Free Republic

The European Union is to ban olive oil jugs and dipping bowls from restaurant tables in a move described by one of Britain’s top cooks as authoritarian and damaging to artisan food makers. The small glass jugs filled with green- or gold-colored extra virgin olive oil are familiar and traditional for restaurant goers across Europe, but they will be banned from 1 January 2014 after a decision taken in an obscure Brussels committee earlier this week. From next year, olive oil “presented at a restaurant table” must be in prepackaged factory bottles with a tamper-proof dispensing nozzle and labeling in...

[Video] BREAKING: NJ State Senators Caught on Open Mic Saying They Need a Bill to CONFISCATE Guns.. You will need to turn speakers way up around the 0:15 mark to hear as they aren’t speaking directly into the mic. In the above vido we hear remarks by several NJ State Senators talking about guns after a session had ended. We can assume they didn’t know the mic was still recording. The discussion is as follows: “We needed a bill that was going to confiscate, confiscate, confiscate.” “They [gun owners] want to keep the guns out of the hands of the...

Wrigley temporarily halted production of its new Alert Energy Caffeine Gum in response to concerns expressed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration over the impact of caffeine on children and adolescents. The company said it had paused the production, sale and marketing of Alert to give the FDA time to develop a new regulatory framework for the addition of caffeine to food and drinks. The recently launched gum has about 40 milligrams of caffeine, as much as a half a cup of coffee, in each piece. …

For a long time conservatives have warned that the heavy propaganda and regulatory hands of the Obama administration were not going to change the exercise or eating habits of 315 million Americans... Now comes early statistical proof that after reelecting Obama with fewer votes the second time and 1,567 days of his reign of government intervention and stimulation, many Americans are deciding that maybe the Obamas' plans for their lives do not fit their plans for their own lives.

Where are today’s rebels?  Where is the counterculture? Ear-budded hipsters, with their sheep-like devotion to Apple products and the Obama administration, sit in on the April 20 “Day of Pot” in Denver, content and satisfied with their free birth control and legalized maryjane.  Meanwhile SWAT teams descend on Watertown, Massachusetts, trampling Fourth Amendment rights in search of a “person of interest”– while a Saudi National is quietly sent back to his homeland.These hipsters champion the legalization of recreational marijuana in Colorado while the war on Big Tobacco rages on.  Since 1997 the FDA inherited control over the $365.5 billion global...

The owner of a small business in New York City is facing a $60,000 fine, thousands in legal fees, and the potential loss of his business — all because he carried a dozen three-inch, gun-shaped lighters which caught the eye of a city inspector. “When you hear something like this, you’re going to have a couple of nightmares,” Fred Shayes tells me, leaning across the counter of his midtown Manhattan shop, US Camera & Computer Inc. Nervous, he won’t let me photograph him or tape-record the interview. Shayes, who immigrated to the U.S. from Iran, founded the business in 2006,...

Trail mix. Potato chips. And now gum. With a growing number of foods boasting added caffeine for an energy boost, the Food and Drug Administration says it's time to investigate their safety. The FDA's new look at added caffeine and its effects on children and adolescents is in response to a caffeinated gum introduced this week by Wrigley.

New York City police officials intend to expand the already extensive use of surveillance cameras throughout town. The plan, unveiled Thursday, comes as part of a drive for increased security around the US following the Boston Marathon attack. New York City Police Department Commissioner Ray Kelly announced the plan during a press conference with Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in which the two announced that the suspected Boston Marathon bombers were planning to attack New York next. The pair said they hope to discourage criminals by using so-called “smart cameras” that will aggregate data from 911 alerts, arrest records, mapped crime patterns,...

Speaking on April 22, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the Boston Marathon bombing forces us to change our interpretation of the constitution. He cited the left's success to date in eroding the 2nd Amendment as giving him confidence such re-interpretation is possible.Bloomberg focused on how reinterpretation will allow us to trade more of our privacy for "a level of security greater than [we] did back in the olden days." This means more surveillance measures on buildings and cross streets, or, as Bloomberg put it, "more cameras and that kind of stuff."...

California Sen. Bill Monning, D-Carmel, proposes a penny-per-ounce tax on sugary drinks. KGO-TVreports that his controversial bill is currently on its way to the senate's Health Committee for discussion. How much more expensive would a can of soda be if the tax goes into effect? The price of each can of sweetened soda would increase by 12 cents. Which types of beverages will this law affect? As noted in SB-622, this tax affects all "bottled sweetened beverages" as well as concentrates if they contain more than 25 calories for every 12 ounces of content. Fruit and vegetable juices may also...

