Free Republic

Sometimes two vices are better than one. Drinking large amounts of coffee protects the livers of people who drink large amounts of alcohol, a new study shows. The results partly explain why so many heavy alcohol drinkers escape cirrhosis of the liver, say the authors. The idea that coffee drinking might benefit alcohol users arose more than a decade ago, when cardiologist Arthur Klatsky and colleagues at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Care Program in Oakland, California, noticed that fewer heavy drinkers were dying of cirrhosis--scarring that hardens the liver--than expected. A study at the time suggested coffee drinking might be...

So here I am in Seattle, America's coffee capital, and the flacks at Starbucks won't even talk to me about the measure on Berkeley's November ballot that would require coffeehouses to sell only Fair Trade, organic or shade-grown coffee. (Fair Trade means the importers paid growers at least $1.26 cents per pound for coffee beans. Shade-grown coffee, the measure explains, "is planted in a shaded, forest-like setting created by a canopy of trees," which provides habitat for native songbirds.) Violators would be subject to a $100 fine, six months behind steel bars or both. Tully's and Seattle's Best Coffee...