US court stops graphic cigarette warnings

by Yahoo News
25th August, 2012

An appeals court has upheld a decision barring the US government from requiring tobacco companies to put large graphic health warnings on cigarette packages, saying the government cannot scare smokers into quitting.

The US Court of Appeals in Washington affirmed a lower court ruling that the requirement ran afoul of the US Constitution's free speech protections.

Some of the nation's largest tobacco companies sued to block the Food and Drug Administration mandate to include warnings to show the dangers of smoking. They argued that the proposed warnings went beyond factual information into anti-smoking advocacy.

The government argued the photos of dead and diseased smokers are factual in conveying the dangers of tobacco, responsible for about 443,000 deaths in the US a year.

The nine graphic warnings proposed by the FDA include colour images of a man exhaling cigarette smoke through a tracheotomy hole in his throat, and a plume of cigarette smoke enveloping an infant receiving a mother's kiss. These are accompanied by language that says smoking causes cancer and can harm fetuses. The warnings were to cover the entire top half of cigarette packs, front and back.

In recent years, more than 40 countries or jurisdictions have introduced labels similar to those created by the FDA. The World Health Organisation said in a survey done in countries with graphic labels that a majority of smokers noticed the warnings and more than 25 per cent said the warnings led them to consider quitting.

Tobacco companies increasingly rely on their packaging to build brand loyalty and grab consumers - one of the few advertising levers left to them after the government curbed their presence in magazines, billboards and TV.

The FDA declined to comment on pending litigation, and the Justice Department said it would review the appeals court ruling. Public health groups are urging the government to appeal.

Warning labels first appeared on US cigarette packs in 1965, and current warning labels that feature a small box with text were put on cigarette packs in the mid-1980s. Changes to more graphic warning labels that feature colour images of the negative effects of tobacco use were mandated in a law passed in 2009 that, for the first time, gave the federal government authority to regulate tobacco.

The share of Americans who smoke has fallen dramatically since 1970, from nearly 40 per cent to about 20 per cent. But the rate has stalled since about 2004, with about 46 million adults in the US smoking cigarettes. Some experts have cited tobacco company discount coupons on cigarettes and lack of funding for programs to discourage smoking or to help smokers quit.

A town hall spy on every corner: Pursuing smokers, stalking dog owners... 9,600 'missions' of council snoopers

By James Slack
22 August 2012

Town halls have launched an astonishing 9,600 spying missions on the public in the past three years.

The surveillance operations exploit anti-terror laws but many are targeting minor offences such as flouting the smoking ban, dog fouling and dropping litter.

Council officers have also gone undercover to carry out ‘test purchases’ at local escort agencies, it was revealed last night.

In other cases, tactics included obtaining phone records and trapping householders putting out rubbish early by using motion-activated cameras on lampposts and inside tin cans.

Families suspected of cheating school catchment area rules have been followed by council ‘spies’.

Civil liberties campaigners said was clear the hugely controversial Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act was being abused.

They urged the Coalition to stop merely ‘tinkering’ with the ‘broken’ law – passed ostensibly to fight terrorist fanatics – and subject it to an overhaul.

In a painstaking report, which took months to compile from Freedom of Information Act requests, the Big Brother Watch group discovered 345 councils had been authorised to use RIPA 9,607 times since 2009 – the equivalent of around nine spying missions a day.

Some 26 local authorities have used RIPA to spy on dog owners to see whose animals were responsible for dog fouling.

A further seven have used their powers to investigate suspected breaches of the smoking ban.

Suffolk County Council conducted a ‘test purchase of dating agency services’.

Stockton Borough Council mounted an operation to check on the ‘proper movement of pigs’ and to investigate a ‘fraudulent escort agency’. No action was taken.

Northumberland mounted three spying operations on a ‘tarmac resurfacing service’. No action was taken.

BBW said Kent was the worst authority in the country for RIPA investigations, with 315 in three years.

Alarmingly, seven public authorities refused under the Freedom of Information Act to disclose why or how often they have used the powers. They included the BBC and Ofsted.

The spies are called ‘covert human intelligence sources’. In many cases they will be council employees, such as dog wardens or trading standards officials, but school children are sometimes recruited to test for the sale of underage alcohol or cigarettes.

Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, admitted councils had been misusing RIPA.