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday the country’s interpretation of the Constitution will “have to change” to allow for greater security to stave off future attacks. “The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry,” Mr. Bloomberg said during a press conference in Midtown. “But we live in a complex world where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.”

For the record, I tend to think that a cigarette ban for minors may be appropriate. While I oppose prohibition for adults, I think it makes sense to say that adults shouldn’t be permitted to entice children into certain unhealthy choices. Of course, if such a prohibition is put in place, it needs to be justified by banning a substance that is clearly dangerous, not just “unhealthy” by some statistic that we know doesn’t apply to all people. If the evidence qualifies tobacco as such a substance, then I can see restricting it from children.But recent news about a new...

In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday the country’s interpretation of the Constitution will “have to change” to allow for greater security to stave off future attacks. “The people who are worried about privacy have a legitimate worry,” Mr. Bloomberg said during a press conference in Midtown. “But we live in a complex word where you’re going to have to have a level of security greater than you did back in the olden days, if you will. And our laws and our interpretation of the Constitution, I think, have to change.” Mr. Bloomberg, who...

Republican Reps. Steve King of Iowa and Tim Huelskamp of Kansas continued their fight against the Agriculture Department’s recent public school meal regulation overhaul on Friday. The congressmen have argued that the new regulations imposed by the USDA, as required by the Michelle Obama-backed Healthy and Hunger Free Kids Act, are overly restrictive for growing and active children, largely due to calorie caps on meals. “The voluminous menu that’s good enough for the federal bureaucrats’ cafeteria should be good enough for our children’s school lunchroom,” Huelskamp said in a statement Friday. “If USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack thinks the federal government...

President's Obama's call for a 94-cent-a-pack hike on federal cigarette taxes to fund early childhood education programs is controversial. Anti-smoking groups applaud the proposal, but some tax experts and tobacco companies are against it. The case for the tax. The tax is being presented as way to fund education and reduce smoking rates. It would raise roughly $78 billion over 10 years. "The proposed tobacco tax increase would have substantial public health benefits, particularly for young Americans," the president's budget read. "Researchers have found that raising taxes on cigarettes significantly reduces consumption, with especially large effects on youth smoking." After...

So, all of a sudden the left in America is concerned with anti-Semitism. That’s a riot. Is this the same left that constantly sides with the Muslim Brotherhood and goes out of their way to support Islam? That left? It just goes to show, when pundits on the left want to accomplish something — there is no end to the lengths they will go. I’m speaking, in this case, of gun control and the fascist mayor Michael Bloomberg’s one-man crusade for their confiscation. And don’t think for a moment that it’s not his endgame. As with everything Bloomberg involves himself...

A state bill proposes a ban on smoking tobacco inside condos, duplexes and apartment units occupied by either renters or owners. If passed, California would be the first state that would regulate smoking inside people’s homes. Poll here

New York City is asking appeals judges to reinstate a ban on supersized sodas and other sugary drinks, which was struck down by a Manhattan judge the day before it was to go into effect. The city had vowed an appeal and said Thursday that lawyers had filed it late Monday. In his decision on March 11, State Supreme Court Justice Milton Tingling said the 16-ounce limit on sodas and other sweet drinks arbitrarily applies to only some sugary beverages and some places that sell them.

Gaines Charter Township is located in Kent County, Michigan, about 13 miles due south Grand Rapids. Covering 36 square miles, the township has 3 unincorporated communities and around 25,000 people. A considerable portion of the township is composed of farms and small cattle ranches.Vern Verduin has a 40 acre cattle ranch in Gaines Township and he’s never been any trouble to anyone until recently. Vern doesn’t like the way the country is being run. He sees the Obama administration as being what it is, a socialist government. So he decided to exercise his First Amendment rights of free speech when...

(CNSNews.com) – In a bipartisan bill opposing an expansion of food labeling requirements in the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, 10 Republicans and four Democrats have signed onto legislation to restrict the Food and Drug Administration’s efforts to include regulation of convenient stores and take-out food outlets.The bill’s sponsors cited Section 4205 of the healthcare law, or Obamacare, that is entitled “Nutritional Labeling of Standard Menu Items at Chain Restaurants.” The regulation requires restaurants with more than 20 establishments to provide nutritional information about its offerings.The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), called the requirements “unworkable” for places...

