Free Republic

SOMMA VESUVIANA, ITALY–When 19-year-old Finnegan Elder and 18-year-old Gabe Natale Hjorth were first met by two undercover police officers with Italy’s military Carabiniere police force on a dark street near the Vatican in Rome, they thought they were about to get jumped. According to a 14-page document from the investigating judge, which was reviewed by The Daily Beast, the two Americans had earlier approached Sergio Brugiatelli, a layabout who can always be found on Piazza Mastei in Rome's Trastevere district, for cocaine. Brugiatelli pointed them to a pusher. The Americans allegedly thought they were buying cocaine, but when their €100...

Vice President Mike Pence abruptly canceled a trip to New Hampshire earlier this month so he could avoid shaking hands with a former New York Giants player under investigation for allegedly dealing drugs in the state, a report said Monday. Pence on July 2 suddenly scrapped a scheduled roundtable discussion on the opioid crisis at the Granite Recovery Center headquarters in Manchester, NH — but his staff and the White House have stayed mum about why. According to Politico, had Pence gone to the event, he would likely have met ex-NFLer Jeff Hatch, who was at the time being probed...

In 2018 25 persons were put to death by the United States. They ranged from 31 years old to 83 and all were convicted by courts, and those convictions affirmed by further courts, that found them guilty of heinous, horrid, disgusting crimes against their fellow man. Despite that, I believe that their deaths were wrong. The death penalty in the United States is seldom used. 25 states have either abolished it entirely or declared a moratorium on its use. Almost a dozen other states have not executed a person in years. Yet it still remains on the books and is more than...

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Mike Braun (R-IN) are still trying to address the fentanyl and heroin overdose crisis—soon to be joined by a methamphetamine and cocaine overdose crisis—by denying chronic pain patients access to pain relief. They have just introduced a bill they call The FDA Opioid Labeling Accuracy Act, which would “prohibit the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from allowing opioids to be labeled for intended use of ‘around-the-clock, long-term opioid treatment’ until a study can be completed on the long-term use of opioids.” Set aside the fact that most pain specialists agree that, in some cases, long-term...

The endless fight between Republicans and Democrats seemed to pause last week. The cause: former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's announcement on "60 Minutes" on Jan. 27 that he is seriously considering a 2020 run for president as a centrist independent. Social media and partisan opinion writers lost their collective minds on that possibility, one of the parties seemingly deploying an activist to disrupt his first public outing, a New York City book event. "Don't help elect Trump, you egotistical billionaire a--hole," the heckler yelled. "Go back to getting ratio'ed on Twitter. Go back to Davos with the other billionaire elites...

Legalizing pot does not appear to encourage teen use and might actually discourage it, a study published Monday in JAMA Pediatrics suggests. Researchers analyzed data from more than 1.4 million high school students between 1993 and 2017, collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for its Youth Risk Behavior survey. The results show teen pot use both before and after medical marijuana laws were adopted in 27 states, seven of which also legalized recreational marijuana during the survey period. Teen marijuana use didn’t change much after medical marijuana was legalized, they found. In states that legalized recreational use,...

Texas demographics today are strikingly similar to those of California in 1990, before Democrats began their seven to nothing streak of Golden State victories in presidential races. Like California in 1990, the Texas population currently hovers around 29 million and is changing rapidly in light of heavy immigration from Mexico. The second generation children of Mexican immigrants have played a major role in keeping California out of Republican reach. This same transformation is taking root in Texas. Young Texas voters overwhelmingly turned out for Beto O’Rourke over incumbent Ted Cruz in the Senate race last year. O’Rourke beat Cruz with...

President Donald Trump likes to keep score. Well, here's a score for him: America, zero; while the rest of the world keeps tallying up free trade points. That's right; while American consumers have been waiting for well over a year to see some resolution to the various trade disputes started by Trump, other countries have agreed to lower their tariffs against each other and signed free trade agreements with one another. Meanwhile, American consumers and exporters are drowning in a sea of high tariffs. Some of Trump's supporters have argued that the president is actually a free trader who wants...

See video at link. Andrew Yang has been censored by MSNBC. His mic was cut off during the debate so he could not respond. The other candidates' mics were NOT cut off. He only got two questions. Why? They (media punks) said Yang was the debate's "loser". They didn't even give him the chance to speak and tried to make him appear timid and stupid. Why don't the mainstream media want people to hear what Yang has to say?

