A 1996 conference hosted by the Food and Drug Administration on the "FDA and the Internet" dealt with the Internet's challenge to that agency's monopoly on dissemination of medical information. Current law makes it a crime for drug manufacturers to make non-approved statements concerning a drug's usefulness, including aspirin's well-known potential to prevent heart disease. It is even illegal for the manufacturer of a product that the FDA has approved to advertise that its product is FDA approved.

The conference dealt explicitly with the FDA's need to extend regulatory authority over web links and chat rooms. (The Internet's global nature also explained the involvement of numerous concerned representatives from foreign countries outside the FDA's jurisdiction.) The FDA also considered classifying "expert systems" computer software—which help doctors correlate reports of diverse symptoms and effectively replace shelves of medical books—as medical devices subject to the agency's censorship.

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The Florida Times-Union reported that a Jacksonville teacher got into repeated book-throwing brawls with students, and wrote rambling letters saying that evil spirits had invaded her students' eyes. She later changed her last name to "God."

Under teacher-tenure laws, it took authorities three years to remove her from the classroom, by which time children had become accustomed to hiding beneath their desks to avoid being hurt by flying missiles.

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Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister, refused to approve disaster relief legislation until tornados were referred to as "natural acts" instead of "acts of God."

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