Free Republic

As preposterous as it may seem, illegal immigrants with drunk-driving, domestic violence, aggravated assault and child abuse convictions will qualify for amnesty under the immigration bill pending in the U.S. Senate unless an amendment introduced by a Texas lawmaker is adopted. Incredibly, groups that would normally be vocal on these sorts of issues have remained silent. For instance, the nation’s largest organization working to stop drunk driving and support victims of the violent crime—Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)—refuses to criticize the proposed law even though it will essentially reward those convicted of driving dunk. Through a spokeswoman, MADD said it...

An Ohio man was charged with DUI after her was pulled over by the police, despite the fact that a breathalyzer test showed he had a blood-alcohol content of 0.000. 64-year-old Jessie Thornton who now lives in Surprise, Arizona said cops told him that they could tell he was drunk simply by looking at him. -snip- Surprise Police Department paperwork shows Thornton was 'pulled over for crossing the white line in his lane.' 'An officer walked up and he said ‘I can tell you’re driving DUI by looking in your eyes.’ I take my glasses off and he says, ‘You’ve...

In an effort to cut down on the number of alcohol related accidents, the National Transportation Safety Board wants to lower the legal limit for driving from a 0.08 to 0.05 blood alcohol content in all states. That doesn't mean post-dinner-out driving standards will be more exacting anytime soon, though — indeed, the fight is just now underway, and from some of the most unlikely of people. ~snip~ Of course, the NTSB can't order the state or federal governments to do anything. They can only make recommendations about that one fewer beer. In fact, the recommendation to lower the legal...

ames Eades of Augusta is charged with obstruction of a police officer, stemming from an incident during Operation Thunder, but he says there is much more to the story than that. Eades says that he and a friend were driving down Alexander Drive early Friday morning when they came to an Operation Thunder Checkpoint on River Watch Parkway. What happened during that stop lead to Eades getting arrested... and he says it's all because he didn't roll down his window all the way "We saw what appeared to be an accident scene. A couple of police cars with blue lights,...

Looking to cut back on the calories in your cocktail by mixing, say, diet soda and rum? Well, get ready for the buzz. According to the results of a new study, this combination will leave you drunker than if you'd mixed the liquor with a sugary, caloric mixer. "Alcohol, consumed with a diet mixer, results in higher (BrAC) Breath Alcohol Concentrations as compared to the same amount of alcohol consumed with a sugar-sweetened mixer," says Cecile Marczinski, a cognitive psychologist who authored the new study. Why? Turns out that sugar slows down the absorption of alcohol from the stomach to...

GPs are to be forced to hand over confidential records on all their patients’ drinking habits, waist sizes and illnesses. The files will be stored in a giant information bank that privacy campaigners say represents the ‘biggest data grab in NHS history’. They warned the move would end patient confidentiality and hand personal information to third parties.

Faced with the high cost of caring for smokers and overeaters, experts say society must grapple with a blunt question: Instead of trying to penalize them and change their ways, why not just let these health sinners die? Annual health care costs are roughly $96 billion for smokers and $147 billion for the obese, the government says. These costs accompany sometimes heroic attempts to prolong lives, including surgery, chemotherapy and other measures. But despite these rescue attempts, smokers tend to die 10 years earlier on average, and the obese die five to 12 years prematurely, according to various researchers’ estimates....

Harris County law enforcement agencies will again crack down on drunken drivers during Christmas and New Year's, but the expanded operations no will longer be limited to holiday weekends. The "no refusal" initiative — a countywide program that expedites search warrants for blood samples from drunken driving suspects who refuse breath tests — now will be in effect every weekend for the next three years due in large part to a grant recently issued by the Texas Department of Transportation to the Harris County District Attorney's Office. The initiative, which also includes funds from the District Attorney's Office, will total...

