Free Republic

A Texas judge has ordered a school district to restore a decoration that included a biblical verse recited by Linus in the 1960s TV special “A Charlie Brown Christmas.” Officials in the Killeen school district north of Austin ordered a nurse’s aide, Dedra Shannon, to remove a handmade decoration featuring a Bible verse from the special, fearing it violated prohibitions on religion in classrooms. …

New research shows children, some as young as nine-months-old, with peanut allergies can successfully become desensitized to nuts by eating small doses of peanut protein. To reduce the risk of life-threatening allergic reactions, researchers at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine have been studying the use of oral immunotherapy to reduce sensitivity to peanut proteins. The published a new report that found the therapy to be 81 percent effective in preschool-aged children. Only a handful of oral immunotherapy programs exist in Texas. Medical City Dallas has been running its current program for eight years with high success, according...

Myriam Ducre-Lemay, 20, died in 2012 after kissing her boyfriend — he'd eaten a peanut butter sandwich and wasn't aware of her peanut allergy (or the severity of it) and she was not carrying her EpiPen with her at the time, CTV News reports. Her mother is just now publicizing the story to help others avoid the same situation. According to CJAD, Ducre-Lemay and her boyfriend had been out at a party earlier that night, which is why she didn't have her medication or her Medic Alert bracelet on her. After the kiss, she had trouble breathing, tried using her...

A fresh food lawsuit has emerged in Massachusetts following an incident at Panera. Boston Magazine reports that back in January, a New England family placed an online order for a meal from the chain's location in Natick. They ordered a grilled cheese sandwich for their six-year-old daughter, noting that it was for a child with a peanut allergy. The parents claim that after taking a bite, the young girl suffered a reaction that sent her to the hospital, and they discovered a dollop of peanut butter inside the sandwich. Luckily an epi pen saved the girl's life, but the family...

The owner of an Indian restaurant was found guilty Monday of killing one of his customers — after he cut corners whipping up an order of chicken tikka masala. A jury in Teesside Crown Court in North Yorkshire, England, found 52-year-old Mohammed Zaman guilty of manslaughter and gross negligence because he switched out almond powder for a cheaper ground nut mix containing peanuts, according to the BBC.

Stung by Donald Trump’s assertion that as president he would get Pakistan to release “in two minutes” the doctor who the U.S. says helped to track down Osama bin Laden, a Pakistani minister said Monday his country was not a U.S. colony and dismissed U.S. aid as “peanuts.” “Contrary to Mr. Trump’s misconception, Pakistan is not a colony of the United States of America,” Interior Minister Chaudry Nisar Khan said in a statement. “Shakil Afridi is a Pakistani citizen, and nobody else has the right to dictate to us about his future,” Khan said. “He should learn to treat sovereign...

A Charlie Brown Christmas first aired in 1965. I loved it back then and I love it today. It spoke from the heart of Charles Schultz, innocent and genuine. It offered a lesson in simplicity, in purity- a lesson of the heart. It was one of the early broadcast tales to nudge us into focusing what was important about the holidays in general and Christmas in particular. After all the presents are opened and everything settles down, it still is what Christmas is all about. The NY Post notes that dedicated Christmas specials are dwindling in number: The potential trend...

A Kentucky school district is being urged to reconsider after censoring "A Charlie Brown Christmas" and other programs by removing all references to religion. The Alliance Defending Freedom weighed in Tuesday after Johnson County Schools officials agreed to modify its holiday programming in order to avoid a potential lawsuit, a move prompted by a complaint from a parent about the classic Peanuts play.

With Thanksgiving having come and gone, we are now solidly into the Christmas season. Two stories that reveal Hollywood's attitude about Christmas in painful detail recently caught my attention. The first was an article in the L.A. Times about the 50th anniversary of "A Charlie Brown Christmas." It is now a classic; one of the most beloved of all broadcast television Christmas specials. Yet those in charge of its production at the time thought it was going to be a dismal failure. Why? Because cartoonist and author Charles M. Schulz refused to include a laugh track, and -- most significantly...

