Free Republic

Citing a radical United Nations treaty known as the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), lawmakers in Scotland approved a deeply controversial new law assigning an individual government overseer to each and every child in the country charged with monitoring their development. However, the draconian measure, which has sparked criticism and outrage around the world as a brazen assault on parental rights and privacy, is already in the process of being challenged in court. Outside of Scotland, concerns have been especially widespread in the United States, where parental-rights advocates are warning about an accelerating worldwide attack on...

New limits on free gifts to doctors have hit the ubiquitous free lattes and coffee seen at major medical meetings like the one here of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. The conference exhibit floor still features massive information booths from cancer drugmakers like Roche Holding AG, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co and Amgen Inc -- though the days of shopping bags laden with pricey goodies are long gone. Many drugmakers still offer coffee or candy with no strings attached, but Pfizer Inc requires doctors to swipe their registration cards and warns that physicians from Minnesota and Vermont are prohibited from imbibing....

WASHINGTON – Former Sen. John Sununu, a member of the government watchdog panel that oversees the financial sector rescue fund, is joining the board of managers of a firm affiliated with a bank that has received $3 billion from the fund. Sununu last week was named to the board of ConvergEx Holdings LLC, the holding company for BNY ConvergEx Group. The Bank of New York Mellon Corp. holds a 33.8 percent stake in BNY Convergex, but it has no control over the company or its board. The bank was one of nine institutions selected by the Treasury Department last fall...