Free Republic

Ethically speaking, vegetables get all the glory. In recent years, vegetarians — and to an even greater degree vegans, their hard-core inner circle — have dominated the discussion about the ethics of eating. From the philosopher Peter Singer, whose 1975 volume “Animal Liberation” galvanized an international movement, to the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, who wrote the 2009 best seller “Eating Animals,” those who forswear meat have made the case that what we eat is a crucial ethical decision. To be just, they say, we must put down our cheeseburgers and join their ranks.

Congresswoman Maxine Waters offered some advice for President Barack Obama Thursday: It’s time to drop the Super Bowl parties and beer summits with the Republicans and stand up and fight them. Speaking at a Congressional Black Caucus legislative conference in Washington, the California Democrat said Obama’s “been very nice” in his negotiations with Republicans, but now he needs to fight harder. “He’s been on the other side of the aisle talking with people. He’s invited them up to the White House to have beer. He’s invited them to come and watch the Super Bowl games,” Waters said, as reported by...

By Walter E. Williams (Archive) • Wednesday, April 13, 2011 I've often said that I wish there were some humane way to get rid of the rich. If you asked why, I'd answer that getting rid of the rich would save us from distraction by leftist hustlers promoting the politics of envy. Not having the rich to fret over might enable us to better focus our energies on what's in the best interest of the 99.99 percent of the rest of us. Let's look at some facts about the rich laid out by Bill Whittle citing statistics on his RealClearPolitics...

That's the reaction of the USA Dry Pea & Lentil Council to the president's urging of budget negotiators to make the difficult choices necessary to reach a "grand bargain" to raise the nation's debt limit. "It's not going to get easier, it's going to get harder. So we might as well do it now; pull off the Band-aid, eat our peas," Obama said at a White House news conference. A spokesman for the pea council said it wasn't interpreting the remarks in a negative context. "We take President Obama's comment on the need to 'eat our peas' as a reference...

Is America really broke? Michael Moore (and others) tells us that there are oceans of cash being hoarded by the wealthy. But Iowahawk (iowahawk.typepad.com) did a little addition, and armed with these statistics Bill and the 'Hawk blow a hole in the "hoarding" lie big enough to fit a documentary filmmaker through.

He says he's not a Muslim. What's his schedule for the month? Any breakfasts, or luncheons planned? How about photo ops at ice cream shops? All of us with inquiring minds would like to know. What do FReepers think?

The Obama family has been working hard to show their indifference to the plight of middle America. Whether it's the president's golfing fetish, private air transportation for family dog Bo to a Maine vacation, or Michelle Obama's taxpayer subsidized trip to the Spanish Riviera, the gulf between the White House leisure class and the American middle class has grown to unprecedented proportions. Everyone is entitled to some R & R, though Mrs. Obama's jaunt is her eighth holiday this summer. Tone-deaf White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs defended vacation numero ocho by saying,

There is: Regular Fruity Chocolate Apple Cinnamon Yogurt Burst Multi Grain Banana Nut Honey Nut and now... Directions: Just add Kool-Aid. Click the image to see a larger version. Some have told me I should have gone with Fruit Loops instead, but I'm talking about liberals in general, not Barney Frank specifically. The Looking Spoon is a conservative humor/satire/art/commentary blog, visit www.thelookingspoon.com to see more posts and art

In Greek mythology, the tale of the Trojan prince Tithonus is a tragic one. His lover, the goddess Eos, asks Zeus to grant him eternal life, but forgets to specify eternal youth. Time passes, and while the goddess of dawn stays young and beautiful, Tithonus degenerates into bedridden senility. (Snip) On the assumption that it has the same effect in people, some individuals have already adopted a restricted diet. The latest evidence suggests that while calorie restriction is indeed beneficial for humans, when it comes to lifespan extension, it may not be the whole story.

At this week's National Grocers Association convention in Las Vegas, celebrity chef Philippe Parola was touting his new favorite fish. '[It has] 70-percent more Omega-3 than in catfish and tilapia," an animated Parola told an assembled crowd at his booth. "No mercury because it's a filter fish."

Happy New Year's Eve!