On Feb. 11, 2006, in Iraq, I was honored to meet a model Marine by the name of Cpl. David Stidman. He did two tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. Commendably, he also left his post to come home and care for his ailing father, Dwayne Stidman, who tragically was hit and critically wounded by a drunken driver last May.Three months later, on Aug. 2, 2010, Cpl. Stidman was killed. Not on the battlefields of the Middle East, but on his home streets of Texas while still caring for his father and family. And not by a drive-by shooter,...

OLYMPIA — The state Liquor Control Board on Wednesday approved an emergency ban of caffeinated alcohol drinks, the type of beverage that sickened nine Central Washington University students last month during an off-campus party. In the unanimous vote, commissioners said they took the action because of public health and safety concerns. The ban will take effect at 12:01 a.m. on Nov. 18 and remain in place for 120 days while the board goes through rule-making procedures for a permanent ban. Gov. Chris Gregoire is expected to hold a news conference shortly regarding the ban. In a news release last month,...

LOUT Laura Hall is the first person to be banned from buying or drinking booze ANYWHERE in the country. Magistrates slapped the Drinking Banning Order (DBO) on Hall after she was involved in a run of alcohol-related public order offences. Cops argued strict measures were needed to deal with the 20-year-old's drunken behaviour. The DBO means Hall is not allowed in any pub, club, off-licence or bar in England and Wales for the next two years. She is also banned from buying booze - or having alcohol in an unsealed container or drinking in any public place. And she must...

A campaign to create a new category of driving while intoxicated is being promoted at the Capitol as one way to curb growing problems in Texas' system of punishing drunken drivers. Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo, among the supporters of the change, said the idea behind a new offense of "driving while ability impaired" — DWAI — would cover drivers whose blood-alcohol content is between 0.05 and 0.07

The evening of Jan. 16, 1920, hours before Prohibition descended on America, while the young assistant secretary of the Navy, Franklin Roosevelt, drank champagne in Washington with other members of Harvard's Class of 1904, evangelist Billy Sunday preached to 10,000 celebrants in Norfolk, Va., : "The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be only a memory. . . ." Not exactly. Daniel Okrent's darkly hilarious "Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition" recounts how Americans abolished a widely exercised private right -- and condemned the nation's fifth-largest industry -- in order to make the nation more...

A dash-cam video of the DUI arrest of Sheldon Killpack last January shows the then-Senate majority leader weaving slightly, brushing a center line and clipping a curb after the Highway Patrol trooper's lights turned on and he pulled off the road. "Talking with you I can smell the alcohol. How much alcohol have you had tonight?" asks Utah Highway Patrol Trooper Raymond Thomson. Killpack, wearing a black baseball cap and sweater vest, initially tells the trooper that he had not been drinking and the smell was his passenger, who was later identified as lobbyist and former state Rep. Mark Walker....

BP's directors plan to suspend the oil giant's dividend payment, the BBC has learned. BBC business editor Robert Peston says that the directors are to meet on Monday to make a formal decision. However, any formal announcement will not be made until after negotiations with the US president on Wednesday.

DALLAS (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ― North Dallas resident Micah Harleaux has nothing but fond memories of his best friend who was killed in a drunken driving accident. "Carl was an extremely funny individual, he had a biting sense of humor," Harleaux said. "He was full of life." Carl Lotspeich was killed nearly a year ago when a drunken driver slammed into the 25-year-old's car on the Dallas Tollway. The driver, who also died, was heading the wrong way. "There are advancements in automobiles like seat belts and air bags to protect not only the driver but also those...

Raleigh is working with Anheuser-Busch on a deal for the naming rights to the city's new downtown amphitheater, but state liquor regulators are hesitant to approve such a deal, WRAL News has learned. The City Council last week voted to name the venue the Bud Light Amphitheater for an undisclosed sum, according to a statement signed by City Clerk Gail Smith. "This will help us pay for a very substantial portion of the amphitheater. So we are hopeful that it will be approved," Mayor Charles Meeker said Wednesday. Doug Grissom, assistant director of the Raleigh Convention Center, which operates the...