Nearly four years after it began regulating cigarettes, the Food and Drug Administration is poised to extend its reach to a broader range of tobacco products. At the top of that list: cigars, which have experienced a boom in recent years even as cigarette sales have declined, in part because of growing popularity among young people. Anti-tobacco advocates and industry representatives widely expect the agency to require changes in the marketing and manufacturing of cigars. But the central question remains: What kind of cigars will the FDA target, and how? On one end of the spectrum are the hand-rolled Cohibas...

Mayor Bloomberg admits soon NYPD surveillance cameras will be on nearly every corner and in the air. 'You wait, in five years, the technology is getting better, they'll be cameras everyplace . . . whether you like it or not,' Bloomberg said Friday. 'The argument against using automation is just this craziness that 'Oh, it's Big Brother.' Get used to it!' Big Brother is watching. Now get used to it! Envisioning a future where privacy is a thing of the past, Mayor Bloomberg said Friday it will soon be impossible to escape the watchful eyes of surveillance cameras and even...

--IMAGE HERE-- “There are certain times we should infringe on your freedom.” These words, or ones very much like them, are powerful words indeed. They have been spoken countless times throughout history by pharaohs, and kings, and emperors, and men with far too much power over the weak and defenseless. And once spoken, they have shaped the blood-spattered history of mankind. They are the words of tyrants … of dictators … of slaveowners. And always … what followed was misery, and suffering, and then ultimately … horror and death. Most recently, these words came from the mouth of New York...

On the heels of a study linking sugary drinks to 25,000 U.S. deaths a year, new research suggests salty food is even more dangerous.The new study, by the same Harvard research team, linked excessive salt consumption to nearly 2.3 million cardiovascular deaths worldwide in 2010. One in 10 Americans dies from eating too much salt, the researchers found.“The burden of sodium is much higher than the burden of sugar-sweetened beverages,� said Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health and author of both the salt and sugary drink studies. “That’s because sugar-sweetened beverages are just one...

25,000 U.S. Deaths Linked to Sugary Drinks ABC NewsBy Katie Moisse | ABC News – 8 hours ago In a study that's sure to shake up the soda ban debate, Harvard researchers have linked the sugary drinks to 180,000 deaths a year worldwide, 25,000 in the United States alone. "We know that sugar-sweetened beverages are linked to obesity, and that a large number of deaths are caused by obesity-related diseases. But until now, nobody had really put these pieces together," said Gitanjali Singh, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston and lead author of...

The public education system in Maryland has officially gone off the deep end.The Old Line State — where kids have been suspended for making guns with their fingers and with toaster pastries — now boasts a school district that prohibits hugging and homemade food in public elementary schools for anyone except a parent’s own children.Parents must also register to enter the playground and they can’t push anyone except their own kids on the swings. The Enterprise, a member of Southern Maryland Newspapers, has the story.Officials with St. Mary’s County Public Schools say the new rules are necessary to provide a...

A new proposal would require New York City retailers to keep tobacco products out of sight under a first-in-the-nation proposal aimed at reducing the youth smoking rate, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Monday. The legislation would require stores to keep tobacco products in cabinets, drawers, under the counter, behind a curtain or in other concealed spots. They could only be visible when an adult is making a purchase or during restocking. "Such displays suggest that smoking is a normal activity," Bloomberg said. "And they invite young people to experiment with tobacco."

(CNSNews.com) – The municipal government of Washington, D.C. received a $1.8 million federal Community Transformation Grant in 2012 to promote healthy lifestyles in the city.Among the things the city would do with the money, as listed on its application, was increasing the "availability of fruit and vegetables to employees in their workplaces."Administered through the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the grant was awarded in September 2011, which is the beginning of fiscal year 2012.According to the CDC, the grant is intended to target “approximately 445,000 residents living in the District of Columbia, focusing on racial/ethnic minority, low-income, medically underserved, and...

Piers Morgan and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s want to be dictators and slave masters. Regulating a person’s diet is the regulation of a person’s life. Here was Morgan’s response to a guest who disagreed with him on sugary drink control:“I think people need [these types of laws] occasionally, particularly on issues like smoking, drinking, guzzling sodas too big for them, you know, eating 16 Big Macs a day, whatever it may be, the reality is we all need a bit of nannying about that. That’s why so many people are on diets. That’s a form of nanny state.”When governments...

Diners will have to wait a little longer to find calorie counts on most restaurant chain menus, in supermarkets and on vending machines. Writing a new menu labeling law "has gotten extremely thorny," says the head of the Food and Drug Administration, as the agency tries to figure out who should be covered by it. The 2010 health care law charged the FDA with requiring restaurants and other establishments that serve food to put calorie counts on menus and in vending machines.

