States Control: Pennsylvania

Milk and Honey, er, Hormones

Bowing to pressure from consumer advocates, Pennsylvania officials have dropped plans to bar farmers from revealing whether or not milk hails from hormone-enhanced cows. The state’s agriculture department on Thursday issued new guidelines that allow dairies to label milk so that customers know if it was produced from cows pumped with recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) also known as recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST).
Source: Scientific American (online), January 18, 2008

Pennsylvania bars hormone-free milk labels

State Agriculture Secretary Dennis C. Wolff said advertising one brand of milk as free from artificial hormones implies that competitors’ milk is not safe, and it often comes with what he said is an unjustified higher price.
STLToday, November 14, 2007

Official proposes gun in every house

Henry Statkowski is proposing a "civil protection ordinance"
[Indiana County] that would ask all heads of households in the 450-resident borough to maintain a firearm and ammunition so residents don’t have to rely on police to do a "homeowner’s job."
Source: Pittsburgh Tribune Review, November 22, 2006

Philadelphia schools promote ‘gay’ agenda

The Philadelphia School District has launched a new advance in the battle to indoctrinate school children into the "gay" agenda with its announcement that October is "Gay and Lesbian History Month."
Source: WorldNetDaily, October 5, 2006

Angry board spurns dropout study

City school board members angrily denounced a study that estimates 35 percent of high school students — including nearly half of all black male students — drop out of Pittsburgh Public Schools.
Source: The Post Gazette (online), July 13, 2006

Motorist files suit against officer

A Lawrence County man filed a federal lawsuit Monday claiming a police officer violated his constitutional rights by issuing a citation after the man flipped off a road construction worker in a fit of anger.
Source: Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (online), March 14, 2006

Pa. seizes paper’s computer hard disks

In an unusual and little-known case, the Pennsylvania Attorney General’s Office has seized four computer hard drives from a Lancaster newspaper as part of a statewide grand-jury investigation into leaks to reporters.

Source: Philly@com, March 13, 2006

Bush photo at farmers’ market causes row

A Democratic city councilman has demanded that a baker remove photos of President Bush from his stand in Lancaster’s venerable farmers’ market, saying the city needs a "healing period" following the bitterly contested presidential election.

Source: CentreDaily.com, December 13, 2004

District to install security cameras at school

Mary Kate DeCoursey doesn’t like the idea of school officials watching her eat lunch, talk to her friends or walk into North Allegheny Senior High School.
"Unless there is a specific reason to have security cameras, like there was a problem, I don’t think they should be in the school," said DeCoursey, 17, of Franklin Park. "It’s an invasion of privacy. Why do they need to watch us?"

Source: Tribune Review, July 11, 2004

Forced Genital Examinations

On March 19, 1996 at the J.T. Lambert Intermediate School in East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, 59 eleven-year-old girls were herded into the school nurse’s office, told to remove their clothes, and forced to undergo a genital examination.

Source: The New American, July 21, 1997
                The Deseret News, August 4, 1996