African societies have proverbs for every situation, drinking included. “He who is drunk from palm wine can sober up, he who is drunk from wealth cannot,” say Nigerians. Such proverbs and wise sayings on alcohol were invariably about men, since in most traditional settings, drinking was primarily an indulgence of the adult male. African drinks most of them illicit, come with quirky, drunken names. While Kenya has chang’aa or “kill-me-quick,” Botswana takes the gold in naming its backyard brews. It has Tho-tho-tho, (the dizzy spell), a lala fa (you sleep right here), laela mmago (say goodbye to your mother) chechisa...

The UK Department of Health recently announced that it would loosen hygiene rules for Muslim and Sikh doctors and nurses. From now on, Muslim female staff will not need to wash their hands before procedures as it compromises their modesty. Instead, they will have the admittedly less sanitary option of wearing disposable plastic over-sleeves. Acknowledging the danger of microbes and death, a Department of Health spokesman said, “The guidance is intended to . . . balance infection control measures with cultural beliefs.” But, believe it or not, from a culturist perspective, the death of some patients is not the main...

A father-of-four has been banned from driving for three years after getting behind the wheel of a toy car when drunk. Paul Hutton, 40, was over the legal alcohol limit when he climbed into the seat of a 4ft by 2ft electric Barbie car, which has a top speed of just 4mph. A police patrol car spotted the 6ft-tall former RAF aeron Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1267136/Father-banned-driving-getting-wheel-toy-Barbie-car-drunk.html#ixzz0lY2qUqd4

First he banned booze in his Kabul headquarters. Now the notoriously austere commander of US and Nato forces has a new target in his war on terror: ice cream and fast food. General Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of Special Forces in Iraq, who runs eight miles a day, eats one meal and sleeps for only four hours a night, has given orders to close the junk food concessions on Nato bases. No longer will the fighter pilots at Bagram or Kandahar airfields be able to ring Pizza Hut to deliver. Once General McChrystal has his way, the Whoppers will...

In the wake of the discovery that RNC money had been used for an outing at a lesbian/bondage club Gawker found this little item in the RNC's filings with the FEC: According to the LA Times"About $400 spent at a liquor store on Capitol Hill was classified in the report as "office supplies.'' A person answering the phone at Congressional Liquors said the store sells no office supplies."

Teachers are demanding the right to get drunk at weekends as they protest against a tough new code of conduct. More than 10,000 have signed a petition calling for the scrapping of rules which require them to uphold 'public trust' in their profession outside school. The code, drawn up by the General Teaching Council [GTC] and coming into force next month, aims to reinforce the traditional role of teachers as pillars of society. It urges teachers to act as role models for pupils inside and outside the classroom by maintaining 'reasonable standards in their own behaviour'. One teacher, who asked...

The early baby boomers may be known as the generation of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. But it turns out, they're hitting the bottle pretty hard as they age, as well. And that portends significant alcohol-related health problems ahead as those mid-lifers become seniors. A new study finds that among men and women 50 to 64 years old, almost 1 in 4 men and 1 in 10 women is a "binge" drinker -- meaning that at some point in the last 30 days, he or she has downed four (for women) or five (for men) servings of alcohol in...

MOSCOW, June 26 (Reuters) - Cheap and illicit alcohol kills more than half Russian men and women in their most productive years and the government must act urgently to reverse the trend, a study to be published in The Lancet at the weekend said. "Excessive alcohol consumption in Russia, particularly by men, has in several recent years caused more than half of all the deaths at ages of 15-54 years," the Lancet article said. The research conducted in three industrial cities -- Tomsk, Barnaul and Biysk -- said "excess mortality from liver cancer, throat cancer, liver disease, and pancreatic disease...