<p>A state judge on Monday stopped Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration from banning the sale of large sugary drinks at New York City restaurants and other venues, a major defeat for a mayor who has made public-health initiatives a cornerstone of his tenure.</p>

New procedures give restaurant inspectors cups that can hold 17 fluid ounces and they'll be instructed to issue a violation only when a cup is found to 'clearly exceed' 16 ounces. There will be no SWAT teams policing Mayor Bloomberg’s controversial new ban on large sodas and other sugary drinks starting Tuesday, but city inspectors will be armed — with 17-ounce cups. The Health Department plans to use regular restaurant inspections to make sure eateries are not selling sugary beverages in servings larger than 16 ounces. But the inspectors will have specially ordered cups to help them enforce the new...

The federal government is tapping experts for its “B-24 Project.” It may sound like a new jet fighter, but in this case, “B-24” pertains to nutrition advice for infants and toddlers up to 24 months old. The project will produce “unified federal dietary guidance for children from birth to 24 months based on the best available science,” said Kevin Concannon, the Agriculture Department’s Under Secretary for Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services. Concannon noted that current federal dietary recommendations are designed for people two years and older, and therefore the B-24 project “will fill an important gap.” …

First Lady Michelle Obama "But in the end, we also know that it's not enough to simply change the way our children eat — we have to change our own habits and behaviors as well. And this is final point I want to make today. We as parents are our children's first and best role models and this is particularly true when it comes to their health. . .

If students want to pass John Banzhaf’s law class, they’ll have to fight for increased government regulation in the food and beverages industry.Banzhaf, a law professor at George Washington University, will require his students to lobby state and local governments to ban sugary beverages, according to a press release. The release was put out by Banzhaf himself, who summarized the objective as “Undergrads Required to Lobby for Obama Policy.”“Some 200 undergrads will be asked to contact legislators in their home cities, counties, or states asking them to adopt legislation similar to that already adopted in New York City … banning...

<p>Mayor Bloomberg - who has already cracked down on smoking, trans fats, salt and super-sized drinks - is embarking on a new crusade: preventing New Yorkers from going deaf.</p> <p>Hizzoner's health officials are planning a social-media campaign to warn young people about the risk of losing their hearing from listening to music at high volume on personal MP3 players, The Post has learned.</p>

Millions of Californians would not be able to smoke tobacco inside their own homes under new legislation that would raise the bar nationwide for fighting secondhand smoke. No state ever has ventured into personal bedrooms and living rooms with its smoking restrictions, but California is going even further than that by targeting owner-occupied residences as well as rental units. Specifically, the measure would prohibit lighting up a cigarette, cigar or pipe in condominiums, duplexes and apartment units. The push would extend a lengthy list of places where smoking already is barred, including restaurants, workplaces, playgrounds, public buildings and cars containing...

Newly proposed federal regulations aimed at the snack foods and drinks served in the nation's schools could come with a hefty price tag. The American Action Forum estimates the regulations, which include caps on serving sizes and calorie counts, will cost schools $127 million and require more than 926,000 hours of paperwork. Sam Batkins, director of regulatory policy at the institute, says the proposals amount to yet another unfunded federal mandate for state and local governments, "at a time when many of their budgets are still struggling." The Food and Nutrition Service regulations would be administered by the U.S. Department...

<p>Only you're probably not going to like his advice for losing weight -- just eat less.</p> <p>"If you eat less than 2,000 calories you'll lose weight," the mayor said on his weekly WOR radio show today. "If you eat more than 2,000 calories, you'll gain weight. Now some things metabolize more quickly than others. And everyone says I should go on this kind of diet or that kind of diet. Don't eat and you'll lose weight."</p>

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Wednesday that the United States’ coal industry’s days are numbered. “Even though the coal industry doesn’t totally know it yet or is ready to admit it, its day is done. … Here in the U.S., I’m happy to say, the king is dead. Coal is a dead man walking,” Bloomberg said at the Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy (ARPA-E) Energy Innovation Summit near Washington, D.C. Bloomberg has been a vocal advocate for killing coal-fired power. He said health problems from pollution and climate change-exacerbated events like Hurricane Sandy have fomented growing recognition...

SHREVEPORT, La. (CBS Houston) — Louisiana’s State Health Department forced a homeless shelter to destroy $8,000 worth of deer meat because it was donated from a hunter organization. KTBS-TV reports that the Shreveport-Bossier Rescue Mission lost 1,600 pounds of venison because the state’s Health Department doesn’t recognize Hunters for the Hungry, an organization that allows hunters to donate any extra game to charity. “We didn’t find anything wrong with it,” Rev. Henry Martin told KTBS. “It was processed correctly, it was packaged correctly.” The trouble began last month after the Department of Health and Hospitals received a complaint that deer...

