missile arms race, watching as the adults in charge willfully hurtled towards imminent catastrophe... So Thunberg finished the Earth Day hearing with another strand to her admonish-hope-galvanize proverbial lifeline for...

Jackson DeLude, an 8-year-old double-amputee and Buffalo resident, received a dream vacation to Disney World with a twist -- a set of prosthetic blades that would allow him to run properly, which he hadn't been able to do because of his partially-developed legs being amputated when he was an infant.

Just a great remix of Time's Like These by the Foo Fighters. Thought some Freepers would enjoy this on a Saturday night.

n Comiskey Park in Dubuque, Iowa, local barber Courtney Holmes decided to do something special. The father of two decided to give free haircuts to kids who would read to him.

Devon Brown would have been just another statistic - one of the 486,900 black inmates in US state and federal prisons by the end of 2016. But an academic year in Kenya during his seventh grade changed his life forever. "Honestly it turned me into the man I am today. From a boy with limited options in inner-city Baltimore to a man who has now run an ice-cream company with revenues of $400,000 (£310,000) as its CEO," he reflects. Mr Brown's childhood had all the ingredients for failure. Born on 9 January 1990 in East Baltimore, his late mother was...

I remember walking into to church for the first time after purposely staying as far from it as I could for 10 years. The music was loud, the crowds were big, and the environment was inviting. It was unlike any other church I could remember going to as a kid, and the people who made up this group were overwhelmingly kind to me. "This place is awesome" I remember thinking to myself. And I remember feeling something I had never expected to feel at a church; welcomed. But the story doesn't end there. No. As quickly as I had stepped...

The tattoo gave it away. A Greensburg police officer knew a city man was giving him a fake name, according to court papers. The evidence was right there in front of him — tattooed on the suspect's neck. Chad M. Stitch, who turns 35 Friday, was riding in a car that was pulled over Wednesday after it was suspected to be involved in a drug deal, according to police. Stitch is being held in the Westmoreland County Prison on $300,000 bail. A witness reported to police an apparent drug deal involving a blue Chevrolet Malibu at 7:15 p.m. in a...

For years Matthew and Maria Colonna-Emanuel thought a piece of rusty metal behind some trees in their backyard was just part of a cable or electrical box. But it wasn't. It was a safe containing $52,000 in cash, gold and diamonds. And the story of how they discovered it -- and what the couple did next -- is remarkable. The couple saw the metal box between some trees when they moved in to their Staten Island home in New York, but never paid much attention to it. "I thought it was an electrical box," Matthew Colonna-Emanuel told CNN affiliate WCBS....

On Nov. 8, 2016, I was on the hook to file several election-related pieces, and had made the process easier for myself by pre-writing four different versions of “What does the first female president mean for America?” It was 3 a.m. when I woke up in Nairobi, Kenya, where I was living that year, and as I opened the New York Times app and saw an electoral map that looked awfully red, I thought that I might still be dreaming. Not that it really mattered — states that are physically large often go Republican, so a red South and middle...

The instant online symbol of global support for Paris after last week’s attacks was a roughly rendered peace symbol with an Eiffel Tower in the middle of it. The French designer Jean Jullien sketched it as soon as he heard the news of the atrocity. He called it “Peace for Paris,” and it immediately became a sensation on social media. Its success is a sign of the times. We have become experts at treacly online mourning. We take grotesque atrocities and launder them into trite symbols and slogans that are usually self-congratulatory and, of course, wholly ineffectual. The 19th-century author...

Friends on Facebook and imposing the French Flag in "solidarity".

Assuming that there are good and bad people on both the right and the left and that everyone is horrified by mass shootings, how is one to explain the great divide between the Right and the Left on the gun issue as it relates to mass murders, such as the one recently committed at Umpqua Community College? Why does the Left focus on more gun-control laws, and why doesn’t the Right? One reason the Right doesn’t focus on gun-control laws is quintessentially American. Many Americans believe that it is their right — and even their duty — to own guns...

"..........Indeed, The Libertarian Mind is a mixture of “whatever” the individual deems to be his interest. “Whatever” can consist of the reasonable libertarian outcry against big government and abusive regulations, or its excellent affirmation of free markets, rule of law and property rights. But “whatever” also consists of the throwing off of moral restraints that inhibit gratification and self-interest. Thus, the author obsesses about the urgent need for same-sex “marriage,” the end to pornography restrictions, and the right to legal drug use.Throughout his explanation,...(h)abits like drug abuse, for example, are only seen from the individual’s perspective of happiness and not...

Monday on MSNBC’s “The Rundown With José Díaz-Balart,” DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz attacked Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) as the same old Republican ideas with a young Hispanic face saying he is “a prune” with “some tinsel around it.”

<p>PITTSBURGH — A sporting goods chain says it’s suspending sales of modern rifles nationwide because of the school shooting in Connecticut. Dick’s Sporting Goods also says it’s removing all guns from display at its store closest to Newtown, where the massacre took place.</p>

Tom Friedman, please take note. China’s lack of political wrangling is not an asset, it’s what will drag it down. Friedman’s and other liberals’ utopian dream of a benevolent dictator has never worked. It fails because unrestrained dictators, with the best of intentions, make mistakes – often grandiose mistakes. And when they are criticized and challenged, they fight to hold on to power. And then they become the Stalins, the Pol Pots and the Kim Jong Ils of the world. And China’s single party autocracy has made a grandiose mistake. It has embarked on a building spree that according to...

In one of these headline news stories that sounds shocking but is not shocking in the least, The Epoch Times reports Chinese TV Host Says Regime Nearly Bankrupt China’s economy has a reputation for being strong and prosperous, but according to a well-known Chinese television personality the country’s Gross Domestic Product is going in reverse. Larry Lang, chair professor of Finance at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said in a lecture that he didn’t think was being recorded that the Chinese regime is in a serious economic crisis—on the brink of bankruptcy. In his memorable formulation: every province in...

Global Crisis: The news these days is filled with stories about the euro zone economies and their ongoing crisis. But another, potentially bigger and even more important crisis is brewing — this one in China. Amid seemingly endless stories about the Chinese Miracle and how China's soaring economy is about to overtake the U.S. comes news that suggests the death of America as No. 1 may be exaggerated — and, in fact, may be dead wrong. Indeed, China's economy may be on the cusp of a major growth reversal. The cause: China's imploding real estate market. Since late summer, Chinese...