Free Republic

I understand the arguments for the legalization of marijuana: It can generate tax revenue. It can reduce illegal supply and demand. It can strip power from cartels and lessen crime across and at our borders. And it isn't so dangerous as other illegal drugs or alcohol. President Barack Obama even claimed one of those arguments when he recently told New Yorker Editor David Remnick, "As has been well-documented, I smoked pot as a kid, and I view it as a bad habit and a vice, not very different from the cigarettes that I smoked as a young person up through...

One of the latest badges of greenie virtue is the mini-car. Supposedly, if you drive one of these contraptions, you demonstrate your concern for Mother Gaia and help diminish the risk that catastrophic global warming will engulf low lying coastal areas and fry the rest of us in temperatures that will be a couple of degrees higher in the next hundred years. In this worldview, people who drive around in SUVs are carelessly risking the very future of humanity. That's quite a serious risk; never mind that temperatures have failed to rise for the last 16 years as the models...

In feudal times, serfs were tied to the land—unable to leave without their overlord’s permission. In the old Soviet Union, workers were tied to their jobs—unable to leave without the government’s permission. In many insurance plans, medical services rendered outside of the network are uncovered. This becomes a problem when the network is extremely narrow, as many of the plans offered under the Affordable Care Act are. It is bad enough when the “network” is bounded by the state’s borders. It is worse when the boundary is the county or city line—as is the case with many of the “affordable”...

The clip at the rear of the trigger group shows rust from the water damage  I recently found that a Remington 700 rifle was water damaged in storage.  It was stored butt down, with a gun sock around the rifle.   The sock wicked water from near the floor up toward the action.  Outside, there was no indication that damage had been done, as the composite stock is impervious to water. The rifle has always had an excellent trigger, in the range of 1.5 to 2 lbs.   It was set up for target shooting, and did not appear to be...

President Barack Obama doesn’t spend much time worrying about his personal security, he said Friday, as he reflected on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy half a century ago. “It’s not something I think about, mainly because we have a Secret Service that does an outstanding job every single day,” he said in an interview ABC News’s Barbara Walters, who was at the White House on Friday to tape her annual end-of-year special featuring the president and first lady. …

<p>The culprit: single-dose detergent capsules that can have a candy-like appearance. In the past year, they were involved in roughly 10,000 cases of exposure involving young children...</p> <p>Three years ago, officials at an Italian poison-control center in Milan contacted P&G to report that children were biting into small packets of a P&G concentrated liquid detergent called Dash Ecodosi. The Milan officials advised P&G to make the capsules' packaging opaque and harder to open, said Fabrizio Sesana, a toxicologist at the Milan poison center.</p>

It sounds insane: Take an enormous hamster tube, suck most of the air from it, insert a hovercraft full of humans and accelerate it to 800 miles per hour. But according to Patricia Galloway, that wild concept is no dream -- it’s very much real. “The feasibility is done. What we’re working on now is moving toward conceptual design,” Galloway told FoxNews.com. Thursday morning Hyperloop Transportation Technologies Inc., a new company Galloway is spearheading, came out of stealth mode to reveal if not a concrete prototype of the futuristic form of transport, at least an outline of what it will...

Has Obama endangered public safety, national security? ICE Council President Chris Crane reacts

Law enforcement officials are investigating a threat against Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who was vaulted into national prominence with his push to defund ObamaCare. A person identifying himself as Troy Gilmore Jr., posted on Twitter Friday morning: “Take down Ted Cruz, at his home” and listed Cruz’s home address in Houston. “What goes around comes around CRUZ!!” the person wrote. The author of the threat uses the Twitter handle @ArmyVet54 and identifies himself as having served in the U.S. Army and Navy. Sean Rushton, Cruz’s spokesman, said, “We’re aware of it and have alerted the proper authorities.” “I can’t comment...

CHICAGO (AP) — Our food was a little less safe, our workplaces a little more dangerous. The risk of getting sick was a bit higher, our kids' homework tougher to complete. The federal government shutdown may have seemed like a frustrating squabble in far-off Washington, but it crept into our lives in small, subtle ways — from missed vegetable inspections to inaccessible federal websites. The "feds" always are there in the background, setting the standards by which we live, providing funds to research cures for our kids' illnesses, watching over our food supply and work environment.

