Free Republic

img src="http://rightbias.com/News/Images/nanny-state%20250.JPG" alt="" align="right" />Since I've been otherwise occupied making a living, it's reassuring to know that my government is looking out for me. In just the last month, our tireless public servants have proposed numerous measures that will make my life better and more worry free. No longer will I have to worry about drug addicts being able to rig a urine test. The Senate is set to vote on a measure that would make it illegal to sell fake urine for the purpose of falsifying a drug test. Whew. While they're at it, Congress is also working on...

Midway through D.C.'s February Snowpocalypse, with dystopian visions dancing in my head, I rented the 1982 sci-fi classic "Blade Runner." The movie's noir-ish picture of Los Angeles in 2019-dimly-lit and rainy, with flying cars, sexy replicants, and gruff, chain-smoking detectives-seems less prescient (and less foreboding) the closer we get to the year it depicts. As the DVD played, one thought kept distracting me: "It's so cute that they used to think you'd be allowed to smoke in the future." From a 2010 vantage point, the 21st century seems to promise an entirely different flavor of nightmare-one in which every individual...

The Virginia Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control began sending underage operatives into stores in the 1990s in an attempt to buy alcohol, usually beer. But in the past year, they began targeting another beverage: alcoholic energy drinks. The rising popularity of the drinks with teens fueled the change, said Robert Simmons Jr., an ABC special agent. They pose a special problem because they look like their non alcoholic counterparts, making them easy to slip past distracted or uninformed cashiers and fool parents and sometimes even police, he said. But with as much caffeine as several cups of coffee and twice...

Malkin’s syndicated column today hits on my point about the Census Bureau’s semi-official slogan … fill out the census so your community gets their fair share. Gotta ensure you’re in the front of the line to feed from the federal government’s teat, so fill out the census you goofball!

Scientists have finally confirmed what the rest of us have suspected for years: Bacon, cheesecake, and other delicious yet fattening foods may be addictive. A new study in rats suggests that high-fat, high-calorie foods affect the brain in much the same way as cocaine and heroin. When rats consume these foods in great enough quantities, it leads to compulsive eating habits that resemble drug addiction, the study found. Doing drugs such as cocaine and eating too much junk food both gradually overload the so-called pleasure centers in the brain, according to Paul J. Kenny, Ph.D., an associate professor of molecular...

In 2008, a city planner filed a lawsuit claiming a co-worker's perfume made it challenging for her to do her job. Susan McBride filed her lawsuit under the American with Disabilities Act, because she said he co-workers' fragrances made it hard for her to breath. She was awarded $100,000. "One of the things the city is going to have to figure out is how they enforce the policy they've agreed to," said attorney John Holmquist. "The city is going to have to get involved in hygiene, I'd guess you'd say, which no employer wants to get involved in." A notice...

Is soda the new tobacco? In their critics’ eyes, producers of sugar-sweetened drinks are acting a lot like the tobacco industry of old: marketing heavily to children, claiming their products are healthy or at worst benign, and lobbying to prevent change. The industry says there are critical differences: in moderate quantities soda isn’t harmful, nor is it addictive. The problem is that at roughly 50 gallons per person per year, our consumption of soda, not to mention other sugar-sweetened beverages, is far from moderate, and appears to be an important factor in the rise in childhood obesity. This increase is...

One of the more extreme proposals floated early in the national health care debate was the idea of taxing soda and other sugary beverages. That trial balloon was almost immediately shot down by the American public, but the Obama administration is attempting to achieve, by subterfuge, soda taxes and a lot of other ways to micromanage our lives in the name of public health—whether or not ObamaCare passes. The mechanism is buried in last year’s $862-billion-and-counting stimulus bill, and works by diverting hundreds of millions of dollars that should be promoting economic growth to instead pay lobbyists to push for...

Temple University researchers create a unique program to help new moms cut down on babies' exposure to second-hand smokeIn underserved areas like North Philadelphia, existing research shows a nearly 10 percent higher smoking rate than in the general population, with a lower quit rate to boot. The consequences of this public health problem are magnified for new mothers that smoke, as they also expose their babies to the ill effects of second-hand smoke. Brad Collins, an assistant professor of public health at the College of Health Professions and Social Work, has been testing ways to improve smoking treatments in underserved...

McCain-Dorgan Bill could make nutritional supplements available only by doctor’s prescription; stifling natural product innovation. (FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla.) - Ironically, in the middle of American Heart Month 2010, the U.S. Senate is weighing a proposed amendment to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (21 U.S.C. 321) that could deny freedom of access and mandate a doctor’s prescription for many dietary supplements, like purified fish oil, which could become seven times more expensive than it is today. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Byron Dorgan (D-ND) have dubbed their new bipartisan bill the “Dietary Supplement Safety Act of 2010.” A reading...

