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The state attorney general wants the country singer who made the song "Redneck Woman" a hit to stop "glamorizing" the use of chewing tobacco at her concerts. State officials said Gretchen Wilson can be seen on concert jumbo screens pulling a can of Skoal from her pocket while performing her new song, "Skoal Ring." That may violate the 1998 settlement between states and tobacco companies forbidding tobacco ads targeting young people, Attorney General Paul Summers said. "Many young people attend your concerts and purchase your music and T- shirts," Summers wrote in a letter he sent to Wilson Thursday. "Because...

If knowledge is power, then gossip is powerful currency, traded daily on high school phone lines and at the supermarket check-out lines. "The best piece of gossip always has a little hint of scandal involved," says Paula Froelich, a columnist for the New York Post's "Page Six." "And it's also pretty salacious. And at some point your mouth drops and you go, 'oh no she didn't!'" While Mom always said "No one loves a busybody," some scholars believe gossip is a healthy, essential tool in helping people work together and defining the rules of the tribe. ....

WASHINGTON Using sex to sell liquor—and incorporating images where liquor is being used excessively or in an irresponsible manner—are among the chief complaints in the latest advertising code report issued today by the Distilled Spirits Council of the U.S., the industry's trade group. The semi-annual report, which covers January through June 2005, is part of the industry's voluntary efforts to regulate itself. One SKYY Vodka print ad, for example, featured a female model wearing see-through clothing. The advertiser, SKYY Spirits, agreed to revise the ad after receiving a complaint. While the council said it achieves a "100 percent" compliance rate...

APPLETON (AP) - At Jokers Bar, the staff of eight has been laid off. Owner Tony Schaefer said he's now working the bar with his brother. Schaefer is among many business owners still fuming a month after a ban on smoking at all indoor workplaces was enacted in this city. The ban was approved by 56 percent of voters in an April 5 referendum and went into effect on July 1. Madison's similar smoking ban went into effect on the same day, although there was no referendum preceding it. "We'll be closing up" if business doesn't improve, Schaefer said. "The...

http://www.greenbaypressgazette.com/news/archive/opinion_21956841.shtml

WHEN it comes to food fights, John Belushi's character in "Animal House" has nothing on Rick Berman. A prominent Washington lobbyist, Mr. Berman runs the Center for Consumer Freedom, a nonprofit advocacy group that is financed by the food and restaurant industries. Two months ago, after a report in a leading medical journal cast doubt on several assumptions about obesity, he pounced. His group ran $600,000 worth of full-page ads in a half-dozen newspapers, gloating that the study showed that obesity was not an "epidemic" but rather a lot of hype. "Americans have been force-fed a steady diet of obesity...

At a press conference and Congressional briefing on Wednesday, May 25th, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) will introduce federal legislation that could cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in federal law enforcement grants to local anti-drug task forces. The legislation, which is being co-sponsored by Representatives John Conyers (D-MI), Charles Rangel (D-NY), Donald Payne (D-NJ), and Ed Towns (D-NY), would prohibit states from spending federal Byrne grants on regional narcotics task forces unless they adopt laws preventing people from being convicted of drug offenses when the only evidence against them is the uncorroborated testimony of a law enforcement officer...

Oops, make that 25,814 -- not 400,000. In March 2004, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said 400,000 Americans die each year due to obesity-related problems. But wait. Citing flawed data, four months ago the CDC revised the number down to 365,000. But now, another branch of the CDC says the first branch -- the CDC's Division of Adult and Community Health -- got it wrong. The CDC's National Center for Health Statistics says, no, the real figure is 111,909. And after you deduct the beneficial effects of being moderately overweight, the figure declines to 25,814! So is the CDC...

Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation Urges Wife of Disabled Jacksonville Man to Err on the Side of LifeTo: National DeskContact: Pamela F. Hennessy for the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation, 727-445-1766, phenn@zimp.orgCLEARWATER, Fl., May 14 /Christian Wire Service/ –- The volunteers with the Terri Schindler-Schiavo Foundation, along with the family of Terri Schiavo, are urging Jacksonville, Florida resident, Eliza Thomas, to allow her 34 year old husband to live.The Foundation has learned that Scott Thomas suffered brain injury in September of 2004 and has since been incapacitated and dependent on others. His mother, Pamela Patton, has petitioned the courts for guardianship of the...

My position on the Schiavo matter has vascilated back and forth over the past few days as I've agonized over the matter.Should she be given a chance at life? If so, what kind of life are we talking about? Is there a chance at rehabilitation? Is Michael Schiavo an evil S.O.B., or is he simply a heart-broken man?Conversely, is she truly in a vegetative state? A virtual zombie with eyes open, and nothing inside? Are her parents and family in denial about her pain and suffering? Are the evangelicals coming to her aid getting so worked up that they are...

HOW DO WE ELECT DANGEROUS IDIOTS LIKE THIS? The brain-dead, idiotic, disgusting, anti-American, childish, can't-get-over-it politician of the day is one Nelson Polite, a member of the Lancaster, Pennsylvania city council. Thankfully this jerk will rise no further up the political ladder. Even Democrats think he's a fool. Polite is upset because of David Stoltzfus who runs a baked goods stand at the local city market. Stoltzfus has a picture of President Bush hanging in the stand. Polite is a Democrat. Polite made a trip to visit Stoltzfus to tell him that he and other Lancaster Democrats are "offended" by...

