Free Republic

WASHINGTON (AP) — Under threat of trade retaliation from Canada and Mexico, the House has voted to to repeal a law requiring country-of-origin labels on packages of beef, pork and poultry. The World Trade Organization rejected a U.S. appeal last month, ruling the labels that say where animals were born, raised and slaughtered are discriminatory against the two U.S. border countries. Both have said they plan to ask the WTO for permission to impose billions of dollars in tariffs on American goods. The House voted 300-131 to repeal labels that tell consumers what countries the meat is from — for...

The Food and Drug Administration is going to try its hand at shaming consumers into making healthier choices when they go out to eat. Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, the FDA announced a controversial and expansive rule that will require certain establishments with 20 or more locations -- including chain restaurants, grocery and convenience stores, and movie theaters -- to post calorie information on their menus and menu boards. A separate rule was also issued requiring operators of 20 or more vending machines to post calorie information. Section 4205 of the Affordable Care Act, a provision included in the law...

An undated but clearly recent page at the National Wildlife Federation breathlessly warns readers, in a section entitled "Threats from Global Warming," that "Lake Erie water levels, already below average, could drop 4-5 feet by the end of this century, significantly altering shoreline habitat." A Thursday Huffington Post Canada Business entry observed that "the (Great Lakes) basin has experienced the longest extended period of lower water levels since the U.S. and Canada began tracking levels in 1918." Of course, it's because of "climate change." Friday, Julie Bosman at the New York Times reported (HT Powerline) that "The International Joint Commission,...

Chris Matthews mocked Republicans on Friday's Hardball over their hawkish stance towards Boko Haram, the Nigerian Islamist group that recently kidnapped hundreds of girls. Matthews made a thinly-veiled racial attack on the GOP during a panel discussion on the terrorist organization: " By the way, when did the Republican Party take this keen interest in Africa? I may have missed that one."

Guess who's all of a sudden standing up for law and order? Why, it's radical environmentalists, who despite their general disdain for lawful behavior have felt compelled to speak out in support of the Bureau of Land Management's attempts to round up Cliven Bundy's cattle and ultimately force the Nevada rancher to abandon his family's century-old business. Martin Griffith at the Associated Press relayed the comments of one such group in a Sunday report in the aftermath of the BLM's abandonment of its roundup efforts, in Griffith's words, "after hundreds of states' rights protesters, some of them armed militia members,...

The three Associated Press reports I've seen on the UAW's failure to win the right to represent hourly workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee — the first two were covered in NewsBusters posts here and here; the wire service's 3:52 p.m. report is here — all mention in one way or another what UAW President Bob King is now calling "unprecedented outside interference" in the runup to the election. (VW, which can only run the factory with the kind of "workers councils" it has at its other worldwide plants in the U.S. if its workers are represented by...

I paused a bit before putting this post up because the last thing an AP reporter needs is some guy on the right telling him he did a good job. I suspect that it's not a resume enhancer. That said, there are two reasons not to to ignore Terence Chea's coverage of the Saturday's Walk for Life West Coast in San Francisco. The first is how it contrasts with Brett Zongker's dismissive and incomplete coverage of the far larger DC March for Life the previous Wednesday. For starters, Chea appropriately described the San Francisco march as "massive"; Zongker's story covering...

On Friday, the Supreme Court issued a one-paragraph order in Little Sisters of the Poor et al v. Sebeluis et al. It told the Sisters that for the case to continue with no enforcement of the Affordable Care Act's contraception mandate, they need only to inform the government in writing "that they are non-profit organizations that hold themselves out as religious and have religious objections to providing coverage for contraceptive services." That's easy, because that's what they are, and that's their position. As a result, the government has been "enjoined from enforcing against the applicants the challenged provisions of the...

So it's come to this. During the past week, the Associated Press reported today, "Federal health officials," meaning "the Obama administration," began "urging" (i.e., "telling") counselors and navigators around the country to stop using paper applications for Obamacare coverage, "because of concerns those applications would not be processed in time." It seems that either Team Obama or AP (my money is on AP) doesn't mind risking criticism for waiting to let this news out until a weather- and sports-dominated Saturday. It's apparently okay to keep those who don't know any better, i.e., those who went to the trouble of printing...

Here's another name to add to the "name that party" file: Michael Thornsbury. The Mingo County, West Virginia circuit court judge was the subject of a federal indictment on Wednesday "after federal authorities allege he targeted his ex-lover's husband and used his position on the bench to manipulate criminal charges against the man," Kate White of the Charleston [W.V.] Gazette reported yesterday. The Mountain State has partisan judicial elections and Thornsbury is a Democrat. Both ABC's Good Morning America and NBC's Today covered the bizarre story on their August 16 programs, but both neglected to mention Thornsbury's party affiliation.For his...

