Free Republic

An Oregon lawmaker proposed legislation Monday creating uniform standards for hand dryers in public restrooms, citing the proliferation of powerful dryers that, while efficient, can sometimes trigger tinnitus or cause discomfort for people with development or sensory disabilities. The measure would require all new or replacement dryers to operate at a noise level no louder than 84 decibels. According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that is about as loud as a school cafeteria. It also wouldn’t allow hand dryers blowing air downwards to blow air faster than 115 mph, in case the hand-dryer manufacturer doesn’t label...

For nicotine enthusiasts, 2015 will be remembered as part of a golden era. Less than 10 years after they were introduced in the United States, e-cigarettes have gone relatively unregulated by health agencies, with companies and users making their own rules in a nicotine-laced Wild West. E-cigarette companies have been advertising their products to adults and children alike, claiming to help smokers quit while simultaneously promoting lollipop-flavored liquids. But now health organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and even city-based public health departments are starting to fight back—not in the form of regulations, but with their own...

Apparently, parents should visit the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) website to find out how to teach their children good eating habits.The agency in charge of the country’s agricultural sector is now in the nanny business, thanks to First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” initiative to fight childhood obesity, which links to choosemyplate.gov on its website.In the kids’ section of My Plate, advice is dished out on how parents can help pre-schoolers “develop healthy eating habits,” including a warning about praising an empty plate.“Avoid praising a clean plate,” the website states. “Your child should stop eating when he or she...

The hullabaloo over false information being propagated about Indiana’s Religious Freedom and Restoration Act (RFRA) reveals a much more serious underlying problem in America. Morality according to the 3 Percent (the gay community in America) is defined by imposing conformity, control, coercion, and oppression over those who disagree with their definition of equality, fairness, tolerance, or even love. The 3 Percent’s “outrage” cannot be about equal rights, as same-sex couples already benefit from civil unions, domestic partnerships, marriage, adoption and fostering children, in addition to receiving health benefits and other legal rights. Nor can it be about fairness. I recently...

Republican presidential hopefuls are united in blasting President Obama for his chaotic enforcement of marijuana laws, but the unity quickly breaks down when they are asked how they would handle things if they were in the White House. Some have sent mixed signals, saying state decisions should be respected while questioning how Mr. Obama has respected those decisions. Others have refused to say how they would wield the federal bureaucracy against marijuana. Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is one of the few potential candidates to take a firm stance, saying he would insist on following federal statutes that outlaw the drug....

Washington, D.C., will drop its appeal of a federal court ruling that overturned the city’s ban on carrying handguns in public, Attorney General Karl Racine announced Wednesday. City attorneys will instead focus on defending concealed-carry laws adopted by legislators in the months after U.S. District Court Judge Frederick J. Scullin Jr. declared the ban was unconstitutional. “We need to focus our energies not on litigating old laws, but defending new ones that our leaders enacted in good faith to comply with court rulings while still protecting public safety,” Mr. Racine said. Up until Judge Scullin’s ruling in July, D.C. residents...

Illinois lawmakers are close to banning — or partially banning — new versions of some of the most popular products on any convenience store shelf. The Illinois state Senate is poised to vote on two proposed laws outlawing powdered alcohol, often called Palcohol, and powdered caffeine. Chicago Democrat Ira Silverstein is pushing the powdered alcohol ban, and the proposal cleared a legislative committee last week. Illinois Watchdog reached out to Silverstein, but he did not immediately return our calls. Silverstein has said, however, that he's afraid for young people. "It's the type of item that can be sprinkled on food...

PALMETTO -- Gripping a squirt bottle of hand sanitizer in her gloved hands, school food bus driver Debra Valdez called to four children shyly making their way toward the brightly colored school bus with mom pushing the youngest one forward. "Y'all ready to eat?" Valdez asked with a smile. The four children were the first of more than 70 students who ate a free lunch Tuesday courtesy of the Manatee County School District Food and Nutrition Services Department. The district retrofitted a school bus last summer to feed students and brought the program back for spring break this week. The...

Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.) has unveiled legislation to establish a program, so schools and food banks can offer meals to low-income students on weekends and holidays. Titus's bill would create a five-year pilot program for providing food to students eligible for free or reduced lunch during the week, when school is out. The Nevada Democrat noted the measure comes at the same time as many schools are out for spring break. Students who rely on meals provided during the school day for sustenance consequently might not have enough to eat. "Vacation from school should never mean hunger for children. This...

The project was awarded this month to Rutgers University, which has received $117,102 so far. The real-time, automatic detection of hurtful online speech is necessary, according to the NSF grant, because cyberbullying is a “critical social problem.” The grant said 40 percent of American teenagers have reported being cyberbullied. ... Vivek K. Singh, Ph.D., an assistant professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University, is leading the project. “I have worked on multiple projects including designing a novel media sharing application, detecting patterns in large scale Twitter feeds, and analyzing community behavior in social media to design...

