Free Republic

An elderly Upper East Side woman claims a sanitation agent chased her, threatened her with arrest and slapped her with a ticket for putting day-old newspapers in a city trash can. Darbe Pitofsky, 83, said she was on her way for a cup of coffee around 6:30 a.m. on June 25 when she threw a brown bag filled with old papers in a city litter basket near her apartment on East 71st Street. She said a sanitation worker quickly jumped out of his vehicle and demanded her information to write a summons. “I froze,” Pitofsky told 1010 WINS’ Carol D’Auria....

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - A civil rights watchdog agency opened an investigation on Monday into a Philadelphia cheese steak restaurant that posted a sign saying "This is America - when ordering, speak English." The Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations complaint effectively opens a case against Geno's Steaks of South Philadelphia, said Rachel Lawton, acting executive director of the agency. The Philadelphia controversy has fed a national debate over immigration in which the U.S. Senate passed a bill that would declare English the national language and politicians have raised objections to a Spanish version of the national anthem.

New super-strength marijuana readily available on US streets is prompting the White House to change direction in its war against drugs. Research from the government-sponsored Marijuana Potency Project claims today's cannabis is more than twice as strong as in the mid-Eighties, leading to greater health risks for those smoking it at increasingly younger ages. Now President George Bush, who had already promised a more aggressive campaign against substance abuse, has ordered that resources be allocated to fighting so-called 'soft' drugs instead of concentrating on harder forms, such as heroin and cocaine. 'We are working hard on education, but unfortunately a...