Free Republic

Muslim doctors and nurses are to be allowed to opt out of strict hygiene rules introduced by the NHS to restrict the spread of hospital superbugs.Female staff who follow the Islamic faith will be allowed to cover their arms to preserve their modesty despite earlier guidance that all staff should be "bare below the elbow". The Department of Health has also relaxed rules prohibiting jewellery so that Sikh members of staff can wear bangles linked with their faith, providing they are pushed up the arm while the medic treats a patient. The Mail on Sunday reported the change had been...

1915: Anti-Smoking Sign, Zion, Illinois

The Turkish Parliament’s General Assembly adopted on Friday an alcohol bill proposed by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), tightening restrictions on the sale and advertising of alcoholic beverages, the daily Hurriyet reported. The approval came despite strong objections against the bill by the opposition on the grounds of personal freedom and respect for lifestyle choices. Secularist opponents accused the Islamic-rooted ruling party of gradually imposing an Islamic agenda on Turkey. According to the bill, retailers will no longer be allowed to sell alcoholic beverages between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. Advertising campaigns will be completely banned, such as...

MCDONALD, Pa., - Police in Pennsylvania said they responded to a report of two men burning something in a shed and discovered an alleged moonshine making operation. McDonald police said Midway residents called officers to their neighborhood April 11 with a report of neighbors burning something in a shed and one witness told police he suspected they were making moonshine because he had seen a man loading Mason jars into a vehicle, The (Washington, Pa.) Observer reported Tuesday. Police said they entered the shed to discover Matthew Zirwas III, 33, and Matthew Kirks, 29, operating what appeared to be an...

Connecticut will fall to the onrushing darkness of firearms prohibition, and the rest of America will too, in time. The prohibition package up for a vote in the Connecticut State Senate April 3 is a doozie: serialization and registration of commonly-available magazines, bans on magazines exceeding a paltry 10-round capacity, and prohibition by name and model of over 100 different guns. Worst of all, full registration of all firearms transfers will be required in CT; this is the Orwellian-named "universal background checks." If you want to know more about this mess, there's better reporting than mine. There are firearms owners...

Alcohol occupies a peculiar position in the culture of the United States. Like so much else besides, it is subject to the ongoing brawl between puritanism and libertarianism, two philosophies that have long jockeyed for dominance here. Americans have made many contributions to the bar — including the perfection and popularization of the cocktail. But puritanism has survived, enjoying a rich history of its own. Benjamin Rush’s inquiries into alcoholism spawned a variety of anti-alcohol movements at the outset of the new republic; in the 1850s, “temperance” overlapped uncomfortably with the Know Nothing movement’s distaste for secular principles; and...

Faced with the high cost of caring for smokers and overeaters, experts say society must grapple with a blunt question: Instead of trying to penalize them and change their ways, why not just let these health sinners die? Annual health care costs are roughly $96 billion for smokers and $147 billion for the obese, the government says. These costs accompany sometimes heroic attempts to prolong lives, including surgery, chemotherapy and other measures. But despite these rescue attempts, smokers tend to die 10 years earlier on average, and the obese die five to 12 years prematurely, according to various researchers’ estimates....

We have had the “War on Drugs” since the 70’s. In the 80’s, the “War” went from just skirmishes to an all out nuclear war on drugs. Now, thirty years later what have we accomplished? Has the “War on Drugs” become just another epic government failure like the “War on Poverty” with the only thing accomplished being massive government spending and an equally massive erosion of our Constitutional Rights? My perspective on the “War on Drugs” is a little different from most people. I practiced law for 24 years. Ten of those years were as a prosecutor. The rest were...

"WE WANT BEER PARADE" It was a sign of the times when the Mayor is the one leading protesters down Fifth Avenue. On May 14, 1932 Jimmy Walker, then the Mayor of New York City, organized a daylong “Beer for Taxation” parade (later known as the “We Want Beer” parade) in objection to the Eighteenth Amendment, which prohibited the manufacture, sale, transport, import, or export of alcoholic beverages.

Tunisia’s western city of Sidi Bouzid is now dry... Chanting “al-Charab haram” (“alcohol is sin”), dozens of Salafists burst into Sidi Bouzid’s Horchani hotel on Monday, September 3. The throng of men quickly homed in on the hotel’s liquor stock, seizing bottles of alcohol and throwing them against the walls or smashing them on the floor. The incident comes around four months after the city’s Salafist community first launched a war against alcohol consumption, pressuring or intimidating several bars into shutting down. Those who tried to resist saw their businesses come under attack, much like the Horchani hotel. ... I...

