Free Republic

These images were taken by an anonymous individual on the website, www.ar15.com. They were taken during a rally in Wisconsin on November 17, 2011. The poster writes: I don’t have time to extract all the cell pics and video at the moment but I’ll drop this here to get some blood boiling. I was able to get in by the North Ave Occupy situation last night –– sitting amongst these idiots is quite an eye opener to listen to the stupidity that comes out of their mouths. And the stupid things they do out in the open. I was able...

Smokers in Austin can take a deep breath and relax. Six months after voting to ban smoking in the city's bars, nightclubs and restaurants, a revamped City Council appears poised to reaffirm smokers' rights to light up at a concert or after a nice meal. The council is scheduled to vote today on a new smoking ordinance that would effectively reverse the ban approved by former Mayor Gus Garcia's council in June. The new law would allow bars and restaurants to buy a $100 annual smoking license, require live music venues to offer two hours of smoke-free shows a week...

A radical programme to cut teenage smoking which included raising the age limit for buying cigarettes to 18 has been an overwhelming success, it emerged today. The initiative on the island of Guernsey has seen the number of teenage smokers halved since 1997 and anti-smoking campaigners said they hoped its success could be mirrored in the UK. The Channel Island adopted a series of measures to tackle smoking, including raising tax on tobacco, banning advertising and increasing the legal age at which cigarettes can be bought from 16 to 18. It also introduced the Guernsey Adolescent non-Smoking Project (Gasp) to...

Once a month for many years, a group of travelers bribed their way into Colombia via a remote border crossing from Venezuela, met with their contacts and then bribed their way home, the better to leave no record of the trip in their passports. The illicit commodity they were trading was not cocaine, as might be expected, but cigarettes. So contends a lawsuit filed last week in a U.S. court by the European Union. According to the suit, the clandestine travelers were employees of companies affiliated with R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. Their goal, the EU says, was to receive cash...