It looks obvious

Today, 75 years ago, was the day the prohibition on Alcohol was repealed. This was a rear moment of realization that legislating moral values is wrong and counter productive. Unfortunately this did not stop the many busy-bodies and power hungry forcing other prohibitions - Smoking, Trans-fat, decency and many other issues. Yet, today I’ll toast for past prohibition repeal and for the hope that one day we will repeal them all.

Here is another case of typical over reaction - probably someone that isn’t busy with real work to do:

CHILDREN as young as three will undergo compulsory exercise regimes of up to two hours every day in preschools.

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Star jumps, action-singing songs as well as catching, jumping and running are just some of the exercises included in the roll call of daily activities.

But why stop here? These fat lazy toddler need a real training regime. So if the government program to let the children do what they do anyway will fail, and as usual it will fail, we need to move to phase II of the program. In this phase we will transfer some real drill sergeants to take the over weight children through a real basic training program. At the very least it will make them tougher.

Can someone find real acceptation for those bored well meaning idiots that coming with such training regime to 3 years old?

I find this story true this excellent blog

Another great success story in a war we should never have started:

Colombia’s coca crop — the basis for cocaine — grew by 27 percent last year, the United Nations reported Wednesday, calling the increase “a surprise and a shock” given major U.S.-funded eradication efforts.

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Washington has spent more than US$5 billion in Colombia over the past seven years to combat both a long-running insurgency and the world’s largest cocaine industry, a business that helps fund a five-decade armed conflict.

A heavy heat wave is passing us and in the last few days the temperature is in the high 90’s (over 35 Celsius). The high humidity making it even worse. Thank to technology we don’t have to suffer very much since most of the time we are using air-conditioning to make life much more comfortable. Modern life are much more comfortable than the past. We live longer, we are healthier and we suffer less than our ancestors used to from the weather. With air conditioning we could work, create and live our life as the heat wave was just a simple uncomfortable event. And while my children take this for granted I’m still remember life without air conditioning.

But while I’m happy for having air-conditioning a passing thought makes me worry - what about Obama? How is he doing without the comfort of his office and his home cooled to 72 degrees? You don’t think he meant only for us not to be as comfortable as possible, do you?

my 72 degrees cooled home, I wonder what the temperature set at Al Gore’s residence…

I’m convinced that if Texas Child Protection Agency would have acted more reasonably, the court decision today would have been completely different. Unfortunately the extreme panic reaction of the state expose some of the children for future abuse, and does very little to protect them.

A Texas state court of appeals ruled Thursday afternoon that the state of Texas had no right to seize more than 400 children from a polygamist ranch in Eldorado, in the western part of the state.

The ruling asserted that the state’s child protection agency not only acted hastily in removing the children from the Yearning for Zion Ranch in April but also failed to show that they were in immediate danger. According to the court, the state did not establish proper grounds to remove the children from their families, who belong to the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or F.L.D.S. The F.L.D.S. broke off from the mainstream Mormon church after it had disavowed polygamy in 1890.

There is very little in common between the crazy FLDS cult, which is now all over the news, and Professor Christopher Ratte and his wife Professor Claire Zimmerman. And yet it is obvious for most of us that taking all the children from the FLDS compound in Texas was justified but we nodding our heads in disbelieve when we are reading how the state took custody over Professor Ratte child:

The way police and child protection workers figure it, Ratte should have known that what a Comerica Park vendor handed over when Ratte ordered a lemonade for his boy three Saturdays ago contained alcohol, and Ratte’s ignorance justified placing young Leo in foster care until his dad got up to speed on the commercial beverage industry.

Even if, in hindsight, that decision seems a bit, um, idiotic.

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Almost everyone Chris Ratte met the night they took Leo away conceded the state was probably overreacting.

The common between the two stories is simple - the overreacting and the rush to take children from their parents without considering the level of danger to child and without sufficient proof. We are often mixing between bad choices and illegal choices, and we are rushing to assume guilt of parent, but we must be very careful balancing between the want to protect children and the harm we are causing when rushing to intervene.

