Was she living under a rock for 40 years?

According to a recent story by Fox News, a jury awarded $13.8 million to the daughter of a longtime smoker who died of lung cancer in February of 2003. The deceased, Betty Bullock, started smoking in 1956 when she was 17 years old and used a couple of different brands of cigarettes, both manufactured by Phillip Morris. Bullock's daughter, Jodie, originally sued the company in 2001, accusing them of fraud and liablity. A judge ordered Phillip Morris to pay $28 million in that instance. After the 2nd District Court of Appeals reversed that decision in 2008, Jodie sued again and was just awarded $13.8 million.

What I don't understand about this story is why on earth is it not Betty Bullock's own fault that she died of lung cancer and why does the company have to pay her daughter- not even the actual "victim" here- any damages at all? From what I've been able to find out, the Cigarette Labeling and Advertising Act was passed by Congress in 1965, requiring that all cigarette packages carry a warning about the possible health risks involved. According to the Fox News article, Betty started smoking when she was 17, which would have been in 1956. Even if the act wasn't passed until 1965, it seems to me that she had a good 40 years to think about putting down the cigarettes.
I want to make it clear that I don't in any way condone some of the tactics and advertising used by these tobacco companies and I do think there are definitely situations in which they are the guilty party. This just doesn't really seem like one of those situations though. Bullock had ample warning about the dangers of what she was doing every time she purchased a new pack if cigarettes, at least from 1965 until the day she died.

We're not all reading the same Bible

I fail to understand how anyone who reads and teaches from the same Bible I'm familiar with can possibly come to the conclusion to allow open, sexually active homosexuals to be members of the clergy of their church.

In a Fox News article from Friday, I learned that leaders of the nation's largest Lutheran church, with around 4.7 million members, voted to allow gays and lesbians who are sexually active and in what they call "committed relationships" to serve as clergy. Since the vote there has been much discussion on how this will affect individual congregations, who are not going to be made to enforce this new rule, but will probably be pressured nonetheless. There is also a lot of debate going on about whether this is a step forward for the Lutheran church or if it will divide the church as a whole and individual congregations as well.

I don't know what is more disturbing to me, this new rule or that, from what I gather from reading a few different articles, that homosexuals have been serving as clergy for some time now as long as they keep it under wraps! It is extremely sad to me that men in leadership positions such as these can read and teach from the same text that I and millions of other Christians do and come to a conclusion that they've made the right decision. This is yet another example of man becoming so jaded by the world we live in that he would put his faith in the modern secular world and discard what God tells us to be true as being old and out-dated. It's really just too frustrating for words.