Free Republic

(CNSNews.com) – The Department of Education’s Office of the General Council and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division filed a brief Wednesday evening in support of Gavin Grimm, a biological female who “identifies” as a male. Grimm filed a lawsuit in June against the Gloucester County School Board in Virginia for access to the boys’ restroom. “Prohibiting a transgender male student from using boys’ restrooms, when other non-transgender male students face no such restriction, deprives him not only of equal educational opportunity but also ‘of equal status, respect, and dignity,’” the DOE and DOJ attorneys argue in the brief. “Treating...

Upscale Beverly Hills is among four California cities whose water utilities have been fined for not forcing residents to conserve enough water during California's unrelenting four-year drought, officials said on Friday. The wealthy Los Angeles area municipality was fined $61,000 on Thursday, making it the only community not located in a desert to be assessed penalties, the California State Water Resources Board said. "Some urban water suppliers simply have not met the requirements laid before them," said Cris Carrigan, director of the water board's Office of Enforcement. "For these four suppliers, it's been too little too late."

(CNSNews.com) – Following an investigation by its inspector general, the Department of Energy has issued a new rule advising its workers to refrain from putting highly enriched uranium in their pockets.“After interviewing chemical operators and reviewing revised Y-12 procedures, we confirmed that chemical operators are no longer allowed to place samples in their pockets and must check their pockets before removing their coveralls,” said a report issued by the DOE Office of Inspector General.The report, released in September, described a safety violation that occured last year at the DOE’s Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tenn."We received allegations that special...

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is spending over $100,000 studying disgust, hypothesizing that all bullying behavior begins with feelings of revulsion.Researchers at Columbia University want to see if they can “successfully regulate” disgust emotions in teens in order to stop bullying.“Whether it’s being the victim, being the perpetrator, or having to watch this upsetting cycle of peer rejection and victimization, few adolescents are unaffected by bullying’s harmful impact,” a grant for the project states. “This effect can last long past adolescence, as both being the bully and being the victim are linked to the development of both short- and...

Nathan Greenberg believes he runs a school district, but government bureaucrats look at his Londonderry, N.H., operation and see …. a food processing plant? That’s the strange dilemma the 5,000-student district finds itself in after deciding at the end of the last school year to pull the high school out of the unpopular National School Lunch Program. While the district’s elementary and middle schools remain in the program, which sets portion and nutrition guidelines for students, provides low cost staples and subsidizes meals of low-income pupils, it proved immensely unpopular at the high school. “We saw the [federally-mandated] food going...

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has spent over $1.1 million studying the “freshman 15,” trying to determine whether friends influence their college peers to eat more.Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) highlighted the project as an example of wasteful spending, calling out the agency for studying a myth invented by Seventeen magazine.“The ‘freshman 15’ is an old legend around college campuses; the idea that new college students, away from home and confronted with a campus food service smorgasbord tend to put on a few extra pounds,” Paul’s latest edition of “The Waste Report” reads. “Well the National Institutes for Health...

Healthcare industry groups are launching a preemptive strike against soon-to-drop federal guidelines meant to tamp down on the prescription of powerful painkillers. The forthcoming guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are meant to combat the abuse of drugs like Hyrdocodone, Oxycontin and Percocet, which many medical experts believe are dangerously overprescribed. Prescriptions for the drugs, known as opioids, increased by 300 percent from 1999 to 2013, according to the CDC, which cites statistics showing 16,000 people died from overdoses during that time. As currently drafted, the guidelines recommend physicians use opioids as a last resort after non-pharmacologic...

The Obama administration is moving ahead with controversial new rules that require doctors to switch to electronic health records or face fees, resisting calls from both parties to delay implementation. Federal health officials said the final rules released Tuesday will make “significant changes" in the "meaningful use" electronic health records program, such as lowering the number of standards each provider must meet and allowing providers to apply for hardship exemptions. But the administration will not delay what it calls "Stage 3" of the records program, a move that is already angering vocal Republicans like Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), who have...

That petition states in part, “We the taxpayers of LaGrange County respectfully request the county require the Amish community to attach manure bags to buggies and to clean up hitching rack areas after use.”

Ten of the world’s largest food production companies sent a letter to the U.S. Congress on Thursday, encouraging them to take action on climate change. The letter was signed by the chief executive officers from Unilever, Mars, Kellogg, General Mills, Nestle, New Belgium Brewing, Ben & Jerry’s, Clif Bar, Stonyfield Farm, and Dannon. “The challenge presented by climate change will require all of us – government, civil society and business – to do more with less. For companies like ours, that means producing more food on less land using fewer natural resources. If we don’t take action now, we risk...

