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The White House has opted not to renovate
its bowling alley after all—a tell-tale sign of the
moral decay of our once great nation.

The bowling alley, which is reportedly nigh unusable
(unbowlable?) due to its shamefully “chipped lanes and worn-out
shoes,” has not been fixed up in 15 years. Post-9/11 America has
never had a respectable White House bowling alley. Now it never
will.

Media scrutiny (read: sabotage) of the proposal to spend money
on a fancier bowling alley—at a time when government purports to be
cutting back—ultimately doomed the renovation, according to

The Washington Times.

Without a better alley, how will President Obama improve his
abysmal bowling game? Answer: he won’t. Woe to the American
people.

Some
women and men shouldn’t be trusted with a loaded gun in public, and
some shouldn’t be allowed to board a plane. But the only reliable
way to separate the worthy from the unworthy is in a public forum
where people can learn why they’re excluded and offer
rebuttals.

Providing this opportunity is crucial for individuals who
otherwise might suffer unwarranted deprivation of rights that are
available to others. But it’s also important for the rest of us, if
only to reveal whether policies adopted by our elected officials
are being carried out with even a minimum level of fairness and
competence, writes Steve Chapman.

The alternative is to expect people given power to use it wisely
in the absence of public accountability, writes Chapman. It assumes
what Orwell’s Ministry of Truth proclaimed: Ignorance is
strength.

View this article.

I’m not sure if the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) is especially good at empire-building or it’s just that I pay
more attention to this federal agency than others. But the FDA
seems to spend a significant amount of its time trying to extend
its reach.

Recently it has taken a manifest destiny mindset toward the
digital landscape, attempting to broaden its regulatory
jurisdiction to include Twitter, Facebook, message boards, blog
comments, and more. Here are three absurd (and possibly
unconstitutional) ways that the FDA is now policing food, drug, and
other companies online. 

Facebook Micromanagement

On June 27, the
FDA sent a warning later to Zarbee’s Naturals, a line of cough
syrup, sleep aids, and seasonal-allergy remedies. Zarbee’s products
rely on active ingredients such as buckwheat honey, Butterbur leaf
extract, and the sleep hormone melatonin. The FDA scolded Zarbee’s
for saying its products treat conditions such as coughs and
congestion, as treating these conditions would “cause the products
to be drugs.” That’s right—if your all-natural product does the
same thing as a drug, that makes the product a “new drug” to the
FDA. 

“New drugs may not be legally introduced or delivered for
introduction into interstate commerce without prior approval from
the FDA,” the agency warned Zarbee’s. FDA drug approval is a
lengthy and expensive process, of course (and no real guarantee of
a drug’s safety at all). 

As examples of Zarbee’s illegal promotion of its “new drugs”,
the FDA cited several Facebook posts from the company as well as
personal testimonials that customers had posted to its Facebook
page. Zarbee’s “liking” these comments was considered “endorsing or
promoting” them. From the FDA warning letter: 

Zarbees “liked” the following comment made on February 4, 2014:
“…I received your…Zarbee’s Naturals Children’s Sleep Product. I
have a daughter…born with cerebral palsy and she suffers from
Complex Regional Pain Syndrome… [s]he took the samples you sent and
slept through the night…best sleep she has had in years…”

On February 4, 2014: Zarbees commented “Mary, Thank you for
writing this!!! We love to hear that we have helped people…” on
this claim.

Zarbees “liked” the following comment made on January 7, 2014:
“I’ve been battling either bronchitis or pneumonia for the last 18
days and have tried everything…your Children’s Cough Syrup and
mucus relief got rid of…my hoarsness [sic]…[m]y throat and chest
are beginning to feel so much better…”

Zarbees “liked” the following comment made on October 30, 2013:
“Love Zarbee’s this is the only medicine we use for our 2 year old.
Colds and congestion clear up in 2 days.”

Zarbees “liked” the following comment made on October 15, 2013:
“Received the sample for allergy relief and my husband had a
terrible problem with allergies…he was very impressed on how well
it worked for him…”

Good thing the FDA is going to step in and pull this dangerous
product off the market until it gets a permission slip, or at least
stop Zarbee’s from making honest, accurate, non-FDA approved
claims. These customers may think Zarbee’s cold remedies
are working for them and their children, but clearly that’s only
because they’ve been duped by the company’s manipulative
advertising (like this February tweet the FDA cites: “Try @Zarbees
#naturalremedies for Cold and Cough Season”).

