Where do these geniuses come from? Seriously? First off, the shooter in Tucson never used threatening symbols or language against Judge Roll or Congresswoman Giffords. Does Robert Brady think assassins are going to hold up large signs that depict acts of violence minutes before they strike? "Here, read my symbols before I shoot you!" It's absurd.

Secondly, what on earth are "threatening symbols?" If I hold up a sign that depicts the U.S. Capitol building collapsing under the weight of our national debt, for example, couldn't that be perceived by some member of Congress as a "threatening" image? How about a STOP sign? Couldn't some member of Congress say a STOP sign seems threatening to them? Anything can be perceived as threatening, depending on the person perceiving it.

And what about threatening language? If I say that the U.S. Justice Department should march into the FDA with guns drawn and make armed arrests of the criminals running the FDA, couldn't FDA officials claim such a statement is "inciting violence" or makes them feel "threatened?" (But remember, the FDA routinely uses violence against the People in the case of armed FDA raids of vitamin companies.) (http://www.naturalnews.com/021791.html)

The idiocy of lawmakers who attempt to strip away our First Amendment rights in knee-jerk reactions never ceases to amaze me. What they're aiming for here is the ability to criminalize all criticism of the government. That's their pretext for imprisoning anyone who dares to point out the corruption and criminal behavior taking place on a daily basis inside the various branches and departments of the federal government (across all political parties, by the way, as even the Bush Administration was deeply corrupted with criminal behavior).

Rather than trying to run an honest government Of the People, By the People and For the People, it's a whole lot easier to just arrest dissenters and throw them in the gulag as if we all lived under Communist China rule.

What has become increasingly clear over the weekend of the Giffords shooting is that a few lawmakers on the left are all too quick to exploit this tragedy for their own political aims which include, of course, silencing all critics of the government as well as criminalizing all firearms ownership by private citizens.

A few radical police state lawmakers in Congress now seem determined to try to effectively banish the Bill of Rights in America by criminalizing any speech that's critical of the federal government. It's all part of an agenda to erode the freedoms of the American people: The TSA routinely violates the Fourth Amendment. The Bush Administration grossly violated the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Federal lawmakers violate the Tenth Amendment nearly every time they pass a law, and now several lawmakers on the left side of the aisle are exploiting this Giffords shooting to try to nullify the First and Second Amendments, too.

Fortunately for the rest of us, lawmakers like Rep. Robert Brady and Carolyn McCarthy are going to meet a thundering wall of resistance from mainstream Americans who are waking up to the importance of their rights as protected under the U.S. Constitution.

The fact that someone got shot is more than enough reason for some lawmakers to unleash yet another round of freedom-smothering police state legislation that would exploit this act of violence for the purpose of making government even more tyrannical and dangerous in the future. Because without the Bill of Rights protections, make no mistake that we are mere Citizen Slaves living under absolute rule by the very kind of tyranny our forefathers sought to escape.

Gabrielle Giffords, I can assure you, was a strong defender of the Bill of Rights and would never want her shooting to be exploited as a vehicle for taking away the rights of the American people. By calling for such actions, her own Democratic colleagues deeply dishonor her.

The CDC found that the average US resident eats only half the recommended daily fruit and vegetable intake of five or more servings per day. Only 26 percent of US adults eat three or more servings a day. These figures are almost identical to data collected in 2000.

In the same month, the market research company NPD Group released its 25th annual Eating Patterns in America report. The report found that only 23 percent of meals consumed in the United States — less than a quarter — include a vegetable, even though "vegetable" was so loosely defined that a hamburger with lettuce on it would qualify. The number of dinners that include a salad actually fell from 22 percent to 17 percent between 1994 and 2010.

Yet these grim numbers come in a time where health advocates continually promote vegetable consumption and food companies market ever easier-to-prepare options such as pre-cut broccoli and pre-washed salads. Studies have found, however, that such convenience products are largely purchased by people who were already buying vegetables anyway.

Rather than simply telling people to eat more vegetables, health officials are now looking for ways to improve access to them, especially in poorer communities and among children.

"Poverty seems to be associated with less access to fresh fruits and vegetables, exercise, and health care," notes Gabriel Cousens in his book There Is a Cure for Diabetes.

There is a sign that these newer tactics might bear fruit: a recent study found that California children who participated in a school gardening program ate one and half more servings of vegetables per day than other children.