Beverly Anderson is mad as hell. She just started to get tickets for parking in her own driveway. That's right. The District of Columbia is ticketing people who park their cars in their own driveways. ---- So what does the law say? "Any area between the property line and the building restriction line shall be considered as private property set aside and treated as public space under the care and maintenance of the property owner." ----------- Basically what that means is most property owners in the District don't own the land between their front door and the sidewalk, but they...

For the past 20 years, the U.S. has maintained a Minimum Legal Drinking Age of 21 (MLDA21), with little public debate about the wisdom of this policy. Recently, however, more than 100 college and university presidents signed the Amethyst Initiative, a public statement calling for "an informed and dispassionate public debate over the effects of the 21-year-old drinking age." SNIP Our research compares traffic fatality rates in states before and after they changed their MLDA from 18 to 21. In contrast to all earlier work, however, we examined separately the impact in states that adopted an MLDA21 on their own...

TO the anger of the wine industry and disbelief of lovers of a good drop worldwide, the French Government has told its people to stop drinking wine. The French Health Ministry has made alcohol one of the chief villains in a drive against cancer. "The consumption of alcohol, and especially wine, is discouraged," say guidelines drawn from the findings of the National Cancer Institute. A single glass of wine a day will raise the chance of contracting cancer by up to 168 per cent, claims the ministry's brochure. Forget those 1980s findings that antioxidants in wine were good for health,...

A proposed new ordinance that would allow Iowa City police to breath-test wait staff and entertainers at bars and restaurants could put bar owners at risk for fines and lost liquor licenses.... In the proposal, an employee could be fined the $500 maximum for having a blood-alcohol concentration of .02 or higher. "It's probably going to pass," Councilor Mike O'Donnell said. "The thought is that if you're not intoxicated, you can be more accurate when checking IDs and keeping people safe in the bar."

can just picture the scene. A concerned parent is out strolling with his/her offspring(s) through the park when, suddenly, a besotted pervert leaps out of the bushes and ... starts mixing a cocktail right in front of them. Oh, the horror! Well, Utah state legislators are pushing to be sure that never happens without a legal penalty being attached. They're actually trying to restrict restaurants from making mixed drinks in full view of minors. Senate president Michael Waddoups says proposed legislation is necessary to protect the "safety and mental future of our children." If he and any like-minded colleagues have...

Maine voters in November will consider a ballot question seeking to overturn a newly-minted state law that changes the funding method for the Dirigo Health Program.

Bars and restaurants around Wrigley Field that ignore the city’s call to voluntarily cut off liquor sales after the seventh inning could face a dire alternative: Area residents could vote them dry, Mayor Daley warned Tuesday. One day after bar owners reacted angrily to the city’s proposal, Daley defended it as "common sense." He argued that Cubs fans who’ve been drinking up until the seventh-inning stretch of potential title-clinching games need, what he called, "some smoothing time" before the celebration begins in earnest. » Click to enlarge image Fans celebrate after the Cubs won the Central Division title. Mayor Daley...

Since Hurricane Ike struck — pitching much of the city into darkness — Houston police have made about 280 arrests every day. Most were for nonviolent offenses, including 388 for public intoxication and 335 for drug possession, police said. The totals actually show a decrease from pre-Ike levels, when Houston police were arresting about 370 people daily, according to department officials. "A lot of the credit goes to the visibility of the officers. We're trying to deter as much crime as we possibly can," said HPD spokesman John Cannon. Arrests for looting have dwindled. Of the 168 arrests made since...

Life is full of surprises, and some 100 college presidents think they have stumbled on one. They think there is too much problem drinking on campus -- no surprise there -- and suggest we might solve the problem by changing the drinking age. They don't propose to raise it to 25. They want to lower it to 18. The group behind the petition they signed, Choose Responsibility, says the current drinking age is a failure. It has "not resulted in significant constructive behavioral change among our students," the statement says, and in fact has spawned "a culture of dangerous, clandestine...