The Mercer Island School District in the State of Washington has barred students from playing the game of “tag” on school grounds or within eyesight of school personnel. Communications director Macy Grade described the ban as “an essential step to ensure the physical and emotional safety of all students.” In the game of “tag,” one child is designated as “it” until he or she can tag/touch another child and pass along the “it” status. Grade characterized the game as “potentially devastating to children’s self-esteem. First of all, the person who is ‘it’ is isolated and stigmatized. Second, all the other...

D.C. Council Member Yvette Alexander announced Tuesday that the week of Sept. 20, 2015, would forever be known as “DC Calls It Quits Week.” The announcement comes just one week before the city plans to implement a 67 percent tax on e-cigarettes, effectively taxing vape shops out of existence. Alexander brought a gaggle of people to the front of the council chambers to make the announcement and to encourage “everyone in the District of Columbia to put down those cigarettes.” "Put down those tobacco product today, and hopefully this can be the beginning of a new beginning for anyone who...

Prepare to be “nudged” by Obama's new “behavioral science” squads — for your own good, of course. Under the guise of better “serving” the American people through government, Obama signed an executive order this week calling for federal agencies and departments to deploy emerging “behavioral science” techniques against the public.Among other goals, the expansion of federal mind manipulation is supposed to help more Americans access government welfare programs, take their “recommended” vaccines, supply more information about themselves to the federal government, and accelerate the transition toward what Obama called “a low-carbon economy.” The controversial decree, signed on September 15, explicitly...

When it comes to garbage, the city of Seattle has launched a waste war. Nine full-time solid waste inspectors have been hired as part of a controversial program to check city trash to make sure people are recycling. Additionally, contracted waste haulers have been effectively deputized as trash police, given the authority to tag bins when people fail to recycle and compost enough. The program is now the subject of a lawsuit, as residents fume over what some call an intrusive government program. “I understand people have noble goals,” said Keli Carender, who got tagged two weeks in a row,...

Regulating fast food kids' meals that include toys may end up making the meals healthier, according to a new study. If a proposed new policy in New York City is approved, then fast food meals that come with toys would contain fewer calories overall, and fewer from fat and sodium, researchers report. "We can create policies that will nudge us toward healthier behaviors," said senior author Marie Bragg, of NYU Langone Medical Center in New York. The proposed policy, which was introduced to the New York City Council, says fast food meals that come with a small toy must include...

As always, the Food and Drug Administration has its eye on the ball and its arms around freedom…in a big, stifling bear hug. The Founders no doubt intended that the federal government would have a passel of people in charge of telling successful condiment producers what they can put on their labels. For freedom. In this case, the federal government has decided a vegan company cannot put the name “Just Mayo” on its clearly labeled vegan mayonnaise product because the company doesn’t include egg whites in the mixture and does include some healthy stuff, like beta carotene. One would think...

Sometimes government’s dishonesty, incompetence, wastefulness, and misguided nannyism combine to make a perfectly ridiculous story. Today’s comes to us from Florida, where the Ocheesee Creamery is being forced to dump gallons upon gallons of good, natural skim milk because the state is requiring the business to label its good, natural skim milk “imitation” because they haven’t added anything to it. Paul and Mary Lou Wesselhoeft have been fighting this in federal court with the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Affairs, which had formerly allowed them to sell their skim milk while calling it skim milk. No one seemed confused...

(CNSNews.com) - The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 changed the nutrition requirements for school lunches and breakfasts, but the U.S. Agriculture Department says the law also gives schools the flexibility to prepare meals that are "familiar to kids from culturally diverse backgrounds."Blogging at the USDA website on Wednesday, Dr. Katie Wilson, deputy undersecretary for for food, nutrition and consumer services, hailed the nation's "diversity" of people, ideas, and culture: "One of the way culture is expressed is through the foods we eat," she wrote. "Our nation's school meals should be no exception." Wilson said she recently participated in one...

An independent study finds that e-cigarettes are 95 percent safer than tobacco and could be “game-changer” for getting people to quit smoking.The study, commissioned by Public Health England, says that while e-cigarettes may not be totally safe, they contain almost none of the chemicals in cigarettes associated with serious diseases like lung cancer and emphysema.The report adds that there is a substantial body of high-quality evidence that e-cigarettes are an effective tool for getting smokers to kick their habit. The devices, which were only invented in 2007, already have 2.6 million adult users in England alone.Contrary to a study released...

(CNSNews.com) – To help “create a classroom where students aren’t limited based on gender stereotypes,” teachers should address classes using words like “friends or “students” rather than girls and boys, the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) advises in a new back-to-school guide.The first tip suggested by the HRC’s Welcoming Schools Initiative is for teachers to avoid using gender to “divide and address students.” The guide claims that separating students for activities according to gender “can leave some students feeling out-of-place, making them distracted or isolated and not able to focus on learning.”The guide recommends finding new, inventive ways of dividing students...