They shot Americans for less.

They look down on all of us, in shame at what we've become.

Via

The video below is disturbing. It shows a poor child suffering a broken ankle and a probable concussion. Right-thinking people, and those who care deeply about children in general, should turn away in horror.

Of course I can't stop watching the video, because I'm not right-thinking, because I don't care about children in general, and most importantly because the little shit had it coming.

According to the Facebook page where this video originated (it's since been removed because it graphically depicts violence against children), the fat kid, a sophomore at a high school in Sydney Australia, had been bullied by schoolmates such as the kid depicted slapping him, for years. Some time in the past week, the fat kid "snapped," as the media put it, or decided he'd had enough of this shit, as I'd put it, and treated himself to the justice his school had denied him.

And well everyone loses their minds!

Commenters on Facebook numbered in their hundreds and sided overwhelmingly with the older boy.

"I think it's great that he's standing up for himself. It just sucks that schools don't even try and stop bullying," said one. "This kid is my hero," said another.

One said they knew the older boy personally and that he had been a victim for some time.

"I find it disgusting that he was suspended for it," they said. "I understand why he was but he still shouldn't [have] been."

Their triumphant response to the older boy's retaliation surprised seasoned experts.

Of course it surprised seasoned experts.

It surprised them because seasoned experts in schoolyard violence lack common sense.

We've built a society in which, under the doctrine of zero tolerance, seasoned experts and school administrators have lost all perspective: They have autistic children arrested for wearing a hoodie. Kids are prosecuted for denouncing scientology. Girls are strip-searched by the ibuprofen police. Boys are suspended for opening the door to help a lady whose hands are full. "Good students" and "nice children" are arrested for carrying nerf guns to class. If our schools are an asylum, the inmates are truly running it.

Meanwhile, somewhere right now, a fat kid is being slapped. And no one will do anything about it. Because it's all part of the plan.

[P]olice and bullying experts are concerned by the video's publication on Facebook and the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the older boy's retaliation against his attacker.

"We don't believe that violence is ever the answer," [seasoned bullying expert John] Dalgleish says. "We believe there are other ways that children can manage this." …

"The longer term way is about developing better relationships between kids in the school, that will then empower young people to not be passive bystanders when these acts occur but to stand up and say 'this is wrong'," Mr Dalgleish says.

"The short term solution is to have individual counselling with each of the children."

Don't you see, fat kid? When that little monster threw a jab at your chin, you were supposed to explore alternative paths of conflict resolution. You should have dialogued with him, as seasoned bullying experts would say, and tried to understand what made him punch you in the face:

In other words, that he's a bully, and you're a fat nerd. And that's what bullies do to fat nerds. Because our teachers, and seasoned experts, have more important things to do with their time than to stop bullies who know just where to step, close to, but not quite over, the line.

Or you can take your chances with the invisible line youself, but if you step over it, you'll be the one who's "snapped." And you'll be the one who goes to jail.

St Marys Police duty officer Inspector Jason Green said posting the video had the effect of glorifying violence in schools.

"…Whether it causes other incidents or not I don't know but it seems to be a trend of late," Inspector Green said.

"It may incite other violence but that's something that we can't comment on." …

"But we have to deal with them as there still is some criminality with regards to their actions," he said.

Why? If this had happened in a bar instead a schoolyard, no jury would convict the victim for what seems a measured, appropriate response to being punched and slapped in the head.

Why not leave the fat kid alone? The bully who slapped him certainly will. If something must be done, why not give the fat kid a stern talking to? Why not give him individual counseling, as seasoned bullying expert John Dalgleish suggests?

Or why not give him a medal?

Via Crime and Federalism.

When people are doing things that are detrimental to their own well being, then government should step in.

—New York State Senator Karl Kruger, discussing proposed legislation that would ban using phones or ipods or stuff while walking or when crossing the street.

I must admit I'd have more sympathy for those who argue that stories of government regulation trapping the unwary in seemingly nonsensical ways were the result of faceless bureaucrats applying the letter, rather than the spirit of the law, if those wrote the law weren't among the worst offenders.

