An elderly club that had been meeting for four years every Tuesday at the Eye Library in Eye, Cambridgeshire, were told that they could no longer have hot tea or coffee at their meetings, lest it be accidentally spilled on a toddler. They’ve retreated to holding meetings in members’ homes. [Telegraph] Hat tip to F.R.
Posts Tagged ‘nanny state’
New Centers for Disease Control appointee Thomas Frieden
“David Kessler Goes Dumpster Diving (and Emerges With Garbage)”
The former FDA chief and inveterate nanny-state advocate, David Kessler, has a new book arguing that chain restaurant food is excessively palatable, to the point where it effectively addicts the chains’ customers. Jacob Sullum at Reason accords Kessler’s theories all the respect they deserve.
Obama puts MADD chief in charge of highway-safety agency
Mothers Against Drunk Driving is anything but an uncontroversial organization, as the Washington Times, Radley Balko, and our own archives make clear. Among the bad, sometimes awful ideas with which it has been identified are a reduction of the blood alcohol limit to .04 (meaning that for some adults a single drink could result in arrest), blanket police roadblocks and pullovers, the 55 mph speed limit, traffic-cams, and the imprisonment of parents who knowingly permit teen party drinking, to name but a few. Of particular interest when it comes to the policies of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), it has backed proposed legislation demanding that costly breathalyzer-ignition interlock systems be foisted on all new cars, whether or not their drivers have ever committed a DUI offense; it’s also lined up with the plaintiff’s bar on various dubious efforts to expand liability.
Now President Obama has named MADD CEO Chuck Hurley to head NHTSA. Drivers, car buyers, and the American public had better brace themselves for a season of neo-Prohibitionist rhetoric, nannyist initiatives, and efforts to criminalize now-lawful conduct. It won’t be pretty.
More: Coyote Blog (“What, was Ralph Nader busy?”)
March 22 roundup
- No back-alley bikini lines: New Jersey consumer affairs director rejects proposed ban on Brazilian waxing [Asbury Park Press, JammieWearingFool, Jaira Lima and protest site, Popehat, News12 video] Florida, however, won’t let you get a fish-nibble pedicure [WWSB]
- Kids doing well in homeschool but divorcing dad disapproves, judge says they must be sent to public [WRAL, Volokh]
- Al Franken comes out for loser-pays in litigation (well, in this case at least) [MSNBC “First Read”]
- U.K.: “A man who tried to kill himself has won £90,000 in damages from the hospital which saved his life but hurt his arm in the process” [Telegraph]
- Life in places without the First Amendment: “Australia’s Vast, Scattershot Censorship Blacklist Revealed” [Slashdot, Volokh, Popehat]; British Telecom passes all internet traffic through “‘Cleanfeed” filters to identify (inter alia) racist content [Glasgow Herald]
- More on that suit by expelled student against Miss Porter’s School; “Oprichniki” said to be not identical to Keepers of Tradition [NYTimes; our December coverage]
- “Why We Need Cop Cameras” [Steve Chapman, Chicago Tribune] Shopkeepers terrorized in Philadelphia: “The thugs had badges.” [Ken at Popehat]
- Counting former lobbyists in Obama Administration? Don’t forget Kathleen Sebelius [Jeff Emanuel, RedState]
- Wisconsin: “$50,000 claim filed over girl’s time-out in school” [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]
Please, Mayor Bloomberg
At least let us drown our sorrows in a bowl of pretzels. More: Amy Alkon.
At least for now, Miller’s ‘Sparks Red’ won’t fly
In the same world where chocolate and peanut butter supercollided to give us the peanut butter cup, it is not surprising that it would eventually not be sufficient to desire either a prepackaged a) drink that contains alcohol or b) energy drink. We must have both, and at the same time. While we have been blessed with a range of such delectable, ready-made beverages, like most things good and tasty they have rubbed the Center for Science in the Public Interest–the nanny state group that has had both alcohol and caffeine in its litigators’ sights for years–in all the wrong ways.
As reported here earlier this year, CSPI whined for months about caffeinated alcohol beverages–which it labels “alcospeed”–before eventually pressuring Budweiser to drop its offering and then suing Miller to stop it from selling Sparks Red. CSPI, which got support from few if any drinkers but a host of apparently underworked attorneys generals who can’t wrap their pointy heads around the notion that caffeine/alcohol combos like the Irish coffee, rum and Coke, or Red Bull and vodka are hardly a new concept, is (with the AGs) blindly claiming the company’s ATF-approved Sparks drink is bad hooch. Just last week, under pressure from the AGs, Miller agreed to postpone the launch of its Sparks Red.
Speed governors, cont’d
We’ve occasionally warned about the up-and-coming idea of mandating that automobiles be fitted out with mechanical controls that would keep them from being driven faster than the authorities think is good for us, and sure enough, here’s an endorsement of the notion from Matthew Yglesias at Think Progress (via Hemingway, NRO “Corner”; see also Ezra Klein, American Prospect).
Regulating fast food
At American.com, Sara Wexler casts a critical eye at the redlining of new fast-food restaurants out of certain Los Angeles neighborhoods. I hadn’t previously noticed that LA was justifying the ban in part on the claim that South LA’s obese residents are “plac[ing] enormous costs on the California state Medicare system”–as a good an example of the future dangers to freedom of government-run health-care as any.
“Is Big Caffeine the Next Target?”
Tim Sandefur asks this only half-facetiously as he reviews mass torts. Of course, as a must-read comment letter to FASB (via the indispensable Beck/Herrmann) submitted by six pharmaceutical companies notes, “A mass tort occurs when the plaintiffs’ bar decides to invest in it.”