Free Republic

For the record, I tend to think that a cigarette ban for minors may be appropriate. While I oppose prohibition for adults, I think it makes sense to say that adults shouldn’t be permitted to entice children into certain unhealthy choices. Of course, if such a prohibition is put in place, it needs to be justified by banning a substance that is clearly dangerous, not just “unhealthy” by some statistic that we know doesn’t apply to all people. If the evidence qualifies tobacco as such a substance, then I can see restricting it from children.But recent news about a new...

New York City is asking appeals judges to reinstate a ban on supersized sodas and other sugary drinks, which was struck down by a Manhattan judge the day before it was to go into effect. The city had vowed an appeal and said Thursday that lawyers had filed it late Monday. In his decision on March 11, State Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling said the 16-ounce limit on sodas and other sweet drinks arbitrarily applies to only some sugary beverages and some places that sell them.

Mayor Bloomberg admits soon NYPD surveillance cameras will be on nearly every corner and in the air. 'You wait, in five years, the technology is getting better, they'll be cameras everyplace . . . whether you like it or not,' Bloomberg said Friday. 'The argument against using automation is just this craziness that 'Oh, it's Big Brother.' Get used to it!' Big Brother is watching. Now get used to it! Envisioning a future where privacy is a thing of the past, Mayor Bloomberg said Friday it will soon be impossible to escape the watchful eyes of surveillance cameras and even...

NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre on Sunday challenged New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's plan to spend $12 million on ads meant to pressure senators into backing strict new gun control measures, saying Bloomberg "can't buy America." Bloomberg confirmed Sunday that he plans to spend $12 million to run ads in at least 10 states, suggesting there could be a political price to pay for opposing the measures. Making clear he intends to be a counterweight to the NRA, Bloomberg said he wants to make sure the powerful gun lobby is not "the only voice" in this debate. If he can...

Piers Morgan and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s want to be dictators and slave masters. Regulating a person’s diet is the regulation of a person’s life. Here was Morgan’s response to a guest who disagreed with him on sugary drink control:“I think people need [these types of laws] occasionally, particularly on issues like smoking, drinking, guzzling sodas too big for them, you know, eating 16 Big Macs a day, whatever it may be, the reality is we all need a bit of nannying about that. That’s why so many people are on diets. That’s a form of nanny state.”When governments...

<p>Mayor Bloomberg - who has already cracked down on smoking, trans fats, salt and super-sized drinks - is embarking on a new crusade: preventing New Yorkers from going deaf.</p> <p>Hizzoner's health officials are planning a social-media campaign to warn young people about the risk of losing their hearing from listening to music at high volume on personal MP3 players, The Post has learned.</p>

<p>Only you're probably not going to like his advice for losing weight -- just eat less.</p> <p>"If you eat less than 2,000 calories you'll lose weight," the mayor said on his weekly WOR radio show today. "If you eat more than 2,000 calories, you'll gain weight. Now some things metabolize more quickly than others. And everyone says I should go on this kind of diet or that kind of diet. Don't eat and you'll lose weight."</p>

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Wednesday that the United States’ coal industry’s days are numbered. “Even though the coal industry doesn’t totally know it yet or is ready to admit it, its day is done. … Here in the U.S., I’m happy to say, the king is dead. Coal is a dead man walking,” Bloomberg said at the Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy (ARPA-E) Energy Innovation Summit near Washington, D.C. Bloomberg has been a vocal advocate for killing coal-fired power. He said health problems from pollution and climate change-exacerbated events like Hurricane Sandy have fomented growing recognition...

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's super political action committee has spent at least $660,000 for 12 days of TV ads blasting Democratic congressional candidate Debbie Halvorson's past support from the National Rifle Association, records filed by local affiliates of the four major networks showed Thursday. When its current ad buy ends Sunday, the Independence USA super PAC will have aired 574 half-minute broadcast TV commercials to influence the outcome of the 2nd Congressional District special election, records show. Halvorson, a former one-term congresswoman from Crete, has accused Bloomberg of trying to buy an Illinois congressional seat. She has maintained her...

If the gunowners in this country simultaneously pulled money out of NY Stock market, cancelled trips to New York, refused to buy products manufactured in New York it would affect Bloomturd, Cuomo, Sliver and the rest of the Constitution burners in that wretched state. The following listing includes the most prominent national corporations that have lent their corporate support to gun control initiatives or taken position supporting gun control. Courtesy of the NRA-ILA & SCOPE Misinformed Moms March – Sponsors They removed their page: http://www.millionmommarch.com/html/march2000/sponsors.html, but we saved the list. A & M Records Al Cafaro, Chrm. & CEO 595...

WEDNESDAY, Sept. 12 (HealthDay News) -- New York City's controversial proposal to regulate restaurant sales of large sugary drinks is coming to a head, with the city's Board of Health scheduled to decide the measure's fate on Thursday. Mayor Michael Bloomberg's self-appointed board is expected to pass the measure, effectively prohibiting city restaurants, delis, sports facilities, and street vendors (but not grocery stores or convenience stores) from selling sweetened beverages in servings exceeding 16 ounces. The mayor has framed the issue as an urgent public health effort to combat obesity, saying the goal is to help New Yorkers make better...

smoking ban in all closed public spaces, including coffee shops, restaurants and bars, went into force in Lebanon on Monday under new legislation that promises hefty fines for lawbreakers. In a country considered a "smokers' paradise," the law took effect a year ago in airports, hospitals and schools, but took hold on a wider basis on Monday, also banning tobacco advertisements criticised for luring youths into the habit. Smokers caught lighting up in a closed public space face a $90 penalty, while restaurant or cafe owners who turn a blind eye to offenders could be fined anything from $900 to...

