The Barrister lost a fence in a recent hurricane, and being foolish enough to ask permission to rebuild it, finds himself confronted with a Catch-22.

I go to down to our little Town Hall, just to stay on the right side of the law, to make a cautious inquiry. Town Hall sits in a nice old colonial house in the center of town, with a brick addition on the back. “It’s about a pool fence,” I tell the receptionist, who is doing nothing at all. “P&Z”, she replies. I go up the stairs to P&Z, and wait for 20 minutes while it is decided that it is OK with the all-wise and all-knowing government for someone to install central vacuuming in their house.

“It’s about a fence,” I finally am able to say. “Go the Building Dept.” I go to Building Dept., where there are two guys hanging around the desk. “It’s about a pool fence.” The guy is friendly and helpful. “Show me where on the map.” I show him the property, and he says “Got to go to Wetlands first.”

I am now running short on time. I go down the stairs and to the back to Wetlands. The nice young lady takes about 20 minutes to determine that the obvious fact that my property abuts a river. “You can’t build a new fence there – that’s a high-velocity flood zone.”

“But I am required to have a fence around the pool”, I insist, “because the town requires it”. And then I made a foolish error, mainly because I was impatient and had limited time. “The old fence was washed away when Katrina blew through here in the fall, so all I need to know is whether it is OK to replace it.”

“An unfenced pool? That is a zoning violation. I am obligated to inform the P&Z inspector.” I sputtered “But but but..I only need to replace it.” She replied “We will need it inspected first, but you are probably currently in violation, because we take pool safety seriously in this town. But construction in a wetlands flood zone will require a variance and a hearing which will take several months to schedule. You can begin by filling out these forms”, she said, handing me a packet about one inch thick. “Honestly, I might suggest to you that you get a local lawyer to represent you in this matter, because these issues become complicated, especially when you want something grandfathered.”

No one wants to see the last remnant breeding population of the Greater Spotted Watzit hunted to extinction. So passing Endangered Species Legislation internationally was a piece of cake. Hunters and animal rights enthusiasts came happily together, beaming with joy, as our political leaders a generation ago signed measures providing such protections into law.

No one foresaw that, in the United States, obscure and totally uninteresting weeds, rodents, or newts would soon be utilized to block developments opposed by selfish neighbors or mere crackpots.

It was also overlooked that somebody, i.e. a committee of obscure and unknown academics meeting happily during well-funded junkets to Geneva, would be empowered to identify as “Endangered” anything they pleased, with no appeal, or recourse to the facts, available.

Big game hunters soon found that many trophies of legally shot game species could no longer be brought back from Safari, because, for instance, the reduction of numbers of leopards in certain portions of the big cat’s historic range (and the politics of preservationism) proved perfectly adequate to persuade the Olympians meeting in Geneva to declare all leopards “endangered,” even where leopards were superabundant or where leopards locally represented a hazard or a pest.

In today’s Britain, superabundant badgers are causing problems for farmers by spreading bovine tuberculosis, but Brock the Badger is utterly and completely protected by law. So much as mess with a badger’s den, and you may get six months in chokey for every badger you’ve theoretically inconvenienced.

The Times of London notes:

Once a species manages to creep on to a protected list, there is no shifting it. Badgers have gained their untouchable status because, in the 1950s and 1960s, farmers were ploughing up their setts. A law requiring farmers to seek licences before destroying setts was passed in 1973. As a result, badgers featured in the Council of Europe’s Bern Treaty in 1979, which committed Britain to protecting the species for ever after. The more badger numbers have increased, the more the Government has defended them. The 1992 Act does include provisions for farmers to seek licences to control badgers, but hardly any have been issued since 1997.

In other words, whether an animal is protected or not owes little to its current numbers; it just depends on how EU ministers were feeling after a good lunch in Switzerland 29 years ago.

Hat tip to Frank Dobbs.