"Probably the mechanisms responsible for the protective effect of plant-origin foods on cardiovascular diseases involve micronutrients such as folate, antioxidant vitamins and potassium, all present in green leafy vegetables," explained Palli to Reuters Health, confirming what previous studies on the "Mediterranean Diet" have already found.

Published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the study collected data from about 30,000 Italian women and tracked their health over the course of eight years. They then correlated cases of heart disease to dietary habits and found that the amount of olive oil and leafy green vegetables consumed is directly correlated to heart health.

Besides improving heart health, eating a diet rich in vegetables and olive oil has been shown to prevent and treat type-2 diabetes, reduce the risk of breast cancer, maintain healthy weight and prevent obesity, prevent and treat prostate cancer, prevent and treat Alzheimer's disease and other forms of dementia, and even lengthen lifespan (http://www.naturalnews.com/mediterr…).

"It appears that the various components of the Mediterranean Diet do promote lower inflammation, oxidative stress, and serum protein levels, which in turn lower risk for vascular problems that can contribute to brain aging — hypertension, cardiovascular disease, stroke, dyslipidemia, and diabetes," explain Peter J. Whitehouse and Daniel George in their book The Myth of Alzheimer's: What You Aren't Being Told About Today's Most Dreaded Diagnosis.

(NaturalNews) The global effort to outlaw herbs, vitamins and supplements is well under way, and in just four months, hundreds of herbal products will be criminalized in the UK and across the EU. It's all part of an EU directive passed in 2004 which erects "disproportionate" barriers against herbal remedies by requiring them to be "licensed" before they can be sold.

 

It's called the Traditional Herbal Medicinal Products Directive (THMPD), Directive 2004/24/EC.

The licensing requirements, however, were intentionally designed to make sure that virtually no herbs could ever meet them. It costs from $125,000 to $180,000 to license a single herb with the EU, and since herbs cannot be patented and don't have the monopolistic pricing found in pharmaceuticals, there's simply not enough profit margin in most herbs to justify such huge expenditures from any one company.

But that's sort of the point. Governments of the world have been conspiring with the pharmaceutical industry for decades to destroy the competition by outlawing nutritional supplements, herbal remedies and many other forms of natural medicine.

They really are coming for your natural medicine
Some people in the USA are still skeptical that this could ever happen in the "land of the free," yet it's happening in Europe right now, and the U.S. is probably not far behind. In just four months, health food stores in the UK will be stripped bare of these suddenly "illegal" herbs, and the many millions of people who have come to depend on them as a safe, natural and non-invasive form of medicine will be forced to pursue pharmaceuticals instead of herbs.

And that's also the point. By driving these products off the shelves, governments know they will simultaneously herd people into doctors' offices where they will be prescribed medications that benefit the wealthy corporations that keep politicians in office (in every western nation).

It may also drive people to acquire herbs from sources that have poor quality controls. As Dr Rob Verkerk of the Alliance For Natural Health said in an Independent article, "Thousands of people across Europe rely on herbal medicines to improve their quality of life. They don't take them because they are sick – they take them to keep healthy. If these medicines are taken off the market, people will try and find them elsewhere, such as from the internet, where there is a genuine risk they will get low quality products, that either don't work or are adulterated." (http://www.independent.co.uk/life-s…)

You must beg the King for permission
The MHRA (UK Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency) has received 166 applications for herbal product licensing and has granted 78 so far. Do you see how this works? Now you must be "granted" a license in order to exercise your Natural Law right to engage in the free commerce of Mother Nature's plants. Big Government has stolen from European citizens their natural rights and is now condemning many of them to suffering or even death as a result.

That's how governments always work in the end: They expand their power at the expense of your freedom. The centralize control over your life while maximizing the profits of the powerful corporations that keep them in business. You're watching it happen right now across Europe, and if we don't put a stop to this, it will soon happen in the United States as well. It's already under way, in fact, with the FDA's outlawing of scientifically-validated free speech about nutritional supplements. There's also a war under way on raw milk, and need I even mention the decades-long war being waged against medical marijuana?

Which herbs are under threat of being banned
Here are some of the hundreds of herbs that are about to be banned across Europe:

• Ashwagandha
• Cascara Sagrada
• Pau D'Arco
• Skullcap
• Horny Goat Weed

… and hundreds more, especially Traditional Chinese Medicine formulas.