We've been hearing a lot of that recently. Earlier this year, The New York Times reprinted a Department of Justice press release and slapped this lede on top of it: “As violent crime has decreased across the country, a disturbing trend has emerged: Rising numbers of police officers are being killed.” Bloomberg and The New York Times are both wrong: In 2008, ten times more civilians regular people were killed by cops than cops were killed by perps. In 2011, 72 cops were shot and killed in the entire U.S.; in L.A. County alone, cops shot and killed 54 suspects...

Who’s full of hot air? Mayor Bloomberg wants to maintain his politically correct credentials on global warming — but hates to get into a hot car when he leaves an air conditioned building. The solution his aides came up with could easily have doubled as a stunt on David Letterman’s show. In full view of bemused tourists and other passers-by, workers yesterday performed what looked like a comedy routine: They hoisted a standard room air conditioner to a side window of one of the mayor’s SUVs parked in the City Hall lot to see if it would fit... < snip...

(CNSNews.com) - During a United Nations General Assembly summit on non-communicable diseases -- a discussion that included diet and eating habits -- New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said “governments at all levels must make healthy solutions the default social option. Speaking on the government's role in diet and health last week, Bloomberg told the UN General Assembly, “There are powers only governments can exercise, policies only governments can mandate and enforce and results only governments can achieve. To halt the worldwide epidemic of non-communicable diseases, governments at all levels must make healthy solutions the default social option. That is...

Mayor Bloomberg Warns Of Rioting If Unemployment Remains High September 16, 2011 5:08 PM NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Pedestrians were seemingly content on the streets of upper Manhattan Friday, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg believes there’s an undercurrent of economic distress that could upset the tranquil street scene. “You have a lot of kids graduating college, can’t find jobs, that’s what happened in Cairo. That’s what happened in Madrid. You don’t want those kind of riots here,” Bloomberg said on his Friday morning radio show. Mentioning these street protests overseas during a gloomy assessment of economic prospects in the u-s. “The...

Mayor Bloomberg warned Friday there would be riots in the streets if Washington doesn't get serious about generating jobs. "We have a lot of kids graduating college, can't find jobs," Bloomberg said on his weekly WOR radio show. "That's what happened in Cairo. That's what happened in Madrid. You don't want those kinds of riots here."

Mayor Bloomberg’s latest program is a greatest-hits package of failed ideas.Selective amnesia is an essential trait in anyone promoting government antipoverty initiatives. Last week, as he announced the Young Men’s Initiative, a government effort to improve the life outcomes of black and Hispanic males, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to assert the radically new nature of the program. The “pioneering new initiative” (which will cost taxpayers $67.5 million, with another $60 million thrown in by George Soros and Bloomberg himself) represented “an entirely new approach” to poverty reduction, said Bloomberg. The “across-the-board policy reforms” of the “action plan” would...

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg is back on the air with another political ad, and this time his focus is guns.Just a few weeks after an operative from Al Qaeda released a video urging Islamic militants to take advantage of America as a country “absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms,” Mr. Bloomberg and his national anti-illegal gun coalition, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, released a commercial on Tuesday urging Congress to close what they say is a loophole in gun laws. That loophole is gun shows, the mayors say, where all kinds of people — even terrorists — can purchase firearms.The ad...

The Health Department reported today that its inspectors have handed out 704 fines to eateries that failed to post their grades as required by a law that took effect last July. Another 100 restaurants were cited for placing their grade signs in spots not clearly visible to customers. Not surprisingly, most of the violators got the worst possible grade -- C. "It's willful," declared Dan Kass, deputy commissioner for environmental health. "If it was really about ignorance of the law, we'd expect proportionate results."

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Smokers have just one message to Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council members: butt out of our business. “We’re outside. We should have freedom to smoke,” City Hall Park smoker Harvey Forbes told CBS 2’s Magee Hickey. By a vote of 36 to 11 on Wednesday the City Council approved a bill to ban smoking in all city parks, beaches and pedestrian plazas. “People who have made the decision not to smoke have civil liberties too and their health and their lives should not be negatively impacted because other people have decided to smoke,” Council Speaker...

Dozens of emails between Mayor Bloomberg’s aides and developers of the proposed mosque near Ground Zero show the mayor’s office has gone out of its way to support the controversial plan – with one of his commissioners going so far as to ghost write a letter to a community board leader on the mosque’s behalf.

On a July afternoon in 2006, Patrick Hale microwaved a bag of popcorn for his two young children and sat down with them to watch television. When he got up to change the channel, he heard a strange noise behind him, and turned to see his 23-month-old daughter, Allison, turning purple and unable to breathe.

The link talks about the NYPD being investigated for misreporting felonies in order to make the department look good at reducing crime rates. The whistle-blower was sent to a mental hospital for psychiatric evaluation against his will. The conclusion of that evaluation was that he's just a little naive about how government works. He thought cops were supposed to be truthful. I'm feeling his pain. I think we all are. There are so many crooks - so many illegal activities with government that we can't give any one story the time it deserves. At this point a bigger story would...