In an impressive case of official pettyfogging and regulatory excess, the Purbeck Council (Dorset) has banned a local veteran from flying his former regiment’s flag above his restaurant on the grounds that it should be regarded as a form of “advertising.”

The Telegraph:

A former Gurkha has been banned from flying the regiment’s flag from his Nepalese restaurant, but he has been told he can hoist the colours of the European Union.

Asbahadur Gurung, whose family served in the Army for 70 years, wanted to display his former regiment’s colours above his restaurant, called The Gurkha.

Council officials said the green and white flag was a form of advertising and refused him permission. But they advised him that he did not need permission to run up the flag of any country, the UN or the EU.

The decision has angered Mr Gurung, whose father Mambahadur fought in the Battle of Kohima in Burma in the Second World War. “I was proud to serve the British Army for 28 years as was my father before me,” he said. “We know the British people have a great respect for the Gurkhas and we thought a lot of people would appreciate the regiment flag.”

Mr Gurung, 70, spent 28 years in the Queen’s Gurkha Signals, eventually reaching the rank of captain.

He added: “Our restaurant is called The Gurkha so we thought it would be quite appropriate to fly our flag. I don’t understand what the problem is. It is not very good. I don’t want to fly another flag or the EU flag – I didn’t fight for the EU.”

Gurkhas are recruited from Nepal and have fought alongside British soldiers for almost 200 years and are renowned for their bravery.

Mr Gurung fought in the Malaya Emergency against a communist uprising in the 1950s and the Indonesian Confrontation in Brunei in the 1960s.

He went on to become a commanding officer, serving in Hong Kong, and left the Army with an exemplary record.

On becoming a civilian, he managed a Nepalese restaurant in Hong Kong before migrating to Britain in 1993.

He opened The Gurkha in Wareham, Dorset, last year and sought permission from Purbeck District Council to fly his regimental flag.

He had hoped to erect two 15ft flag poles and unfurl the Union Flag on one and, on the other, the Gurkha flag with its green background and two white crossed kukris – the curved weapon and general all-purpose tool of Nepal.

The local parish council had no problem with the flags and there were no complaints from local residents. But Purbeck council viewed the Gurkha flag as a form of advertising and refused permission for it to be displayed. They also thought it could distract passing motorists.

Alan Davies, the council’s principal planning officer, said: “The government regulations state you can fly the flag of any country without permission but the Gurkha flag is not the flag of a country and therefore it needs permission.

“There is already a plethora of advertising signs on the site of the restaurant. We are not opposed to the restaurant, indeed a lot of staff have been there before and it is excellent.”

It’s cold in Minnesota, and David Karki wishes Al Gore would just send some of that Global Warming his way, and leave his civil liberties alone.

Minus 17° F. That was the low temperature this mid-winter morning as I walked outside and coughed on the frigid arctic air that burned my windpipe as I attempted to inhale it, before starting my minivan’s engine so it could idle for 20 minutes and then be warm enough to drive.

Some think we Minnesotans are crazy to live in such conditions, but then every location has its risks – hurricanes in the southeast, summer heat in the desert southwest, and so on. Those of us endowed with a healthy sense of humility, logic and common sense understand that these extremes are perfectly normal; that they have been occurring off and on for many, many years; and that they are far beyond our puny ability to significantly affect.

Sadly, this grounded understanding has completely escaped one Al Gore and his radical environmentalist acolytes. Ol’ Al has jumped off the reality train and headed for parts unknown.

Never mind the crust of frost on my bedroom windows; Al says “the climate crisis is significantly worse.” You want to come up here without thermal underwear, a parka, gloves and a stocking cap and say that? …

And never mind the federal government banning incandescent light bulbs come 2012; Al says it’s not enough, and that we must change laws, “not just light bulbs.” Uh, first of all Al, the new ban is changing the law, you idiot! And more importantly, you and your wacko tree-hugging allies have no right whatsoever to stomp on personal liberties just to stroke your massive ego for having solved an entirely non-existent crisis.

