"...The pharmaceutical company said it would also plead guilty to a federal criminal charge concerning a payment to a managed care customer. Federal law requires drugmakers to give their lowest prices to Medicaid, but a group of whistle-blowers accused the company of giving some private health care providers better deals on its drugs by offering them under-the-table "patient education" grants."

Modern Drunkard Magazine advises us that it is important not to have too many rules:

It’s A Party, Not a Penitentiary

Along with inviting a large group of people into your home comes the natural proclivity to lay down some rules. Resist this urge with all your might. Forcing your guests to use coasters will make tomorrow’s clean-up slightly easier, but it may also trigger an Uptight Principle/Juvenile Delinquent vibe. A party is about extending freedoms, not curtailing them. Do not enforce any rules that are not enforced in a bar. Do not guilt your friends off a perfectly good bar stool so you may lord over them.

But Club 216 isn't the only place with a lot of rules in Charlottesville. Check out this sign posted on the door at Rapture, a decent restaurant that has a healthy bar scene. It's pretty clear that they are aimed at the local black community, and they are so vague that they could easily be selectively enforced against the unwanted.

[...]

It is sad to consider how much first-rate courage must be devoted in this world to struggling out of the toils of sheer pettiness. The Saudi women who first drove automobiles risked and suffered penalties, overcame inhibitions, and shattered norms, heroic in their defiance of an absurd convention. We have our own Rosa Parks. That such great courage should have been required to challenge such petty barriers is a demonstration of the power of social consensus. How many minor coercions are required to sustain similar customs and usages? How aware are any of us, absent direct challenge, of how we also deal in trivial coercion?

[...]

Cultures commonly employ the methods of cults, making their members subject and dependent. And nations at intervals march lockstep to enormity and disaster. A successful autocracy rests on the universal failure of individual courage. In a democracy, abdications of conscience are never trivial. The demoralize politics, debilitate candor, and disrupt thought.

My sex shop neighbors have this nice Bush-Cheney Dog Sign.

And Full Contact Bowling

Use a fake ID and the Century Council will get you!

Freedom Market

1901 New Hampshire Ave. NW

Closed July 13 for unclean food contact surfaces and equipment and no hot water. Reopened July 14.

Washington Hilton Hotel

1919 Connecticut Ave. NW

The Gazebo closed July 12 for unclean food contact surfaces and equipment, inadequate basic sanitation and evidence of rodents. Reopened July 15.

"In many markets that would represent a significant cut. A recent study from J.P. Morgan showed that some shows, particularly news talk shows during the morning and afternoon consumer drives, cram in as much as 22 minutes of advertising an hour. Radio averages 15 minutes of advertising an hour, compared with 12.5 minutes for television."

The Washington Post quotes Clear Channel saying that fewer ads means an improvement in "the value of radio to listeners and advertisers." Fair enough. But check out this quote--John Hogan, Chief Executive of the Radio Unit said, "Clutter is a major issue in our industry, and our decision to limit the amount of commercial time and length of breaks while reducing promotional interruptions will benefit listeners, advertisers and the industry as a whole," he said.

Being responsible for inflating circulation numbers and defrauding your advertisers causes the publisher to be fired.

"Cosmetics may be made from a variety of cattle-derived ingredients. These ingredients include: Albumin, brain extract, brain lipid, cholesterol, fibronectin, sphingolipids, collagen, keratin, and tallow, and tallow derivatives. Tallow derivatives, particularly fatty acids and glycerin, are the predominant cattle ingredient used by the cosmetic industry. Cattle-derived ingredients serve many functions and may be used as skin conditioning agents, emollients, binders, and hair and nail conditioning agents."

"There are several routes through which cosmetics contaminated with the agent that causes BSE could transmit disease to humans. Transmission of the BSE agent to humans through intact skin is not likely; however, cosmetics may be ingested or applied to cut or abraded skin or to mucosal tissues, particularly in the eye, which could provide direct routes for infection."