For instance, what sort of man calls the police to report schoolchildren for selling cookies, cupcakes, and rice krispie treats without a business permit and necessary insurance?  In New Castle, New York, that honor goes to city councilman Michael Wolfensohn.

Michael Wolfensohn sure does have a pretty mouth.

"All vendors selling on town property have to have a license, whether it's boys selling baked goods or a hot dog vendor," said Wolfensohn, who was elected to the board in 2007 after becoming well known in the community for leading a contentious, five-year effort to build a 9/11 memorial. The memorial ended up in Gedney Park after neighbors of the original location, the Duck Pond, sued.

Couldn't Wolfensohn have simply told the boys that they needed a license, the parents want to know, instead of calling the police?

"In hindsight, maybe I should have done that, but I wasn't sure if I was allowed to do that," he said. "The police are trained to deal with these sorts of issues."

Actually, and to their credit, the police of New Castle, New York are not trained to deal with the issue of thirteen year old boys selling unlicensed cookies and snacks.  That's demonstrated by the fact that the police had allowed the boys in question to sell other treats without harassment or complaint, until Michael Wolfensohn squealed like a pig that the law was being violated, by two children who wanted to make a buck selling their product to willing buyers through honest commerce.

In fact, no amount of training can make a man "qualified" to deal with "these issues," where the issues in question involve a self-important adult so concerned with upholding the sanctity of the law that he calls the cops on (if this story had been perfect) a kid's lemonade stand.

No, it took a born prick, of the caliber of Michael Wolfensohn, to rain on these boys' parade, and then to blame it all on a policeman who was just doing his job.

And while it may seem ironic that Wolfensohn, before today, was most famous for his struggle to build a 9/11 memorial in a town having no obvious connection to that tragedy, considering that he's the sort of man who would use his ham-fisted authority to quash even the tiny spark of free enterprise represented by a kid's cookie stand, it's in fact entirely appropriate.

Wolfensohn is the best possible representative of a political class that spends public money to build useless memorials where they're not wanted, and to step on children who have the energy, but not the good sense and legal advice, to build a cookie stand, all while claiming to stand for the American law and ideals that the terrorists attempted to crush on September 11, 2001.

. . . for government reminds me not to drink from the urinal.

Chandler's new City Hall comes with some features that have municipal workers and visitors scratching their heads. Like the restroom signs that tell people not to drink out of the urinals and toilets.

The underlying article implies that the signs are there because the building uses reclaimed wastewater to flush the toilets and urinals (sensible) and that pertinent regulations require all wastewater uses to be accompanied by warning signs (not sensible).

Query:

1. If there are people who want to drink from the toilet, shouldn't we just let them do whatever makes them happy and keep all the good water for ourselves?

2. If a person is inclined to drink from the toilet, is there a rational basis to believe that a sign telling them not to is likely to influence their behavior? (This is a variation on a question that got me disapprovingly hissed during torts class at a certain East Coast diploma mill 20 years ago: if someone sees nothing wrong with pouring perfume onto an open flame to make a nice scent, what are the chances that they will heed a warning not to pour alcohol-based perfumes onto open flames? Aren't we just ruining the aesthetics of our perfume bottles for the benefit of .1% of the population that would probably be better off confined to burn wards anyway?)

With any luck, charismatic thinker John Cole will be here any moment to explain that by asking these questions I am identifying myself as a glibertarian teahaddist Palinite freak.

It's not easy to count the ticks on a dog. It's not easy to count the barnacles on a ship. And it's certainly not easy to count the number of state agencies, commissions, committees, and other taxpayer-funded entities run by an out-of-control debt-ridden state like California.

But Maggie's Farm gives you a graphical impression of it. It will take your breath away.

Every one of those entities has employees paid by you, my fellow Californians. Every one wants to grow its fiefdom — which, generally, means that every one wants to increase the role of state government in citizens' lives. Every one wants to get more money next year than it got last year. Every one wants you to think its mission is essential, let alone reasonable and prudent. Every one has lobbyists. Every one has aligned interest groups. Many have unions. Most have a thicket of regulations, and most have brigades of lawyers who make their living helping citizens deal with them.

Via.

Via Radley, a brutal video: Why Chuck Can't Start A Business.