Official guidance on how much we can eat each day has been underestimated for the last two decades, scientists have revealed. The daily intake of calories - currently 2,000 for woman and 2,500 for men - could be increased by up to 16 per cent, the equivalent of cheeseburger or two packets of crisps. An average adult could happily squeeze in an extra 400 calories a day and not pile on the pounds, Britain's leading nutritionists have admitted. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1227743/Its-official--eat-stay-healthy.html#ixzz0WuC35zPn

LONDON – Would you pay 145 pounds ($215) for a slice of very stale cake? That's what an antiques fair in Birmingham hopes to earn Thursday when people bid for the remnant from one of Britain's most controversial royal weddings. The cake is thought to be the only surviving item from the 1871 wedding of Queen Victoria's fourth daughter, Princess Louise, to the Marquis of Lorne. It went on sale for 145 pounds ($215) Thursday at the Antiques for Everyone fair in Birmingham. The seller is antiques dealer John Shepherd. He bought the slice from a private seller who is...

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A Minnesota company has won federal approval to become the first in the U.S. to market an E. coli vaccine for cattle, a new weapon against a foodborne disease that can cause serious illness in people and even death. Epitopix LLC was given a conditional license from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to sell its vaccine. Nayyera Haq, a USDA spokeswoman, called it "an important step toward improving food safety in this country," and a major beef group agreed. "It really is a major milestone for our industry," Michelle Rossman, director of beef safety research for the...

After five years of futile efforts to find or confirm sightings of any Caribbean monk seals — even just one — the U.S. government on Friday announced that the species is officially extinct and the only seal to vanish due to human causes.

Eat like a caveman for a healthy heart By Kate Devlin, Medical Correspondent Last Updated: 8:28PM BST 08/05/2008 A “caveman diet” of berries, nuts, lean meat and fish could help reduce the risk of developing heart disease, a new study shows. Scientists found that volunteers who ate the stone age fare for just three weeks had lowered blood pressure and a reduced risk of clots. They also lost an average of five pounds in weight.Meat, as long as it is lean, is beneficial Our early ancestors lived on a diet lacking in cereals, dairy products and refined sugar for centuries...

WASHINGTON — Cotton, for thousands of years one of the most important crops for clothing and shelter, might also become a source of food. A chemical called gossypol makes cottonseed inedible for humans, though some of it is used in feed for cattle, which are less affected by the toxin. Now, researchers at Texas A&M University have genetically modified cotton to produce seeds with little or no gossypol. It's a step they say could help provide valuable protein to millions of people. Their findings are reported in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Keerti Rathore of...

From the day they brought her home, the D'Avellas' black-and-white mutt loathed ringing phones. At the first trill, Jay Dee would bolt from the room and howl until someone picked up. But within a few weeks, the D'Avellas began missing calls: When the phone rang, their friends later told them, someone would pick up and then the line would go dead. One evening, Aida D'Avella solved the mystery. Sitting in the family room of her Newark, N.J., home, Ms. D'Avella got up as the phone rang, but the dog beat her to it. Jay Dee ran straight to the ringing...

Show Us Your Dove Recipes and Prove Anti-Hunters Wrong- (08/28) Michigan Join our e-mail alert list In their quest to ban dove hunting in Michigan by ballot in November, anti-hunters have stated repeatedly that doves are not eaten by hunters, giving the impression that they are left in the field to rot. The U.S. Sportsmen’s Alliance wants sportsmen across the country to prove the anti-hunters wrong by submitting their best dove recipe and perhaps winning a sportsmen’s prize package for doing so. Anti-hunting groups in Michigan have created a campaign of misinformation designed to win the votes of urban-dwellers and...

Something horrifying is happening in the waters off Brazil. Sharks are attacking surfers near the city of Recife at an unprecedented rate, scaring the locals and forcing the government to ban the sport at one of it’s most popular beaches. Over the past decade, 45 people have been attacked by bull sharks in the region, 16 were deadly. And while these attacks are not unheard of, the fact the port city had recorded only one in the 75 years prior, is perplexing. Are the sharks rebelling? Have they had enough of people overcrowding their home? Or is there something less...

Don't eat raw eggs By Charles Clover Environment Editor (Filed: 28/02/2006) Raw eggs should not be eaten by themselves or used in dishes, even though avian flu is not present in Britain, the chairman of the Food Standards Agency has said. Speaking at the National Farmers' Union annual conference, Dame Deirdre Hutton expressed a similar view to that of Prof Sir David King, the Government's chief scientific adviser - that avian flu did not pose a risk to consumers of poultry. Eggs should be cooked until the whites are solid - not the yolks But she warned that experts recommended...

Resale of Meals, Ready to Eat questioned after eBay trading spottedBy Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes Mideast edition, Saturday, February 18, 2006 WASHINGTON — Meals, Ready to Eat, the prepackaged rations infamous among servicemembers, remain hot collectibles on the online trading site eBay.com, despite defense officials’ efforts to stop the practice. MREs typically cost about $4.50 to produce, and are intended solely for use and distribution by members of the military, according to Defense Department rules. But the water-activated rations are being marketed on the site as both survival gear and collector’s item, with some cases of 12 going...

MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH Alleged fetus eater focus of new legislation Kansas considers bill to regulate conditions of abortion, medical clinics -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posted: February 15, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com Shockingly unsanitary conditions discovered at an abortion clinic in which the proprietor was accused of eating a fetus have prompted consideration of a bill by the Kansas Legislature to tighten up regulations for all medical facilities. Last spring, Krishna Rajanna's abortion clinic in Kansas City was raided after former employees made allegations of coffee cups full of syringes, medical tools stored near toilets and fetuses stored...

The food you eat may change your genes for life 17 November 2005 NewScientist.com news service Alison Motluk IT SOUNDS like science fiction: simply swallowing a pill, or eating a specific food supplement, could permanently change your behaviour for the better, or reverse diseases such as schizophrenia, Huntington's or cancer. Yet such treatments are looking increasingly plausible. In the latest development, normal rats have been made to behave differently just by injecting them with a specific amino acid. The change to their behaviour was permanent. The amino acid altered the way the rat's genes were expressed, raising the idea that...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Starving -- officially known as caloric restriction -- may make worms and mice live up to 50 percent longer but it will not help humans live super-long lives, two biologists argued on Sunday. They said their mathematical model showed that a lifetime of low-calorie dieting would only extend human life span by about 7 percent, unlike smaller animals, whose life spans are affected more by the effects of starvation. This is because restricting calories only indirectly affects life span, said John Phelan of the University of California Los Angeles and Michael Rose of the University of California...

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- Former President Bill Clinton said his weight problem and brush with death are the catalysts behind his foundation's initiative of tackling childhood obesity. Once famous for his love of fast food, Clinton told CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta that bad health habits since childhood led to his September 2004 quadruple bypass surgery. That operation, he said, opened his eyes to a larger issue, and he turned his attention to the problem of overweight American children. "The brush with death I had maybe had the biggest impact of all," Clinton recalled. "I realized that one more time I've...

Laksamana.Net - Sumatran tigers, on the brink of extinction due to poaching and rampant illegal logging, killed 18 people in and around a conservation forest in Riau province last year, an official said Monday (10/1/05). The attacks took place in the 150,000-acre Senepis Tiger Conservation Area and in outlying villages, said John Kenedie, head of Riau’s Nature Conservation Office. "In 2004 alone, 18 villagers were killed. Over the past five years, there have been 40 locals who had fallen prey of the Sumatran tigers," he was quoted as saying by state news agency Antara. He said the endangered tigers often...

TACOMA, Wash. - A teaching assistant gave some preschoolers dog food to eat during a play-acting exercise at Northeast Tacoma Elementary School. A Tacoma School District spokeswoman said the children spat out the dry dog food and no one suffered any ill effects. The teaching assistant has been placed on paid leave pending an investigation. District spokeswoman Patti Holmgren said it happened Monday in an early education class while the supervisor was out of the room. When a few of the students pretended to be puppies, getting down on their hands and knees and barking, the assistant attempted to encourage...

Scientists Find 75 Percent Of Red Snapper Sold In Stores Is Really Some Other Species CHAPEL HILL ? While learning in a course how to extract, amplify and sequence the genetic material known as DNA, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill graduate students got a big surprise. So did their marine science professors. In violation of federal law, more than 75 percent of fish tested and sold as tasty red snapper in stores in eight states were other species. How much of the mislabeling was unintentional or fraud is unknown, said Dr. Peter B. Marko, assistant professor of marine...

What are FReepers fixing to eat during these hot August days? I try to have something substantial without heating up the kitchen. We have only a charcoal grill and concluded a few weeks back that it's too much work to use very often -- no doubt those w/ gas grills are using them regularly as they aren't as much trouble.

A chicken from the Krasnoarmeiskaya poultry farm in the village of Mir of Grodnensky region laid the world's largest egg. This has been reported by a Russian representative of the Guinness Book of World Record in Belorus Alexander Kalinin. "The egg that weighs 160 grams has a big chance of getting into the Guinness Book of Records," stated he. The Byelorussian chicken bit the record of its Cuban colleague from Las-Tunas. Several years ago, the latter has laid an egg weighing> Byelorussian chicken laid the world's largest egg 146 grams. It has been inserted in the Book of Records as...

