Free Republic

NASHVILLE (BP) -- The death of Truett Foster McKeehan, 21, son of Christian rapper TobyMac, was caused by an accidental overdose of fentanyl and amphetamines. The cause was listed on a report from the Davidson County (Tenn.) medical examiner, according to the Tennessean newspaper. McKeehan's death was sudden. Emergency crews found him dead on arrival to his home after a call was made regarding a person in cardiac arrest. The report showed potential nitrous oxide use, known also a laughing gas, as well as Adderall and marijuana. Metro Public Health Department records for Davidson County show that deaths as a...

SNIP “We both have a dream in life and that is to get Gayle to smoke weed,” Winfrey said of her best friend, while talking with Schumer on a recent episode of her podcast “Oprah’s Super Soul Conversations.” Winfrey explained that as long as she’s known the “CBS This Morning” co-host, King has stayed away from the hard stuff. “In all the years that I’ve been besties with Gayle and that’s since 1976, and I’ve been with Stedman [Graham] since 1685, in all those years neither he nor Gayle has ever had a sip of anything,” she said, adding that...

Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) is calling for the U.S. to legalize currently illicit drugs. “If we take that step to legalize and regulate, then we're no longer treating people who are struggling with substance addiction and abuse as criminals and instead getting them the help that they need,” the 2020 presidential candidate said at a campaign stop in Merrimack, New Hampshire on Friday. She was responding to a voter who asked whether her plan to end the war on drugs centered on more harm reduction and treatment or if it involved moving to “legalize and regulate narcotics so that you're...

A hemp field near Fresno, Calif., is marked with a no trespassing sign that indicates the plant growing here is hemp, not marijuana. Photo courtesy of Fresno County Sheriff's Office =================================================================== EVANSVILLE, Ind., Dec. 19 (UPI) -- Across the country, newly legal hemp plants are being mistaken for their close cousin, marijuana. And they're attracting thieves. "They thought they stumbled upon the field of dreams," said Ashleigh Baldwin, a hemp grower in Coopersburg, Pa., who experienced two people stealing hemp from her fields last summer. "It really does look, smell and feel a lot like marijuana." While a hemp is...

Abby Huntsman announced on Monday she’s quitting “The View” to join her father, Jon Huntsman Jr., on his Utah gubernatorial campaign. But Page Six is told that the campaign isn’t the real reason for her exit from the ABC fixture, which has recently been rocked by a breakdown in the relationship between Meghan McCain and her fellow panelists. “It’s an unhealthy environment — just the way that things are handled during shows and how people deal with each other,” said an insider familiar with Huntsman’s thinking. “It’s intense.” “Abby made an issue [to executives] about the overall environment. She’s felt...

On Sunday’s broadcast of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) accused the Trump administration of giving “contradictory information” on why the president ordered the killing of former Iranian Quds force commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani. Paul said, “I think we’ve heard contradictory information. We’ve heard from the secretary of state that they don’t know where or when but it was imminent. That to me does seem inconsistent. He thinks he can square the circle but to me it seems pretty inconsistent.”

On Monday, during an interview with the Des Moines Register, 2020 presidential hopeful mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttigieg said drug possession should not result in jail time. Buttigieg said, “Incarceration should not even be a response to drug possession. What I have seen is while there continues to be all kinds of harms associated with drug possession and use, it is also the case that we have created in an effort to deal with a public health problem, we have created an even bigger problem — a justice problem, and it’s own form of a health problem when...

"No voices calling for peace. No voices critical of empire. Just establishment media and current and former Pentagon officials who feed off the trillion dollar war machine." As President Donald Trump spent the early days of 2020 instigating and then backing down from a potentially catastrophic confrontation with Iran, corporate media in the U.S. turned to the very same people who promoted the country's worst foreign policy disaster in a generation to advocate for repeating the mistakes of two decades ago. The decision of networks and cable news outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News to bring on a stream of past advocates for...

Neil Peart, the drummer behind the band Rush, has made it known that, as a “bleeding-heart libertarian,” he encourages people to support Democrats. […] Rolling Stone notes that Peart's newfound beliefs appear to prioritize the “bleeding-heart” aspect over the “libertarian” one. Speaking of the libertarian-oriented Senator Rand Paul, a 2016 presidential candidate, Peart allegedly told Rolling Stone it is “very obvious” that Paul "hates women and brown people.” […] Peart, who recently became a United States citizen, told Rolling Stone, “For a person of my sensibility, you’re only left with the Democratic party.” …

In an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, Sen. Rand Paul said the only way you can stop people who believe the president has the ultimate authority on war like Lindsey Graham is defunding a war. Paul was responding to Graham's accusation that he "empowering the enemy" by playing games with the "unconstitutional" War Powers Act. Paul called the Trump administration's reasoning for the Soleimani strike an "insult to the constitution." "I think it's sad when people have this fake sort of drape of patriotism, and anybody that disagrees with them is not a patriot," Paul said Wednesday. "For him to...

