Free Republic

From mandates about what food children can eat to draconian attendance policies, it’s becoming increasingly clear that parental rights do not exist when you send your child to public school, as The Blaze’s Matt Walsh has argued before. But in Seattle, it’s even worse. In at least 13 public schools in the area, where kids are banned from even having soda or candy, middle and high school-aged girls can get a taxpayer-funded IUD without their parents’ consent. CNS News reports: [Long-acting reversible contraceptives] are associated with serious side effects, such as uterine perforation and infection. IUDs, specifically, can also act as abortifacients by...

It’s a four-letter word that parents in one Northern California city don’t want their children to hear: soda. In a novel approach to fighting childhood obesity, the Davis City Council voted unanimously this week to approve an ordinance making milk and water the default options for kids’ meals — a victory for parents who want to shield children from sugary beverages. Cashiers and waiters in fast food joints and other restaurants that market meals to kids will be forced, under threat of a fine to the business, to offer water or milk with those meals, not Coke or Pepsi.

A can of Coke could soon look like a pack of Marlboros, if one Bronx lawmaker has his way. Assemblyman Jeff Dinowitz has introduced the “Sugar-Sweetened Beverages Safety Warning Act” — which would require tobacco-style health- warning labels on all sugary drinks, such a cola, iced tea and energy drinks. The labels would read: “SAFETY WARNING: Drinking beverages with added sugar contributes to obesity, diabetes and tooth decay.”

Voters in Berkeley, Calif., have passed the nation’s first soda tax with a resounding 75 percent of the vote. The measure aims to reduce the effects of sugar consumption on health, especially increased rates of obesity and diabetes. It will levy a penny-per-ounce tax on most sugar-sweetened beverages and is estimated to raise more than $1 million per year. Proceeds will go to the general fund; Measure D calls for the creation of a health panel to advise Berkeley’s City Council on appropriate health programs to receive funding. Campaign Co-Chair Jack Daniels called Berkeley’s win a tipping point. “I think...

The progressive War on Soda may have failed in New York, despite the best efforts of the Deplorable Nanny State Mayor, but this is a multi-front battle which will clearly rage on for some time. As any good battle commander will tell you, when fighting an opponent with numerical superiority, it’s best to drag them into a skirmish on your home turf. In the effort to save people from their own ignorant, evil selves, the fight to make soda more expensive – and thereby modify public behavior through tax policy – has moved to Berkeley.

Libertarians were outraged by New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s “Big Gulp” ban (which a state court ultimately struck down). They slammed it as a “Nanny State” measure. But it was current Centers for Disease Control head Tom Frieden who was actually behind the ban.

Time and again we hear politicians from different parts of the country profess the virtues of a soda tax. Their reasoning ranges from wanting to improve the public health, by cutting back consumption of unhealthy drinks, to talking about how much revenue it will bring in. This proclivity of nanny statists to push policies to change people’s behavior hues quite closely to Einstein’s definition of insanity: Trying the same thing over and over, expecting different results. Policy makers of all stripes need to abandon their affinity for soda taxes. Put simply, soda taxes just don’t work. Take Berkeley, California, as...

All newly manufactured vehicles to be sold in the U.S. are required as of Tuesday to have backup cameras equipped as a standard feature. Advocates for the rule, which was mandated by the National Highway Transportation Safety Agency in 2014, hope today’s milestone will lead to fewer instances of drivers backing into people due to a lack of visibility. “This day is so important because we don’t have a choice” when it comes to children’s safety around cars, said Janette Fennell, founder and president of KidsAndCars.org, an advocacy group that works to prevent accidents involving children and motor vehicles. “This...

The saga of ailing toddler Alfie Evans has thoroughly discredited the United Kingdom's National Health Service. According to the NHS, Alfie's death "would be best for all concerned." His parents' efforts to prevent this outcome with the assistance of humanitarians outside of the NHS have been thwarted with the connivance of the UK's courts. It's not a question of the parents insisting that the NHS provide care that the NHS considers inappropriate and futile. The parents haven't asked for anything more than to take their son out of the Alder Hey Hospital and take advantage of Bambino Gesu Hospital's offer...

Companies can no longer sell bulk packages of liquid or powdered caffeine directly to consumers, the Food and Drug Administration announced Friday. The policy will take immediate effect “given the significant public health concern,” according to the agency’s statement released Friday. “Highly concentrated and pure caffeine, often sold in bulk packages, have been linked to at least two deaths in otherwise healthy individuals,” the agency stated. ... Between 10 and 14 grams of caffeine is considered life-threatening, according to the FDA’s guidelines, though people can have an irregular or rapid heart rate and seizures after taking just a gram. The...

