Via Theo.
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Supposed Christian group that won headlines attacking Paul Ryan’s budget funded by the very secular-minded George Soros.

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Jim DeMint: Your tax dollars at work: $2 million grant to build a “culinary amphitheater,” wine tasting room, and gift shop in Richland, Washington. That makes sense, with the federal deficit where it is, everyone needs a drink.

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Cedar Falls, Iowa wants keys to residents’ homes. It’s for their safety.
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Kayleigh via Jose Guardia: Keynesianism is the equivalent of pouring your can of soda into a glass and trying to claim that, because the soda is now in the glass, you have more soda than if you had not poured it into the glass.
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Michelle Malkin: Woe is Weiner: No skillz to pay the billz. But don’t worry, he has a job offer with a higher salary. And he has a pension.
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Leopold Bloom resigns after erotic letters leak.

Our liberal rulers are preparing warning labels for cigarette packages to save us from ourselves.

DirectorBlue argues that warning labels on voting machines and ballots would be more to the point.

Hat tip to the News Junkie.

The Times Picayune reports that officialdom has arbitrarily created a new freedom-of-the-press-does-not-apply zone systematically excluding the public and the media from most of the Gulf waterfront impacted by the oil spill.

The Coast Guard has put new restrictions in place across the Gulf Coast that prevent the public – including news photographers and reporters covering the BP oil spill – from coming within 65 feet of any response vessels or booms on the water or on beaches.

According to a news release from the Unified Command, violation of the “safety zone” rules can result in a civil penalty of up to $40,000, and could be classified as a Class D felony. Because booms are often placed more than 40 feet on the outside of islands or marsh grasses, the 65-foot rule could make it difficult to photograph and document the impacts of oil on land and wildlife, media representatives said.

But federal officials said the buffer zone is essential to the clean-up effort.

“The safety zone has been put in place to protect members of the response effort, the installation and maintenance of oil containment boom, the operation of response equipment and protection of the environment by limiting access to and through deployed protective boom,” the news release said.

The Coast Guard on Tuesday had initially established an even stricter “safety zone” of more than 300 feet, but reduced the distance to 20 meters – 65 feet – on Wednesday. In order to get within the 65-foot limit, media must call the Coast Guard captain of the Port of New Orleans, Edwin Stanton, to get permission.

Photographer James Michael Duncan marvels at the way that it has suddenly become potentially a crime to photograph the oil spill.

Volunteers can’t work on the beach, [ostensibly] for liability reasons. Only contracted employees can go work. Of course, those contracts expressly forbid talking with media. Every boat captain that signs on with the clean up is also expressly forbidden from talking to media or taking photographers out, even when those photographers can stay out of the way of people working. Chilling effects, all.

The Coast Guard says that you must call the Coast Guard captain of the port of New Orleans to get permission. If you buy the safety argument, that sounds sort of reasonable. Except for the fact that there’s no stated rules for who can get permission. The Times-Picayune article reports that AP photographer Gerald Herbert—one of the few mainstream press photographers that has been putting out incredible shots—has asked to discuss the new policy with officials. Guess what? He hasn’t received a response. ...

I successfully [took several] photos without endangering any response workers, interfering with booms, or endangering wildlife. In fact, there wasn’t a response worker within miles of my location. Should I be a felon for making these images?

I ask again: Why is the government helping control the message here? Who’s interest is being served? It’s certainly not the public’s interest.

August Saint-Gaudens, The Puritan, 1883 – 1886, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Fast cars, smoking, flirting, even eating fast food at Burger King, the puritans of the Left are determined to eradicate each and every one of life’s little pleasures, Dennis Praeger warns.

Just as the Soviets removed Trotsky from old photos, anti-smoking zealots have forced the removal of cigarettes from old photos — from photos of FDR, from the famous Beatles photo — and from movies whenever possible. Torture and murder are ubiquitous in films, but smoking is all but banned — even cigars are now banned from James Bond films.

Smoking has been banned in entire cities, outdoors as well as in. In Pasadena, Calif., one cannot even smoke in a cigar store. ...

Virtually every game I played as a child during school recess is now banned because organizations such as the National Program for Playground Safety deem games in which kids are “running into each other” as too dangerous. Someone might get hurt.