The FDA must step in to break this false consciousness brought
on by lived experience and not an external authority—for the
ignorant masses’ own good!, obviously. Coughs and colds, after all,
“are not amenable to self-diagnosis and treatment by individuals
who are not medical practitioners,” the FDA states. “Therefore,
adequate directions for use cannot be written so that a layperson
can use these drugs safely for their intended purposes.” 

(h/t Tristyn
Bloom/The
Daily Caller)

Tweet Police 

Zarbee’s Naturals was also cited for several tweets. It’s not
the first company to come under FDA scrutiny on Twitter, and it
certainly won’t be the last:
Draft guidelines released by the agency in June instructed drug
companies that
any pro-pharmaceutical tweet would also have to list product
risks and side effects.

Because Twitter users only have 140 characters to convey a
message, this would effectively make tweeting about prescription
drugs (and perhaps honey) illegal. And this may be what the FDA
intends: “If a firm concludes that adequate benefit and risk
information, as well as other required information, cannot all be
communicated within the same character-space-limited communication,
then the firm should reconsider using that platform for the
intended promotional message,” the agency states.

If the FDA’s attitude toward Facebook liking is any indication,
companies may also want to reconsider what they retweet and
“favorite” on Twitter, too, lest that be considered a form of
criminal endorsement. (It’s a good thing the FDA doesn’t regulate
beer—Tecate recently favorited an Instagram photo of my kitten
getting curious about a can, thereby tacitly endorsing my
unscientifically-tested caption, “even kittens love
Tecate”.) 

“It’s been very challenging for companies to use Twitter in a
way that the FDA prescribes,” Jeffrey K. Francer, vice president
and senior counsel with Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers
of America (PhRMA),
told biotechnology publication GEN.

“If the FDA is going to require the same type of fine print that
you see in a magazine ad to be in a tweet, then the FDA is
essentially taking that tool away from patients who may want to
hear from companies as well as healthcare professionals.”

Francer said PhRMA has proposed in the past that companies be
allowed to use graphic symbols to indicate risk, with a short
statement about what the drug does, and a link to more detailed
risk-benefit information. Such character-limited messages would be
along the lines of the FDA’s (new drug approval tweets), which
include links with the details about risks and benefits rather than
embedding info within the tweets.

“The companies want to provide information that’s useful to
physicians and that’s useful to patients, and they should be able
to use all the different media that the government uses itself,”
Francer said. “I assume that the FDA believes that its own tweets
are truthful and not misleading. If they believe that, then why
couldn’t a company use Twitter in the same way that the FDA is
using Twitter?”

Francer said it raised First Amendment concerns that the
government is restricting the speech of a particular group while
engaging in that same type of speech itself. In a January 2014
letter to the FDA, PhRMA said the agency’s proposed rules for drug
companies on social media, podcasts, and blogs “could chill
truthful and nonmisleading communication protected by the First
Amendment.” 

And as we see with Zarbee’s Naturals, it’s not just
pharmaceutical companies who should worry about FDA oversight on
social media. Any company marketing a remedy for something that
could also be treated with drugs is apparently on notice. 

All Your Social Medias Are Belong to Us

Under the FDA’s new draft guidelines, pharmaceutical companies
must submit monthly reports to the agency listing “all
non-restricted sites for which it is responsible or in which it
remains an active participant” if these sites involve real-time
communications. In other words, every company must keep the FDA
abreast of any and all of its social media accounts, and resubmit
this information on an ongoing basis.

“Firms need not submit screenshots or other visual
representations of the actual interactive or real-time
communications with the monthly updates” if the site is public, the
FDA oh-so-generously offers. Just let it know where you are online
and the FDA is more than capable of monitoring your every comment
and like, thanks. 

Brittany La Couture, a health policy analyst with the American
Action Forum, nicely sums up the damage these
kind of FDA policies can do. “With each additional regulation
limiting free speech in marketing, producers are under more
pressure to refrain from any advertising at all for fear of harsh
repercussions for inadvertently crossing an invisible line,” writes
La Couture. “When drug and device manufacturers are afraid to use
the latest and most popular technologies to market their products,
companies and patients both pay the price.” 