He said: ‘Under Labour, councils seriously abused and over-used such snooping powers – for matters as trivial as spying on garden centres for selling pot plants; snooping on staff for using work showers or monitoring shops for unlicensed parrots.’

Mr Pickles said the Coalition had changed the law so that, from November, town halls will require the permission of a magistrate before they can launch snooping missions.

But campaigners and experts – including the Government’s own watchdog – have questioned how much difference the change will make. BBW director Nick Pickles said: ‘The current law is broken and before further surveillance powers are considered we need to fix the situation.

‘Despite nearly ten thousand investigations in three years, most resulted in no action being taken, reinforcing the need for a comprehensive review.’

He wants the public to have a right to know they have been spied upon. Currently, those who are found to be innocent never know they have been under surveillance.

Sir Paul Kennedy, the Government’s Interception of Communications Commissioner, said in his annual report: ‘I still remain unconvinced that the Government’s proposal to require all local authorities to obtain the approval of a magistrate before they can use these powers will have much impact other than to introduce unnecessary bureaucracy into the process.’

However, Mehboob Khan, of the Local Government Association, said that without snooping powers it would be harder for councils to tackle rogue traders.

The BBW report also laid bare the extent to which scores of other public bodies and quangos are spying on the public.

Job Centre Plus made use of RIPA 34,093 times between 2009 and 2012. On almost 18,000 occasions, people were put under surveillance to see if they were living as a couple.

Women are entitled to receive more state handouts if they are classed as living as a single mothers.

BBC REFUSES TO DISCLOSE HOW IT TRAPS LICENCE-FEE EVADERS

A string of public bodies including the BBC have refused to disclose how often they have used the spying powers.

The lack of transparency was yesterday described as ‘unacceptable’ by Communities Secretary Eric Pickles.

Hundreds of state bodies are entitled to use the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which was introduced by the last Labour government.

Normally, they reveal under the Freedom of Information Act how many surveillance operations they have carried out and why.

But the BBC, Ofsted, Royal Mail, the UK Border Agency, the Prison Service, Office of Fair Trading and UK Trade and Investment all refused requests from the Big Brother Watch campaign group.

They claimed ‘disclosure would, or would be likely to, prejudice a range of law enforcement functions and activities’.

In the BBC’s case, this is likely to involve operations to catch licence-fee evaders.

Unlike town halls, under a change in the law later this year, public bodies will continue to be allowed to snoop without approval from a magistrate.

Mr Pickles said: ‘For public bodies, funded by and working for the taxpayer, to be using RIPA yet so vociferously trying to avoid accountability is simply unacceptable.

From the BBC to Ofsted, the Royal Mail to UK Trade and Investment, public bodies should be transparent about why there are using these powers.

‘It is important that the public can have faith that surveillance powers are being used only in those situations where serious crimes are taking place and when there are no less intrusive alternative routes of investigation.’

A TV Licensing spokesman said the BBC used RIPA only to detect licence evaders ‘as a last resort’, adding: ‘The reason we do not release more details on how and when it is used is to ensure people without a valid TV licence don’t use this information to their advantage.’

[ed. It couldn't "detector equipment" because not one case has used this 'evidence' in court. These guys rely on compliance and fear, not superior skills or tech...]

Obama Voter Fraud

Obama Voter Fraud
21 August, 2012

"Obama’s Administration Is Currently Engaged In... A Massive Nationwide Campaign To Enable Voter Fraud." -David Kupelian, WND.com

Obama Vote Fraud He went on to say: "Obama needs one more voting bloc on his side... the shadow group comprised of non-citizens, illegal aliens, repeat-voters, multiple-state-voters, dead people, felons and others ineligible to vote but who will vote anyway – for Obama."


And there you have it. While everyone is distracted by the latest poll or the reports of mud-slinging and idiotic gaffs, Team Obama quietly burns the midnight-oil to get out the "non-vote." It's no secret. We know it... you know it... and they know it.

But the most pathetic and cutting irony of all is that the very folks whose careers actually hang in the balance over Team Obama's massive campaign to enable full-scale voter fraud are asleep at the wheel. They're just going to sit back and let Team Obama get away with it.

Well... we're not just going to let them get away with it. We refuse to just sit back and let it happen. The integrity of our electoral process is much too important for us to allow it to be abused. We need to make a stink... we need to get something going... and the time to do it is now.