Sucks To Be Chuck

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca channels Judge Dredd:

See, Baca really, really doesn't like California's Proposition 19, which if approved by voters in November would decriminalize a substantial amount of marijuana use here. Sheriff Baca knows that, rule of law aside, there can be no ground given in the Great War On Drugs, which we will be winning any day now, really. Sheriff Baca knows that he has a protected right to arrest people for smoking vegetation. Sheriff Baca knows that his budget, his power, his prestige, his position depend on the Great War on Drugs.

So Sheriff Baca and his merry men are not going to stop arresting Californians for marijuana use just because it's been decriminalized through lawful process. No, not a chance.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca said Friday his deputies’ marijuana enforcement would not change even if Proposition 19, which would legalize the drug in California, passes Nov. 2.

“Proposition 19 is not going to pass, even if it passes,” Baca said in a news conference Friday at sheriff's headquarters in Monterey Park.

Baca, whose department polices three-fourths of the county, was bolstered Friday by an announcement from the Obama administration that federal officials would continue to “vigorously enforce” marijuana laws in California, even if state voters pass the measure.

Baca said the proposition was superseded by federal law and if passed, would be found unconstitutional.

The proposition that California voters cannot constitutionally decriminalize marijuana use because of the Supremacy Clause is a curious one. Certainly there is a good argument that under current Supreme Court precedent federal laws against marijuana use survive a state's decriminalization, given that federal courts routinely say that Congress can stick its nose into just about any goddamned thing it wants. But Baca seems to be suggesting that if the federal government makes an act a crime, then it must perforce also be against state law. I'm not sure where he finds the authority for that. Perhaps we could ask a doctor with a flashlight. Or perhaps Baca simply means that his officers will enforce federal law. The feds of this administration don't seem to like that when it comes to immigration law, but they may be amenable to state enforcement of drug law. [After all, the feds cannot possibly enforce the federal prohibition on small amounts of marijuana on anything more than a you-got-struck-by-lightening level. In recent memory, the local office guidelines for which marijuana cases were big enough to be prosecuted required 500 kilos or 1000 plants.]

But we're asking too much of Baca. He's not a lawyer. He's just a guy with a badge, and a budget, seeking to keep his deputies employed.

And the rule of law is just a principle. Baca would hardly be the first person to ignore, or trample, a principle because Marijuana is Bad. Why, look at DePaul University. It's supposed to be a university, devoted to open discussion of ideas. But it refuses to recognize Students for Cannabis Policy Reform, student group devoted to debate and education about marijuana laws, because Marijuana Is Bad, End of Discussion. Now maybe DePaul would look less ridiculous if this was an organization devoted to defying marijuana laws in public. But they want to debate whether the law of the land is just. And to the administrators of DePaul, that subject is inherently harmful to students, because marijuana is unhealthy and impairs studies and frankly makes some people assholes, admit it. Of course, DePaul (as the link shows) hardly has an impressive record of commitment to freedom of expression. So maybe we shouldn't be surprised.

Frankly I'm not even a little tempted to try marijuana if Proposition 19 passes. So I'll have to find some other way to spit in the faces of the Lee Bacas and DePauls of the world.

Schools have bullies.

They always have, they always will.

School administrators tend to respond in a way that reflects their attitude towards the respective roles of the state and the citizen. Some perform the core legitimate function of the state: they punish bullies who physically abuse students, and take appropriate and modest steps to maintain order. Some attempt to micromanage student speech and conduct both on and off campus, to the point of punishing unpopular expression that might hurt somebody's feelings or sensibilities. And some believe it is the role of the school — and the state — to eliminate the occasion of bullying by eliminating any conduct that might draw the attention of a bully. That's the school administrator who tells you, after the tenth time that week you've been sucker-punched or your books thrown in the trash, "You should get to know them and be more friendly. You bring it on yourself, you know."

It looks as if Paul Smithson of Godley Independent School District falls into that third category.

Just ask Chris McGregor.

Chris McGregor is 12. He's trying to go to Godley Middle School in Texas. God knows that middle school, let alone middle school in Texas, is an inherently miserable experience that I wouldn't wish on anyone. But Chris just wants to go to school. He's a good student.

