Free Republic

Experts say too many patients are being prescribed opioid painkillers by emergency room doctors, and a program created by Obamacare could be enabling the problem.A new study released this week found 17 percent of nearly 20,000 patients were discharged from emergency rooms with an opioid prescription. Experts and lawmakers say a push under Obamacare for hospitals to get good patient satisfaction scores is one cause of the problem.America is in the midst of an opioid "epidemic," according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Painkillers killed more than 16,000 people in 2013. A huge part of the problem is...

Bill Clinton put the blame for his foundation’s foreign donor scandal on the accountant who filed its taxes in his Monday interview with NBC News.“There was no attempt to hide [donations],” Clinton said from Kenya. “The guy that filled out the forms made an error. The guy put it on the wrong form … I can’t explain why they didn’t do it—all I can do is fix it.”In the wake of the scandal surrounding the foundation’s foreign donors, chief executive officer Maura Pally said mistakes were made in tax filings and that multiple years of tax forms will “likely” have...

LARAMIE, Wyo. – Trucks and cars piled into one another Monday in dense fog on Interstate 80 in southeast Wyoming, resulting in a fiery chain-reaction crash that killed one person, injured 16 and sent up a column of thick black smoke. The crash in a rural area 18 miles west of Laramie occurred four days after several pileups during a blinding snowstorm closed the busy interstate for two days.

Russia is waging a hybrid war for which the West is not prepared. All warning lights are red. All cross-checked information, all sources show that Russian Federation forces have massed troops on each foreseen penetration axis from Kursk to Kharkiv, Rostov to southeast Ukraine and from Crimea to the coastal area. The estimation ranges from 65,000 to 95,000 soldiers. The Russian supplied armor in the Donbas alone is estimated to 700 main battle tanks (with an increasing number of T-72 V3 only used by Russia) and 1,100 infantry fighting vehicles, BTR and BMP (with an increasing number of BTR 82)....

Jim Quinn is back! - and in better form than ever!! The Quinn in the Morning Show airs from 6:00am to 9:00 am, Monday thru Friday. To listen online, go to www.warroom.com and sign up (for a small fee). Or you can listen on the radio locally in the upstate NY area on 1040 WYSL Rochester, NY or 1480 WCNS in Latrobe, Pa. If you sign up online, be sure to choose the "auto-renew" option in order to have full access to archived shows and podcasts.

Hillary Clinton shook up the presidential race in both parties with her declaration that she would not only protect President Obama's unilateral executive actions on immigration but that she would go further to offer new status to currently illegal immigrants, and in the end grant "full and equal citizenship" to those who came to the U.S. illegally. It was a move so swift, so consequential — and so far to the left — that Democratic immigration activist groups were stunned. Some on the right saw an opportunity for Republicans to go on the offensive against Clinton. "Now the GOP campaigns...

(Reuters) - A Space Exploration Technologies' passenger spaceship made a quick debut test flight on Wednesday, shooting itself off a Florida launch pad to demonstrate a key emergency escape system. The 20 foot- (6 meter) tall Dragon capsule, a modified version of the spacecraft that flies cargo to the International Space Station, fired up its eight, side-mounted thruster engines at 9 a.m. EDT to catapult nearly one mile (1.6 km) up and over the Atlantic Ocean. The flight ended less than two minutes later with the capsule's parachute splash-down about 1.4 miles (2.6 km) east of the Cape Canaveral Air...

Daimler debuts self-driving semi-truck Its name is “Inspiration,” and Daimler Trucks says it is the first ever self-driving semi-truck licensed to drive on public roads — in this case Nevada’s highways — not only for testing, but business, too. Daimler Trucks North America LLC debuted the self-driving big rig Tuesday night with a drive — and a driver steering — atop the Hoover Dam on the Nevada-Arizona border. Taking a line from astronaut Neil Armstrong, Dr. Wolfgang Bernhard of Daimler Trucks and Buses told the crowd bused to the site from Las Vegas for the news conference that they were...

WASHINGTON – The United States plans to sell 17 V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor military transport aircraft, associated equipment, parts and logistical support to Japan for an estimated cost of $3 billion, the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency said Tuesday. The agency said it delivered the required certification notifying Congress of this possible sale. The associated equipment requested by the Japanese government includes 40 engines and 40 infrared radars, according to the agency. Japan plans to assign 17 Ospreys to the Ground Self-Defense Force by fiscal 2018.

Japan will agree this month to give Australia classified submarine data, an unprecedented step signaling Tokyo’s intent to join competitive bidding to sell Canberra a fleet of stealth subs, said two Japanese officials familiar with the plan. The “competitive assessment” will see Germany’s ThyssenKrupp and France’s state-controlled naval contractor DCNS separately competing with a Japanese government-led bid for such contractors as Kawasaki Heavy Industries Ltd. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd. Japan had been the front-runner in the planned sale of around 12 vessels, for as much as $40 billion, to replace Australia’s ageing Collins class submarines, sources have said, until...