Suzanne and I went to see The Peanuts Movie. (Yes, we like kids’ movies. They often contain metaphysics. I have long said that one of my very favorite metaphysical movies is the 1971 Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.) I love Peanuts, so this movie appealed to me. The Peanuts Movie centers around Charlie Brown’s pursuit of The Little Red-Haired Girl, with a delightful subplot regarding Snoopy’s latest novel, in which he, as The World War One Flying Ace, is chasing a female canine flying ace named Fifi. Fifi gets shot down by the Red Baron and Snoopy, of course,...

It’s okay to feel a little trepidation before going to see The Peanuts Movie. After all, it was only a couple of months ago that the powers that be decided what the world really needed was a Muppets television show full of penis jokes and pessimistic cruelty. If the folks entrusted with Jim Henson’s creations were willing to submit Kermit and Fozzy to that kind of butchery, why should Charlie Brown and Snoopy be any safer? Well, let those trepidations slide away, because, to paraphrase Charles M. Schulz, happiness is a film about a warm puppy. The best way...

But for many fans, it wasn't merely Snoopy's brothers and sisters dragging him down. There was something fundamentally rotten about the new Snoopy, whose charm was based on his total lack of concern about what others thought of him. His confidence, his breezy sense that the world may be falling apart but one can still dance on, was worse than irritating. It was morally bankrupt.  As the writer Daniel Mendelsohn put it in a piece in The New York Times Book Review, Snoopy "represents the part of ourselves-the smugness, the avidity, the pomposity, the rank egotism-most of us know we...

Oh boy. Thanks to those among us that have a peanut allergy, everyone else has to have a crappy Halloween. That’s what it means to be a sensitive, “responsible” American these days. Here’s the sign asking parents to only hand out carrot sticks, raisins and other boring treats:

Eating half a handful of nuts every day could substantially lower the risk of early death, a Dutch study suggests. Previous studies had already indicated a link with cardiovascular health, but this is the first to look at specific nuts and diseases. Maastricht University researchers found a 23% lower chance of death during the 10-year study in people eating at least 10g (0.3oz) of nuts or peanuts a day. More than 120,000 Dutch 55-to-69-year-old men and women provided dietary and lifestyle information in 1986, and then their mortality rate was looked at 10 years later. The researchers had taken into...

A judge Friday ordered a mental examination for a former child actor who unleashed a verbal tirade during a sentencing hearing. Peter Robbins, 58, who provided the voice of Charlie Brown in several "Peanuts" animated television specials from 1965 to 1969, was set to be sentenced to jail for probation violations from his guilty plea to threatening an ex-girlfriend and her plastic surgeon. But Robbins began yelling and cursing at Judge Robert O'Neil. He said he wanted to withdraw his guilty plea, using foul language to describe the judge. O'Neil delayed sentencing and, at the request of Robbins' attorney, ordered a...

To understand what feeds former president Jimmy Carter's anti-Israeli frenzy, look at his early links to Arab business. Between 1976-1977, the Carter family peanut business received a bailout in the form of a $4.6 million, "poorly managed" and highly irregular loan from the National Bank of Georgia (NBG). According to a July 29, 1980 Jack Anderson expose in The Washington Post, the bank's biggest borrower was Mr. Carter, and its chairman at that time was Mr. Carter's confidant, and later his director of the Office of Management and Budget, Bert Lance.

LONDON - In research that contradicts years of health advice, scientists said on Monday that babies at risk of developing a childhood peanut allergy can avoid it if they are given peanuts regularly during their first 11 months.

I live out in the sticks and can't find the major ingredient of hummus (i.e. tahini). Found several recipes for hummus using natural peanut butter. Made some and it is wonderful.Here's a link to the source for the recipe I used...recipe for peanut butter hummus.Ate it for dinner tonight with raw broccoli.Wow!

The parent of a child with a life-threatening peanut allergy is fighting for new rules to protect airline passengers who have severe food allergies.Lianne Mandelbaum, who says she was practically kicked off a United Airlines flight last year because of her son’s condition, has been lobbying for new protections for allergy sufferers.Now, more than 14,000 people are coming to her aid, petitioning lawmakers and federal regulators to establish a "buffer zone" around passengers who are allergic to certain foods.“I am not after a nut ban,” Mandelbaum said. “Just the ability to preboard, wipe down the seat area and make an...

Little Joe Cook, whose one big hit, "Peanuts," helped make him a local music legend, has died.