Free Republic

Tom Condliff, a 22-stone former policeman trying to persuade a health authority to fund obesity surgery, has started the latest round of his legal battle The grandfather from Talke, Staffordshire - who is 62 and 6ft 2in - says he needs stomach surgery to save his life. But the North Staffordshire Primary Care Trust (PCT) refuses to fund a laparoscopic gastric bypass operation. In April, the High Court refused to quash the PCT's decision not to provide the surgery. Mr Condliff's lawyers are seeking to overturn the High Court ruling in the Court of Appeal. (snip) Mr Clayton told Lord...

Anyone who thinks presidential ambition is an incurable condition hasn’t spent much time lately with Mike Huckabee. The man who came in second in the 2008 GOP primary isn’t exactly ruling out another run in 2012. But he doesn’t sound all that eager to jump right back into the fray, either. “I’m not one who thinks the future of the world is depending on whether I run for president,” the former Arkansas governor said in an interview. The truth is, there were many things about the presidential campaign grind that Huckabee didn’t much like the last time around. Don’t look...

“A nightstick the size of a telephone pole and the muscle to wield it effortlessly.” Mike Huckabee, who knows a thing or two about insurgent campaigns, sees the power of the Palin candidacy. Taegan Goddard links this morning to the Des Moines Register: Mike Huckabee told the Des Moines Register that Sarah Palin would be a strong contender for president should she decide to run. Said Huckabee: “No question, she will be a very, very strong presence and force, if she gets in. You know, she may run away with it. And that’s one of those things everyone needs...

Is this Mike Huckabee attempting to position himself as the voice of GOP reason heading in to 2012, or merely have his political cake and eat it too? Huckabee appeared on Rosie O’Donnell’s Sirius-XM radio show over the weekend and perhaps not surprisingly talk turned to gay marriage and same sex adoption. Huckabee, a former pastor, is against gay marriage, though gently so…or at least that is what he’d have us believe if this exchange is any measure. During the appearance, Huckabee fended off criticisms from O’Donnell telling her that “I have great respect for you. I respect your choices....

I'm scheduled to have Roux-en-Y Gastric Bypass Surgery on March 18th. It has taken me 3 years to get to this point but now that it's here I'm starting to wonder if I'm making the right decision. This is a really serious procedure that will completely alter my digestive system. Losing weight will be great but havng my diabetes cured will be wonderful.

He’s not saying it critically, mind you. Since when has Huck ever been critical of a rival, overtly or otherwise? Huckabee had some interesting observations about Sarah Palin, a potential 2012 opponent, suggesting that she didn’t earn her spurs and was more appealing to the base of the party because she hadn’t been scrutinized in the primary. “What John McCain did for her was to give her the capacity to sort of leapfrog over the process and get right to the center stage,” he said of the GOP’s vice presidential nominee. Unlike those, he added, who had competed in the...

People wonder why Mike Huckabee would come out with a book that violates Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment, which is not to criticize another Republican, and trashes the wholly deserving Mitt Romney. Is it that Huckabee wants to get Romney out of the way so that he can emerge pre-emptively as the GOP alternative to Sarah Palin in 2012?

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee says he was surprised by John McCain’s pick of Sarah Palin because he believes the only difference between himself and the Alaska governor is “she looks better in stilettos than I do.” Reflecting on the Palin pick in an interview with the New Yorker posted Monday, Huckabee told the magazine that “I was scratching my head, saying, ‘Hey, wait a minute. She’s wonderful, but the only difference was she looks better in stilettos than I do, and she has better hair.’” Huckabee insisted that Palin “was given a pass by some of the very people...

Growing evidence shows that surgery may effectively cure Type 2 diabetes — an approach that not only may change the way the disease is treated, but that introduces a new way of thinking about diabetes. A new article — published in a special supplement to the February issue of Diabetes Care by a leading expert in the emerging field of diabetes surgery — points to the small bowel as the possible site of critical mechanisms for the development of diabetes. The study's author, Dr. Francesco Rubino of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, presents scientific evidence on the mechanisms of diabetes...

A broad coalition of black conservatives from across the country are holding a press conference to urge former Governor Mike Huckabee to stay in the presidential race for the Republican nomination until the convention. "Governor Huckabee should not be intimidated to stop his bid for the Republican nomination," states Don Scoggins, veteran GOP activist and ... president of Republicans for Black Empowerment, a DC-based national grassroots organization. The concern of the group is the pressure that is mounting by Republican talking heads to push Governor Huckabee out of the race. The consensus is that Huckabee's campaign was deliberately sabotaged by...

I am amazed at how unfair and unbalanced the coverage of Mike Huckabee has been on Fox News this past week. In the past week: On the Beltway Boys, Mort K. asserted that Mike Huckabee “is not a nice man" simply because he accepted the endorsement of Mr. Gilchrist of The Minute Men Project. Fred Barnes not only stood by in agreement but joined in on the slander. Tuesday morning Dec 18th, on Fox & Friends, Steve Ducey stood by and let Ron Paul accuse Huckabee of being a “fascist” because of the bookshelf in his commercial that they believed...

