Free Republic

A US court on Friday shot down orders to slap graphic anti-tobacco messages on cigarette packs, saying the government overstepped its authority by trying to "browbeat" smokers into quitting. In line with campaigns in several other nations, the United States planned from September 22 to require images on cigarette packs including a man smoking through a hole in his throat and a body with chest staples on an autopsy table. In a 2-1 decision, the US Court of Appeals in Washington said that the images planned on cigarette packs were not necessarily false but they went beyond "pure attempts to...

November 2012 Statewide Ballot Measures Proposition 30 Initiative Constitutional Amendment 1578. (12-0009) - Final Random Sample Update - 06/20/12 Temporary Taxes to Fund Education. Guaranteed Local Public Safety Funding. Initiative Constitutional Amendment. Qualified: 06/20/12 Proponent: Thomas A. Willis c/o Karen Getman (510) 346-6200 Increases personal income tax on annual earnings over $250,000 for seven years. Increases sales and use tax by ¼ cent for four years. Allocates temporary tax revenues 89 percent to K-12 schools and 11 percent to community colleges. Bars use of funds for administrative costs, but provides local school governing boards discretion to decide, in open meetings...

The case for mandatory GMO labeling - even if you believe in limited government and the free market (NaturalNews) Now that the GMO labeling ballot measure has been officially accepted onto the California ballot, Monsanto is gearing up its propaganda campaign that aims to convince people you don't need to know what you're eating! Trust us, we're the food companies! We never lie, do we? For the record, I'm an opponent of most government mandates against individuals. When the government says you have to give your children vaccine shots, that's a violation of your liberty. When Mayor Bloomberg says you...

Anyone my age or above will need no reminding of the late, great Michael Wharton, whose Peter Simple column on these pages introduced readers to, among other creations, Dr. Heinz Kiosk. Chief among Dr. Kiosk’s inventions was the “prejudometer”, an anti-racist measurement device. When used on suspected racists, it emitted a reading in “prejudons”, the “internationally-recognized scientific unit of racial prejudice”. When I was a teenager, the antics of Heinz Kiosk made me laugh. I wonder now, though, if those lost in the modern world of corporate correctness might find Wharton’s work eerily prescient. What he didn’t foresee was that...

GENEVA - The World Trade Organization has ruled against some U.S. labeling regulations for meat sold in supermarkets, saying they discriminate against foreign suppliers, people close to the case said on Thursday. The confidential interim ruling, if approved later this year, would deal a partial victory to Mexican and Canadian breeders frustrated in their attempts to export to the United States, and opens the way to scores of similar legal challenges, the sources said. A WTO spokesman said the interim report -- expected to be largely unchanged in its final version later this year -- was circulated to the United...

Since Friday, ABC has devoted 60 minutes and 23 seconds to interviews covering the most salacious details of John Edwards' sex scandal. Yet, the network's anchors have refrained from referring to him as a Democrat. 20/20 on Friday spent the entire hour talking to Andrew Young, a former top Edwards aide who allegedly holds a sex tape involving the politician. The D-word was never used by reporter Bob Woodruff.

Leaders of the House Energy and Commerce Committee proposed a new set of rules regarding the labels for food and drugs. According to the new principles, all labels for all food products and drugs should present the following information to the customer: country of origin, the source of a medicine’s active ingredient and its place of manufacture and also, the producer should identify on its web site the place where each ingredient in a particular food product originates. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., and chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said consumers must be protected from possibly harmful products and...

With the Olympics coming on, what's more poignant than the image of the sprinter hopefully awaiting the official time, only to learn he missed the record by 1/100th of a second? I'm in that same heartbroken mood for the Associated Press this morning. The wire service came so close to equalling the world record for revealing the Republican party affiliation of someone finding himself sideways of the law. Check out the first sentence from this AP story of April 17th: "A Republican congressional candidate was charged Thursday with felony burglary and criminal trespass stemming from an encounter last year with...

...at least not to the AP: Romney did better among more conservative voters, while McCain and Paul each got about one in five moderates, who made up about 20 percent of the electorate. OK, what kind of a "moderate" would vote for Ron Paul? I can't think of any position that he takes that could be considered "moderate." He's what most people would call an extremist*. If someone called themselves a "moderate," or someone whom the AP would call a "moderate" would vote for Ron Paul then the word has no meaning whatsoever. And frankly, I find people who call...

House Votes to Postpone Meat Labels in Grocery StoresBy Libby Quaid Associated Press Writer Published: Jun 8, 2005 WASHINGTON (AP) - The House voted Wednesday to block the government from requiring labels that would tell shoppers from what country their meat comes. Congress already had postponed the labeling from its original date of 2004 to September 2006. The House action would stop the Agriculture Department from spending money on the new requirement. The postponement was part of a $100 billion spending bill for food and farm programs in the budget year that begins Oct. 1. The House passed the bill...

John Bolton stands accused of nonsexual harassment (rudeness or crudeness, in plain English) by a woman named Melody Townsel. She says Bolton, President Bush's nominee for U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, chased her through the halls of a Moscow hotel a decade ago when she was working as a subcontractor for the U.S. government. Does it matter that Townsel is a liberal Democrat and founder of the Dallas chapter of Mothers Opposing Bush? Maybe not. Even anti-Bush liberals can find themselves pursued through Russian hotels by rapidly moving Republicans. But it matters a lot that most news outlets withheld...

WASHINGTON, Nov. 15 - The death of a California woman in January after she took an abortion pill prompted federal drug regulators on Monday to strengthen the warning label on the drug, RU-486, also known as mifepristone. The death was the third in the United States that the Food and Drug Administration has linked to the pill since its approval in 2000. The warnings, though largely present on the old labeling, will now be given added prominence, with physicians urged to redouble efforts at watching their patients carefully for signs of systemic bacterial infection, excessive vaginal bleeding and ectopic, or...

JACK SULLIVAN Associated Press WASHINGTON - Government cost estimates of a new program that will require meat packages to be labeled with their countries of origin are "questionable and not well supported," congressional auditors said in a report released Wednesday. The General Accounting Office report undermines an argument against the labeling requirements, which are set to take effect in September 2004. Sens. Tom Daschle and Tim Johnson, both D-S.D., and Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., said the GAO report is ammunition against House legislation that would cut off funds to the labeling program before it starts. The Department of Agriculture estimated the...

Country of Origin Labeling not dead yet Though COOL (Country of Origin Labeling) was cooled down in the U.S. House, it is not stone cold dead yet. Thanks to the efforts of farm organizations, individual farmers and consumers across the United States, COOL is maintaining a heartbeat in the U.S. Senate. It is apparent that USDA and the Bush Administration are not what one would call the biggest supporters of the legislation which was passed just last year. The recent efforts in the U.S. House in approving an amendment that would preclude USDA from spending any of next year's...

<p>The Food and Drug Administration (search) announced last week a new program allowing food manufacturers to make health claims on food labels. The FDA says it wants to encourage “science-based labeling” and “competition for healthier dietary choices.”</p> <p>Fittingly, nut sellers are the first to be allowed to make health claims under the FDA program.</p>

Election season is near, and as crisp autumn winds sweep across our blessed land, one thing is certain: the hot air on political talk shows will heat up even more. Even though aging 1960´s liberal brats and their successors control the major media — television remains the best forum for conservatives to present their case and win the hearts and minds of the American electorate. Sadly, it´s always an uphill battle when the other side controls the sources of propaganda. Americans who have watched talk shows the last few elections have probably come away with at least one observation: conservatives...