Until a few years ago, just about every American boy, and many girls, played dodgeball. No more. This joy, too, has been eliminated from American life. “We consider it inappropriate to use children as human targets,” said Mary Marks, physical education supervisor for Fairfax County, Va. And it may hurt the feelings of kids who are eliminated. For the same reason — potential hurt feelings of those eliminated — musical chairs is no longer played in some schools.

Some might argue that these bans are not because of Leftism but because of fear of lawsuits. But in light of how leftwing the trial bar is, that only reinforces my argument.

Read the whole thing.

Young men of Brockworth in Gloucestershire have from Time Immemorial, at least for a couple of centuries, possibly even from Roman or Phoenician Antiquity, been celebrating the arrival of Spring with the annual Cooper’s Hill Cheese-Rolling and Wake, a peculiar local competition involving a hazardous madcap pursuit down a steep hill after a large round block of Double Gloucester cheese.

The London Times reports that safety, insurance, and traffic considerations, in other words bureaucracy and general poltroonery, have caused this year’s cheese-rolling to be cancelled.

A centuries-old cheese rolling contest has fallen victim to health and safety — but not because of the broken bones and dozens of other injuries sustained each year.

Organisers of Gloucestershire’s annual competition have cancelled the event due to be held on May 31 because of concerns raised by the police and local authority over traffic and crowd control.

Good blog article on the tradition

Cheese-Rolling in Gloucestershire web-site

Maccabees “Can You Give It” 3:18 Cheese-Rolling song video

Hat tip to No Pasaran.

Michael Simkins is appalled at the point to which the contemporary nanny state has reduced Britain, a condition in which restaurants must ask patrons to sign a waiver of liability for a pudding.

The owners of the High Timbers (sic) restaurant, located in the heart of London, are insisting that customers sampling their festive menu sign a legal waiver before sitting down to eat.

The restaurant is currently offering plum pudding as part of its seasonal fare, which, as ancient custom (and the recipe) dictates, is prepared with the odd silver coin or lucky charm thrown into the mix.

But so wary have the management become of expensive lawsuits brought by any patron chipping a veneered tooth or choking on silver horseshoes that each portion arrives with both a jug of brandy sauce and a legal disclaimer.

This is a bit older, slightly nicer version of the Boy Scout Knife I used to carry back during the Consulate of Plancus.

You see how these things work?

There’s a little accident, and first they come and take away your cannon. Next, before long, they won’t even let Boy Scouts carry pocket knives. The utter and complete emasculation of society is a slippery slope process.

Telegraph:

New advice published in Scouting, the official in-house magazine, says neither Scouts nor their parents should bring penknives to camp except in “specific” situations.

Scouts have traditionally been taught how to use knives correctly, using them on camping trips to cut firewood or carve tools.

At one point Scouts were allowed to carry a sheath knife on their belt as part of their uniform although this is no longer the case. In recent years the Scout Association guidance has been that parents should carry knives to camps or meetings.

Dave Budd, a knife-maker who runs courses training Scouts about the safe use of blades, wrote that the growing problem of knife crime meant action had to be taken.

“Sadly, there is now confusion about when a Scout is allowed to carry a knife,” he wrote. “The series of high-profile fatal stabbings [has] highlighted a growing knife culture in the UK.

“I think it is safest to assume that knives of any sort should not be carried by anybody to a Scout meeting or camp, unless there is likely to be a specific need for one. In that case, they should be kept by the Scout leaders and handed out as required.”

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Even farther back, before WWII, there used to be an official Boy Scout sheath knife. It seems to have been an adaptation by a different company (Ka-Bar? Camillus?) of the old Webster Marble Woodcraft pattern.

——————————————————————British Scouting Commissioner says story is unfair, Update 9/9:

Wayne Bulpitt, UK Chief Commissioner, says the Daily Mail’s Sunday edition used “a few selective statements and quotes some out of context.”

There’s no story here, Bulpitt claims. Why! We’ve been discouraging scouts from carrying pen-knives for years.

A Mail on Sunday journalist approached us on Friday having read the latest guidance we issued in Scouting Magazine/online in December 08 and April 09 on advising Scouts on the situations in which they can use a knife as part of normal Scout Activities. He was looking to make the story into “Scouts Ban knives shocker”. The media team took them through the facts and sent them links to our various documents and magazine articles giving him the following info,

– The Rules changed about wearing knives with uniform in 1968 – We have issued regular guidance to the Movement on this matter ever since 1968 e.g. early 1980’s , 1996, 2008 and 2009 (the latest being the magazine article in April/May) – We need to support leaders with information to help them support young people

Despite making these facts available the Mail on Sunday published the piece, They used a few selective statements and quotes some out of context..

