JUNE 16, 2010
Sickening health scares
The U.S. Senate set a lousy precedent for the country last Friday when 53 senators voted against a resolution by Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, that would have stopped the Environmental Protection Agency from taking on powers it was never bestowed. The resolution, S.J.Res.26, would have overturned EPA's finding that "greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare." The endangerment finding, the Competitive Enterprise Institute points out, is both a trigger and precedent for sweeping policy changes never approved by Congress.
When the EPA declared that carbon dioxide is a "toxin" rather than an element necessary for the life cycle of living things, this overreaching regulatory agency positioned itself to enact global warming policies through the back door. It is the EPA that is toxic to our welfare, and now the monster has the authority to impose the ominous carbon tax without citizen input or without one vote in Congress!
Get this: Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., declared that voting for the 8-line resolution was equivalent to repealing the laws of gravity (not that the laws of gravity have been any friend to her of late). Well, all the Republicans in the Senate voted for it, along with six Democrats: Senators Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor, D-Ark., Evan Bayh, D-Ind., Mary Landrieu, D-La., Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and Ben Nelson, D-Neb. Thank you, folks, but we lost a big piece of freedom anyway. President Barack Obama (S-The World) can now push his Climate Change legislation into law by means of the EPA under the "Clean Air Act."
Guided by more junk science, Democratic U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Schumer and Ed Markey have introduced legislation to ban the chemical bisphenol-A (BPA) from food and drink containers. There is overwhelming scientific evidence that BPA is safe as used and has never been found in its 50 years of use to cause health problems in adults, children or unborn babies.
Forbes magazine columnist Trevor Butterworth writes, "... the panic over the chemical BPA is not only unjustified, it has reached the point where the failure to accept basic, rational principle in scientific research is damaging toxicology itself, wasting taxpayers' money and undermining scientific progress." Poor Mr. Butterworth. He fails to realize that the rabid alarmists are totally unconcerned with those three things.
Next we have more silliness contributing to our alarmist culture in the example of Apple's Steve Jobs who is releasing the iPhone 4 on June 24. Along with the sales pitch, Jobs reveals an "Environmental Checklist" to allay consumers' fears of chemical. You will be relieved to know that the iPhone 4 will be arsenic-free, BFR-free, Mercury-free, and PVC-free. Good lord, man, are we going to be eating this thing?
"Bill Gates did the same thing 6 or 7 years ago, cleaning phthalates from Microsoft keyboards," said Jeff Steir of American Council on Science and Health and an avid iPhone user. Despite the recent scare expose done by "60 Minutes" on CBS recently, phthalates are safe when used as intended. The program falsely reported that incidents of hypospadias (a defect of the urethra in baby boys) is increasing in frequency. It is not (and it's not nice to scare the pee out of them with bogus claims).
Warning Label on the U.S. Constitution
There's quite a kerfuffle about the paperback copy of "The Constitution, The Declaration of Independence and The Articles of Confederation" published by Wilder Publications in 2008. It seems it was deemed necessary in this day and age to include the following disclaimer, or warning label, if you will, on the copyright page of the book: "The book is a product of its time and does not reflect the same values as it would if it were written today. Parents might wish to discuss with their children how views on race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and interpersonal relations have changed since this book was written before allowing them to read this classic work." You are free to draw your own conclusions here.
