Free Republic

On the ropes and with no message about rising crime or the struggling economy to appeal to voters, President Joe Biden has gone to pot. Literally. The president’s election-eve marijuana decriminalization order has him yet again putting politics over people’s lives and health. In a shameless attempt to buy the votes of young people and lower-income minority communities, Mr. Biden is waving his pen around again to dig himself out of the political cellar. The American Left, and some on the Right, along with the Big Tobacco companies already responsible for millions of deaths from their products, have spent heavily...

ROME — With political turmoil still plaguing Greece and descending upon the much larger economy of Italy, the fate of the euro and market stability worldwide hinged Tuesday on whether two of Europe’s most tangled and unresponsive political cultures could deal with their tightening fiscal gridlock. The prospect of a new transitional, technocratic government in Greece, and signs that Silvio Berlusconi’s resilient hold on power in Italy was weakening in advance of a crucial parliamentary vote on Tuesday, did little to reassure investors that either country was prepared to grapple with the deep structural changes that investors are demanding to...

We now know how civilization could end, and exactly when. Not with a nuclear war, not with famine, and not with pestilence. No, the collapse of civilization might be caused by a ridiculous computer error. Something bad will happen on January 1, 2000. The problem is called the "millennium bug" or "year 2000" or Y2K, K meaning 1000. The problem began back in the 1950s when computers first came into use. Back then, believe it or not, computer users did not have TV- like monitors. The input medium was punched cards which held 80 characters. Those 80 characters were called...