Free Republic

When Colorado legalized marijuana two years ago, nobody was quite ready for the problem of exploding houses. But that is exactly what firefighters, courts and lawmakers across the state are confronting these days: amateur marijuana alchemists who are turning their kitchens and basements into “Breaking Bad”-style laboratories, using flammable chemicals to extract potent drops of a marijuana concentrate commonly called hash oil, and sometimes accidentally blowing up their homes and lighting themselves on fire in the process.

It was a one-mile walk home from a Silver Spring park on Georgia Avenue on a Saturday afternoon. But what the parents saw as a moment of independence for their 10-year-old son and 6-year-old daughter, they say authorities viewed much differently. Danielle and Alexander Meitiv say they are being investigated for neglect for the Dec. 20 trek — in a case they say reflects a clash of ideas about how safe the world is and whether parents are free to make their own choices about raising their children. “We wouldn’t have let them do it if we didn’t think they...

We made this video for all of the climbers in the tower industry who believe in safety. Nick Bassarab and Todd Horning from Safety One Training Inc. climb to the top of a 1700 foot tall tower to change a couple light bulbs while using 100% attachment the whole time. www.safetyoneinc.com for more information on safe climbing and work at height practices.

While there’s been a lot of ‘sex, lies, and videotape’ about the highly contagious and fatal disease known as Ebola, not much accurate advice has been offered to folks at home on how to avoid it. So I’m going to switch hats for this column and offer some thoughts from an old, E.R. trauma nurse. Supposedly, the disease made its way to our country via only one “Patient Zero.” But considering the history of disinformation the CDC is known for, most notably AIDS, it’s tough to take them seriously. The CDC’s early blasé attitude and misdirection contributed to the spreading...

This is National Teen Driver Safety Week, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention hopes its “Parents are Key” campaign will help parents encourage safe driving habits.

Maybe the White House could organize a coherent response to the myriad problems exploding all over the place if this was an amorphous “community” instead of an actual country. We are seeing a real-life PowerPoint demonstration explaining exactly what happens when you turn the Executive Branch over to people who have never executed anything more complex than a sit-in at the local welfare office. Since everything they touch turns to failure, their response is to lie. And everyone sees it. Everyone except Chet. Chet is my unicorn. I’m a lawyer and get paid to watch equivocating weasels twist in the...

What we can learn from the boot leather, organization and quick response times that stopped Ebola from spreading in this African nation …………… …….the rapid action after Nigeria's index patient was diagnosed helped keep the outbreak from spreading more widely. "In contrast the initial outbreak in Guinea remained undetected for several weeks," they wrote. "This detection delay facilitated the transnational spread of the virus to Sierra Leone and Liberia while difficulties and at times inability to track and contain infectious individuals compounded the situation and resulted in an as yet uncontrolled epidemic in these countries."

I have no interest in adding to the rising level of fear-mongering and finger-pointing that we're reading, hearing, and seeing about Ebola. It is scary enough without a bunch of people running around like a character in an Edvard Munch painting. I just looked this up. According to webmd.com an outbreak"happens when a disease occurs in greater numbers than expected in a community or region or during a season." An epidemic "occurs when an infectious disease spreads rapidly to many people. In 2003, the severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) epidemic took the lives of nearly 800 people worldwide." A pandemic...

As the Ebola infection rate and death toll continue to rise rapidly on the African continent, many of us have become complacent with the measures we have taken to protect Americans from this deadly disease. Other nations, such as England, have gone so far as to ban flights emanating from the affected regions of Africa. The Centers for Disease Control and various infectious-disease specialists have done a yeoman's job in their efforts to prevent infected individuals in our country from contaminating others. They have put excellent protocols in place that would virtually guarantee complete safety. Unfortunately, all of those valiant...

"Self-described 'dissident feminist' Camille Paglia has written an op-ed piece for Time Magazine arguing that female college students are naive and careless about the true nature of men as sexual predators. Paglia, 67, a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, penned the column this week in reaction to the recent abduction of University of Virginia sophomore Hannah Graham, 18, who was last seen two weeks ago in the company of a 32-year-old nursing assistant. Jesse Matthew was captured in Texas last week and charged with abduction with intent to defile, but so far there is no sign...