He also wants to wear a truly hideous haircut. Justin Bieber or Anton Chigurh wouldn't put up with this haircut. But Chris likes it, and feels it is right for him, and expresses how he feels about himself.

That won't do.

Godley Middle School and the Godley Independent School District have standards. Nonconforming haircuts don't meet those standards. So they've suspended Chris until he cuts his hair.

Superintendent Smithson explains:

But Smithson said the hair rule protects students and reflects community standards. "There's a reason in Texas they're called 'independent' school districts," he explained. "Bullying's a big thing, and we want to make sure everyone's dressed appropriately, someone doesn't bring attention to themselves so that someone says something to them, and all of a sudden we have a problem."

If you dress, or wear your hair, or act in a nonconformist way, bullies will get you. That's inconvenient for the school. Bullies are troublesome. They often have verminous amoral parents who indulge and defend their behavior. It's much easier to force the nonconforming kids to conform, in the hopes that will make it a bit less likely that the bullies will bother them. Plus, people who are indulged in nonconformism in hair, or dress, might expose other children to other nonconformist ideas.

Now, the cynics among you — a category I'd define as "people who went to middle school and weren't unreconstructed bullies themselves" — know that there's no avoiding a bully. You can dress the same, look the same, talk the same, but a bully will find some reason to bully. If you are the sort who would want to wear your hair differently than everyone else, it is certain that you will stand out somehow. A school policy — like a foreign policy — premised on appeasing bullies is doomed to ignominious failure at the expense of the rights of the bullied.

But that's complicated. Enforcing conformism is easy. Even a man like Paul Smithson can do it. And in doing so, and in enforcing any number of other policies based on inane and nannyish policies about what is in children's best interest, Smithson and his ilk teach the children a lesson — a lesson about the proper relationship among the individual citizen, his fellow citizens, and the state, and a lesson about the relative value of individualty.

I leave it to your imagination whether the Paul Smithsons of the world intend that lesson or not.

The City of San Francisco — no stranger to knowing what's best for you — doesn't think your kids should get toys in their Happy Meal unless they eat their veggies.

The City of San Francisco could take a didactic approach, putting up posters encouraging kids to eat their veggies and encouraging parents to require it. But there's a very real danger that you and your kids just won't grasp that the wise, concerned leaders of San Francisco know what is best for you and your kids. So rather than teach, they compel:

In San Francisco, newly proposed legislation would ban toys from most kids meals sold at McDonald's, Burger King and other chains unless the meals meet more stringent calorie and sodium limits. The legislation also would require fruit or veggies in each meal.

. . .

"There's no fundamental conflict between a healthy meal and a happy meal," says Rajiv Bhatia, environmental health director for San Francisco.

He says chains could easily conform by making relatively small changes in ingredients or portion size, reducing the number of french fries, or replacing fries with veggies, fruit or salad.

People like Rajiv Bhatia have thought about the Platonic ideal meal, and you haven't. The Platonic ideal of a meal is not a happy one ; rather, it is a meal of which informed people like Rajiv Bhatia approve. A meal of which Rajiv Bhatia does not approve is not a meal at all, and therefore your uninformed belief that you should be able to choose your kids' meals by yourself is simply untutored. Rajiv Bhatia understands that The People make bad choices and it is the role of The State to make correct choices for them for the ultimate good of The People.

It would be easy to react to this just with irritation and the increasing prevalence, and power, of people who think they know better than you what you should eat and drink, and what you should give your kids to eat and drink. But I have to agree with Brad on this: it's a teaching moment. If your kids want their favorite Happy Meal with a toy they've seen advertised, and can't buy it at your local McDonald's, you could explain why. "You can't have that toy in that Happy Meal because some people in the government think that you shouldn't be able to choose what you eat, and mommy and daddy shouldn't be able to choose what you eat. They think that they should be able to choose what you eat, because they think they are smarter and better than all of us. Do you think that's fair? Do you think that people in the government should be able to tell you what you can eat, and what you can play with? Did you know that some people in the government think that there's a whole bunch of other things they should be able to tell you what to do? What do you think of that? Would you like to learn more about it? Would you like to learn about how you can stop people like that, now and later when you're a grown-up?"