Heather Squires was the designated driver. Never exactly a fun thing, but a college buddy of her husband's was driving up from Tucson to celebrate his acceptance into law school. So when her husband, Jason, asked, Heather said yes. It's not safe to be the designated driver these days, either. At Chuy's in Tempe, Heather's brother and her husband and the soon-to-be-law-school student knocked off four pitchers of beer. Everybody was having a great time. Around 9:30 p.m., they decided to head home. So they piled into Jason Squires' new pickup truck. As planned, Heather drove. They didn't get very...

LONDON, May 31 -- Pete Duffell stood on the subway platform late Saturday, swigging a cold beer and ready to party. Duffell, 24, a professional scuba diver from Kent, and two buddies -- one with his hair dyed green for the occasion -- hauled three plastic bags filled with beer and wine onto a Circle Line subway train. At midnight Saturday, drinking on London's Tube would suddenly be banned for the first time in the storied history of the world's oldest underground train system. Duffell and thousands of others, many wearing tuxedos, Mexican sombreros and Darth Vader masks, decided to...

US winemakers seek to reduce alcohol content By Tom Leonard, in New York Last Updated: 2:47am GMT 11/01/2008 Winemakers in California are attempting to reduce the alcohol level in their notoriously powerful reds and whites. Californian "monster" wines regularly contain 15% vol alcohol and some are as high as 17%, alarming some of their own producers despite the praise of critics. The winemakers have responded by picking grapes earlier and employing other tactics designed to produce the more "balanced", lower alcohol wines that are popular in Europe. They say the move has in part been prompted by demand from American...

The frustration of proving one's age to buy things like alcohol and tobacco does not end when you reach the appropriate legal age. Those of us who are fortunate enough to have a youthful appearance are forever burdened with having to carry a state-issued ID card to every place where we might want to buy alcohol or tobacco. Over the past few years, we've been gradually subjected to another, more intrusive ID-related hassle -- that of electronic drivers license scanning. It's one thing when a government representative scans your driver's license; it's another thing entirely when a restaurant does it,...

Another new year, another list of new laws affecting California motorists. This year's batch includes restrictions on cell phone use, a law making it easier for vehicle owners to replace lost keys, and a prohibition of smoking in vehicles that contain minors. Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, R-Anaheim, voted against two bills that will go into effect this year. "It starts to cross over to a nanny state when law enforcement officials are trying to regulate every aspect of everyone's lives," Spitzer said of the smoking ban. Similarly, Spitzer voted against the cell phone restriction, which will require motorists to use hands-free...

Besieged by criticism of the new 10 percent tax on alcoholic drinks, Allegheny County Council members have seen the relationship between Democrats and Republicans take a decidedly acrimonious turn. Representatives of both parties have vowed to try to set aside political differences to undo the damage done by the tax debate and the accusations it generated. The tax, which goes into effect next month, was approved in a 10-4 vote Tuesday. Nine of the 10 votes in favor came from Democrats.

Anti-drinking ads which show stupid drunk behaviour inadvertently glamorise Medical Studies/Trials Published: Monday, 10-Dec-2007 . .   Advertising campaigns in Britain meant to discourage young people from drinking to excess have come in for some harsh criticism from researchers and comes at a time when experts are saying alcohol abuse is a widespread problem among the young. The researchers say adverts which focus on the idiotic behaviour carried out when people are drunk may be "catastrophically misconceived" and may backfire by inadvertently glamorising the habit. In a study, led by a research team at the University of Bath, researchers...

Citing and hailing the latest production of epidemiological junk science … Here comes the first solid prelude to the "denormalization" of alcohol -- the third and final phase of "public health’s" sick-minded social engineering. Of course alcohol causes cancer! They “proved it” with the same methods used to “prove” the carcinogenicity of smoking: a) multifactorial epidemiological junk science; b) finding molecules that, administered in millions of times greater quantities, may cause cancer in mice. What else is new? All of you non-smokers who were so happy about “smoke-free” pubs and bars and restaurants, enjoy: it is your turn. The gipsy...