Hannah Graham is straight-A, a second year University of Virginia student who has been missing since September 13th,2014. Typically, at this stage of the game it isn’t looking good for Hannah. Her parents, as you can imagine, are beyond crushed. As of yesterday, the police have issued a search warrant for Jesse Matthew, who cops think was the last person to see Hannah Graham before she vanished. Last weekend Mr. & Mrs. Graham held a press conference thanking law enforcement and volunteers for their search efforts and letting folks know that this is a ‘parents worse nightmare’ and that ‘it...

Yesterday at the DFW airport. It was strikingly difficult to talk to the Pakistani women selling food, with their head coverings, OBVIOUSLY pious Muslims. And turning around were Muslim Women with head coverings removing trash. I just WISH someone had the testicular power to tell these women if they want to work at an AIRPORT where travelers are sensitive about Muslim people that blow up things, they need to REMOVE their coverings, or go work at the local dry cleaning shop, or sell used tires. But to put them in the AIRPORTS knowing that all of the things that get...

Seventy-five UNDOF peacekeepers in the Golan Heights fled Syrian territory for the Israeli-controlled Golan on Saturday after their positions were attacked by rebel forces. An Israeli military spokesman confirmed that a number of UN peacekeepers entered Israel. He spoke on condition of anonymity. Channel 2 said 75 UN troops had crossed the borders, after two UN positions on the Syrian side of the border were targeted by al-Nusra rebel forces. Earlier in the day, the Philippine defense chief said that Filipino peacekeepers in the Golan Heights were attacked by Syrian rebels, who are also holding dozens of Fijian troops hostage....

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, part of the Department of Transportation, published last week an "advanced notice of proposed rulemaking" on "vehicle-to-vehicle communications." What NHTSA is proposing could begin a transformation in the American transportation system that makes our lives better and freer — or gives government more power over where we go and when.

You park your SUV in a space and you and your wife prepare to do some shopping. You open the door and a 300 pound jerk is near to the vehicle and he slams your door shut and yells at you and tells you to leave, and says your kind don't belong around here. You get out of the vehicle, and the jerk pushes you back into it, punches you in the face a few times, and for good measure, punches your wife in the mouth, splitting her lip. He walks away and you get out of your car, and...

Open carriers with rifles; neither hunters nor protesters, but private purchasers at a "buy back" event Most law enforcement officers do not interact with people openly carrying riles and shotguns, or long guns, as they are collectively called.  That has been changing in recent years as more and more members of the gun culture have exercised their first and second amendment rights by openly carrying long guns.  The movement has taken off in Texas, where the open carry of modern pistols is banned in public places.   Texas is one of only six states that bans the open carry of...

CNN Newsroom| Added on August 9, 2014 Brooke Baldwin talks to analysts Bob Baer and Paul Cruickshank about possible ISIS retaliation and presence in the U.S.

Which are more dangerous for young children, five gallon buckets or guns?  Five gallon buckets result in a small number of fatal accidents for young children; about 27 a year.   The accidents are not tracked as rigorously as those with firearms are.  I found a study that tracked them for six years.  From a pediatrics study:   Analysis of Consumer Product Safety Commission data revealed 160 bucket-related drownings for the years 1984 through 1989, representing a mortality rate of 0.367 per 100 000 persons (younger than 2 years old) per year in the United States. I have not found numbers...

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday it had uncovered a new safety breach at its bioterror research laboratories involving dangerous avian flu, just as it was investigating the failures behind the potential exposure of researchers to live anthrax bacteria. In its first findings from an internal probe into the anthrax incident last month, the CDC said multiple failures by individual scientists and a lack of agency-wide safety policies had led to the potential exposure of more than 80 lab workers to the dangerous bacteria at its campus in Atlanta.

A worker at a Pennsylvania sugar plant died buried alive in sugar in an accident that could have been prevented by a safety device removed just 13 days earlier, a ProPublica investigation finds. Janio Salinas—a 50-year-old who, like every other employee in the CSC Sugar warehouse in Fairless Hills, was a temp worker—died after climbing inside a huge hopper to remove sugar clogs on February 25, 2013. The warehouse manager told the Occupational Safety and Health Administration that he had asked for a safety screen to prevent such an accident, but after one was installed, the plant manager decided to...