German government document gives backing to EU efforts to put “Made in Israel” label only on products from within pre-1967 lines. … Foreign Ministry officials downplayed as “nothing new” an answer the German government gave to a parliamentary question last month supporting EU efforts to specially label goods originating in Israeli-controlled territory beyond the Green Line. Berlin, the officials said, was merely falling into line with other EU countries which were pushing this issue. …

MSNBC continues to disparage the scandals that have plagued the Obama administration the last few weeks. On Sunday’s Weekends with Alex Witt, the host brought on former Democratic staffer Jimmy Williams and former RNC chairman Michael Steele to reluctantly discuss the scandals once again. Of course, rather than focus on the substance of the controversies, Witt fell back on the concern that she and many others in the liberal media have often expressed: “[D]oes this have the potential to derail the president's second-term agenda?” The president’s agenda is always the victim of these scandal investigations in the minds of the...

Food companies big and small are struggling to replace genetically modified ingredients with conventional ones. Pressure is growing to label products made from genetically modified organisms, or “G.M.O.” In Connecticut, Vermont and Maine, at least one chamber of the state legislature has approved bills that would require the labeling of foods that contain genetically modified ingredients, and similar legislation is pending in more than two dozen other states. This weekend, rallies were held around the globe against producers of genetically altered ingredients, and consumers are threatening to boycott products that are not labeled. And so, for many businesses, the pressing...

The European Union on Monday denied a report in the Israeli media that it was delaying a decision to label products from Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, AFP reported. On Sunday, the Haaretz newspaper reported that the EU had delayed labelling the products to the end of June at the request of the United States. "Contrary to what was recently reported in the Israeli media, work on the effective enforcement of EU legislation with regard to the labelling of settlement products has not been delayed. Nor has the EU been asked to postpone such work," a statement...

In a disptach early this evening, the Associated Press's Pete Yost, perhaps signaling his employer's intent to remain the journalistic lapdog known as the Administration's Press, accepted at face value Attorney General Eric Holder's claim, while defending his department's actions, to have played no role in its wide-ranging subpoena of two months of AP phone records involving 20 cellular, personal and business lines used by over 100 wire service reporters and editors. Yost also did not address whether DOJ received judicial approval for its fishing expedition, a question the AP's Mark Sherman identified last night as unresolved. It apparently hasn't...

On Wednesday, NBC Nightly News covered the Dr. Kermit Gosnell case for the very first time, a whopping 44 days after the opening of the trial, and only after the jury had finished its first full day of deliberations. Stephanie Gosk wasted little time before emphasizing that Gosnell's clinic was "one of the only places in this low-income neighborhood in Philadelphia where pregnant woman could afford to go for abortions" [audio available here; video below the jump]. Gosk's report was also the first time that Big Three aired a report on the case on its evening newscasts, even as ABC...

WASHINGTON, DC - President Barack Obama signed a spending bill, HR 933, into law, the "Monsanto Protection Act," that strips federal courts of the authority to immediately halt the planting and sale of genetically modified (GMO) seed crop regardless of any consumer health concerns. "The provision would strip federal courts of the authority to halt the sale and planting of an illegal, potentially hazardous GE crop while the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) assesses those potential hazards," explains a letter to the House that has been signed by dozens of food businesses and retailers, as well as interest groups and...

Following the governmemt's Employment Situation Summary yesterday, two words were noticeably absent at the Associated Press (here, here, and here), Bloomberg, Reuters, CNBC, and the New York Times: "seasonally adjusted."

On Thursday's CBS This Morning, Charlie Rose and Norah O'Donnell granted staunch gun rights supporter Michael Bloomberg a platform to blast the NRA as "stupid", and brush aside gun-owning Americans as a radical minority. O'Donnell set up the New York City mayor to accuse the gun rights group of being under the thumb of gun manufacturers. The CBS anchors also took a more subdued approach to the Bloomberg segment, compared to their contentious interview of NRA President David Keene just minutes earlier. Co-anchor Charlie Rose led the segment with a softball question to the billionaire politician [audio clips from the...

Prop 30: Your Wallet or Your Kids. NO Either approve $36 billion in higher sales and income taxes or else Gov. Brown threatens to shoot the schools. Don't worry, the income taxes are only on the "very wealthy," but it turns out the "very wealthy" include many small businesses filing under sub-chapter S, meaning lower wages, higher prices and fewer jobs. California already has one of the highest overall tax burdens in the country and yet has just approved a budget to spend $8 billion dollars more than it's taking in. Moral of the story: it's the spending stupid. Prop...