Plant the seed early, and maybe the next generation will be a little less tolerant of the San Franciscos and Rajiv Bhatias of the world. Maybe at least they'll be aware of the issue that there are people who want to tell them how to live their lives, and that paying attention is the only way to fight it.

I like monks, particularly creative monks.

They make Chimay. That ought to be enough right there. They cut hit records. They live a life of asceticism, which I like both because it's an impressive spiritual discipline and because it leaves more Big Macs, iPads, and women for me. They are often self-supporting through crafts. Yes, that means that they live a life of spiritual and intellectual inquiry, but don't expect anyone else to pay for it.

Unfortunately for monks, the Nanny State is no respecter of asceticism or small-scale, self-sustaining craftsmanship.

Through the Institute for Justice, whose free speech blog I mentioned before, I learned about the dilemma of the monks of the Saint Joseph Abbey of St. Benedict, Louisiana. As part of their effort to be self-sustaining (which means not only no government handouts, but no financial support from the Catholic church), the monks of Saint Joseph make beautiful, simple, traditional caskets. I'd like to be buried in something like that, rather than in something that makes it look like I'm being buried in a grand piano or the desk of the senior partner at Skadden. The caskets are significantly cheaper than most, and you can buy one in advance and only pick it up — well, technically, have someone else pick it up — when you need it.

Of course that's a problem. The Institute for Justice explains:

Louisiana law purports to require that anyone who is going to sell a casket has to jump through all same regulatory hoops as a full-fledged mortuary operation that embalms bodies. See, selling "funeral merchandise" (including caskets) means you are a "funeral director." And to be a "funeral director," you must be approved for "good moral character and temperate habits" by a funeral-related government entity [of course, that's in Louisiana, but still], complete 30 semester hours at college, apprentice with a funeral director for a year, pay an application fee, and pass an exam. But that's not all. If you want your facility to sell caskets, it's got to qualify as a facility for funeral directing, including a showroom and "embalming facilities for the sanitation, disinfection, and preparation of a human body."

So, to sum up: Louisiana would like the monks of Saint Joseph to take college classes, intern with a funeral director for a year, pass an exam, pay a fee, be approved by a board, and convert part of their monastery into a professional mortuary in order to sell hand-crafted wooden caskets. If they don't, they are guilty of a crime. The Institute for Justice has sued in federal court on behalf of the monks, seeking an injunction against the relevant Louisiana codes. They assert that they violate the monks' due process, equal protection, and privileges and immunities rights. (That last represents the Institute for Justice's hope over its experience, I think — it's a seed oft planted by libertarian litigators in the fond hope it will someday yield fruit.)

Defenders of the regulatory state assert that such regulations are reasonably designed to protect the health and safety of the populace and defend them from fraud and mistreatment by bad apples within an industry. Certainly regulations can have that effect, to a limited extent. But it's credulous to think that's the only purpose, or even the primary purpose. High regulatory barriers to entry to crafts, professions, and marketplaces is merely a form of rent-seeking by the people — and conglomerates — who want to keep those crafts, professions, and marketplaces themselves. Established "funeral directors" want the law to require anyone who wants to sell a hand-crafted casket to intern for a year embalming bodies, because the established funeral directors already did that internship, and correctly perceive that the barriers to entry will deter most of the competition, both by craftsmen like the monks and by big national retailers like Costco. Either the monks or Costco can provide consumers with a cheaper product (though frankly, it's damned inconvenient to buy your caskets in those giant five-packs.) Costco or the monks may well provide more variety. Certainly you will not find anything like the beautiful, simple caskets made by the monks of Saint Joseph at your local chain funeral home. But the funeral homes — which are increasingly run by conglomerates that approach monopolies — don't want you to have any more price or selection choices than they want to give you, because that's bad for their business. So they rent-seek. Using connections, influence, and campaign donations, they get government to create high barriers to entry. They are modern guilds.