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is promoting a giant full-body exhibit for kids to walk through to promote healthy eating habits.While encouraging schools to apply for nearly $6 million in grants to help them comply with the First Lady Michelle Obama-promoted Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act new lunch standards, the USDA highlighted efforts by the Kansas State Department of Education.“Body Venture, a traveling health education exhibit sponsored by Kansas State Department of Education travels to schools to teach students about nutrition and physical activity,” the USDA said in a blog post Friday.Body Venture is a 45-foot by 50-foot exhibit that starts...

Guess What Makes The Cut As A 'Smart Snack' In Schools? Hot Cheetos Flamin' Hot Cheetos might conjure a lot of descriptors: spicy, crunchy, unnaturally fiery red. But it's a good bet that "healthy" didn't exactly spring to mind. Yet it turns out that those fiery Cheetos beloved by school children (some kids even made an epic rap paean to Hot Cheetos a few years ago) actually qualify as a "Smart Snack" under revised federal nutrition guidelines for schools. The Obama administration rolled out the new guidelines last year in a bid to limit the amount of junk food kids...

Kylee Moss, a 7-year-old-girl from Belton, Missouri, was sent home from school with a note to her mother saying that the 54-pound child’s Body Mass Index (BMI) was too high. Aside from the idiocy of using a discredited measurement for body fat, what are these administrators thinking? Obviously, they’re not. If they had two working brain cells, they would take one look at this kid and realize the stupidity of believing their “measurements.”

Celebrate with me the recent lesson learned by the city council of Los Angeles after a 7-years-long experiment in nanny statism that ended in utter failure. A public health report released in early 2007 showed that South Los Angeles residents were significantly more obese than those in the remainder of the city, including adults and children, and the data showed a dramatic increase from a similar report from a decade earlier. Furthermore, occurrence of obesity-related illness, such as diabetes, was more present in the area and also showed an increase. The city council decided that something needed to be done....

By now, everybody knows we are in the midst of an epidemic of overweight and obesity in Canada and around the world. There is a horrifying series of maps showing the rate of obesity spreading like a red stain across Canada over the past 30 years. In its latest fact sheet, the World Health Organization reports that “worldwide obesity has nearly doubled since 1980” and that “35 per cent of adults aged 20 and over were overweight in 2008, and 11 per cent were obese.” In Canada, it is much the same. The Public Health Agency of Canada reported in...

A new report says that the federal government plans to keep track of how healthy children are by weighing and measuring them in daycare. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will weigh and check the height of roughly 3,000 children as part of a study mandated by First Lady Michelle Obama’s Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act. According to a report by Free Beacon, the USDA published “a notice in the Federal Register on Friday proposing data collection on what meals are served in professional and home daycare facilities and how much physical activity children perform.” …

The Environmental Protection Agency has its eyes on pollution from backyard barbecues. The agency announced that it is funding a University of California project to limit emissions resulting in grease drippings with a special tray to catch them and a "catalytic" filtration system. The $15,000 project has the "potential for global application," said the school. The school said that the technology they will study with the EPA grant is intended to reduce air pollution and cut the health hazards to BBQ "pit masters" from propane-fueled cookers. Charged with keeping America's air, water and soil clean, the EPA has been increasingly...

- The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants hotels to monitor how much time its guests spend in the shower. The agency is spending $15,000 to create a wireless system that will track how much water a hotel guest uses to get them to “modify their behavior.” “Hotels consume a significant amount of water in the U.S. and around the world,” an EPA grant to the University of Tulsa reads. “Most hotels do not monitor individual guest water usage and as a result, millions of gallons of potable water are wasted every year by hotel guests.” -

If you like your shower, you probably can’t keep it once the Obama administration bureaucrats are done. Nobody can altogether escape regulations, not even when bathing in the altogether. The Environmental Protection Agency denies wanting to compel us to shorten our showers, but that’s like President Obama denying you will lose your current doctor under Obamacare. EPA is funding research to create hotel guest monitoring systems so the front desk can track your shower time and water usage. It’s the scariest thing since Hitchcock staged the deadly shower scene in “Psycho.” The next step could be a water-use surcharge on...

The meat industry is seeing red. Meat companies have tried to rehabilitate an image tarnished in recent years by health and environmental concerns. Now the industry is swiftly and aggressively working to discredit a proposal for new dietary guidelines that recommends people eat less red and processed meat. The proposal last month by a government advisory committee also relegates the health benefits of lean meat to a footnote to the main recommendations. “We’ve been put in a position over the years to almost be apologizing for our product; we’re not going to do that anymore,” said Barry Carpenter, the president...