A number of newspapers this morning (Times, Telegraph, Express, Mirror, Sun) have taken the text from the Mail on Sunday (without talking to us) and have run with the story.

I’m not especially moved by Mr. Bulpitt’s complaints personally, but I thought he was entitled to a place on the record.

Steve Chapman, writing in Reason, notes that Congress just proved all over again that our elected representatives never believe in letting the Bill of Rights get in the way of saving Americans from themselves.

(T)he tobacco regulation bill recently passed by Congress indicates that the spirit of liberty is even scarcer than usual in the halls of government.

What motivates advocates of stricter tobacco regulation is the unassailable assurance that they are not only completely right but that their opponents are a) wrong and b) evil. This invigorating certitude makes it possible to justify almost anything that punishes cigarette companies, even if it does no actual good—or does actual harm.

One of the main purposes of the new law is to reduce the number of smokers in the name of improving “public health.” This is a skillful use of language to confuse rather than enlighten.

An individual decision to take up cigarettes is a private event, not a public one, and its health effects are almost entirely confined to the individual making the choice. ...
Cigarette makers are forbidden to use color in ads in any publication whose readership is less than 85 percent adult. They are barred from using music in audio ads. They are not allowed to use pictures in video ads. They may not put product names on race cars, lighters, caps, or T-shirts. From all this, you almost forget the fleeting passage in the Constitution that says “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech.”

When it gets in a mood to regulate, Congress doesn’t like to trouble itself with nuisances like the First Amendment. In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional for Massachusetts to ban outdoor ads within 1,000 feet of any schools and playgrounds. So what does this law do? It bans outdoor ads within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds.

The Court said the Massachusetts law was intolerable because it choked off communication about a legal activity. “In some geographical areas,” complained Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, “these regulations would constitute nearly a complete ban on the communication of truthful information about smokeless tobacco and cigars to adult consumers.”

But to anti-smoking zealots, that effect is not a bug but a feature. The only problem they have with imposing “nearly a complete ban” is the “nearly” part.

Read the whole thing.

Eton tie

The BBC quotes an industry association report identifying the latest breakthrough in British mollycoddling: replacing dangerous, capable of individual expression knotted ties with clip-ons.

Clip-on ties are replacing knotted school ties as schools worry about health and safety, says a survey of school uniform suppliers.

The Schoolwear Association says 10 schools a week in the UK are switching, because of fears of ties getting caught in equipment or strangling pupils.

There are also claims that clip-on ties can stop pupils from customising the size of the knots in their ties.

Uniforms are an “instrument of social levelling,” says the association. ...

The emergence of clip-on ties is part of a growing sensitivity towards health and safety, says the association, along with modifications such as high-visibility trimming on scarves.

Clip-on ties take away the risk of pupils having accidents with their knotted ties.

Schools have raised concerns about ties catching fire in science lessons, getting trapped in technology equipment or ties getting caught when pupils were running.

Clip-on ties also allow schools to create a more standardised appearance, says the association, stopping pupils from being more creative in how they wear their ties.

There is something perfectly embodying modern leftist thought in the combination of motives here: sniveling cowardice joined with leveling conformity.

Oxford’s Bodleian Library

The news has even reached India’s DNA news service (Bombay) that librarians at Oxford have banned step ladders and refused all access to books on upper shelves.

Britain, to make up for the monstrosities it perpetrated on its colonies during its empire days, has since the culmination of the Second World War been celeritously progressing on a path of political correctness—to the extent of first starting to call a spade a wilting water lily and then beginning to nurse a whimpering nanny state.

Now, an old stanchion of olde Blighty has caught the contagion. The Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford, where many a ruminative afternoon was spent by the likes of Gladstone and Attlee, Wilde and Shelly, and Hawking and Tim Berners-Lee, has made the books in its uppermost shelves out of bounds for students—or anyone else for that matter.

The reason: three-year-old British health and safety regulations that the library’s authorities happened to trip upon recently. Better late than never, the library has deemed the use of stepladders to be too risky for a scholar’s life and limb. The momentous decision has been arrived at irrespective of the fact that in the centuries of its existence, no untoward incident is on record to have occurred in the Bodleian owing to the use of ladders for reaching books in the higher rows.