The popular perception is that big business is against regulation. That's only true to a certain extent. Big business doesn't like regulation that makes it difficult to operate. But big business is not adverse to regulation that makes it difficult to enter the market in the first place and compete. Hence, big established toy manufacturers are not the ones protesting vigorously against the ruinous CPSIA we've blogged about, which makes it prohibitively expensive for small producers of kids' toys, clothes, and books to enter the market.

So should we abandon regulation entirely? No. But we need to keep in mind that all regulation has costs, and we need to be more skeptical about, and critical of, the need for particular regulations and their connection to their putative purpose. We need to stop doing industry's leg-breaking for it. After all, in a country where you hear about a story a month about funeral homes mistreating or abandoning bodies, it doesn't really seem that funereal regulation does a great job of protecting the public from abuse — even if it does a pretty good job of protecting them from craftsman monks.

Dateline: New York. The city sells advertising on its buses. Blogger Pamela Geller wants to buy space to run what, in the context of her, is a subtle and balanced advertisement in opposition to building the "Cordoba House" project a few blocks from Ground Zero:

Your coy point eludes me, Pamela.

According to Geller, the city's advertising entity refused. According to the city, they just hadn't gotten around to approving it yet. At any rate, Geller's organization sued, and the City caved and allowed the advertisement. It is equally easy for me to imagine (1) that the city resisted an advertisement because it didn't like the message, or (2) Geller filed the lawsuit for publicity before the ad was actually rejected.

Dateline: San Francisco. In a heroic and mostly successful attempt to one-up its prior insipid Nanny-Statery, the City of San Francisco creates a policy saying that the ads it sells on its buses and in its bus stations cannot "promote" weapons, by which it apparently means "depict" them. Hence, despite the fact that its stance is obviously unconstitutional, San Francisco requires horrible posters for horrible movies to be rendered even more horrible by replacing guns with pepper spray, at least in some bus-related venues. No word on whether Steven Spielberg was involved in the decision.

Dateline: Des Moines. The Iowa Atheists and Freethinkers buy advertising on the local transit authority's buses to run the terrifying message "Don't believe in God? You're not alone." Some people who are easily offended by the expression of views differing from theirs object to the message. The transit authority caves and pulls it, resorting to the standard bullshit excuse "it was never authorized in the first place." Later, the transit authority caves again, restoring the ads, explaining that it realized that its ad policy was "outdated," by which it perhaps meant "predating the incorporation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution and the passage of statutes entitling successful civil rights plaintiffs to payment of attorney fees."

Dateline: Detroit. The city's transit authority sells advertising on its buses. It accepts the "Don't believe in God?" advertisement described above. However, when a buyer attempts to place an advertisement aimed at Muslims leaving their faith ("Fatwa on your head? Is your family or community threatening you? Leaving Islam? Got Questions? Get Answers!") Detroit's transit agency refuses to run the ad. The Thomas More Law Center sues.

Look: it's simple. Don't operate a business if you don't know its fundamentals. If your business is throwing open a public forum for paid advertisement, then don't get into it without knowing, and being committed to following, the relevant First Amendment jurisprudence guiding the legitimate grounds for taking or not taking an advertisement. Don't hire people who are too stupid, or biased, or incompetent, to apply the rules.

By the way: in a perfect world, everyone would have the same stance on the right to run ALL of these advertisements, whatever their individual stance on atheism or Islam or guns. But it's not a perfect world.

What happens when the surveillance/informant state clashes with the speech-regulating state?

Well, at least in the United Kingdom, it looks as if the speech-regulating state wins.

Via Thatcher, I saw this decision by the U.K.'s Advertising Standards Authority, the U.K.'s advertising watchdog. The decision reviewed an advertisement with the following text:

A radio ad for the Anti-Terrorist Hotline stated "The following message is brought to you by Talk Sport and the Anti-Terrorist Hotline. The man at the end of the street doesn't talk to his neighbours much, because he likes to keep himself to himself. He pays with cash because he doesn't have a bank card, and he keeps his curtains closed because his house is on a bus route. This may mean nothing, but together it could all add up to you having suspicions. We all have a role to play in combating terrorism. If you see anything suspicious, call the confidential, Anti-Terrorist Hotline on 0800 XXXXXX. If you suspect it, report it".