That is really the point here. The tyrannical means being used to implement this lunatic environmentalist policy is so beyond anything we Americans should find tolerable, much less acceptable, that even if the ends were desirable we should not stand for it. What we are really talking about, when you take away the pseudo-benevolent green crapola behind which these psychos hide, is totalitarian control of every last detail of your life.

Read the whole rant.

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.

Former Oklahoma Congressman Ernest Istook, now at Heritage Foundation, identifies the key problem with America’s economy.

We can’t afford Congress. It’s driving America’s cost-of-living through the roof.

Any tax cut or “economic stimulus” we might get this spring is peanuts compared to how Washington keeps jacking up the price of everything that’s important.

By itself, last month’s energy bill will make food, cars, gasoline and even light bulbs more expensive. Washington is also the culprit behind high medical bills and health insurance, washing machines that have doubled in price, and our wonderful, more-expensive “lo-flo” toilets that don’t flush right.

All this is on top of what red tape already costs us. A 2004 government report admitted that federal regulations cost our economy at least $1.1 trillion each year. That’s $3,666 per person, so multiply that by the number of people in your household. And remember that’s before the 2007 energy bill. And in addition to taxes.

The new energy laws are a leftist’s dream and a supply-sider’s nightmare. As 2008 starts, we’re paying $3 (often more) for a gallon of gasoline. That’s up about a fourth (64 cents) from a year ago. The Heritage Foundation calculates the new energy bill will boost gas prices over $5 a gallon by 2016. Yet rather than let us produce more oil domestically, Congress keeps areas off-limits from drilling that could raise supply and lower prices. Nor will Congress let us expand nuclear energy, which likewise would help energy prices.

Read the whole thing.

The federal government already prevents Americans from using durable (made with lead) house paint, and assures that new toilets don’t flush properly. Now California wants to go a step further and take control of California residents’ heating and cooling systems and home appliances.

Californians love Big Brother!

WorldNetDaily:

Add thermostats to the list of private property the government would like to regulate as the state of California looks to require that residents install remotely monitored temperature controls in their homes next year.

The government is seeking to limit rolling blackouts and free up electric and natural gas resources by mandating that every new heating and cooling system include a “non-removable” FM receiver. The thermostat is also capable of controlling other appliances in the house, such as electric water heaters, refrigerators, pool pumps, computers and lights in response to signals from utility companies. If contractors and residents refuse to comply with the mandate, their building permits will be denied.

The proposal, set to be considered by the commission Jan. 30, requires each thermostat to be equipped with a radio communication device to send “price signals” and automatically adjust temperature up or down 4 degrees for cooling and heating, as California’s public and private utility organizations deem necessary.

Claudia Chandler, assistant executive director for the California Energy Commission, told WND the new systems would be highly beneficial to residents.

“From the Energy Commission’s perspective, all we’re doing is ensuring that this new technology is included in new homes instead of the older programmable technology,” she said.

The Programmable Communication Thermostat, or PCT, will allow power authorities to control home temperatures without granting consumers ability to override settings during “emergency events.” Nowhere in the proposal does it clarify what type of situation would qualify as an “emergency,” but Chandler offered her own explanation: “An emergency is when the utilities need to implement rolling blackouts and drop load in order to be able to meet their supplies because the integrity of the grid is being jeopardized.”

She claims residents will be able to manually override controls in all cases, but the 2008 Building Efficiency Standards (Page 64), known as Title 24, specifically states: “The PCT shall not allow customer changes to thermostat settings during emergency events.”

The New York Times reports on how the medieval practice of the state defending the special interests of particular groups participating in the economy over the general interest continues to flourish in certain unenlightened European countries.

Amazon.com may not offer free delivery on books in France, the high court in Versailles has ruled.

The action, brought in January 2004 by the French Booksellers’ Union (Syndicat de la librairie française), accused Amazon of offering illegal discounts on books and even of selling some books below cost.