Last week a photo of a man and his daughter went viral after they drowned together in the Rio Grande. It happened while they attempted to enter the United States illegally. According to Border Patrol agents, pushing adults and children into the river is a new tactic being used as a distraction by smugglers. While agents focus their attention on water rescue missions, they take advantage.

Volodymyr Zhukovskyy is what happens when you stop enforcing all the laws, for all the people. If you tell one group of individuals that, for whatever reason, there are certain laws they no longer have to abide by, it’s not long before everybody else begins to believe that there’s no reason they should be held accountable for any crimes they commit either. Here’s the deal for any society: either all the laws have to be enforced for everybody, across the board, or pretty soon they’re not going to be enforced for anybody. The only alternative is to start repealing all...

Well, they've gone and done it. The House Oversight and Reform Committee voted to authorize a subpoena for White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway to testify about her potential Hatch Act violations. The panel says that Conway engaged in "egregious, repeated, and very public violations” of the ethics law. "Here, we have a clear-cut case of a federal employee violating federal law over and over and over again,”  Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-MD) alleged on Wednesday after the panel's vote.Conway knows what's going on. The Democrats on the panel, she said earlier this week, want to silence her."They want a big roll of...

Bernie Sanders, Liz Warren talk decriminalizing prostitution WASHINGTON – The two progressive presidential candidates backing Queens District Attorney candidate Tiffany Cabán are also backing her on one of her signature issues. Cabán wants to decriminalize sex work, arguing that the current laws go after people who are destabilized by the current economic system. “This is literally how they put food on their tables,” Cabán said in a debate Tuesday. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) – who endorsed Cabán Wednesday – said he was open to the idea as well. “Bernie believes that decriminalization is certainly something that should be considered,” Sanders’...

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) posted a survey on Facebook, requiring people’s email address and zip code, and asked respondents to pick what they think are the most important issues facing the country today. Warren pledged in text accompanying the survey to make “big structural change” in America. “Our grassroots movement is ready to fight hard and make big, structural change in this country,” the text on the survey read. “We’re going to do this by lifting up everyone’s voices and making this campaign about the priorities of the people — not the powerful special interests.”

A Houston woman who was driving a sport utility vehicle toward her children in an apparent game of "chicken" struck and killed her 3-year-old son, authorities said. Lexus Stagg, 26, was arrested and charged with criminally negligent homicide in the boy's June 11 death, Harris County prosecutors said in a statement Friday. “Cars aren’t toys and playing chicken with your kids isn’t a game,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in the statement. Stagg can be seen on surveillance video reversing a white Lincoln Navigator in an apartment complex parking lot as her three small children run toward the...

Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press,” Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan said President Donald Trump’s style of “harum-scarum” was exhausting the America people. Noonan said, “Do you remember on the Ed Sullivan show when we were little children? There was a guy who came and balanced plates. There would be a stick, put a plate up, get it going, get another and then he would run back and forth just trying to keep them all up. Balancing plates is part of the tone of this administration and of this president.”

Ignore the battlefield prep from the mainstream media – Donald Trump is the odds-on favorite for reelection against whichever weirdo, loser or mutation the Democrats finally pick as their nominee. The leaked polls purportedly showing Trump deep underwater to Floppy Joe and Bernie Stalin and that has-been furry from Texas are about as reliable as the ones the placed Felonia Milhous von Pantsuit in the White House. She’s now stumbling around the woods guzzling from a queen-sized goblet of Trader Joe’s Chardonnay while The Donald is racking up the greatest streak of conservative victories since Ronald Reagan – maybe...

Independent Vermont Senator and Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders lit into President Donald Trump in advance of Trump’s Florida campaign kickoff rally, calling him a “racist” who won’t tell his supporters how he “tried to throw 32 million people off of healthcare.” On Tuesday’s edition of MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell Reports, host Andrea Mitchell asked Sanders for his reaction to the possibility that Trump might live-tweet the Democratic debates. “Well, I’m surprised that he has the time to tweet, I thought he would be watching, you know, some Fox TV program,” Sanders quipped, before really going in on Trump. “Look, he...

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The returns are in on Colorado’s decision to legalize marijuana: (1) Large amounts of money are being made thanks to legalization, privately and by the state; (2) “horrible things are happening to kids.” The quotation is from psychiatrist Libby Stuyt. She treats teens in southwestern Colorado and has studied the health effects of high-potency marijuana. Stuyt says: “I see increased problems with psychosis, with addiction, with suicide, with depression and anxiety” stemming from legalization in the state. Stuyt’s report won’t surprise anyone who has read Alex Berensen’s book Tell Your Children, which I discussed here. Berensen noted that over the...