Note: The following commentary includes graphic descriptions. This is not suitable for children. “I’m at my wits’ end,” the young woman wrote. “I’ve asked pastors, friends, parents, God, and message boards this question and still haven’t received an intelligent answer that I can live with. Why are homosexual acts wrong? I’m a Christian and believe in the Bible, but this part always stumps me.” According to my friend, Dr. J. Budziszewski, author of the excellent new book, Ask Me Anything: Provocative Answers for College Students, disturbing questions like this show that church leaders aren’t providing young people with the whole...

Governor Wants to Smoke Sat Feb 14, 5:28 PM ET Associated Press (AP) -- Anti-tobacco groups are protesting Governor Schwarzenegger's efforts to return the smoke-filled room to California politics. Schwarzenegger is converting the Capitol's interior courtyard into an all-weather ``smoking plaza'' where he can smoke cigars with lawmakers and other power brokers. Anti-smoking groups say that sends the wrong signal particularly to young fans of the screen star-turned-politician. They're sending him hundreds of Valentine's Day (news - web sites) cards asking him to stop. A Schwarzenegger spokeswoman says the governor discourages children from smoking -- but notes Schwarzenegger is over...

<p>SACRAMENTO - Anti-tobacco groups on Saturday protested Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's efforts to return the smoke-filled room to California's political lexicon.</p> <p>To comply with the state's strict smoking laws, the cigar-loving Schwarzenegger is converting the Capitol's interior courtyard into an all-weather "smoking plaza" where he can entertain lawmakers and other power brokers.</p>

SACRAMENTO -- In addressing an issue that professional sports teams such as the Washington Redskins have faced and resisted in recent years, the California State Assembly passed a bill Thursday that would require the state's middle and high schools to drop "Redskins" as their mascots if the bill becomes law. The Assembly passed the bill 43-20 after a lengthy, passionate debate about Native American-related mascot names that are common throughout California and the nation. If passed by the Senate and signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the ban would begin in January 2006 and make California the first state to issue...

<p>SEN. Hillary Clinton's trouble with PETA isn't going away. The kerfuffle over her new sheared mink coat that her staff is trying to pass off as velvet has spurred PETA President Ingrid Newkirk to tell the horrific tale of "Mr. Velvet," a red fox who lost a leg to a steel trap. "His eyes were wide as saucers as his tongue pounded the air with each labored breath," Newkirk wrote of her furry friend before he was released from the trap, which "took all my strength to open and release the crushed white bones of his paw." She also claims that Clinton's cover-up of her cover-up is disappointing and wants the truth. "I live in the hope that Americans will continue to demand honesty from their politicians, as well as empathy and kindness." A rep for Clinton reiterated the party line: "The only thing we've said about this is what we say again: The senator has owned a mink coat for over 25 years. Because it was worn, she traded it in."</p>

Osbaldo Torres, a convicted murderer on Oklahoma's Death Row, might have been dead by now -- his appeals exhausted, his time up. But 15 judges in The Hague, acting at the request of the Mexican government, have ordered his execution stayed for now, so he is alive in a cell in McAlester, awaiting the next move from the Netherlands. The judges also ordered stays in the cases of Texas Death Row inmates Cesar Fierro Reyna and Roberto Moreno Ramos, both Mexican citizens. Texas officials' response to the court's order could not be learned Thursday night. Execution dates have not been...

Did you kids know that last year a hole collapsed and killed someone?" Unfortunately, my husband and I only half-registered that a woman was addressing our 10- and 11-year-old boys, as we lazed beside the "hole to China" they were digging on the beach. When we had fully registered - and realised indignantly that she might as well have said "Do you kids know you have irresponsible parents?" - she had already plopped her self-righteous self back on her towel. All she achieved, though, was complete deflation of the boys' enthusiasm and a complete obsession with rehashing the "beach police"...

BRASSTOWN, N.C. -- For the past 12 years, on New Year's Eve, this Appalachian town has lowered a possum in a Plexiglas cage from the roof of a gas station at the stroke of midnight. It is called the Possum Drop, and hundreds of people pack downtown Brasstown to see it. This time, Baby New Year was awfully still. And as the crowd soon learned, this possum wasn't just playing possum. It was roadkill. With just hours to go before the festivities, Clay Logan, host of the Possum Drop, said he got a call from a national animal rights organization...

From dallasobserver.com Originally published by Dallas Observer Dec 18, 2003 ©2003 New Times, Inc. All rights reserved. No Trespassing When teens vow not to have sex, the moral to their story isn't always clearBY LEAH GERCHARIO AND MICHELLE MARTINEZ top:Jim Veneman The virgin diaries: In 1994, top, more than 200,000 True Love Waits commitment cards were displayed at the national mall in Washington, D.C., to raise awareness of the burgeoning teen abstinence movement. Since then, TLW estimates more than a million teens have signed such pledge cards; left, pledge drives like this one two years later at the Georgia Dome...