So is there a way to access the books? In one word, no. The authorities say, respecting the national love of tradition, the books stay where they are: in their “historic” locations. If one wants access to a particular volume, one can always try at the British Library in London. And yes, there are also the digital versions.

It was several decades ago that Yale closed all the fireplaces in in residential dorms after the fire marshal declared that they constituted a fire hazard.

One of contemporary nincompoopery’s most characteristic features is an infatuation with the idea of Progress so complete that it excludes totally the ability not only to draw lessons from the evidence of the past, but even to recognize that the possibility of continuation with the past exists. Revolutionary change today is always vital and obligatory. And anytime events produce the slightest break with ordinary routine, as in the case of Islamic terrorists captured post 9/11, a group of experts must be hastily assembled to re-invent the wheel.

Oxford librarians simply cannot recognize that people have climbed stepladders to reach books for centuries, just as Yale’s administration could not access the fact that people heated homes and cooked with fireplaces for centuries, all with entirely acceptable rates of untoward incident. Similarly, the Bush Administration could not grasp the fact that American military commanders had previously encountered illegal combatants and that practically effective policies and customs applying to such circumstances have existed throughout the history of human conflict. Instead, George W. Bush had to invent new policies and order policy drafts from Justice Department attorneys.

The Bodleian’s high shelf books are exactly like mankind’s history, tradition, and the experience of all our deceased predecessors: out of the reach of contemporary idiots.

He’s a real mother, alright

Get ready, America, for a return to the 1970s era of federally-mandated nationwide 55 mph speed limits, emission-strangled automobile engines, and speedometers topping out at 85.

Barack Obama has appointed America’s Safety-Nazi-in-Chief Charles A. Hurley, current head of Mothers Against Drunk Driving to preside over the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

Well, you’re living in the Nanny State now, boys and girls. Hurley is a long time advocate of drastically more extensive federal supervision of your naughty driving.

He is on the record as supporting a .04% Blood Alcohol Content limit, meaning you are guilty of DUI if you sip one glass of Chardonnay at dinner, and he favors vastly expanded pullover alcohol checks to enforce it, along with breathalyzer-ignition interlocks.

Expect to see the federally mandatory 55 mph speed limit again, expanded liability opportunities for trial lawyers, and a nationwide regime of stoplight and speed check cameras everywhere.

Repeat after me: “I love Big Brother!”
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Hat tip to Walter Olson.

Hugo Rifkind survived Xmas without the advice of Britain’s Labour Government. It was obviously a Xmas miracle.

For all I know, this column is coming to you from beyond the grave. As I write, it is Christmas Eve. As you read, it is Boxing Day. I can’t really see myself making it through. You see, despite my best efforts, I have utterly failed to get hold of a copy of the Government’s festive safety leaflet, Tis the Season to be Careful.

Tis, tis it? Oh dear. I wonder what will get me? Will I sever an artery with scissors while excitedly opening a present? Take a lethal elbow to the nose, thanks to somebody else’s overenthusiastic tug on a Christmas cracker? Maybe I’ll get drunk and sit in the fireplace, or blow up the house by putting a gravy boat in the microwave. Maybe, who knows, I’ll fit the whole turkey over my head and, as the complete antithesis of that “Blind man sees” story that was in the newspapers the other day, run around excitedly until I fall off the landing. You know, like Joey would have done, if they’d had stairs in that apartment in Friends.

Alas, there is just no knowing. For the Government handed out 150,000 leaflets advising people on how not to kill themselves at Christmas, and my household didn’t end up with one. I’m feeling terribly exposed. And there must be plenty of other families in the same boat.

Maybe you read this now as the only survivor of your own little festive apocalypse. Under the dining room table, naked except for a party hat, beating off the advances of your snarling, brandy-butter-crazed family dog with the charred remains of grandma’s thighbone. “Nooooo!” you will be wailing. “If only I had been appraised of the stark and leafleted warnings of Baroness Morgan of Drefelin, the Minister for Children, in conjunction with the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents! Woe! Woe!” Sob, growl, thunk. ..

Once you stop resenting nanny, you start to rely on her. If nanny tells you to stop smoking in pubs, you probably stop smoking in pubs. But, in time, you also stop thinking about whether you ought to smoke in pubs or not. And worse, if somebody else lights up next to you, you expect nanny to do something about it. It’s not your business or even really his. It’s just nanny’s business. You’ve both become morons.

