Free Republic

“Teenagers and young adults who use marijuana may be messing with their heads in ways they don’t intend,” reports Harvard Health Publications. Also: Evidence is mounting that regular marijuana use increases the chance that a teenager will develop psychosis, a pattern of unusual thoughts or perceptions, such as believing the television is transmitting secret messages. It also increases the risk of developing schizophrenia, a disabling brain disorder that not only causes psychosis, but also problems concentrating and loss of emotional expression. In one recent study that followed nearly 2,000 teenagers as they became young adults, young people who smoked marijuana...

A quick reading of the measure that will go before San Francisco voters in November to decriminalize prostitution easily could leave you with the misimpression that the measure is an exercise in fairness that demands that prosecutors go after men who abuse prostitutes and implement policies "to reduce institutional violence and discrimination against prostitutes." A careful reading of the initiative, "Enforcement of Laws Related to Prostitution and Sex Workers," however, shows a measure that shields child prostitution and traffickers of human beings. "If I had just heard from the proponents, I would probably vote for it myself," said the Rev....

A new mathematical analysis of the collapse of the World Trade Centre has been published by a Cambridge University academic, with results that challenge conspiracy theories surrounding the September 11th attacks. The new paper, by Dr Keith Seffen, uses established engineering models to demonstrate that once the collapse of the twin towers began, it was destined to be rapid and total. Although the causes that initiated the collapse of the twin towers are now well understood, engineers continue to speculate about the speed and totality with which the buildings were demolished during the fateful attacks. Some have even dared to...

In the aftermath of the Virginia Tech massacre, there was the usual debate between supporters and opponents of gun control. On one thing, though, everyone seemed to be in agreement: Cho Seung-Hui, whom a judge had found a danger to himself, should never have been allowed to buy a gun. But now that legislation has been introduced in Congress to keep deranged people from getting firearms, we find not quite everyone is on board. Under the Gun Control Act of 1968, Cho was legally barred from gun possession. The law disqualifies people in several categories, including anyone convicted of a...

Louis Theroux, left, with Gramps on the right They call themselves the most hated family in the US and they picket funerals of soldiers killed in Iraq. So what did Louis Theroux make of the Phelpses after three weeks?In any country, let alone one as patriotic as the US, few actions are as provocative as protesting at a soldier's funeral. The Phelps family pickets mourners across the country, to mark what it describes as God's revenge on the US for tolerating homosexuality. Their actions are in the name of the Westboro Baptist Church, which numbers 71 and is headed...

MORE than 100 criminally psychotic patients are roaming Baghdad after looters ransacked the city’s only mental hospital, stealing even the metal doors from patients’ barred cells in the high- security unit. One nurse told how she had found two patients whimpering in the grounds after being raped by marauders who stripped the hospital of beds, equipment and medicines. Four other women were raped after joining the hundreds of patients who either escaped or were released from al-Rashad mental teaching hospital by staff unable to treat them in a building devoid of “everything except the ceilings and walls”. With overstretched American...