Lux Americana

Earlier this week Larry Pope, president and chief executive of Smithfield Foods of Virginia, insisted that “we are very comfortable that our pork is safe,” and that “we know of no pigs that are sick, no people on those farms that are sick and no people in our plants [who are sick],” and the U.S. [...]

This week in his “online town hall,” President Obama laughed off one of the questions that has persistently been among the most popular throughout the “Open For Questions” and online town hall voting processes – should we legalize marijuana in order to stimulate the economy?
It’s tempting to believe that the president has been consistently giving [...]

According to data from the National Center for Health Statistics, the number of babies born in the United States in 2007 (more than 4.3 million) surpassed even the height of the “baby boom” in the late 1950’s.  Like most industrialized nations, the United States worries about a possible population crisis as a result of low [...]

Is America winning the war on drugs, or are we doomed to continue to spend tens of billions of dollars a year fighting an uphill battle?
President Richard Nixon announced the “War on Drugs” in 1969, coining a phrase likely inspired by LBJ’s “War on Poverty,”  and we’ve been locked in a bloody and expensive fight [...]

Are patients being forced to give up their right to free speech in order to receive health care?
The AP is reporting that some doctors are now asking their patients to sign what is essentially a gag order, agreeing not to post negative reviews or comments about their performance on consumer rating websites.
The North Carolina neurosurgeon, [...]