Now nanny is telling you not to hurt yourself over Christmas. Chances are, you weren’t really planning to, anyway. Chances are, moreover, that you probably thought you were quite well equipped to avoid hurting yourself at Christmas all by yourself.

But nanny disagrees. Nanny doesn’t think that you are up to it. And, in time, you’ll probably start to believe her. In time, as a result, you will grow to consider your wellbeing at Christmas not to be your own problem at all, but to be nanny’s problem entirely. And that’s nuts.

In other words, you used to have a duty not to burn down your house and slaughter your entire family. Now, because nanny has taken on that duty, you have a right not to burn down your house and slaughter your entire family. Needless to say, this makes no sense at all.

Still, don’t come crying to me. It’s nanny’s fault, not mine. And anyway, as discussed, I’m probably dead.

Read the whole thing.

Daily Mail:

For nearly a quarter of a century, Lourdes Maxwell has celebrated the arrival of summer by putting a paddling pool in the garden.

This year, however, her two grandchildren and the children of her neighbours may have to find another way to cool off in the heat.

Miss Maxwell’s local council has decided that the pool – which is only 2ft deep – needs a lifeguard.

The 47-year-old divorced mother of three has also been told she must have insurance before she can inflate the toy outside her house in Portsmouth.

Jonah Goldberg sounds the alarm over the elect’s revival of enthusiasm for coercive expressions collectivist paternalism.

Remember this? “There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical….”

Younger readers may not remember the opening to “The Outer Limits,” a pretty good sci-fi rip-off of “The Twilight Zone” (and they may have only a fuzzy understanding that TVs used to have knobs to control the horizontal and vertical). But as they read the news these days, maybe they can find a new appreciation for the creepy feeling of powerlessness that opening once gave viewers. ...

We are seeing a return to the idea—first championed by social planners in the progressive era—that government can and should play the role of parent. For instance, Michael Gerson, once a speechwriter for President Bush, advocates a new “heroic conservatism”—an updating of his former boss’ compassionate conservatism—that would unleash a new era of statist regulations. On the stump, Hillary Clinton refers to her book, “It Takes a Village,” in which she argued that we all must surrender ourselves to the near-constant prodding, monitoring, cajoling and scolding of the “helping professions.” Clinton argues that children are born in “crisis” and government must respond with all the tools in its arsenal from the word go. She advocates putting television sets in all public gathering places so citizens can be treated to an endless loop of good parenting tutorials.

Mike Huckabee, who represents compassionate conservatism on steroids, favors a nationwide ban on public smoking. Everywhere, from Barack Obama to John McCain, we are told that our politics must be about causes “larger than ourselves.” What we used to think of as individual freedom is now being recast as greedy and selfish.

Read the whole thing.

“First they came for the fully-automatic machine guns, and I’d didn’t protest because I didn’t own a machine gun…”

As the BBC reports, even joke guns and toys swords must be registered and stored locked up in today’s Britain.

A Cornish village drama group has had to register a toy gun with the police to comply with health and safety rules.

Carnon Downs drama group in Cornwall have also had to keep their plastic cutlasses and wooden swords locked up for the pantomime, Robinson Crusoe.

Producers of the show called the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) rules “farcical”.

A spokesman for the HSE said the rules were designed to make risks “sensibly managed”.

The climax of the show is a fight in which actors use replica 4ft-foot long plastic cutlasses.

There is also a toy gun which produces a flag saying “Bang”.

The directors contacted police after receiving advice from the HSE and the National Operatic and Dramatic Association.

The HSE have a page on their website called Entertainment Information Sheet 20 which lays down strict rules for the handling of guns, swords and other weapons on set.

Drama group co-director Linda Barker said: “The cutlasses count as weapons even though they are replicas and made of plastic and apparently they could be mistaken for real ones.

“Our only gun was a panto pistol which produces a flag with the word bang on it.

“Our local police at Truro were fantastic and they have registered the gun, the two plastic cutlasses and our six wooden swords.”

She added: “It gets a bit farcical when you are dealing with plastic swords. It is not as if anyone is likely to be scared by them.”

Neighbourhood beat officer Pc Nigel Hyde said: “We have been informed and made a note.

“It seems a bit unusual but other forms of replica weapons have been used to carry out crimes and the consequences have been serious.”

A spokesman for the HSE said: “We do not want to stop people putting on pantos or having fun as long as the risks are sensible managed.”

Hat tip to Walter Olson.