With Mike Huckabee's sudden prominence in the 2008 GOP Presidential race has come greater scrutiny, of both the man and his record. Prominent in both is his famous weight loss saga, and as such it too merits scrutiny. In June 2003, Mike Huckabee was an obscure and obese (290 lb.) Arkansas Governor. By June 2004, Huckabee lost 110 lbs., which he attributed to diet and exercise. This feat naturally attracted media attention as a human-interest story, to which Huckabee added a public policy angle by also touting his anti-obesity public health initiative called Healthy Arkansas. This program included public service...

CANNES, France (Reuters) - Director Michael Moore says the U.S. health care system is driven by greed in his new documentary "SiCKO", and asks of Americans in general, "Where is our soul?" He also said he could go to jail for taking a group of volunteers suffering ill health after helping in the September 11, 2001 rescue efforts on an unauthorized trip to Cuba, where they received exemplary treatment at virtually no cost. The controversial film maker is back in Cannes, where he won the film festival's highest honor in 2004 with his anti-Bush polemic "Fahrenheit 9/11". In "SiCKO" he...

US filmmaker Michael Moore has challenged Republican presidential candidate Fred Thompson for a debate over health care issues. Both of them have been taking a dig at each other ever since Thompson wrote in the National Review on May 2, an article on the Treasury Department's investigation into whether Moore violated the US trade embargo against Cuba by seeking free treatment for 9/11 responders there. Moore has now blasted Thompson in a letter over his fondness for Cuban-made Montecristo cigars. "While I will leave it up to the conservatives to debate your hypocrisy and the Treasury Department to determine whether...

Until she came to Houston's Renaissance Hospital two weeks ago, Renee Williams hadn't left her bed in three years. It took eight people to get her in and out of the ambulance. At her first weigh-in at the hospital, she tipped 850 pounds. Williams this week became what's thought to be the largest female patient to undergo laparoscopic gastric bypass surgery, the increasingly popular solution to morbid obesity. Her doctor said he's optimistic her weight may drop to as low as 200 pounds in two years.

A jury has awarded $284,000 to a Bad Axe man who claims he was fired from his job for being fat. The eight-person jury in U.S. District Court awarded Steve Pasanski the money in a wrongful discharge discrimination case against Continental Rental, Inc. The four-day trial concluded Friday in the Bay City courtroom of U.S. District Judge David M. Lawson. "I'm grateful to the jury, and I'm glad the legal process vindicated Steve Pasanski," said Glen Lenhoff, the Flint attorney who represented the plaintiff. "I hope overweight people are encouraged by this." Pasanski, since being fired in August 2003, underwent...

Jacqueline Ezell says she felt as if she were drowning when she was rushed to the hospital four years ago. At 288 pounds, doctors had already diagnosed her with diabetes, glaucoma and high cholesterol, all side effects of obesity. She also had heart problems. "I couldn't breathe," Ezell said. Doctors gave Ezell two options. She could seek a heart transplant, or have gastric bypass surgery. She chose the surgery. The Preston woman recently told Connecticut lawmakers that she went from a size 26 to a size 6. The surgery also helped lower her cholesterol, and she was taken off a...

A long-term study of people who had surgery for obesity found they lost more weight and experienced fewer obesity-related complications, including diabetes, than people who didn't have the operation. The study, one of the strongest long-term examinations of the subject, appears in the Dec. 23 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. "It's certainly an endorsement relative to what else is available," said Dr. Caren G. Solomon, deputy editor of the journal and co-author of an accompanying editorial. "Other things don't take weight off as well, and it doesn't stay off well." "The weight loss seems to be very...

In July 2002, after decades of dieting, Jerrold Nadler, (aka the Waddler, Jerry the Hut) US Representative from New York's 8th Congressional, weighed 338 pounds. Then, as now, he was 5 '4" tall. In August 2002, Mr. Nadler underwent gastric surgery, a "sleeve job" that reduced his stomach to a small pouch. By mid-November 2002, he had lost 61 pounds. In the nine months following, he lost an additional 14 pounds. That's an average of 1.5 pounds per month. The likelihood is that he lost no weight at all for some months. He now weighs about 263 pounds and is...

The Fat of the Land In July 2002, after decades of dieting, Jerrold Nadler, (aka the Waddler, Jerry the Hut) US Representative from New York's 8th Congressional, weighed 338 pounds. Then, as now, he was 5 '4" tall. In August 2002, Mr. Nadler underwent gastric surgery, a "sleeve job" that reduced his stomach to a small pouch. By mid-November 2002, he had lost 61 pounds. In the nine months following, he lost an additional 14 pounds. That's an average of 1.5 pounds per month. The likelihood is that he lost no weight at all for some months. He now weighs...

July 11, 2002 | Kathleen Turner was on television recently talking about her pain and suffering. "The damage that I have, the damage I'll always have could have been prevented," the actress told "Good Morning, America" host Diane Sawyer on Feb. 19. Sawyer was sympathetic. Turner, she knew from a previous interview, had been battling rheumatoid arthritis for over a year now. "You're still in pain?" Sawyer asked. "Well," Turner responded, "as they say: only when you walk." Turner then went on to mention a Web site, www.ra-access.com, where fellow sufferers could get help. Sawyer eagerly repeated the site's address...