In a separate notice, FDA is prohibiting the use of certain cow "materials" in food, cosmetics, and supplements: "Prohibited cattle materials include specified risk materials, small intestine of all cattle, material from nonambulatory disabled cattle, material from cattle not inspected and passed for human consumption, and mechanically separated (MS)(Beef). Specified risk materials are the brain, skull, eyes, trigeminal ganglia, spinal cord, vertebral column (excluding the vertebrae of the tail, the transverse processes of the thoracic and lumbar vertebrae, and the wings of the sacrum), and dorsal root ganglia of cattle 30 months and older; and the tonsils and distal ileum of the small intestine of all cattle. Prohibited cattle materials do not include tallow that contains no more than 0.15 percent hexane-insoluble impurities and tallow derivatives."

And the government wants your suggestions about stopping mad cow. Just send email to fdadockets@oc.fda.gov and include Docket No. 2004N-0264 and Regulatory Identification No. (RIN) 0910-AF46 in the subject line of your e-mail message.

1. Written comments on the proposed plan for revising the food
guide's graphic presentation and consumer education materials can be
submitted and must be received by the Agency on or before August 27,
2004.

2. A public meeting for stakeholder input will be held on August
19, 2004, from 9 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Requests to participate in this
meeting must be received by 5 p.m. e.d.t. on August 12, 2004.

ADDRESSES: 1. Submit written comments to Food Guide Pyramid
Reassessment Team, USDA Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion, 3101
Park Center Drive, Room 1034, Alexandria, VA 22302. No electronic
written comments will be accepted or considered.

2. The public meeting for stakeholder input will be held at the
Jefferson Auditorium, USDA South Building, 1400 Independence Avenue
SW., Washington, DC. Submit requests to participate to respond@cnpp.usda.gov.

Three Newspapers Are Sanctioned

By ELENA CHERNEY
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
July 13, 2004

"TORONTO -- Seeking to strengthen advertisers' confidence in newspaper-circulation figures, the industry group that audits North American newspaper sales took the unusual move of placing sanctions against three U.S. newspapers for "fraudulent" practices.

"The board of the Audit Bureau of Circulations, Schaumburg, Ill., suspended the Chicago Sun-Times, Newsday and Hoy newspapers from ABC's closely watched, semiannual FAS-FAX report, which gives advertisers and media buyers a preliminary look at circulation figures.

"In addition to the one-year suspension, the newspapers, all of which reported inflated circulation numbers to ABC, will have their circulation numbers audited every six months instead of annually for the next two years.

"The Committee on the Present Danger -- an off-and-on organization of anti-Soviet policymakers and strategists founded in the early 1950s and revitalized in 1976 -- is re-forming for a third incarnation. This time, the main target is terrorism, not Moscow-based communism.

"The bipartisan group, co-chaired by Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), held a mid-June conference on the war in Iraq, which drew little attention beyond The Hill newspaper. Among the group's tenets is support for preemptive strikes against nations with ties to terrorist organizations.

[...]

It's time for the masses to rebel, to file complaints, to reject the culture of non-help that too many companies embrace. Our call is not important to them. And for that infuriating attitude, they should pay a price.

Your July 4 editorial "Back and Fourth, Safely" equated drunken-driving highway deaths and "alcohol-related" highway deaths. They are not the same at all. The misnamed "alcohol-related" term has nothing to do with drunken driving. All it means is that those involved in the accident had some level of alcohol in their system. It does not mean that they were legally impaired or at fault. The victim could have been sitting at a bus stop after having one beer and been crushed by a careless though sober driver.

Real drunken-driving deaths are tragic, but those numbers are much lower than the silly "alcohol-related" statistics bandied about by those seeking to scare the public, raise money and make drinking all but impossible. In addition, these pied pipers are behind efforts at criminalizing non-impaired drivers and supporting Soviet-style checkpoints that are a gross waste of taxpayer money as well as an infringement on our basic rights as Americans.

-- Michael McGuire

MADD really is out of control. If you look at their legislative priorities, they are pushing all sorts of laws that look like neo-prohibition efforts rather than anti-drunk driving initiatives. They want to ban happy hour, to impose liability on private individuals who have parties, and to require keg registration.

" Admissions office staffers and high school guidance counselors say parental over-involvement comes in many forms. Some parents refuse to let their children apply to schools that don't rank high enough on the U.S. News & World Report list of prominent colleges. Some rewrite application essays. Some intrude on even the simplest parts of the process.

"I am always shocked when a parent and student come in and I'll ask the student their name, and the parent will literally jump in front of their child to answer for them," said Georgia Summers, a Georgetown University senior working this summer at the school's undergraduate admissions office. "I've even had parents fill out the basic info sheet on behalf of their child."