The occasion is the 20th annual observance of the Great American Meatout, the world's largest and oldest annual grassroots diet education campaign. Every spring, thousands of Meatout supporters educate their communities and ask their friends, families, and neighbors to pledge to "kick the meat habit (at least for a day) and explore a wholesome, nonviolent diet of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains."

ESPN.com news services The "bridge is burned." All-Pro cornerback Ty Law does not want to play another game for the Patriots. Citing "irreconcilable differences," Law said he has told Patriots coach Bill Belichick and vice president of player personnel Scott Pioli his desire to play somewhere else after being "lied to" about their intentions, according to the Boston Globe. "Right now, it's not about money," Law told the Globe this week. "That bridge is burned. I no longer want to be a Patriot. I can't even see myself putting on that uniform again, that's how bad I feel about playing...

When the World Health Organization (WHO) released its proposed "global strategy on diet, physical activity and health" calling for "fat taxes," the Bush administration noticed something conspicuously missing from the report -- any notion of personal responsibility. Thankfully, the former Director of Communications for WHO's European Office, Franklin Apfel, provides insight into this obvious omission. He recently told a conference in Dublin (as reported in The Irish Times): [W]e are all influenced by 'hazard merchants' selling us a false view of things like tobacco, alcohol and high density foodstuffs -- we're given the impression that these things represent personal choice,...

A million adults 'never eat veg' By Celia Hall, Medical Editor (Filed: 15/01/2004) Nearly a million adults never eat any fruit or green vegetables and more than 3.5 million eat them only once or twice a month, according to a survey published today. Despite government campaigns to encourage people to eat at least five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, a small percentage of the adult population resolutely refuses to do so. The poll among 1,000 adults for the charity, Cholesterol UK, found that while 90 per cent said they always or generally ate a healthy diet, 2.5 million...

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - With self-refilling bowls of soup and jumbo buckets of stale popcorn, professor Brian Wansink has identified one culprit for U.S. obesity: excessive food portions. The University of Illinois researcher has set up several food experiments that show the more people are given, the more they will eat — regardless of whether they are full or think the food tastes good. "In the obesity war, portion size is the first casualty," said Wansink, who founded the University of Illinois' Food & Brand Lab. "It's easy to point at, and we don't have to take responsibility because we can...

For a woman who ate little besides strawberries, apples and cottage cheese, Susan Fair had an extremely hard time controlling her weight. Despite her careful eating habits, her weight over a 20-year period had sometimes fluctuated wildly. Though never a petite woman, she went through periods when she would mysteriously pack on the pounds. At one point, she tipped the scales at almost 260. But the mystery began to dissipate three years ago when her husband, Dana, began to notice all of the food crumbs, wrappers and boxes that littered the bedroom floor of their apartment each morning.It turned out...

Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle became witness Tom Daschle Thursday as he testified for about five minutes in the manslaughter trial of his friend, Republican U.S. Rep. Bill Janklow. Meanwhile, Janklow's lawyer indicated the congressman might testify. Janklow, 64, is charged with second-degree manslaughter, running a stop sign, reckless driving and speeding in the crash that killed motorcyclist Randy Scott, 55, of Hardwick, Minn. The crash occurred Aug. 16 at the intersection of Moody County Highways 13 and 14 east of Trent. Janklow and Daschle were on the same stage at a Korean War veterans event at the Brown County...

The Least Harm Principle Suggests that Humans Should Eat Beef, Lamb, Dairy, not a Vegan Diet. The following abstract and the aforementioned title were written by S.L. Davis, Department of Animal Sciences, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331.Wildlife Damage Control has received permission to reprint this abstract in its entirety which was "Previously published in the Proceedings of the Third Congress of the European Society for Agricultural and Food Ethics, 2001, pp 449-450." Again, this article was NOT written by Stephen Vantassel. See my version of this principle written long before this article at Uneasy Conscience of the Animal Rights...

A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day Free Republic made its debut in September, 1996, and the forum was added in early 1997.   Over 100,000 people have registered for posting privileges on Free Republic, and the forum is read daily by tens of thousands of concerned citizens and patriots from all around the country and the world. A Few of FR's Finest....Every Day was introduced on June 24, 2002. It's only a small room in JimRob's house where we can get to know one another a little better; salute and support our military and our leaders; pray for those in...

MIDI - BEAT IT You are a leftist stooge and Hollywood ho Each time you spoke, disdain for you was sure to grow We've cooked a tasty dish and it's time to have some crow Time to eat it…time to eat it Our president you thought that you could attack You thought that you had known it all about Iraq But what you did to troops was a knife right in their back So eat it…we have cooked it for you Just eat it, eat it…you're side's utterly defeated You and Mike Farrell…Martin Sheen, too You're always wrong…whatever you...

