The nanny state at work — Feds consider limiting potatoes offered to kids – Yahoo! News.
Laws/Regulations
Free Markets, Laws/Regulations
Reason.tv: Discussing Fees for Fire Protection
by JOHN ADAMS •
America and places beyond have heard the story about how firefighters in Obion County, Tennessee let a house burn down because the homeowners, the Cranicks, had not paid the $75 annual firefighters’ fee. (The department is from South Fulton, but serves areas in the county beyond the South Fulton city limits.) At Reason.tv, there’s a…
Laws/Regulations, Liberty
Lou Dobbs, American Hypocrite | The Nation
by JOHN ADAMS •
The Nation has a fine story exposing the hypocrisy of Lou Dobbs, an immigrant-bashing television commentator and former CNN anchor: In Lou Dobbs’s heyday at CNN, when he commanded more than 800,000 viewers and a reported $6 million a year for “his fearless reporting and commentary” in the words of former CNN president Jonathan Klein,…
Freedom of Speech, Laws/Regulations, Liberty, Politics
Camp Politics: Training the Next Generation of Censors Since 1974!
by JOHN ADAMS •
Laws/Regulations
Reason.tv: Nanny of the Month for September 2010 – Busted for Growing Veggies!
by JOHN ADAMS •
Reason presents the Nanny of the Month for September 2010. While America thinks of new ways to live a truly green lifestyle, including eating locally-grown produce, in DeKalb County, Georgia officials want to fine a man for growing too many vegetables. Here’s the description accompanying the video: Nanny of the Month turns one-year-old this month,…
Law, Laws/Regulations
Ieshuh Griffin on The Daily Show: Slogan’s Hero
by JOHN ADAMS •
I’ve written before about Ieshuh Griffin, the Wisconsin candidate who wanted to use “NOT the whiteman’s bitch” as her description of candidacy on the November ballot. She’s now hit the big time — a mention on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The Government Accountability Board denied Griffin’s request to use that description, and a…
Freedom of Speech, Law, Laws/Regulations, Liberty
From the Institute for Justice: Defending the Right to Ordinary Speech
by JOHN ADAMS •
Is it possible, in America, that government will not allow citizens to make a living describing national landmarks without holding a license from the state? A license, literally, to speak about our democratic heritage. Not a business license — no, a second license from government — by which government claims to permit a person to…
Government Spending, Law, Laws/Regulations
Wisconsin: State Journal: Shame those who hide state contracts
by JOHN ADAMS •
The Government Accountability Board deserves credit for trying to put some teeth into the law that requires state agencies to post online the details of any contracts that involve more than $10,000 in state money…. Problem is, that website [to post details] has been mostly blank, as agencies have routinely ignored the requirement for online…
Laws/Regulations
Reason.tv‘s Nanny of the Month (Aug 2010): Police Chief Busts Guy Who Keeps Drunks Off the Street
by JOHN ADAMS •
Beautiful Whitewater, City, Laws/Regulations
Beautiful Whitewater
by JOHN ADAMS •
During the week, each morning, I’ve posted photos of wildflowers near a parking lot on our college campus. There are two reasons for posting them. Those photos appeared Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. First, the flowers make beautiful photographs, however poor the photographer. Seen as they are, they’re lovely. Look back over the photos from…
Laws/Regulations
Wisconsin State prison head lives in Illinois – JSOnline
by JOHN ADAMS •
Exemptions: The state employee in charge of responding at a moment’s notice to riots and other disturbances in Wisconsin prisons recently moved to Illinois, more than 90 miles away from his office in Madison. The employee also received an exemption to state policy requiring him to keep his specially equipped emergency response vehicle at his…
Laws/Regulations, Libertarians, Liberty
When (Canadian) Bureaucrats Attack
by JOHN ADAMS •
Kevin Libin, of the Canadian National Post has a story about how Canadian officials are bullying a libertarian family of immigrants to Canada from what was Soviet-occupied Poland. They left a dictatorship, but they’ve run into the soft, oppressively bureaucratic culture of modern-day Canada. (Sadly, something like his story might easily happen in countless places…
Laws/Regulations
OSHA fines Wis. company again, this time for $375K – BusinessWeek
by JOHN ADAMS •
Laws/Regulations
How Is Smoking Pot Like Beating an Old Lady? – Reason Magazine
by JOHN ADAMS •
It’s like beating an old lady in the way it’s prosecuted and the sentences handed down for possession. The Associated Press reports that “[Udonis] Haslem was charged with possessing more than 20 grams of marijuana, a third-degree felony which could bring maximum punishments of a $5,000 fine and a five-year prison sentence.” Twenty grams is…