TAMPA - Had a few drinks before getting behind the wheel? Think again. That harmless-looking minivan in the rearview mirror might be the neighbors on patrol. That's how Mothers Against Drunk Driving pitched its latest plan to get impaired drivers off the roads. Called the Traffic Observation Program, the pilot program is slated to begin in Hillsborough County and may become a statewide initiative, according to Don Murray, Florida's executive director for MADD. The plan: Recruit 20 volunteers armed with donated cell phones and send them out in the middle of the night to watch for telltale signs of drunk...

FORT WORTH – The Sierra Vista housing development has long been awaited on the city's southeast side, putting the area plagued by drugs, crime and alcoholism on the verge of rebirth. But supporters of revitalization for the area are worried that a proliferation of liquor stores and convenience stores selling alcohol nearby could mar the development and stymie the economic opportunities it is expected to bring. The latest liquor store is planned for Yuma and East Berry streets – the gateway to Sierra Vista.

New Jersey appellate court decision upholds a DUI for a man sleeping in a parked truck under the influence. New Jersey Superior Court logoA New Jersey appellate court yesterday upheld the principle that convictions for driving under the influence of alcohol (DUI) can be imposed on individuals who were not driving. David Montalvo, 36, found this out as he responsibly tried to sleep off his intoxication in his GMC pickup truck while safely stopped in the parking lot of the Market Place Deli on a cold February morning last year. At around 5am he awoke to see a Hamburg Police...

LONDON (AP) — Last call at a British pub can be like a contact sport, with a crush of drunken customers suddenly heaving toward the bar in search of one last round. It's a hallowed British tradition, and doctors say an increasingly dangerous one. Britain's taste for binge drinking, driven by a pub culture in which a good night out means packing in as many pints as possible before the traditional 11 p.m. closing time, could lead to a liver-disease epidemic within two decades unless Britons learn to drink more responsibly, authorities warned. "There's been a frightening increase in alcoholic...

NEW YORK, Aug 7 - Most binge drinkers will reach for beer rather than wine or liquor when they set out to get drunk, U.S. researchers said on Tuesday. The study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined the drinking habits of 14,000 adult binge drinkers across 18 U.S. states. What they found is that 67 percent of these drinkers drank only or mainly beer in their most recent binge, with easy access to beer seen as a major reason. The researchers defined a binge drinker as someone drinking more than five drinks at one sitting. "Beer...

In the state's continuing war against the consumption of alcohol, North Carolina Governor Mike Easley signed a new law on Monday that will not only make it harder to buy kegs of beer, but will also diminish the legal rights of defendants to challenge illegally or incorrectly obtained evidence by the state in regards to driving under the influence charges. The new law also makes it a crime to have any alcohol in the system of anyone under 21 years of age and allows police officers to demand a chemical test of citizens under 21, whether or not they are...

MINEOLA, N.Y. -- A district attorney elected last fall on a promise to limit plea bargains is being sued by a defense attorney who claims the prosecutor's new policies on DWI cases are unconstitutional. Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice said she is not backing away from the changes, which include the creation of a separate courtroom for DWI cases. She also wants permanent criminal records for first-time offenders convicted of having a blood-alcohol level of 0.13 percent or more. The legal limit in the state is 0.08 percent. Rice has also stiffened her office's approach to plea deals, insisting...

McHenry County defense attorneys and prosecutors said they have noticed little change in area DUI cases since penalties for drunken driving were stiffened this year, but soon more defendants could face tougher penalties and staggering costs. As of this year, it is easier to be charged with felony drunken driving than ever before. In one change in the DUI laws, now even a first-time drunken-driving arrest can result in a felony charge in certain situations, and some defense attorneys think it is targeting the wrong people. If someone is arrested for drunken driving and does not have valid insurance or...