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
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…
Laws/Regulations, Liberty
Institute for Justice: Free the Monks and Free Enterprise
by JOHN ADAMS •
We have become so regulated, and government has become so much a tool of particular businesses over others, that in Louisiana monks of Saint Joseph Abbey cannot even build and sell caskets for those who would prefer a simple casket. Fortunately, the Institute for Justice is prepared to defend the right of a monastery to…
Laws/Regulations, Taxes/Taxation
Applying So-Called Sin Taxes Sensibly
by JOHN ADAMS •
In a recent column at Bloomberg, Amity Shlaes writes that not all sin taxes, taxes on supposedly harmful behaviors, are applied to best revenue-generating effect. Shlaes is author of the excellent The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. She finds that Franklin Roosevelt understood the best way to implement a ‘sin’ tax…
Laws/Regulations
Apology in Oregon After County Inspectors Shut Down Child’s Lemonade Stand
by JOHN ADAMS •
It was right for the county’s executive to apologize afterward, but telling that two county inspectors lacked the normal understanding to refrain from shutting the stand down. Here they are: Petty, small-minded, and contemptous of the culture in which they live. Alternatively, they don’t have the capacity required for exercise of simple authority. Apology in…
Laws/Regulations
Author David Gumpert on Raw Milk Consumption
by JOHN ADAMS •
I’ve posted occasionally about raw milk, and the inability of adult consumers to drink natural, unpasteurized milk even in a dairy state like Wisconsin. There’s a story at the Walworth County Gazette‘s online edition about an interview with David Gumpert, who’s written about raw milk. See, Author: More research needed on health risks of raw…
Law, Laws/Regulations, Police
Reason.tv: Five Ways the Drug War Hurts Kids: A Conversation with Neill Franklin of LEAP
by JOHN ADAMS •
Laws/Regulations
Reason‘s Nanny of the Month for July 2010: San Fran Soda Banner Mayor Newsom
by JOHN ADAMS •
Laws/Regulations, Liberty
Raw Milk: The Wonder Tonic?
by JOHN ADAMS •
I don’t know if raw milk’s a wonder tonic, but people in a dairy state should be able to buy it and enjoy natural, unpasteurized milk. A study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison examined the reasons people want to drink raw milk, and the backgrounds of those who want to drink it: New research at…
Laws/Regulations, Liberty
Tonight on Stossel: Sex and the Law (8 p.m. Central)
by JOHN ADAMS •
Laws/Regulations, Liberty
LA Times: Food Raid Raises Questions Over Existing Milk Laws…and the Safety of Potlucks
by JOHN ADAMS •
The battle over the right to drink natural, unpasteurized milk is a national one, as a story in the Los Angeles Times confirms. If government can ban raw milk because of the supposed danger, why wouldn’t it ban the uncertain practice of potluck dinners at schools, churches, and workplaces? I wouldn’t support a ban on…