Jeff Stier

Democrats’ grand plan for this election year doesn’t seem to include free speech. The group that drafted the Democratic Party platform recently called for the Justice Department to prosecute energy companies that don’t see eye-to-eye with Democrats on climate change.

I was huddled in a Connecticut legislative hearing room on a chilly spring morning three years ago, awaiting my chance to testify about a proposal to over-regulate e-cigarettes.

Using a new methodology that seems to have been designed to produce exactly the conclusion it did, the EPA has now found that the nation’s methane emissions have been dramatically higher in recent years than previously thought. And for the EPA, this is a story with a villain: In a major departure from earlier studies, this year’s report claims the oil and gas industry is the nation’s chief methane culprit.

First Lady Michelle Obama touted the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 as a way to make school meals more nutritious and accessible to reduce childhood obesity rates. But after more than five years, the program has few positive results: a recent study shows childhood obesity levels haven’t declined (and in some demographics, have increased), food waste at schools is way up, and kids from families that don’t need subsidized meals still get them, courtesy of federal taxpayers.

England’s Royal College of Physicians (RCP) recommended on April 28th that doctors “promote the use of e-cigarettes, NRT and other non-tobacco nicotine products as widely as possible as a substitute for smoking in the UK.”

Lost in the noise of political posturing over health care, there’s one widely accepted principle: the importance of the doctor-patient relationship in medical decision-making. Yet we’ve all heard stories where insurance companies won’t fully cover a drug that both the doctor and patient believe is the right medical choice. Why not? It’s pretty simple: the insurance companies don’t want to pay.

Why would a public research university boasting a top-100 geology program deliberately hide its work? Because, as lead researcher Amy Townsend-Small explained, “our funders, the groups that had given us funding in the past, were a little disappointed in our results. They feel that fracking is scary and so they were hoping our data could point to a reason to ban it.”

Controversy continues to rage over whether foods from plants modified with molecular genetic engineering techniques should have to be labeled as such. The battle has been fought for years in the media, Congress, state legislatures, federal courts and through referendum issues. Most mandatory-labeling proposals have failed, and none is currently in effect–for good reason: They fail every test–scientific, economic, legal and common sense. That hasn’t prevented the more ignorant and ideological legislators from continuing to try.

Climate activists are ratcheting up their attempt to blame global warming on food production and consumption, targeting the meat industry in particular. As the public tunes out stale climate-change rhetoric, climatarians hope to turn attention away from your SUV and onto your dinner plate.

Climate change activists are disappointed with the Paris agreement because, in the words of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, it doesn’t go “far enough.”

It’s the fourth quarter with under two minutes remaining in the activist-driven campaign against a widely-used plasticizer, diisononyl phthalates (DINP). Yet despite the chemical’s overwhelming and well-established safety record, the outcome of a final regulatory determination by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) remains in doubt.

The Congressional Budget Office just estimated that the federal budget deficit would reach $425 billion this year. That’s an additional $1,300 of debt for each American man, woman and child.

Over the past 30 years, the Dietary Guidelines for Americans have become as bloated as the nation’s collective waistline, serving up a thick brew of revolving-door nutrition advice, confusing messages, and perhaps even politically influenced eating recommendations.