[...]

"Nate Pancost, 19, who took a year off before enrolling as a math major at U-Md. in the fall, said he liked his parents' hands-off approach, compared with what he has seen among other Montgomery Blair High School families.

"Pushy does not even begin to describe some of the parents of my friends at school," he said. "Ultimately I feel like it works against the kids, because once Mommy and Daddy aren't there pushing, they stop working, and there goes a $40,000-a-year education."

MOYERS: Have our expectations (of happiness) changed over the century?

Particularly living in this constant siege of advertising that accelerates, accentuates and exacerbates our longing for everything we see, wanting all of it that's out there. What about that? Have expectations changed?

BOK: It does seem that peoples expectations especially when it has to do with income or with objects such as houses, for instance, or automobiles or something like that. Yes, that they change depending on what other people have. And again many philosophers, many religious theorists... other people have argued, yeah, but you don't have to go that way, there are other ways of being happy.

MOYERS: Someone has said that the unhappiness a person feels is often directly in relationship to his imagined or his exaggerated understanding of other people's happiness. That you're so happy, something must be wrong with me.

BOK: There must be something wrong with me.

MOYERS: Yeah.

BOK: People say that. On the other hand, people also say that especially in America there is this attitude, "Oh, yes, we're all so happy. We all have to be so happy." People use the word "happy" in different ways in America.

Even, for instance, when they say, "I'll be happy to do such-and-such." You wouldn't use the word "happy" in French or German or some other language if you just say, "Yeah, I'd be glad to do whatever it is you ask me." So, that's the notion in America that it is so important to be happy and for everybody else to notice that you are so happy can, indeed, then make a number of people say, "Well, what's the matter with me if I am not that happy?"

[...]

MOYERS: It is so hard to weigh our own desire to achieve happiness against the misery, the contrast between misery and opulence. That is so evident today.

BOK: Yes. And opulence of course many psychologists are now finding, Economists as well. And I think you could read about it in the Bible. Opulence was never the thing that actually makes people happy. And if you go back to the Declaration of Independence the pursuit of happiness was never about dying with the most toys for instance as the expression goes. Meaning accumulating, accumulating.

MOYERS: What do you think the founders meant when they talked about the pursuit of happiness?

BOK: From what I understand, what they meant was something very different from the very individual pursuit that people now often talk about. They really had in mind... the society that they were shaping, of course, the society pursuing happiness for the entire community. And I think that they might come back to us and say, "Look, this is what still is so important."

"The gun has sort of been removed from the head and put back in the holster," said Hugh Keogh, president and chief executive of the Virginia Chamber of Commerce. "There's no panic. To affect the level of confidence, we may still need a special session."

(Senate Majority Leader) Stosch added: "We ought to schedule it as soon as we can. The business community deserves to have this resolved."

"I am pleased that Judge Markow's injunction allows everyone to take a deep breath," (Governor) Warner said. "We will continue to work with leaders of the legislature and others on this issue."

Now, how much harm would there really be if some of these laws were retained? For instance, Virginia code 40.1-28.1 requires employers to give "at least 24 consecutive hours of rest in each calendar week." Other portions of the code require employers to give their nonmanagerial employees the right "to choose Sunday as a day of rest..." or Saturday as long as the employee "actually refrains from all secular business and labor on that day." There are exceptions for emergency situations.

How far we haven't come. There used to be promises of a 35 or even 30 hour work week. American workers are far more productive than ever, and we can't even give people one day off a week.

[…]

A few minutes later, police said, the man again hopped behind the wheel and motored off.

So far, so good. But as officers trailed several blocks behind, the tracking signal died.

The car and suspect vanished just over the Maryland line.

It took police two days to find the car in Prince George's County. An $80 videocassette recorder in the car's trunk, which was used to record the sting operation, was missing, police said.

The "New Big Wong Restaurant" on H St. NW was closed for "unclean food contact surfaces and equipment, improper temperatures of potentially hazardous foods, refrigerated equipment incapable of keeping proper temperature, inadequate basic sanitation and evidence of rodents."

And in the good old "Free State," Le Petit Bistro in Montgomery Mall was closed for a "fly infestation and operating without hot water." Fly infestation? What does that mean? Sounds scary.