--- George Soros Millions Paving The Way For Massive Voter Fraud.

Kupelian reiterates the point: "Obama’s administration is currently engaged in what can reasonably be called a massive nationwide campaign to enable voter fraud."

One thing is certain, the rabbit hole is much deeper than you may think.

It's no secret that Eric Holder's Department of Injustice is spending millions of your hard-earned tax dollars on witch-hunts against states that are desperately trying to prevent a repeat of the massive voter fraud that plagued the 2008 election.

But...

...did you know that George Soros millions, $10 million to be precise, actually laid the foundation for this current stab at enabling massive abuses of our electoral system?

Specifically, an outfit perched in the ivory towers of New York University's Law School, calling itself (rather ironically) the Brennan Center for Justice started the ball rolling by issuing a phony-baloney 64-page report to support the outlandish and totally fraudulent contention that common-sense voter ID laws "could make it significantly harder for more than five million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012."

But the so-called Brennan Center for Justice didn't simply supply phony studies to bolster the idiotic argument that requiring a person to show identification at the polls would disenfranchise "more than five million eligible voters," the Center also spoon-fed these bogus studies to its stooges and errand-boys in the Main Stream Media.

And, by the Center's own admission, it initiated endless complaints to Eric Holder's Injustice Department demanding that the DOJ block the states that had passed common-sense voter ID laws from implementing those laws.

And guess who funds the "independent" and "non-partisan" Brennan Center for Justice... none other than George Soros.

According to the Media Research Center: "Soros's Open Society Foundations gave the Brennan Center for Justice $7,466,000" and "New York University also received $2,819,540.... That's a total of $10,285,540."

If George Soros is willing to spend $10 Million dollars to "buy" election fraud, then shouldn't we, as patriotic Americans, be willing to at least RAISE A FUSS to preserve the integrity of our electoral process?

Use the button or the hyperlink below to send your urgent Blast Faxes to each and every one of the Members of the Republican Leadership of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. Or alternately, send your urgent Blast Faxes to each and every Republican Member of the United States Senate and the United States House of Representatives. That's more than 285 individual faxes from you to each and every one of these legislators.

--- Battleground States Are In The Crosshairs And We're Already Late To The Fight.

When the deceptively-named Brennan Center for Justice asked Eric Holder's Department of Injustice to block common-sense voter ID laws, Holder and his minions of the radical left went straight to work; and there are already pending court cases in a number of battleground states.

Make no mistake, these folks are playing hardball. As a matter of fact, when a judge in Pennsylvania ruled in favor of the commonwealth's voter ID law on Wednesday, it only took the opponents of fair-and-free elections 24 hours to file their appeal on Thursday?

It's a blitzkrieg. Holder and his minions are moving fast and they're moving on multiple fronts at the same time.

According to ABC News: "Lawyers are asking the state's highest court for a speedy review of the appeal, requesting that oral arguments be scheduled during the court's session in Philadelphia the week of Sept. 10," and ABC News also reports: "Another lawsuit is pending from the state's second-most populous county, Allegheny County."

Pennsylvania is not the only state in Eric Holder's crosshairs. Alabama, Kansas, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin are on Holder's radar and at least five of those states are battleground states.

The 2012 election is a very big apple and the tyrannical-left is planning to take as many bites as possible out of that apple in the next several months.

And they know that, in the end, they may only need to win only a few of these skirmishes to succeed.

Those of us who truly love our country are not powerless to stop them. You can take a stand. You can do something constructive to preserve our electoral process, or at least, you can mitigate the damage enough to deny those who wish to destroy our electoral process the satisfaction of victory.


--- And Let's Not Forget Ohio.

Not so amazingly, the self-proclaimed protectors of the "right" of everyone to have their vote counted, did a 180 degree flip when it came to our men and women in uniform who are registered voters in Ohio.

Engaging in a level of hypocrisy that can only be matched by Eric Holder's insistence that it's not necessary to protect voting privileges when armed New Black Panthers show up at a local polling place, Team Obama moved swiftly when it came to disenfranchising our men and women in uniform.

Presently, the State of Ohio cuts off early voting three days before the election, but grants an exemption to our men and women in uniform.

After all, a service member who is stationed outside the state simply can't stop by a city or county clerk's office two weeks before the election... and it's often difficult to put an absentee ballot in a mailbox when you're crawling around in a desert in the middle of Afghanistan.

