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A new Gallup poll shows growing support for marijuana legalization, with 64 percent of Americans now in favor of the measure. The number is the highest level of support in nearly half a century of surveying adults on the issue, according to Gallup. Support has steadily increased in recent years, with the latest figure up 4 percentage points over last year and up 14 points from 2011. The poll also showed a majority of Republicans favoring legalization for the first time, with 51 percent expressing support. That number is up 9 percentage points from last year, according to Gallup.

Donald J. Trump ‏@realDonaldTrump 1m1 minute ago More If Chicago doesn't fix the horrible "carnage" going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds!

Former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura suggested Tuesday that he’d be glad to be Donald Trump’s running mate. “Do you think Donald would ever think of asking me?” Ventura said during an interview on his “Off the Grid” show with former Trump adviser Roger Stone .

In 1973, Major League Baseball changed forever. Following a year when the American League recorded a batting average of .239, the AL instituted the designated hitter rule, allowing a team to place a hitter in the batting order instead of forcing the team’s pitcher to step up to the plate. Since that season, there has been an imbalance between the AL and the National League — which still requires a spot in the batting order for the team’s pitcher. Now, more than 40 years later, talks of making the two leagues consistent have begun to heat up once again. “It’s...

The purpose of this post is to introduce My Little Pony to Free Republic in a positive fashion, to counter much of the negativity that has been unfairly heaped on the show. I had been trying to decide the best episodes to put forward, when the producers dropped the Season 5 premiere in my lap. What could be better than a no-holds-barred trashing of liberalism and forced equality in a ponified Harrison Bergeron type town? Complaining about a lack of good, new, family oriented television? All new TV is trash? This is what you're looking for. There's a certain kind...

Now that calorie counts on restaurant menus are a done deal, it's time to take the next step toward slimming America's flabby waistline.. A national soda tax. I know, I know: This is the kind of nanny-state talk that causes seizures among conservatives and libertarians. It's an intrusion on personal freedom, a trampling of consumer choice, blah-blah-blah. It's also, as we've learned from taxes on cigarettes and alcohol, a highly effective method of influencing behavior that carries high social costs.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell operates with a steely resolve, a political discipline that leaves nothing to chance. A childhood bout with polio instilled in him an enormous capacity for patience. And for 25 years in Congress, the Kentucky Republican has waited for the moment now before him: the chance to become Senate majority leader. With four seats needed to flip the chamber, or three if a Republican is elected president (because the vice president could break a tie), the GOP has its best opportunity in years to gain full control of Congress. But McConnell and his party must first...

Christie is leaving the door open. "If Gov. Romney comes to me and wants to have a talk about that, we'll have a full conversation about that and then Mary Pat and I will make that decision about what we want to do with our future," Christie said in a Fox News interview before Christmas. "But my view is, I think if you fast-forward the tape to a year from now, I think it's going to be President-elect Romney and some other VP-elect - and Chris Christie, the governor of New Jersey." Christie repeatedly has said he would not be...

ATLANTA (AP) --- Newt Gingrich, the House speaker who led a national GOP resurgence in the 1990s before facing ethics questions and resigning, is running for president. Gingrich's announcement, made on social networking websites Monday, came after months of public flirting with a bid. He enters a slow-to-form GOP presidential field that has left some Republicans craving more options as they search for a nominee strong enough to credibly challenge President Barack Obama. The former Georgia congressman, well-known to most Republicans, brings to the race a years-in-the-making political machine with ties to early nominating states as well as a network...

American University Erupts Over Date Rape: Girls Who Drink and Go to Frat Parties Deserve Date Rape, Says Student Newspaper Columnist Today begins Sexual Abuse Awareness and Prevention month -- and American University is in an uproar over an anti-feminist diatribe in the student newspaper charging that some women who survive date rape invited it. "Let's get this straight: any woman who heads to an EI [fraternity] party as an anonymous onlooker, drinks five cups of the jungle juice, and walks back to a boy's room with him is indicating that she wants sex, OK?" columnist Alex Knepper, 20, wrote...