HOPKINTON — A safe full of fireworks and an acetylene torch caused an explosion that took the lives of two men who police said were attempting an early morning burglary at a landscaping company. Lucas Burke, 21, of Allenstown and Ethan Keeler, 20, of Epsom died in a blast at New Yard Landscaping at 67 Farrington Corner Road. According to the state fire marshal’s office, “the two males were attempting to gain entry into a closed metal container which contained consumer fireworks using an oxy-acetylene cutting torch when the blast occurred. The investigation has revealed that the two victims did...

With the Just Move! stamp issuance the U.S. Postal Service hoped to raise awareness about the importance of physical activity in achieving a healthy lifestyle. However, according to Linns Stamp News, the USPS will be destroying the entire press run after receiving concerns from the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports & Nutrition over alleged “unsafe” acts depicted on three of the stamps...

Dishonesty, lying and cheating are not treated with the right amount of opprobrium in today's society. To gain an appreciation for the significance of honesty and trust, consider what our day-to-day lives would be like if we couldn't trust anyone. When we purchase a bottle of 100 pills from our pharmacist, how many of us bother to count the pills? We pull in to a gasoline station and pay $35 for 10 gallons of gasoline. How do we know for sure whether we in fact received 10 gallons instead of 9 3/4? You pay $7 for a 1-pound package of...

<p>I’ve always considered this a loaded question (what does “safe” actually mean, anyway?). It’s rarely the right question to ask. But it comes up pretty often for an average investor, and rarely for the right reasons.</p> <p>“Bank officials hit on the idea of raising capital and cleaning debts off their books by getting people with savings accounts to invest in their banks instead,” the Times article recounted. “For many savers, the first hint of trouble — and understanding that they had bought into risky investments — was when some of these banks essentially failed about two years ago. Overnight, they were unable to withdraw their money. Soon, they came to understand that they had purchased complex financial products, originally designed for sophisticated investors.”</p>

Preliminary autopsy results on two New Brunswick boys who were killed after an African rock python escaped its enclosure in Campbellton, N.B., show they died from asphyxiation, RCMP say. The pathologist completed the autopsies on Noah and Connor Barthe on Tuesday. "At least right now we have a cause of death. Even though we still need some reports from the pathologist to be forwarded, that's going to help the investigation to move forward," RCMP Sgt. Alain Tremblay told CBC News. Tremblay said in a statement that police are aware the case has "touched the hearts of people across the world"...

Two children died after a python got into an apartment in Campbellton, N.B., RCMP say. "Police are investigating two sudden deaths of two young boys," Const. Julie Rogers-Marsh said Monday. It's believed the snake escaped from a pet store called Reptile Ocean. The victims were boys aged five and seven. They were visiting a friend in the apartment above the store, police said in a statement released Monday. Initial information indicates the snake got into the ventilation system and then into the apartment upstairs. "It's believed the two boys were strangled by the snake," she said, noting that autopsies are...

http://www.avweb.com/avwebflash/news/Animation-214-Crash220137-1.html A Florida company that specializes in animations that re-create crimes and accidents has released its animated take on the crash landing of Asiana Flight 214 at SFO earlier this month. Eyewitness Animations, which has been doing the animations for court cases and accident investigations for 23 years, shows the final 40 seconds of the Boeing 777's flight to San Francisco and includes a "ghost airplane" in the sequence showing the proper flight path of the airliner.

WASHINGTON/NEW YORK, June 24 (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Monday that generic drugmakers cannot be sued under state law for adverse reactions to their products, a decision that consumer advocates called a blow to patient safety. In a 5-4 vote, the court ruled for Mutual Pharmaceutical Co, owned by Sun Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd, overturning a multimillion-dollar jury award to a badly injured patient in New Hampshire who alleged a generic drug she had taken was unsafe based on its chemical design. The majority opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, said the state's law could not run against...

Images like those below are chilling to those of us in the shooting community, as they should be. Sometimes we forget just how dangerous our hobby can be and we become lax. When we become lax we accidentally double charge a round while reloading, or we hear a pop vs. a bang and fail to check the bore of our firearm before firing the next round. We sweep others with the muzzle. We put our finger on the trigger when we shouldn’t. And sometimes we forget to wear eye protection. The AR15 pictured here exploded unexpectedly on its owner this...