A group of 187 scholars of Japanese and East Asian studies have called on Japan to accurately address its history of colonial rule and wartime actions, particularly the so-called “comfort women” who were forced to work in Japanese wartime military brothels. In a letter sent Monday to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the group, including Pulitzer Prize-winning historian John Dower and Ezra Vogel, professor emeritus of history at Harvard University and author of the 1979 best-seller “Japan As No. 1: Lessons for America,” said the ability to celebrate 70 years of peace between Japan and its neighbors was being undermined by...

Iran has released a container ship it seized in the Strait of Hormuz last week, state media report. A source at Iran's Ports and Maritime Organisation was quoted by the official Iran news agency as saying that the Maersk Tigris "was free to leave". The Marshall Islands-flagged ship and its crew of 24 were intercepted by Iranian patrol boats on the 28 April.

A UK trader accused of contributing to the 2010 Wall Street "flash crash" has protested his innocence in court, saying he did not "do anything wrong". Navinder Singh Sarao, 36, has been charged with wire fraud, commodities fraud and market manipulation by the US Justice Department (DOJ). Mr Sarao denies the charges but was remanded in custody for the third time after failing to raise £5.05m in bail. His lawyers' request that bail be lowered to £50,000 was refused.

Who We Are MASONIC FRATERNAL POLICE DEPARTMENT I Am Fraternally Obligated. I Most Solemnly & Sincerely Promise & Swear to Protect & Serve & Uphold The Constitution & By-Laws of That Grandmaster & That Sovereign Jurisdiction So Help Me God Amen, Amen, Amen Fraternally Faithful, Absolute Supreme Sovereign Grandmaster Henry 32° 33° X° The Masonic Fraternal Organization is the oldest and most respected organization in the “World.” Grand Masters around the various states are facing serious safety concerns for their Jurisdictions and their family members. The first Police Department was created by the "Knights Templar's" back in 1100 B.C.The Masonic...

When he came to office, not unlike other politicians, Obama made many promises. Nearly every promise he made has remained unfulfilled — with one exception: The promise that “change has come to America.” My dad used to tell me that nothing was so good it could not be better or be so bad it could not get worse. Things have indeed gotten worse, much worse, and it would appear that there is no bottom as to how far we may ultimately fall at the hands of an administration and politicians from both sides of the aisle, who only care about...

A newly discovered life form could help resolve one of the most contentious conundrums in modern biology. All organisms on Earth are classified as either prokaryotes, which have simple cells, or eukaryotes, which have larger, more complex cells. But the two cell types are so divergent that understanding how one evolved from the other has foxed biologists. The new microbes, reported in Nature journal, go some way to bridging that gap. They have been named Lokiarchaeota, partly after the Loki's Castle volcanic vent system lying 15km away from the site where the microbes' genetic material was isolated in cold marine...

The Chinese PC manufacturer Lenovo has been accused of running a "massive security risk" after researchers found flaws in its software. Three vulnerabilities could be exploited to install malware on users' systems or to hand attackers a measure of control over them, it was reported. Lenovo acknowledged the findings and urged users to download a patch to resolve the issues. The news follows revelations about pre-installed adware on Lenovo systems.

The Finnish Navy acted appropriately and extremely resolutely in driving away a possible submarine from the territorial waters of Finland early on Tuesday morning, President Sauli Niinistö lauded on Wednesday after announcing the opening of the new parliamentary session. “The Navy, and captains in general, have been granted considerable powers, and I think they were used appropriately here,” Niinistö said. He underscored that all intrusions by military vessels are serious but admitted that the incident was not particularly surprising in light of growing instability in the Baltic Sea Region. “Such traffic has increased on the Baltic Sea. Whatever was under...

We rate 11 models from eight manufacturers, and Apple's sapphire screen and easy pairing give its models the edge We’ve been spot-testing smartwatches for a while now, but the with the arrival of the Apple Watch, the category has catapulted into mainstream status. (Even analysts who are down on the Watch’s prospects have Apple selling 30 million of these devices next year.) But Apple isn’t the only game in town. Manufacturers such as Samsung, Pebble, and Martian have been selling high-tech wristwear for years, and some of the watches from these companies are in their second and third generations. For...

A vote for Ukip is a 'suicide note' for Eurosceptics who want Britain to leave the European Union, Iain Duncan Smith has warned. The Tory Work and Pensions Secretary said only the Conservatives can deliver a referendum on the EU. He claimed support for Ukip would only help put Labour in power, with Ed Miliband refusing to give the British people a say on severing ties with Brussels.