Free Talk Live

Where generals now meet in war rooms, hemp plants once waved in the breeze. The Washington Post reports on the recently discovered “hemp diaries” of a government botanist, Lyster H. Dewey, who tended a USDA hemp farm that was eventually turned over to the War Department for the construction of the Pentagon.

The series of events started after a patient at the hospital left without permission in mid December. Police were called to help locate the patient and several days later, a man with the same description of the escapee was brought back to Graylands by police where he was wrongly identified by hospital staff as the runaway patient. The man was subsequently given a batch of antipsychotic drugs but it caused an adverse reaction and he was treated overnight in hospital. The “real” missing patient eventually returned to Graylands.

A Kuwaiti court sentenced a man to two years in prison for insulting the country’s ruler on Twitter, a lawyer following the case said, as the Gulf Arab state cracks down on criticism of the authorities on social media. According to the verdict on Sunday — published by online newspaper Alaan — a tweet written by Rashid Saleh al-Anzi in October “stabbed the rights and powers of the Emir” Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad Al-Sabah. Anzi, who has 5,700 Twitter followers, was expected to appeal the verdict, said the lawyer, who asked not to be named.

When Jonathan Frieman of San Rafael, Calif., was pulled over for driving alone in the carpool lane, he argued to the officer that, actually, he did have a passenger.

He waved his corporation papers at the officer

A nice summary of many of the arguments against the "Drug" war. Link at the bottom to the actual WSJ piece. Nice to see the corporate media putting this stuff out to the masses.

A woman hiding in her attic with children shot an intruder multiple times before fleeing to safety Friday.

The incident happened at a home on Henderson Ridge Lane in Loganville around 1 p.m. The woman was working in an upstairs office when she spotted a strange man outside a window

An arcane idea that started on finance blogs in the summer of 2011-- that Tim Geithner should mint a trillion dollar platinum coin to avert the debt ceiling -- is now seriously taking off...

Icelandic teenager, whose name means "Light Breeze" in Icelandic, sues for the right to her own name. Her name is not on Iceland's official list of acceptable names, and for 15 years she's been officially known as "Girl."

In 2011, the city of Philadelphia paid out $13 million to people alleging harm from police, largely to alleged victims of excessive use of force. Critics say that the city lacks meaningful oversight of police misconduct and, instead of trying to prevent it, treats payments due to the behavior like a cost of doing business. The city, however, doesn’t see a problem, contending that recession-weary Philadelphians and greedy lawyers are suing the city for a paycheck.