Here are the relevant FDA draft guidelines: 

January 2014: Fulfilling
Regulatory Requirements for Postmarketing Submissions of
Interactive Promotional Media for Prescription Human and Animal
Drugs and Biologics

June 2014: Internet/Social
Media Platforms with Character Space Limitations— Presenting Risk
and Benefit Information for Prescription Drugs and Medical
Devices

June 2014:
Internet/Social Media Platforms: Correcting Independent Third-Party
Misinformation About Prescription Drugs and Medical
Devices

Tennessee has just made it legal
to break into a
car if you see a child in there and have a “good
faith belief” that he or she will suffer harm if not immediately
removed.

In other words, feel free to get out the crowbar.

This would make sense if we had a realistic sense of when kids
are truly in danger. But we don’t. We have been told by the media
and the government that kids are in danger absolutely any time they
are waiting in the car, even for a single minute. Look
at this
story, for instance: a mom found guilty of neglect for not
hauling her sleeping kid into the store with her on a 10 minute
errand. Or this
one—a four-minute errand. Or this
one, a mom berated by a “Good Samaritan” for a
20-second errand.

I hear from moms who got yelled at for returning their shopping
cart to the corral after first getting their kids into their car
seats, as if this put their kids in mortal peril.

We have become so hyper sensitized to the danger of kids waiting
in cars, we can no longer see the difference between a child
waiting while mom picks up the pizza and a child locked in the car
all day while mom plays the slots.

But there is a big difference. I can find no instance of a child
dying in a car who was there for the duration of a short
errand. Of
the 30-40 kids who died in parked cars, 86 percent perished
because their parents forgot they were in the car and didn’t come
back for hours, or the children got into the car unbeknownst to the
parents and then couldn’t get out. (That wouldn’t be the case in a
parking lot.)

The Tennessee law
requires that before a would-be Samaritan crowbars the car they try
actually opening the door, and also call 911. But that immediately
involves the police in a parenting decision. A far better course of
action would be to simply stand by the car for a while and wait for
the parent to return.

Smashing the window or prying open the door without waiting a
while for the parent is extreme. It’s acting as if every time a
child is waiting in a car he’s in danger, when—thank
goodness—that’s not the case. We know that because most of us often
waited in the car as kids.

That practice simply was not labeled negligence back then,
because it wasn’t and still isn’t. It’s a decision that decent,
rational parents who love their kids make every day.

Sometimes it makes sense to bring a child in while running
an errand, sometimes it doesn’t. Parents should be allowed to make
that choice without the law breathing down their necks.

Let’s not dive back into the whole Hobby Lobby
contretemps, but consider for a moment that some folks over at
Talking Points Memo (TPM) are horrified to discover that
religious beliefs are “irrational.” Really? Readers are treated to
this deep insight from the article, “Science
Was Irrelevant in Hobby Lobby and That’s Congress’s Fault“:

“I think RFRA [Religious Freedom Restoration Act] was a very
unfortunate law because it enshrined a legal shield for [religious]
people even if they had irrational beliefs,” said Sara Rosenbaum, a
professor of health policy at George Washington University who
co-authored
an amicus brief in favor of the birth control mandate. “So if
the court feels it’s dealing with someone who’s sincere, I don’t
think anybody’s going to subject that person’s belief to a
scientific test.”…

“The whole purpose of RFRA is to honor people’s religious
beliefs and so science steps out of the doorstep in RFRA,”
Rosenbaum said. “The wonderful thing about being religious is you
can believe all sorts of irrational things.”

Who would have thought it? And Professor Rosenbaum teaches at a
university run by a church that thinks that using regular
contraception (pills and condoms) is
sinful.

The TPM article cites a chart from The New Republic
showing that emergency contraceptive pills are not abortifacients
as the owners of Hobby Lobby believe. As it happens, the New
England Journal of Medicine in a 2012 editorial
excoriating the Obama Administration for not allowing emergency
contraceptive pills to be sold over the counter in pharmacies
noted:

The best available evidence indicates that it prevents pregnancy
largely by delaying or preventing ovulation, but prevention of
implantation cannot be ruled out. Levonorgestrel does not cause
abortion; it does not terminate an established pregnancy (an
implanted conceptus) and should not be confused with the
abortifacient mifepristone (RU-486).