The Metropolitan Police and the Association of Chief Police Officers defended the ad as "raising awareness" and informing the public that a combination of factors might lead them to conclude that someone is up to something nefarious. The ASA ruled that the ad should not be broadcast again. The ASA did not so rule on the basis that the advertisement represents part of the U.K.'s abandonment of its remarkable common law heritage of liberty, and its steady march towards a freakishly regulated surveillance state that is obsessed with getting citizens, including children, to inform on each other for wildly speculative reasons.

No, the ASA found the ad violated the ultimate speech-regulating sin — it's not that it promotes an authoritarian state that treads on all that makes England great, it's far, far worse than that. Someone's feelings might be hurt.

However, we considered that the ad could also describe the behaviour of a number of law-abiding people within a community and we considered that some listeners, who might identify with the behaviours referred to in the ad, could find the implication that their behaviour was suspicious, offensive. We also considered that some listeners might be offended by the suggestion that they report members of their community for acting in the way described. We therefore concluded that the ad could cause serious offence.

Now, the ASA is dead right that the advertisement is offensive. It's horrifically offensive to suggest that if you mind your own damn business and keep your blinds closed and avoid getting into debt by eschewing credit cards, there's any remotely rational basis to think you're up to no good. It promotes governance according to the socially totalitarian fantasies of the Gladys Kravitzes of the world, and indulges our base tendencies to suspect and scorn the odd man out. But focusing on it being offensive is missing the point, like asking whether or not police officers said "please" and "thank you" when they conducted an illegal search on your house. It's awful because it promotes the informant state and tightens the grasp of law enforcement over society, and encourages the view that everything, however mundane, is potentially deadly, so obey your local police officer! Only he can protect you!

If you're going to give a quasi-government, quasi-private entity the authority to regulate advertising expression based on "offense", why not give it authority to reject government advertising on the basis that it takes a shit on your cultural heritage and promotes totalitarian thinking?

In the wake of government raids on organic food collectives for the crime of selling raw milk, it would be easy to follow the lead of the Los Angeles Times and seize the opportunity to make lighthearted fun of the hippies, and foodies, and hippie foodies:

With no warning one weekday morning, investigators entered an organic grocery with a search warrant and ordered the hemp-clad workers to put down their buckets of mashed coconut cream and to step away from the nuts.

The "hemp-clad workers" is a masterful touch; I wish I'd written that.

Or, you know, you could examine whether we should be thrilled about the government raiding stores where willing participants sell, and knowing participants buy, exotic food items that satisfy their beliefs about "organic" and "natural" food. Let's be clear: this isn't the Atherton Safeway carelessly putting out raw milk where innocent, unaware Susie Soccermom from the burbs is going to pick it up by accident and give it to little Dakota and Logan. This is an organic collective selling overpriced specialty goods to informed (kind of) consumers who for philosophical reasons want their produce and dairy goods to be as organically filthy and free of corporate taint as humanly possible without them wresting it non-exploitatively from the ground and the empowered cow's teat themselves. Should we really applaud the government stopping them?

The tricks, in discussing limits on government authority to micromanage our lives, are to (1) be wary of the government's categorical frames, and (2) recognize that safety and freedom often exist on a continuum.

The government likes nice, neat frames. The government likes to create categorical exceptions to rights, then cram as much as possible into those categorical exceptions to increase its power. The government likes to get you to accept these big categories first — like "safety" and "homeland security" — and then tell you that what it's doing fits entirely into those categories, with nothing left to go in the category marked "freedom." The government's rationale for pestering hippies is no different:

"This is not about restricting the public's rights," said Nicole Neeser, program manager for dairy, meat and poultry inspection at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture. "This is about making sure people are safe."

The government would prefer you believe that its actions are all about one thing or the other, like a light switch. The government doesn't want you to contemplate how safety and freedom are incremental trade-offs on a sliding scale — because then you might start questioning how far the scale has slid in one direction, or maybe even question whether the government, in light of widespread dishonesty and incompetence, really improves safety with its meddling.

But the L.A. Times — ostensibly the government's critic, in longtime practice its compliant lapdog — is unlikely to raise those questions.

Hat tip.

How else to explain the movement to keep people like me from buying Snus?