But Team Obama didn't see it that way and filed suit.

Apparently, allowing the men and women who are presently putting their lives on the line for our country this small courtesy constitutes disenfranchisement of dead voters, people's pets, illegal aliens and all the other "shadow-voters" who will pull the level for Barack Obama.

In actuality, if you were to look for an honest-to-goodness disenfranchised voter, you'd need to look no further than a man or woman in uniform.

According to data released by the federal Election Assistance Commission, only 4.6 percent of military voters "were able to cast an absentee ballot that counted" in 2010. In 2006, the figure was only 5.5 percent.

Reasons for low absentee ballot counts from our men and women in uniform vary, but outright abuses of the system must not be discounted as a contributing factor. If you're thinking that no one would dare disrespect the vote of someone serving our country, here's something from WND.com that might move you to think again.

"Two weeks after Election Day 2000, Mark Herron, a Democrat lawyer in Florida, circulated a memo to members of his party throughout the state instructing them on how to disqualify overseas military ballots. The entire five-page memo, obtained and published by the Drudge Report, included tips on how to lodge protests against military ballots which were thought to heavily favor Republican George W. Bush."


But, Disenfranchising Our Men And Women In Uniform Is Not Team Obama's Primary Goal In Ohio.

However, Team Obama's primary purpose behind filing this action is not to disenfranchise our men and women in uniform (They already have ways of doing that apart from the suit).

No, the primary goal behind crying foul over this courtesy given to our men and women in uniform is to facilitate voter fraud in what may be the biggest prize among the battleground states.

They're not asking for ALL absentee voting to be cut-off three days before the election. They're demanding that EVERYONE be allowed to vote absentee right up to the time the polls open.

And why would that be a problem?

The Ohio Secretary of State summed it up when he told Bloomberg Businessweek: "The curb on early voting for a majority of Ohioans is needed to allow local election boards to synchronize the early balloting records with those at 9,800 polling places to prevent people from voting twice."

Early voting and absentee voting are a courtesy given to people who are either unable to vote at a polling place on election day, or anticipate that they may find it difficult to do so.

Only a lunatic or a person seeking to enable fraud would demand that early voting for everyone occur right up to the time the polls actually open.

Why? Because it's not only much easier to commit systemic and widespread voter fraud if you can confuse and overwhelm the system, it's also easier to determine how much fraud you may need to commit on Election Day if you can extend absentee voting up until the time the polls actually open.

If you're going to commit illegal activities, it's essential to pave the road to facilitate those illegal activities beforehand. As the Democrat Machine in Chicago used to say: "Vote Early And Vote Often."


--- At Least One Man Predicted What Would Happen Over Three Months Ago.

You read that right. James Simpson with Accuracy in Media actually outlined what was about to happen in Ohio all the way back on May 8, 2012.

No, Simpson is not a psychic. He's just a man who knows the playbook of the extreme left.

Here's a snippet of what Simpson said on the matter:

"Swamp election officials with overwhelming numbers of registrations at the last possible minute, a huge proportion of which are deliberately fraudulent, in order to create systematic chaos. This accomplishes numerous goals."

Makes verification of registrations difficult, given the small size and limited budgets of state and local election offices.

Provides multiple opportunities for vote fraud.

Throws the entire voting process into question, providing pretext for lawsuits where concessions may be obtained from election officials.


Simpson also says: "The Left seeks fundamental structural change to our entire form of government. In keeping with their amoral, means-justifies-ends philosophy, they will register any voters, dead or alive, legal or illegal, who will then vote as many times as possible, in order to establish a 'permanent progressive majority.'”

The left has its playbook. It's time for patriotic Americans to start running some plays of our own.


--- And Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get Any Worse: ACORN Is Back.

You had better believe it. The Community-Organizers of ACORN are back and this time around, they have a Community-Organizer-In-Chief sitting in the Oval Office.

Of course, the Lame Stream Media is trying to ignore this issue.

When reports are issued, the talking points issued by the Brennan Center for Justice are simply repeated and we're told that there's really nothing to worry about. Five million people are too stupid to obtain a photo-id but voter fraud isn't all that common.

Apparently the media believes that the American people have short memories and limited attention spans, because they didn't always sign that tune.