It’s a watershed moment for Concord residents as single-serve plastic water bottles will be officially banned in the town, effective Jan. 1....state Attorney General Martha Coakley ruled that the controversial bylaw...does not violate state or constitutional law in any way.

What if candy stores were closed on Sundays? What if you needed a license to open a doughnut shop? As America's weight problem gets bigger, some health researchers say instead of relying on individual willpower alone, it may be time for some new community-level policies. Deborah Cohen, a physician and public health researcher with the RAND Corporation, suggests that some of the policies we use to control alcohol consumption could help beat back obesity. "People realized this a couple hundred years ago, that alcohol was a problem," Cohen said. "So they developed all kinds of regulations to make it less...

Reality star Joey Kovar, who appeared on "The Real World: Hollywood" and "Celebrity Rehab," was found dead at a friend's home near Chicago on Friday (Aug. 17) morning, reports TMZ.

US Senators accuse HSBC of ‘letting Mexican gangs launder $7 billion and working with Saudi bank linked to terrorism’ * HSBC moved huge sum from Mexico into the U.S. between 2007 and 2008 * Provided services for Saudi Arabia’s Al Rajhi Bank linked to financing terrorism * Senate investigation suggests they also moved money tied to Iran * Accuses bank of ‘pervasively polluted’ culture * Another hammer blow to the credibility of British banking system after Barclays was fined for allegedly rigging LIBOR interest rate HSBC has been accused of handling money from Mexican drugs cartels and working alongside a...

Kerry Kennedy in hiding after drug-related driving arrestBy Henrick Karoliszyn AND Larry Mcshane / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS Sunday, July 15, 2012, 10:43 AM Kerry Kennedy steered clear of the public eye Saturday after her shocking arrest for drugged driving near her Westchester County home. There was no answer at the 52-year-old Kennedy’s home in Bedford, and neighbors said they had not seen the human rights activist and ex-wife of Gov. Cuomo. **SNIP** The News reported exclusively that her brother RFK Jr. had his estranged wife’s casket illegally exhumed and moved to another plot in a cemetery near the family’s...

More bad news for the Kennedys: Kerry Kennedy, the ex-wife of Gov. Cuomo and daughter of the late Robert F. Kennedy, was arrested Friday morning on drug-related charges. Kennedy was nabbed by State Police after taking off following a collision with a tractor-trailer on I-684 in the town of North Castle in Westchester County. State Police said they found Kennedy, 52, sitting behind the wheel of her disabled 2008 Lexus RS 350 on state Route 22. The car had sustained damage, including a flat tire. An investigation is said to have found Kennedy had been operating the car while her...

MIAMI (CBS Tampa) – If imitation is the highest form of flattery, then Rudy Eugene, the Miami cannibal who chewed off a homeless man’s face while reportedly high on bath salts, has an admirer in his own neighborhood. Brandon De Leon, 21, was arrested Saturday after getting into a fight at a local Boston Market and resisting arrest, but his threats of wanting to eat a Miami police officer followed by his attempt to bite the officer have raised more concern following the recent act of cannibalism in the Miami area that has made international headlines. CBS News reports that...

These are the places in America where alcohol is still banned The year was 1933. America's fourteen-year experiment in sobriety was over; the federally mandated ban on the sale and manufacture of alcohol had been lifted. All across the U.S., people welcomed the repeal of prohibition with open arms and flowing taps. Or rather, most of them did. Meet the counties where America's "noble experiment" never died. When prohibition lifted almost eighty years ago, many communities (particularly in the Bible Belt) voted to keep alcohol bans in place at the local level. Today, there are still more than 200 "dry"...

http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/02/15/time-for-a-new-approach-to-alcohol/ "Material from independent.co.uk cannot be posted to FR per publisher’s copyright complaint," but see link. In Firefox you can select url and right click choose "Open in new tab." It is very relevant to the Nat. health care mandate

Since President Nixon declared war on drugs in 1971 the United States has jailed tens of million of its' citizens. In 2008 alone 1.5 million American were arrested and 500,000 were imprisoned. At a cost of $45,000 per prisoner per year over 22 billion dollars were spent in prison costs alone for just those busted in 2008. I would imagine the costs to the courts, parole officers and police departments are equally large. And then there is the unmeasurable societal cost of a lost income to a community and the breakup of families effected should it be a mom or...