Obese Third Grader Taken From Mom, Placed in Foster Care

A Cleveland third grader who weighed more than 200 pounds was taken from his mother after officials reportedly said she did not do enough to help the boy, who suffered from a weight-related health issue, to lose weight.

“They are trying to make it seem like I am unfit, like I don’t love my child,” the boy’s mother, who was not identified, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “It’s a lifestyle change and they are trying to make it seem like I am not embracing that. It is very hard, but I am trying.”

Elaine Riddick was 13 years old when she got pregnant after being raped by a neighbor in Winfall, N.C., in 1967. The state ordered that immediately after giving birth, she should be sterilized. Doctors cut and tied off her fallopian tubes.

“I have to carry these scars with me. I have to live with this for the rest of my life,” she said.

A sexual health clinic in the San Fernando Valley - the Hollywood of pornography - has been denied a license to operate as a community clinic by California's Department of Public Health. The clinic, which is run by the Adult Industry Medical Healthcare Foundation (AIM), is used by straight-porn producers to test actors for sexually transmitted diseases before filming. Many onlookers say it has to do with an October 2010 incident in which a "crossover" porn performer - who participated in both gay and straight porn - tested positive for HIV at AIM.

An embarrassed Oregon country Chairman named Jeff Cogen apologized recently, and reminisced briefly about how he used to have a lemonade stand. He also said that the mighty foot of government would not trample upon a child’s lemonade stand again.

Dear God in Heaven, how did America come to this?

Here's a guy on Reason.com, a prominent libertarian publication, talking about how he prefers France's single payer system to what we have in the US. That is to say, perhaps the free market is the best scenario, but the alternative isn't necessarily near the disaster we claim it to be. So far, the discussion among libertarians seems to be that European medicine is a disaster, but I've heard plenty of people claim the contrary. Let's give this a fair discussion!