Two dogs digging for a buried bone in their owner's backyard in Chile found a 2,500-year-old mummy. Ivan Paredes, who lives in Arica, could not believe his eyes when his dogs dug up the ancient body. He told La Cuarta online: "The dogs were trying to find bones buried in the backyard as usual, but they started to bark very loud and I came to check what was going on and found the mummy of child." Archaeologists believe it is the remains of a boy buried by his parents who would probably have been farmers. The mummy, said to be...

A tendency for getting their lips around a Whopper has turned Japanese schoolgirls into Nippon's naughtiest nymphomaniacs, according to Shukan Gendai (6/29). Kazuo Sakai, head of the Stress Hibiya Clinic in Tokyo, says fast food is to blame for the promiscuous behavior of today's schoolgirls. "Sex addiction, which involves having sex with numerous different partners over a short period, is related to bulimia. Fast food so popular among young people is absorbed unnaturally quickly by the body, making it easy for bulimia to develop," Sakai tells Shukan Gendai. "Bulimia makes it harder to control the central nervous system and a...

The orbit of the microquasar through the Milky Way galaxy (red line); our Sun's orbit (yellow) is shown for reference [Pic: NRAO/AUI/NSF] Download an animated version here.  The deadly embrace between a collapsing cannibal star and its hapless companion probably began in a globular cluster some 30 million years ago, a French-Argentinian team announced. The neutron star and its captured companion, called Scorpius X-1, were originally discovered in 1962. Dr Felix Mirabel and Dr Irapuan Rodrigues, astrophysicists at the French Atomic Energy Commission, used a number of published observations to calculate the path of the duo over the past...

Contact: Dr. Dolores Pipernopipernod@tivoli.si.edu 011-507-212-8101Smithsonian Institution An origin of new world agriculture in coastal Ecuador New archaeological evidence points to an independent origin of agriculture in coastal Ecuador 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Suddenly, the remains of larger squash plants appear in the record. The Las Vegas site, described by Dolores Piperno of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) and Karen Stothert, University of Texas at Austin in the February 14th issue of Science, may predate plant domestication sites in the Mesoamerican highlands. The fertile and amazingly diverse lowland tropics seem like a likely place for agriculture to develop. But...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - An Australian man has been charged with killing 12 wombats in multiple hit and runs along a road in a national park.   Bob Conroy, of the National Parks and Wildlife Service, said Friday that the killings of the small, bear-like marsupials, discovered on January 28, did not appear to be random. "My understanding is that they were targeted and then run over a number of times," Conroy said. "It's quite a callous act of cruelty and we're quite horrified." The bodies of the furry, slow moving wombats were scattered along the Wolgan road heading to...

LONDON (Reuters) - Forget the tigers, the elephants and the dancing bears. Cirque du Soleil will never travel the world with performing animals. "We don't agree with the way the animals are dressed to do their tricks. We prefer to give jobs to human beings," said Pierre Parisien from the renowned Quebec troupe that has inspired a circus renaissance around the globe. "They are animals, not performers. They should be in the jungle," the artistic director of the troupe's "Saltimbanco" show told Reuters after its London opening this week. "We do not agree with the way they are trained...

Special Dispatch Series - No. 421 September 19, 2002 No.421 Columnist for Saudi Daily Al-Jazirah: Jews Use Blood for Baked Goods In a recent article published in the Saudi state controlled daily Al-Jazirah, columnist Dr. Muhammad bin S'ad Al-Shwey'ir, a past advisor to former Saudi mufti Sheikh Abdallah bin Baz and editor-in-chief of the Islamic Research periodical published by the Islamic Clerics Association of Saudi Arabia, wrote that Jews use human blood for their holiday celebrations.(1) Al-Shwey'ir's article also incorporated several other antisemitic canards; among these are references to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and to the...

Inquiry and Analysis Series - No. 99 June 27, 2002 No.99 The Damascus Blood Libel (1840) as Told by Syria's Minister of Defense, Mustafa Tlass Background Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad recently extended the term of Defense Minister Field Marshal Mustafa Tlass for another two years beyond mandatory retirement age, in appreciation of his service and his close connection with his father, former president Hafez Al-Assad. Tlass is one of the founding fathers of Syria's current Ba'ath regime and has been a key figure in Syria for the past 30 years. Hafez Assad himself had already postponed Tlass's retirement once.[1]Tlaas...

JAPAN is considering allowing people to eat beached whales, helping themselves to what is considered an expensive gourmet treat.