The federal government can't require tobacco companies to put large graphic health warnings on cigarette packages to show that smoking can disfigure and even kill people, a divided federal appeals court panel ruled Friday.
In a 2-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington affirmed a lower court ruling that the requirement ran afoul of the First Amendment's free speech protections. The appeals court tossed out the requirement and told the Food and Drug Administration to go back to the drawing board.
Court upholds block on graphic cigarette warnings
Alex Baer: Leveling the Killing Fields
The only thing our political leaders have learned about war is not how to avoid them, but making certain they never again suffer a national conscription, or draft.
Vietnam taught politicians the PR challenges of holding a fine war with a draft in place: All of a sudden, everyone and his brother had some real skin in the game, with so broad a population base up for grabs as cannon fodder.
Today, politicians think nothing of narrowing their gun sights, and sharpening the burden to a fine point -- one supported by very few backs. With a more-or-less volunteer force, you just demand the same small group returns to the battlefield over and over and over -- while promising to look into the puzzling reasons soldier suicides have skyrocketed.
Prairie2: Living with the opposite of reality
The geniuses of the Republican National Convention have installed a huge banner across the front of the Tampa Convention Center proclaiming "We Built That".
They unconsciously summarized the Obama speech that they are trying to mis-characterize. Even though the convention center sports a corporate sponsor's name, it really was built by government with union labor.
The "branding" of public buildings with corporate names is really a subtle propaganda ploy to make people think that everything good is provided to them by their benevolent corporate overlords. Americans have been conditioned to believe things that come from corporations are free, and that government is expensive. This is the opposite of reality of course.
Even in recession the rich get richer: Savers have been hit for £70bn as printing money 'helps rich' admits Bank of England
Record low interest rates have robbed savers of more than £70billion while printing money to revive the economy has mainly benefited the rich, the Bank of England admitted yesterday.
But critics have long claimed that ultra-low interest rates have hammered Britain’s army of savers and the decision to print money has led to a ‘death spiral’ in pensions by slashing annuity rates.
We'll make a killing out of food crisis, Glencore trading boss Chris Mahoney boasts
Oxfam said companies like Glencore were "profiting from the misery and suffering of poor people who are worst hit by high and volatile food prices", adding: "If we are going to fix the ailing food system then traders must be part of the cure."
The United Nations, aid agencies and the British Government have lined up to attack the world's largest commodities trading company, Glencore, after it described the current global food crisis and soaring world prices as a "good" business opportunity.
Detained Marine veteran leaves VA hospital
-Brandon J. Raub has been released from the Salem Veterans Affairs hospital and is on his way to see his family, officials from the Rutherford Institute said this afternoon. From earlier reports
Mental assessment records of Brandon J. Raub describe his as delusional and paranoid in the days before he was transferred to a Veterans Affairs hospital in Salem.
Scientists knew biological attack alert was flawed
Scientists who helped pioneer BioWatch, the government's system for detecting a biological attack on the U.S., knew from the start that it was prone to false alarms, records show.
Between 2003, when the nationwide network of air samplers was first deployed, and 2006, officials at the federally funded Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory filed five patent applications aimed at improving BioWatch's reliability.
TVA held responsible for massive coal ash spill
The Tennessee Valley Authority was responsible for a coal ash spill outside Knoxville that federal officials say is one of the worst environmental disasters of its kind, according to a U.S. District Court order issued Thursday.
Had the federal agency acted appropriately, the underlying failure of the north dike "would have been investigated, addressed, and potentially remedied before the catastrophic failure," said U.S. District Judge Thomas Varlan of the Eastern District of Tennessee.
The authority repeatedly sought to have the case dismissed.
Bob Alexander: This Was The Year That Was … Great
One year ago today we loaded up a borrowed truck for the last time and in the great tradition of The Grapes of Wrath and The Beverly Hillbillies, rolled on out towards a dream of a better life. The Joads struggled along Route 66 from Oklahoma’s dustbowl through California’s Mojave Desert to get to the Promised Land. Jed Clampett sold his oil-rich swamp in the Ozarks for 25 million and moved his family to the hills of Beverly.
Our move wasn’t as difficult as the Joads' and certainly not as well subsidized as the Clampett’s. It took us 10 years to have the wherewithal to make the two and a half hour drive from our house in Seattle to our new home in Canada. Though we woke up in A New Country … we didn’t have the time to appreciate it for the first three months or so.
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