California is increasing business tax rates on legal marijuana, a move that stunned struggling companies that have been pleading with the state to do just the opposite. Hefty marijuana taxes that can approach 50 percent in some communities have been blamed for pushing shoppers into California’s tax-free illegal market, which is thriving. Industry analysts estimate that $3 are spent in the illegal market for every $1 in the legal one. The California Cannabis Industry Association said in a statement that its members are “stunned and outraged.” The group said the higher taxes that will take effect Jan. 1 will make...

Hefty marijuana taxes that can approach 50 percent in some communities have been blamed for pushing shoppers into California’s tax-free illegal market, which is thriving. Industry analysts estimate that $3 are spent in the illegal market for every $1 in the legal one. The group said the higher taxes that will take effect Jan. 1 will make it even worse for a legal industry struggling under the weight of heavy regulation and fees, local bans on pot sales and growing and a booming underground marketplace. Josh Drayton of the cannabis association predicted that an eighth-ounce purchase of marijuana buds, typically...

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) talks with CNN's Wolf Blitzer about President Donald Trump's decision to kill Iranian general Qasem Soleimani

Former Rep. Ron Paul said he wished President Trump would "flip-flop" his policy on Iran and criticized Trump's loyalty to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia. "I think our country is not doing so well. Our foreign policy is in shambles," the Texas Republican said. "Unfortunately, the one place where I wish he would flip-flop every once in a while or change his policy completely is dealing with Iran. He is steady on it, he said it on the campaign. He's very loyal to Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia." Trump authorized airstrikes that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani and...

Spanish special-operations police, their faces covered with balaclavas and their weapons visible, attempted to force their way past Bolivian police at the Mexican Embassy in La Paz on Dec. 27. The effort failed but it left behind troubling questions about whether rogue interests inside the Spanish government are working with Mexico on behalf of former Bolivian officials, some of whom face criminal charges. Spanish elite police had already escorted the Spanish Embassy’s chargé d’affaires and its consul to the Mexican Embassy earlier that morning. When two more cars, carrying masked members of the same counterterrorism unit, showed up later and...

Former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee has filed to run for President as a libertarian in what appears to be a new long-shot White House bid following his failed campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2016. Chafee filed paperwork with the Federal Election Commission on Sunday to form the Lincoln Chafee for President campaign committee based in Wyoming. A website linked to Chafee's FEC filing states "Lincoln Leads with TRUTH" along with the phrase "Thirty Years, Zero Scandals." Chafee has spent most of his life as a Republican. He was nominated to his late father's Senate seat in 1999 and...

llinois’ governor granted more than 11,000 pardons for low-level marijuana convictions on Tuesday, describing the step as a first wave of thousands of such expungements anticipated under the state’s new marijuana legalization law. The expungement process is a key part of the law, which takes effect Wednesday and made Illinois the 11th state to legalize marijuana for people 21 or older. When they crafted the policy, Illinois lawmakers said they wanted to repair some of the damage caused by law enforcement’s efforts to combat sale and use of the drug, particularly in minority communities. Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker announced the...

We have a choice next November, possibly the last chance for honest choice we will ever get. Choose wisely 2020 promises to be the most crucial and pivotal year for America, if not, certainly in our lifetime. This new year will either produce our best chance for a stable social, political, and financially secure future or it will radically alter everything this country stands for, our values, and the freedoms we have come to enjoy and take for granted. The Democrat Party is not your grandfather’s or even your father’s Democrat Party. It has morphed and contorted, into a deranged...

An oft-repeated but, in my view, ultimately misguided self-critique by Christians, is that we are better known for what we are against than what we are for. I fully agree with the spirit of the comment. As Chuck Colson liked to say, Christians should not just resist the bad stuff but always propose a better way. Today, however, that statement is too often used as a way of saying Christians should be more positive, as if Christians should be known for what we are for, and not known for what we are against. But Christians just can’t choose between those...

In the wake of the strike ordered by President Trump that killed General Qasem Soleimani, many on the left have rushed to criticize Trump for retaliating against the attack on the U.S. embassy in Baghdad. 2020 Democrats, in particular, piled on Trump with condemnations. "President Trump just tossed a stick of dynamite into a tinderbox," said Biden. Cory Booker, who apparently is still in the race, claimed, "We have a president who has failed to show any larger strategic plan." Elizabeth Warren acknowledged that Soleimani was an evil terrorist responsible for the deaths of hundreds of Americans, but also said,...