The court gave Amazon 10 days to start charging for the delivery of books, which should at least allow the company to maintain the offer through the end-of-year gift-giving season. After that, it must pay a fine of €1,000 (US$1,470) per day that it continues to offer free delivery. It must also pay €100,000 in compensation to the booksellers’ union.

Retail prices, particularly of books, are tightly regulated in France.

Using “loss-leaders,” or selling products below cost to attract customers, is illegal. Other restrictions apply to books retailers must not offer discounts of more than 5 percent on the publisher’s recommended price. Many independent booksellers choose to offer this discount in the form of a loyalty bonus based on previous purchases. Larger booksellers simply slash the sticker price of books.

But the free delivery offered by Amazon exceeded the legal limit in the case of cheaper books, the union charged.

The union said it was pleased with the court’s ruling, which would help protect vulnerable small bookshops from predatory pricing practices.

This sort of thing exemplifies precisely the philosophical differences between the United States and Europe. The American idea is to attempt to limit the powers of government to serve special interests and to bear the inevitable discomforts and dislocations resulting from freedom and competition, based on the belief that voluntary human interactions produce more innovation, greater productivity, and lower costs, inevitably maximizing the prosperity of society as a whole. Europeans still commonly reject Liberalism and modernity, preferring state paternalism and arbitrary systems of protected status.

Marc Morano reports on Senator James Inhofe’s blog from the UN conference in Bali.

How do you save the Earth from catastrophic climate change? Create a new International tax to be used to redistribute monies from countries like to US to the Third World.

A global tax on carbon dioxide emissions was urged to help save the Earth from catastrophic man-made global warming at the United Nations climate conference. A panel of UN participants on Thursday urged the adoption of a tax that would represent “a global burden sharing system, fair, with solidarity, and legally binding to all nations.”

“Finally someone will pay for these [climate related] costs,” Othmar Schwank, a global tax advocate, told Inhofe EPW Press Blog…

Schwank said at least “$10-$40 billion dollars per year” could be generated by the tax, and wealthy nations like the U.S. would bear the biggest burden based on the “polluters pay principle.”

The U.S. and other wealthy nations need to “contribute significantly more to this global fund,” Schwank explained. He also added, “It is very essential to tax coal.”

The UN was presented with a new report from the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment titled “Global Solidarity in Financing Adaptation.” The report stated there was an “urgent need” for a global tax in order for “damages [from climate change] to be kept from growing to truly catastrophic levels, especially in vulnerable countries of the developing world.”

The tens of billions of dollars per year generated by a global tax would “flow into a global Multilateral Adaptation Fund” to help nations cope with global warming, according to the report.

Schwank said a global carbon dioxide tax is an idea long overdue that is urgently needed to establish “a funding scheme which generates the resources required to address the dimension of challenge with regard to climate change costs.” …

The environmental group Friends of the Earth, in attendance in Bali, also advocated the transfer of money from rich to poor nations on Wednesday.

“A climate change response must have at its heart a redistribution of wealth and resources,” said Emma Brindal, a climate justice campaigner coordinator for Friends of the Earth. …

MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen warned about these types of carbon regulations earlier this year. “Controlling carbon is a bureaucrat’s dream. If you control carbon, you control life,” Lindzen said in March 2007.

California’s formerly-Republican Governor has signed two anti-gun bills embodying controversial theories.

Assembly Bill 821 bans the use of lead bullets in a number of California hunting zones inhabited by the California Condor (Gymnogyps californianus) on the basis of the belief that the few surviving California Condors could ingest bullets from wounded-and-lost game animals or from hunter’s gut piles, then fail to regurgitate or quickly pass such foreign objects, consequently succumbing to lead poisoning.

Journalists report studies supporting such deaths, but those familiar with the digestive processes of raptors generally may well find it difficult to believe that indigestible lumps of metal are likely to remain inside the birds long enough to produce poisoning. Vulturine birds like other raptors eject indigestible portions of prey or carrion, such as bone or fur or feathers, in the form of pellets.

