Free Republic

Restaurants and other businesses have lost their challenge to Denver ordinances that forbid them from using natural-gas appliances, as a judge has found they are not preempted by federal law. The Restaurant Law Center and the National Association of Home Builders were among the trade associations that sued Denver in July 2024, arguing rules passed in Denver this decade were preempted by the federal Energy Policy and Conservation Act. Judge Philip Brimmer disagreed in an Aug. 7 ruling granting the city’s motion to dismiss. Preemption only applies to energy use requirements on manufacturers before the appliances reach consumers, Brimmer wrote....

No way in hell you are going to put a wok on an electric stove.”That was Steven Lee, a San Francisco official and restaurant investor, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle last year after the city’s Board of Supervisors voted to outlaw natural gas in new buildings.Nevertheless, they persisted. Per the Sierra Club, the quickening campaign to phase out natural gas recently notched its 50th city-level win in California alone. (Take a bow, Encinitas!) No. 50, as with some others, has “situational exemptions” for restaurants and the like, but the overall push to compel an all-electric design for homes...

LIES SO pervade the campaign waged to "save" convicted killer Stanley Tookie Williams that Williams and company don't even bother to cover their tracks when they say things they know aren't true. So, as Williams' Dec. 13 execution date looms and supporters are pressing Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to grant him clemency, the Death Row inmate claimed in an interview Monday with MSNBC's fatuous Rita Cosby that he was convicted by an "all-white jury." That's not true, and Williams knows it. In fact, Williams' own clemency lawyers have stipulated that the jury that convicted him in the 1979 murders of Albert...