Hunger is a force to be reckoned with; it is a motion that cannot be stopped unless it is quenched. But once hunger is sated, it comes again, often more urgently than before. This applies to hunger, in the typical sense, but also the hunger for life, money, faith and power. Once a taste is in your mouth, more is needed to fulfill you the following round. Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, has such a hunger. He has a complex need for power that doesn’t ever seem to be sated. This power hunger has reared it’s ugly head...

Take a big gulp, New York: Hizzoner is about to give you a pop. Nanny Bloomberg unleashes his ban on large sodas on March 12 — and there are some nasty surprises lurking for hardworking families. Say goodbye to that 2-liter bottle of Coke with your pizza delivery, pitchers of soft drinks at your kid’s birthday party and some bottle-service mixers at your favorite nightclub. They’d violate Mayor Bloomberg’s new rules, which prohibit eateries from serving or selling sugary drinks in containers larger than 16 ounces. Bloomberg’s soda smackdown follows his attacks on salt, sugar, trans fat, smoking and even...

Oregon gun owners cheered by the demise of Sen. Ginny Burdick's proposals to ban large magazines and scary-looking semiautomatic weapons should leave the Champagne in the fridge for the time being. The Legislature's gun-control advocates are still hard at work, and the direction in which they're heading would create problems for law-abiding citizens over the long term and, perhaps, do nothing to enhance public safety. We're leery of slippery-slope arguments, but two concepts supported by Burdick and Sen. Floyd Prozanski, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, could grease the transformation of concealed-handgun policy into something resembling smoking policies around the...

It becomes a difficult task for those in power to resist the lure of acquiring even more power. The more they have, the more they want. No such example exists greater than that of New York City mayor-king Michael Bloomberg. This is the man who brought into existence the absurd and absurdly named National Salt Reduction Initiative, an incentive-based program designed to reduce the amount of salt in restaurant and prepackaged food. This is the man who, last year, banned the sale of sugary drinks, like sodas, in more than 16-oz containers. Why? Because what’s good for Bloomberg is what’s...

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has fought against smoking, big sugary drinks and salty food during his tenure, is setting his sights on a new foe: Styrofoam. Bloomberg plans to use part of his Thursday State of the City address to push for a ban on Styrofoam food packaging. He also will call for initiatives that would increase the number of parking spaces for electric cars and begin recycling more plastics and food waste "One product that is virtually impossible to recycle and never bio-degrades is Styrofoam ... something that we know is environmentally destructive and that may...

(CNSNews.com) - Under the broad banner of "health," the federal government not only is telling Americans what to eat, it's also telling us to make our homes safer.This week, the Obama administration released a "bold new vision for addressing the nation's health and economic burdens caused by preventable hazards associated with the home."The project has a name: "Advancing Healthy Housing: A Strategy for Action.""People in the United States spend about 70% of their time in a home," the announcement said. "Currently, millions of U.S. homes have moderate to severe physical housing problems, including dilapidated structure; roofing problems; heating, plumbing, and...

If the Food and Drug Administration gets its way, your trip to the grocery store could get a tad pricier. Supermarket owners argue a pending federal food-labeling rule that stems from the new health care law would overburden thousands of grocers and convenience store owners -- to the tune of $1 billion in the first year alone. (Snip) The rule stems from an ObamaCare mandate that restaurants provide nutrition information on menus. Most in the restaurant industry were supportive of the idea, but when the FDA decided to extend the provision to also affect thousands of supermarkets

The Obama administration proposed regulations Friday that would prohibit U.S. schools from selling unhealthy snacks. The 160-page regulation from the Department of Agriculture (USDA) would enact nutrition standards for "competitive" foods not included in the official school meal. In effect, the proposed rules would replace traditional potato chips with baked versions, candy with granola, and regular soda with diet — but only for high schoolers.

For Lafayette stockbroker Kenneth Daigle, buying a gallon of milk is no longer the bargain it used to be on Tuesdays at Fresh Market. The upscale supermarket chain yanked milk from its $2.99 once-a-week promotion after a state auditor objected to the low price. A gallon of whole milk was priced at $5.69 Thursday at the Fresh Market in Perkins Rowe. State Agriculture and Forestry Commissioner Mike Strain said Fresh Market violated state regulations by selling milk below cost as part of a promotion. The supermarket routinely sells a gallon of skim, 1 percent, 2 percent or whole milk for...