As it happens, for some religiously irrational folks prevention
of the implantation of a fertilized egg would count as an
abortion.

Possibly the greatest achievement of the Enlightenment was the
principle of tolerance: I may or may not have access to
transcendent truth, but I am damned sure that you don’t. So let’s
leave each other alone in our irrational beliefs about the
transcendent.

Since between 60 and 80 percent of embryos are never born due to
natural causes, let’s reprise my column, “Is
Heaven Chiefly Populated with the Souls of Embryos?“

Disclosure: For what it’s worth I have been an out-atheist
since my teens.

It appears as though the
federal Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA)
may be dead again. This legislation—outlawing employment
discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender
identity—has died
more times than the average comic book character.

The last time it died, it was amid a fight over whether to
include gender identity to protect transgender workers. Supporters
and sponsors of ENDA agreed to strip out the transgender
protections to increase the likelihood of legislation passing. This
caused a rift among civil liberties and gay activists groups who
balked at the omission. Despite the “protection for some is better
than protection for none” argument and increasing support from
Republicans, it died in 2011.

Introduced again in 2013 in the House by Rep. Jared Polis
(D-Colo.) and the Senate by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), ENDA made
it farther along the road to passage than it ever has. It passed
the Senate in April of last year, even drawing support from the
likes of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

But now it looks like it’s going to die again, not at the hands
of Republicans or religious conservatives, but at the hands of gay
and civil rights groups. ENDA excludes religious organizations and
non-profits from its rules and in the wake of the Hobby Lobby
ruling, groups are now withdrawing their support for the law, the
National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the American Civil
Liberties Union among them. The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is
still supporting ENDA, just as they did during the kerfuffle over
whether to included transgender workers. They kind of have to—ENDA
is their baby, essentially. Despite having their logo plastered all
over the gay marriage debate, they’ve always been really more about
fighting employment discrimination.

The Supreme Court decision on Hobby Lobby has been tossed out
as an explanation or excuse, but that logic doesn’t exactly follow.
The majority ruling, based on the Religious Freedom Restoration
Act, argued that the government failed to pursue the “least
restrictive means” to achieve its aims of providing access to
contraceptives by requiring employers pay for them. It doesn’t seem
at all likely that, presuming the government could argue it has a
compelling interest in stopping employment discrimination, an
anti-discrimination law wouldn’t pass a “least restrictive means”
test.

Chris Geidner at BuzzFeed (before you dismiss the
source, Geidner does significant amount of reporting on legal
issues affecting the gay community) suggests that this sudden shift
isn’t an implosion, but rather a belief that shifting attitudes
toward gays, lesbians and transgender people mean
even stronger legislation could be introduced and passed:

The real question is what the bill will look like when
introduced in the next session of Congress. Will it only focus on
employment, or will it include additional areas like public
accommodations, housing, education, or lending? And, regarding
today’s debate, will it include a streamlined religious exemption
or will it continue building on this year’s exemption? (None of
this even gets into Republicans’ support for the bill, and whether
their support — from key congressional supporters like Sens. Susan
Collins and Mark Kirk and Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen to the American
Unity Fund and Log Cabin Republicans — is contingent upon the
religious exemption remaining as is.)

Even some of the other organizations still supporting today’s
ENDA, like the National Center for Transgender Equality and Freedom
to Work, signaled to BuzzFeed that next year could be different
with regard to the religious exemption.

While Freedom to Work’s Tico Almeida continues to support ENDA,
as passed by the Senate, he said of the group’s work to lobby for
ENDA this year that “increasing the numbers of co-sponsors of ENDA
this year increases the chances of a stronger bill getting
introduced next year.” When asked if getting “a stronger bill”
included seeking a more narrow religious exemption, Almeida said
that it did.

Support for antidiscrimination laws that protect gays and
lesbians
is high, according to polls, and actually has been for years.
The opponents tend to be the religious for religious reasons and us
libertarians for thinking that “freedom of association” actually
still applies even when we think the outcomes are
reprehensible.