Who in his or her right mind would choose to elect a tyrant that, when in office, will start dictating things like:

…government programs to help people “quit smoking, to get more exercise, to eat right, to take their vitamins.” 

The only parental tyranny acceptable is my mother’s, and even she knew at some point to lay off and let me make my own decision. The believe that the government’s proper role is to be a Paternal Tyrant combined with well documented approach of “The goal justifies the means” should be a major factor in a decision not to vote for such candidate.

We know big government does not have all the answers. We know there’s not a program for every problem. We have worked to give the American people a smaller, less bureaucratic government in Washington. And we have to give the American people one that lives within its means.

The era of big government is over. But we cannot go back to the time when our citizens were left to fend for themselves. Instead, we must go forward as one America, one nation working together to meet the challenges we face together. Self-reliance and teamwork are not opposing virtues; we must have both. 

Bill Clinton - The State of the Union Address 1996

On the one hand this is really not that important, just another bill that nobody really notice. But its significance is in its mere existence. Government become so intrusive, so involved in areas it should never been involved with, that such bills doesn’t seems evil (or at least ridiculous) as they truly are. It is sad to acknowledge that it is now acceptable in the “Era of small government” to use the government monopoly of the mean of violence to ensure the existence of toilet papers in restaurants… 

A proposed law currently making its way through the Florida legislature might help you with what can be an embarrassing problem. Here’s the bottom line, the bill would be a mandate that all eating establishment must have enough toilet paper when you go into the restroom.

The only problem is the bill doesn’t dictate how much toilet paper is "enough."

The question is obviously not the technical question of what constitute “enough” toilet paper, but when will we say enough!

(Via LRC)

One of the problems with Business people becoming politician is that the failed to see the differences between the business world and the political system. It is easy to see the similarities - management to large systems, Producing results and so on. But these similarities are often deceiving. While running a business is often about the “Bottom line”, achieving the desired results, political systems should be about the process. Successful business people often desire to fix the inefficiencies of the political system and failing to understand that those inefficiencies, the compromises, the political pressures and the many different interest groups are crucial for the health of liberal democracy.

And when the business man, turn to be politician, is by nature an authoritarian the results are:

Doubtless the Mayor is still pondering the question. Since he took office six years ago, Mike Bloomberg’s record is, among other things, a study in finicky prohibition. Not only is Bloomberg certain of what’s best for you, he knows you to lack the good sense to choose it. In order to ensure the well being of his charges, the Mayor has instituted a few laws about which he has said, “People will adjust very quickly and a lot of lives will be saved.” Has an American politician ever expressed a more vitally un-American sentiment? Dubious claims of life-saving aside, American citizens aren’t to be schoolmarmed into compulsory purification. 

Yet, in 2002, brushing off a few cranky editorials, Mayor Mike instituted a smoking ban that covered every public New York City workplace including all restaurants, bars, cabarets, and pool halls. In 2007, he enacted the country’s first municipal ban on trans fats in restaurant food. With their appetites regulated and a chunk of their free choice under lock and key at Gracie Mansion, denizens of the vice-free five boroughs have been, presumably, “adjusting.”

Without doubt Mayor Bloomberg is one of the more efficient Mayors NY City had, the price of “making the trains run on time”, however, of is much to high to pay.

While Senator McCain is busy convincing GOP voters that he is true conservative, a term that need clarification to begin with, I stumble upon a news report that demonstrates McCain’s conservative credentials. Apparently Senator McCain, in his roll of senior good doer, was successful in forming a new federal agency - this time to regulate the sport of Boxing. Additional government agencies, regulations and barriers are typical McCain approach for solving issues passing his desk.

The move is part of a campaign to protect youngsters coming into the sport, the actions of promoters and the independence of judges. Among a range of schemes to be introduced will be a new licensing system applying to boxers, managers, promoters and sanctioning bodies.

The new agency – the US Boxing Administration – will also regulate the major TV networks when they act as fight promoters.

The bill was the brainchild of Senator John McCain, a long time supporter of reform in the sport.

No wonder Goldwater didn’t like him…