Free Republic

Normally when the police show up it means the party's over. But police officers in Seattle will be adding to the fun this weekend by providing snacks at an marijuana festival. Seattle Police Department's spokesman, Sergeant Sean Whitcomb, said the department intends to use the opportunity to spread the word about new marijuana laws, by attaching a summarized version to bags of Doritos. The law came into effect in 2012, and allows anyone to legally possess up to an ounce of recreational marijuana. But police are worried people still aren't clear enough on the rules. So, with the help of...

Bo, the president's Portuguese Water Dog, arrived separately on one of two MV-22 Ospreys, a hybrid aircraft which takes off like a helicopter but flies like a plane.

The trial of George Zimmerman cost Seminole County government about $91,000, officials said in a statement Friday. Zimmerman's high-profile second-degree-murder trial in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin began June 10 and concluded July 13 with a not-guilty verdict. During the trial, Seminole County handled the "coordination of resources and planning," through its Emergency Operations Center, county spokesman Alan Harris said. According to Harris, the EOC's role included "public information, safety, liaison, logistics, planning, intelligence" and other operations. Its efforts were spearheaded by a team of fire-rescue, facility management, information technology, utilities, economic development and public works staff, as...

HACKENSACK -- The attorney representing a woman who videotaped an NJ Transit bus driver masturbating while behind the wheel of a bus carrying passengers has released the video with the hope it will spare others from having to witness such an act.

Same-sex couples are seeing the benefits of the Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling even faster than anticipated (much to the chagrin of conservatives). On Friday, as same-sex marriages resumed in California, Julian Marsh, an American, and his husband Traian Popov, a Bulgarian immigrant, got the news that they are the first gay couple to have their marriage-based green card petition approved. The New York Times reports that the visa agency had said it would hold off on approving applications until this week, but apparently immigration officers got excited and decided to jump the gun.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has a graduation rate of 66% well below the national average of 78.2%. Despite this, the LA school district is going to spend nearly a million dollars training kids to promote Obamacare. Heartland.org reported, via Human Events: The Los Angeles Unified School District will use a state grant to train teens to promote ObamaCare to family members. Covered California, the state’s health insurance exchange, announced grants of $37 million on May 14 to promote the nationally unpopular law. LAUSD will receive $990,000. The district listed as a primary outcome for its project, “Teens trained...

Deandre Poole will return to Florida Atlantic University after being placed on administrative leave.Florida Atlantic University has reinstated an instructor who had students stomp on pieces of paper with "Jesus" written on them as part of a lesson. The school announced Friday that 32-year-old Deandre Poole would return to teach summer classes, as well as the next academic year. The Palm Beach Post reports that he will only teach online through the rest of 2013 because of safety concerns. Officials said in March that he would be placed on paid administrative leave for safety reasons and to prevent disruption of...

A Tennessee community college professor ordered her students to wear ribbons in support of gay rights and said those who supported the traditional definition of marriage are just “uneducated bigots” who “attack homosexuals with hate,” according to a legal firm representing several of the students in the class. Students in a general psychology class at Columbia State Community College were directed by their professor to wear “Rainbow Coalition” ribbons for an entire day and express their support for the homosexual community, said Travis Barham, an attorney with the Alliance Defending Freedom. Barham is calling for the college to punish Dr....

(Family Research Council) - If the president doesn't respect America's views on marriage, what makes us think he would respect other countries'? Certainly not his latest USAID project. In April, to relatively little fanfare, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) embarked on one of the most shocking abuses of taxpayer dollars in the last five years. With help from the Levi Strauss Foundation and millionaire liberal Tim Gill, the U.S. government is spending $11 million to train homosexual activists in other countries. The Washington Blade, D.C.'s gay newspaper, praised the Obama administration for creating an army of international lobbyists...

More Federal studies and grants are needed and we can't wait. Editor's note: This is a guest post by the Very Honorable Ima Librul, Senator from the great State of Confusion Utopia. He recently explained some of his difficulties in growing pineapples and focuses here on other major problems and opportunities facing modern American society. We are privileged to have a post of this caliber by a quintessential Librul such as the Senator. He is a charter member of President Obama’s Go For It Team, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and Chairman of the Meretricious Relations Subcommittee. He is also...

Would you like to know what America's young people are actually learning while they are away at college? It isn't pretty. Yes, there are some very highly technical fields where students are being taught some very important skills, but for the most part U.S. college students are learning very little that they will actually use out in the real world when they graduate. Some of the college courses listed below are funny, others are truly bizarre, others are just plain outrageous, but all of them are a waste of money. If we are going to continue to have a system...

The Department of Defense confirms to NBC 5 Investigates that accused Fort Hood shooter Major Nidal Hasan has now been paid more than $278,000 since the Nov. 5, 2009 shooting that left 13 dead 32 injured. The Army said under the Military Code of Justice, Hasan’s salary cannot be suspended unless he is proven guilty.

entire Wabasha bridge this morning downtown St.Paul(both sides) Wonder hoe much the public works spent putting all these nice, new rainbow flags up? might explain your property tax rates, St.Paulites...

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Twenty-four current and former Internal Revenue Service employees have been charged with stealing government benefits, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. The IRS employees were indicted on charges that they illegally received more than $250,000 in benefits including unemployment insurance payments, food stamps, welfare, and housing vouchers, the U.S. attorney’s office in Memphis said in a news release. Prosecutors say 13 of the IRS employees face federal charges of lying about being unemployed while applying for or recertifying their government benefits. They each face up to five years in prison if convicted of making false statements to receive...

Leave it to my state of California to head off in radical and expensive directions. Legislation has been filed that would require group insurance to cover gay and lesbian infertility treatments just as they do heterosexual. But, as I note elsewhere, AB 460 isn’t limited to a finding of actual infertility. Nor does it require that gays and lesbians have tried to conceive or sire a child using heterosexual means, natural or artificial. Rather–as with heterosexual couples–merely the inability to get pregnant for a year while having active sexual relations is sufficient to demonstrate need for treatment, meaning if the...

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has responded to a letter dated November 13, 2012 from Senator Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) regarding the agency's ammunition purchases. Sen. Coburn published the response on the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs website yesterday, April 1, 2013. The response, dated February 4, 2013, says that DHS buys ammunition in bulk to "significantly lower costs."

Liberals who demand church-state separation would pitch a fit if a public school decided to perform a play that reverently told stories of the Old Testament, whether it was the story of creation, the story of Noah, or Moses or Joseph and his brothers. But somehow, if a public school decides to put on a play mocking God and the Old Testament, that is not a church-state violation. The separation police don't want religious (or atheist) minorities to face religious indoctrination in a public school. But anti-religious indoctrination mocking the Judeo-Christian majority is a glorious festival of free speech. Take,...

For the first time since 1981, when it dubbed sex-change operations "experimental," Medicare has opened the door to covering transexual operations, adding to the growing list of operations that would be allowed under Obamacare. Acting on a new request, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said it is starting a new analysis that could lift the spending ban for sex-change operations with a goal of making a decision two days after Christmas and on the eve of Obamacare kicking in January 1. A 30-day public comment period just opened on the proposed "National Coverage Determination." "Surgical Treatment for Gender...

This video image from an Internal Revenue Service video shows an IRS employee portraying Mr. Spock. William Shatner has made up his mind about the Star Trek parody video produced by the Internal Revenue Service. He tweeted: "So I watched that IRS video. I am appalled at the utter waste of US tax dollars." If you haven't been paying attention, the IRS released the video last week after CBS News filed a Freedom of Information Act Request. The video, which shows IRS employees boldly going "where no government employee has gone before," was supposed to be used for training purposes.It's...