Here are just a handful of the blasts from the past:

CNN’s Drew Griffin reported: “ACORN's in trouble all across the country with its huge voter-registration drive. Actually, 1.3 million new voters registered according to ACORN. The problem is, are they really voters? Up in Lake County, Indiana, they're finding out they are not. Some 5,000 applications came in, all filled out by ACORN, and there they are. They went through the first 2,100 of them, every single one of them, fraudulent.”

But what Griffin reported was just the tip of the iceberg. The Associated Press claimed: "The Indiana secretary of state's office says it has found evidence of 'multiple criminal violations' in connection with voter registration applications in Lake County. Secretary of State Todd Rokita says... 30 percent of the applications included information that was obviously incorrect, incomplete or illegible. He calls it a 'fraud perpetrated on all of the people of Indiana.'"

Here's the lead from an article by UPI: "President George W. Bush has asked the U.S. Justice Department to investigate the status of 200,000 newly registered Ohio voters."

The Los Angeles Times got into the act as well: "A similar legal drama could play out in Colorado. Republicans there are charging that the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) is loading up the voter rolls with unqualified people. Democrats are asking a federal court to reinstate approximately 30,000 Colorado voters purged from registration lists by Secretary of State Mike Coffman, a Republican."

And even the mother-of-all-liberal publications, The New York Times, reported: "In the year ending Sept. 30, election officials in Nevada, for example, used the Social Security database more than 740,000 times to check voter files or registration applications and found more than 715,000 nonmatches, federal records show. Election officials in Georgia ran more than 1.9 million checks on voter files or voter registration applications and found more than 260,000 nonmatches."

Nothing to worry about? In a pig's eye.... The time to take action is now. The sooner we get something going, the better.


--- But Hold On Just A Minute. What's The Big Deal? ACORN Is Gone... Isn't It?

Didn't Republicans and Democrats both assure us back in 2008 that AFTER THE ELECTION they were going to pursue ACORN and that the fraudulent actions of ACORN would never leave a stain on this great nation again?

You didn't really believe them... did you?

Here's what Simpson says: "ACORN was supposedly disbanded in 2010 but resurrected itself under a slew of new names. Former ACORN President Bertha Lewis bragged that they created '18 bulletproof community-organizing Frankensteins' ... Most of these groups occupy former ACORN offices, many with the same staff."

And with one of their own in the White House, they're bolder than ever. Simpson and others believe that complimentary actions by Holder's Department of Injustice, George Soros' Brennan Center for Justice and ACORN are NO COINCIDENCE.

"Judicial Watch obtained several documents showing coordination between DOJ, Project Vote [an ACORN front-group] and the White House. In one email, Project Vote demanded action on NVRA cases. Less than a month later, DOJ sued Rhode Island for NVRA noncompliance. Similarly, DOJ’s Louisiana NVRA suit followed Project Vote’s by a few months. Project Vote is promoting prospective employees for DOJ’s Voting Rights section."

Simpson again:

"ACORN is directly connected to Obama and the Democratic Party. Counsel to The Advance Group, a strategic planning company, is Michael Gaspard, Patrick Gaspard’s brother. Patrick is currently the DNC’s executive director and President Obama’s former political director. He has worked for ACORN, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Working Families Party, a descendant of the ACORN-founded New Party which Barack Obama joined in 1996. Obama has bragged of 'fighting alongside ACORN on issues you care about my entire career.'”

"ACORN’s former deputy regional director, Amy Busefink was convicted in 2010 of vote fraud stemming from a 2008 Nevada case. Judicial Watch found that, 'while under criminal indictment in Nevada... [Busefink] managed an online program for Project Vote’s 2010 Colorado campaign, the ultimate goal of which is to allow people without a driver’s license or state identification to register to vote online.' Busefink is now national field director for Project Vote."

Back in 2008 we became aware of the fraud that was about to take place far too late. Desperately, we demanded that Congress come back into session and take action, but it was much too late.

We're not making that mistake again! Times have changed. Patriotic Americans have flexed their political muscles on far too many occasions since then. Our elected officials know now that the wrath of the American electorate is a potent force and that patriotic Americans are not easily fooled by dog-and-pony shows.

In short, they know you expect action. They know, with an election approaching, that you'll expect results, and we're taking action right now. Will you join us?

Racist woman rant in London (video) (contains strong language)