Thanks in large part to President Trump’s aggressive deregulation agenda—through which the president has demonstrated a commitment to cutting or restructuring unnecessary, burdensome rules that hamper innovation and growth—the economy is booming. Unfortunately, one poorly considered rule that seems to have escaped his notice will hurt the businesses that provide one of America’s favorite foods: pizza.The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) rule, a byproduct of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and slated to go into effect on May 7, will require businesses with 20 or more locations that sell highly customizable food items—such as pizza companies, convenience stores, supermarkets...

This week, parents in one state can breathe a sigh of relief. Utah Governor Gary Herbert has made parenting a lot easier by signing a bill that legalizes “free-range” parenting. Free-range parenting allows children to play without the constant and close supervision of their parents or another adult. Devotees believe children benefit from more freedom and learn vital decision making skills while playing at parks, walking to school, or wandering the neighborhood, without a parent hovering over them. The bill’s sponsor, Utah state Senator Lincoln Fillmore recognized the benefits of free-range parenting saying, “kids need to wonder about the world,...

A City Council member wants to crack down on bosses who require their employees to maintain contact after hours, and his idea is picking up steam. Raphael Espinal, who represents the Brooklyn neighborhoods of Bushwick, Bronwsville, Cypress Hills and East New York, is set to introduce a bill in a City Council meeting on Thursday that establishes New Yorkers’ “right to disconnect.” The legislation would make it illegal for employers to require employees to access work-related electronic communication outside of their regular work period. If passed, the law would allow workers who are regularly bombarded by urgent, late-night emails from...

Americans love their cars. The United States has one of the highest car ownership rates per capita in the world. We're a mobile culture and we like it that way. But a tax-per-mile plan being pushed by Republican Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri might have drivers re-thinking those weekend joyrides instead of feeling all the pain at the pump.

New York state lawmakers want Tide to stop making its pods look so appealing. Assemblywoman Aravella Simotas and Sen. Brad Hoylman proposed a bill Tuesday that would require Proctor & Gamble to individually wrap each pod and add warning labels to them, reports NBC New York. The lawmakers also want the pods to be made less colorful, claiming that their bright colors “can make them appealing to young children, adults with dementia, and those looking to take part in the internet trend known as ‘Tide Pod Challenge.’ That said, don’t expect a change anytime soon. Proctor & Gamble responded to...

SANTA FE, N.M. — New Mexico's high school juniors would be required to apply to at least one college or show they have committed to other post-high school plans as part of a new high school graduation requirement being pushed by two state lawmakers. The proposal is scheduled for its first legislative hearing on Thursday. If it eventually becomes law, New Mexico would be the first state to require post-high school plans of students, said Jennifer Zinth, who is the director of high school and STEM research at the Education Commission of the States, a Denver-based group that tracks education...

While the rest of us were popping champagne to celebrate the arrival of 2018, Seattle greeted the New Year with a 1.75 cent per ounce tax on sweetened beverages. It was needed, former Mayor Ed Murray once said, for a host of noble reasons: to reduce sugar consumption; to raise revenue for important projects like a year of “free” community college for all graduating public high school students; and, to subsidize purchases of healthy foods by low-income families.Before he resigned in disgrace over multiple allegations of personal misconduct, Murray considered the soda tax one of his greatest accomplishments, a “cutting...

A new report issued last week by the National Academies of Sciences, Getting to Zero Alcohol-Impaired Driving Fatalities: A Comprehensive Approach to a Persistent Problem, urges a host of draconian measures in an effort to eliminate every alcohol-related driving death in the United States. The NAS report suggests that policy approaches expand dramatically from their present focus, preventing drunk driving, "to also encompass reducing drinking to the point of impairment"—the latter, in other words, targeting all drunkenness. Getting to zero, in the report's estimation, means a host of nefarious, neo-Prohibitionist approaches to alcohol regulation, including "lowering state per se laws...

In memory of British lawmaker Jo Cox, who was murdered by a right-wing extremist in 2016, the U.K. government has announced the appointment of a new “Minister of Loneliness.” Conservative MP Tracey Crouch was named to the post by British Prime Minister Theresa May on Wednesday. The recommendation for the appointment came from the Jo Cox Foundation, a registered charity that was set up in Cox’s memory after her death.

In Yoder v. Sugar Grove Area Sewer Authority, (Commonwlth. Ct. PA, Jan. 5, 2018), a Pennsylvania state appellate court, in a 2-1 decision, upheld the denial of an injunction sought by an Old Order Amish couple who object to the requirement that they connect to the local sewer system using an electric pump. The dispute has wound its way through the courts for over five years. (See prior related posting.) The majority said in part: Owners did not establish the injunction would not harm the public, or that the harm in denying the injunction outweighed the harm in granting it....