Recent figures on both sides of the Atlantic suggest claims of an epidemic of weight-related illness are grossly exagerrated. Everyone knows The Truth about obesity: we’re getting fatter each year. Our growing girth is termed everything from the ‘pandemic of the twenty-first century’ to an ‘obesity tsunami’. But the evidence is now flooding in from both America and England that obesity is the epidemic that never was. Two studies produced by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and published last week in the Journal of the American Medical Association – one about obesity in children and adolescents,...

Remember Louise Woodward, the English Nanny convicted in part by Martha Coakley in 1998. People had very strong opinions on the case, many felt she was guilty, I always was sure she was innocent. Well I wonder if many like me missed the recent update to the story. The Prosecutions star medical expert has since reversed his opinion that convicted Woodward, based on fairly new scientific research. The article goes on to suggest that hundreds of innocent people are currently in prison for this FALSE SBS Shaken baby Syndrome. This is related to the current Coakley discussions so I share...

We have seen the previews. The film looks really awful. In fact, it may turn out to be a horror film. I’ll try my best to avoid it. But if you sit idly and allow bureaucrats to seize even more power over your life, I wish you good luck and good health. You’ll need both.

At first glance, Moshe Holtzberg looks like any happy boy on the brink of his third birthday. Messy lunches and tons of playtime is how the lovable tot spends his time with his grandparents and nanny living in Afula, Israel. But Moshe is far from normal. He is a living miracle. Last year, a group of gunmen stormed into Moshe's old house in Mumbai, India, killing his parents and four others at the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish center. His nanny, Sandra Samuel, managed to grab him half way into the 36-hour siege, running from the chaos and saving his life. "He remembers...

FALLS CHURCH, Va. — Fourteen people have been charged with illegally purchasing 77 million contraband cigarettes from undercover agents in Virginia and smuggling the cigarettes to New York. Two are also accused of paying an agent posing as a hit man to kill a husband and wife whom they believed had stolen from them. The indictments handed up Thursday in federal court in Alexandria are the culmination of a yearlong investigation. Authorities say the smuggling ring paid $8 million plus guns and drugs to the undercover agents for the cigarettes. Cigarette smuggling has increased in recent years as high taxes...

I'm all for Liberty but I'd sacrifice some rights for a tough love leader and a law against Big Gulps. ......And people love a good dictator — or at least get over their hatred of one pretty quickly — provided that the dictator doesn't put up too many pictures of himself. We instinctively object to new forms of paternalism, but we also quickly accept them: ......President Obama should probably get a little bit dictatorial up in here. He's the only person in the U.S. unaware that we elected him dictator, giving him both houses of Congress and the major television...

OKLAHOMA CITY — As more and more cities and states pass laws banning the use of cell phones – including texting – while driving, this “nanny statism” has finally struck lawmakers in Oklahoma. And that’s unfortunate. Oklahomans tend to pride themselves on the fact that more government intervention is not a good idea. Good old-fashioned common sense is usually acceptable and reasonable laws are followed. Banning cell phones and texting while driving is unreasonable, in the eyes of the Oklahoma Watchdog. Rep. Sue Tibbs, a Tulsa Republican who serves on the House Public Safety Committee, is planning to introduce a...

Americans need more exercise, not another tax. Obesity is a complex issue, and addressing it is important for all Americans. We at the Coca-Cola company are committed to working with government and health organizations to implement effective solutions to address this problem. But a number of public-health advocates have already come up with what they think is the solution: heavy taxes on some routine foods and beverages that they have decided are high in calories. The taxes, the advocates acknowledge, are intended to limit consumption of targeted foods and help you to accept the diet that they have determined is...

[snip] Granholm spokeswoman Liz Boyd said the agency was following standard procedure in its response. "But we feel this (law) really gets in the way of common sense," Boyd said. "We want to protect kids, but the law needs to be reasonable," she said. "When the governor learned of this, she acted quickly and called the director personally to ask him to intervene." State Rep. Brian Calley, R-Portland, said he was working to draft legislation that would exempt situations like Snyder's from coverage under Michigan's current day care regulations. The bill will make it clear that people who aren't in...

Clair McCaskill thinks she's a neurologist. These people hold elected office and actually think they are entitled to tell folks what they need better than the scientists that treat them! http://www.foxnews.com/search-results/m/26494935/suffering-scooters.htm#q=McCaskill+Scooters So if you are a person with MS, Parkinsons, ALS and Huntingdon's disease, lets land our sorry butts in Clair's office and tell her what we think of her medical knowledge.