MIAMI — When Jeb Bush left office four years ago, his public appearances were as scarce as bi-partisan man hugs. He didn't want to upstage his successor in the governor's mansion nor his brother in the White House. Instead, he quietly cashed in by joining corporate boards and an elite speakers bureau, penned policy essays and gave infrequent interviews to conservative media. But in recent months, as the Republican Party of Florida has grappled with a leadership vacuum, Bush's political profile has grown as fast as the national deficit ...

Just breaking, link is to the MLB main site.

MUMBAI (AFP) – The world's cheapest car, the Tata Nano, hit the streets on Friday, as the first customer got the keys to a vehicle that its makers hope will transform travel for millions of Indians. Ashok Raghunath Vichare took delivery of a lunar silver Nano LX model, one of three cars handed over in person by Tata Motors boss Ratan Tata at a city dealership. The 59-year-old customs official from Mumbai said only that he was "very happy" to have got his hands on the car, as he was mobbed by cameras and press photographers. His family, who accompanied...

Are we really headed into another Great Depression?Here's my Op-Ed in today's National Post arguing that no, we're not: So we’re in for another Great Depression, are we? Don’t believe it. Now that the epic U.S. presidential race is over, a caffeinated press corps is in withdrawal, so hyperventilating about a new Depression is their new fix. Just to pick one newspaper at random, Toronto’s Globe and Mail used the phrase “Great Depression” over 300 times in December alone — or about a dozen times each edition. And that’s restrained compared to U.S. cable news shows. It’s not just bored...

This might be a good time for investors to pick up a copy of the Koran. Stocks and other investments that adhere to sharia, or Islamic law -- though hardly unscathed -- have fared better than the broader market. That's thanks largely to rules that forbid investing in collateralized debt obligations and other toxic assets that have caused the carnage in conventional financial circles. A big part of the appeal of Islamic finance is its simplicity. Speculation is taboo under sharia, and there's a ban on assessing interest because the Prophet Mohammed said debts must be repaid in the amount...

For an entire week, Americans watched as Senator Barack Obama took his act on the road, courting the European elitists and cowtowing to an endless array of foreign politicians. At this point it may be easy to take Obama’s “celebri-plomacy” lightly. Yet, his trip highlights a dangerous threat to America’s national sovereignty in the form of his globalist policies that will diminish America’s role in the world and outsource decisions of vital national interest to the United Nations. His Global Poverty Act, currently under consideration in Congress, is just one such policy. Despite its seemingly innocuous title, the Global Poverty...

Barack Obama's offer to meet face to face with Fidel Castro's successor is ''dangerously naive,'' Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Friday, testing out a potential fall campaign strategy to cast the Democratic presidential candidate as too inexperienced for the world stage.

**EXCERPT** The same conservative Christian activist who called a meeting last fall to discuss backing a third-party candidate to counter a possible Rudy Giuliani candidacy is revisiting the idea as Sen. John McCain closes in on the Republican presidential nomination. Bob Fischer, a South Dakota businessman and anti-abortion activist, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that while he could back the Arizona senator over either Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton or Barack Obama, he made clear that he and others in the evangelical movement are not content with those choices. "I'll be working in other ways to see that we...

Men Jailed in Sudan for Selling Book on Mohammed's Child-Bride By Patrick Goodenough CNSNews.com International Editor December 18, 2007 (CNSNews.com) - A Sudanese court reportedly has sentenced two Egyptian men to six months' imprisonment for harming Islam after they marketed a book deemed critical of one of Mohammed's wives. The men, who work for an Egyptian publishing house, were arrested at an international book fair in Khartoum while promoting a book on Aisha, who Muslim historians record as one of Mohammed's 12 wives and concubines. According to an authoritative Hadith -- the traditions and sayings of Mohammed -- the middle-aged...

Moderate Arab governments plan to tell Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice they will help Washington stabilize Iraq if the U.S. takes more active steps to revive a broad peace initiative between Israel and its neighbors, Arab officials and media said Sunday. The deal, dubbed "Iraq for Land," is expected to be proposed during a meeting between Rice and her counterparts from eight Arab countries in Kuwait on Tuesday. It echoes widespread Arab feelings that a lasting Middle East peace cannot be achieved as long as Israel doesn't reach a settlement to hand over lands it occupied during the 1967 Mideast...