Arnold Schwarzenneger also signed the patently absurd Assembly Bill 1471 which mandates the application of imaginary non-existent technology in semiautomatic pistols. After January 1st, 2010, semiauto pistols in California must be

designed and equipped with a microscopic array of characters that identify the make, model, and serial number of the pistol, etched or otherwise imprinted onto in two or more places on the interior surface or internal working parts of the pistol, and that are transferred by imprinting on each cartridge case when the firearm is fired.

California’s democrat-majority assembly pretends to believe that an ability to trace ejected cartridge casings to specific individual firearms would be of great value in crime solving. That theory, of course, overlooks the possibility of smart criminals simply picking up their spent cases at shooting scenes, the truly diabolical taking a file to the microscopic array, and the just-plain-practical throwing the murder weapon into the Pacific.

In reality, of course, the impact (and concealed intention) is really simply to ban semi-automatic pistols in the state of California.

Governor Schwarzenegger ran originally as a Republican and a reformer. When he found himself taking large hits in the polls as the result of massive political advertising by state employee’s unions and hostile coverage by the liberal establishment media, he sold out and made peace with the democrat legislature, the unions, and the liberal activist lobby groups. Now he gets flattering press coverage for precisely this kind of betrayal.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation observed:

Governor Schwarzenegger has now effectively banned more firearms than Senators Kennedy, Feinstein and Schumer combined,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF senior vice president and general counsel. “The governor has proven to gun owners and sportsmen that he is just another liberal anti-gun Hollywood actor — he just plays a moderate Republican on TV. Mr. Schwarzenegger has now exposed himself for what he really is, the most anti-gun and anti-sportsmen governor in America.

Gyrinophilus porphyriticus porphyriticus

A single Northern Spring Salamander spotted across the road from the site of Jake Halpern‘s family’s intended vacation retreat in 1988 resulted in a building ban twelve years later, two years of negotiations with the state, a compromise involving the construction of two bridges, one 76 feet (23.16 meters) long.

Then, Massachusetts took the Spring Salamander off its Endangered Species list.

Francisco Linares of Rolling Hills Estates, California will be going to jail for six months. His crime? Getting into an argument with the authorities enforcing the Kafka-esque system of construction permits in his California town over a termite-infested fence on city property.

DailyBreeze:

The 51-year-old bought the nearly 1-acre property in the 4600 block of Palos Verdes Drive North in 1998. After tearing down an adobe house on the site and building a 3,000-square-foot French-style home, he began landscaping.

When Linares asked the city to repair the white three-railed fence behind his house, he was told it was on his property and his responsibility. So he replaced the termite-infested planks. Then the city reversed itself and said Linares had illegally built the fence on city property.

In October 2004, the city charged Linares with three misdemeanors: for not taking down the fence, having a retaining wall built higher than a 2-foot restriction and for erecting stone columns without a neighborhood compatibility analysis. Later inspections found eight other violations, including a lack of permits for plumbing and grading.

“He’s had a couple of years to correct the problems,” said Dean Pucci, a Fullerton attorney contracted as the city’s prosecutor. “His options were to obtain final permits or remove all of these structures built without permits.”

Linares lives in the house with his wife and three daughters. He contends that he didn’t remove the structures because he believed the permits would be approved.

However, Pucci said no permits are pending, since Linares failed to resubmit an application that was deemed incomplete.

At the sentencing, Hamar said his client was a good Christian man who has never committed a crime and who worked diligently – 142 hours – to try to resolve the issues with the city.

And the only reason he was not able to complete the stipulations of the plea agreement, he said, was because of the city’s confusing building codes and negligence in rendering a decision on his permit applications.

“We established that he did everything that was humanly possible to comply. And the un-rebutted evidence is that (the city) hasn’t ruled on the permits.”