The Evening Standard has news of Britain’s Labour Government’s latest crime fighting initiative.

Parents could be forced to go to special classes to learn to sing their children nursery rhymes, a minister said.

Those who fail to read stories or sing to their youngsters threaten their children’s future and the state must put them right, Children’s Minister Beverley Hughes said.

Their children’s well-being is at risk ‘unless we act’, she declared.

And Mrs Hughes said the state would train a new ‘parenting workforce’ to ensure parents who fail to do their duty with nursery rhymes are found and ‘supported’.

The call for state intervention in the minute details of family life followed a series of Labour efforts to reduce anti-social behaviour and improve educational standards by imposing rigorous controls on the lives of the youngest children.

Mrs Hughes has established a national curriculum to set down how babies are taught to speak in childcare from the age of three months.

Her efforts have gone alongside a push by other ministers to determine exactly how parents treat their children down to how they should brush their teeth…

This autumn is likely to see an extension of parenting orders that can force parents to attend parenting classes so that they can be used on the say so of local councils against parents.

For the first time, parenting orders are likely to be directed against parents whose children have committed no criminal offence.

The threat of action against parents who fail to sing nursery rhymes was unveiled by Mrs Hughes as she gave the first details of Mr Blair’s ‘national parenting academy’, a body that will train teachers, psychologists and social workers to intervene in the lives of families and become the ‘parenting workforce’.

We’ve all heard of “the nanny-state,” but really!

Koochiching County (population 13,907) is located at the center of the northern end of Minnesota, bordering the wilderness of Northern Ontario. Its principal claim to fame is probably that county’s leading metropolis International Falls (population 6703) having been fictionalized in 1959 on television as “Frostbite Falls,” home of cartoon characters Rocky and Bullwinkle.

Indus Elementary & Secondary School, located 30 miles west of International Falls, has 194 pupils (79 elementary – 115 secondary) attending grades K through 12 from families residing in western Koochiching County.

I mention all this just to make clear the rural character of the setting of today’s headline news item.

The Associated Press yesterday evening ran the alarming headline: Principal quits after shooting kittens at school, followed by this lead:

A school principal has resigned and could face felony firearm charges after he shot and killed two orphaned kittens on school property last month.

That sounds absolutely terrible, of course. But the reality was rather different.

Principal Wade Pilloud, who resided weekdays in a mobile home on school property, had placed one or more traps underneath the trailer “to catch pests,” WCCO‘s version of the story reports.

Since the trap was large enough to kill an adult cat, Principal Pillaud was almost certainly using a conibear trap, rather than a leghold trap. Conibear traps are designed to kill the animal. A conibear trap large enough to kill a cat would have to have been set for something larger than a rat or a squirrel. Chances are that a skunk took up residence under Mr. Pillaud’s trailer, and he was taking action to remove a rather drastic problem.

Unfortunately, Mr. Pillaud discovered he had trapped a (presumably feral) female cat, whose death left orphaned a pair of young kittens. A cat-owner himself, Mr. Pillaud did not want the kittens to starve to death; so, after school, one night last month when all this happened, he took his shotgun, and “put them out of their misery,” as people say in the country.

But several children on the schoolgrounds for after hours activities heard the shooting, and went home and told their parents all about it.

This being the day and age it is, even in rural Northern Minnesota, you have nincompoops.

There were parents who felt, apparently some rather strongly, that there were concerns about the safety of their children,” said Joseph Flynn, an attorney for the South Koochiching/Rainy River School District. “The district’s position is that safety was not compromised.”

John Mastin, acting sheriff in Koochiching County, said Pilloud could be charged with felony possession of a firearm on school property and reckless discharge of a firearm, a misdemeanor.

County Attorney Jennifer Hasbargen said Friday that the case was under review.

Mastin said the shooting put no one in danger but said Pilloud used “poor discretion and poor timing,” especially amid the growing fear of gun violence in schools.

The district put Pilloud on administrative leave after the incident. Flynn said Pilloud agreed to an undisclosed settlement and resigned.

This type of incident demonstrates that nowhere in America is non-suburban enough today to assure the safety of gun-owners from the ritualized hoplophobia of journalists, politicians, and anti-weapons bigots. The NRA and other gun rights litigation centers need to intervene and contest every such case of the marginalizing of gun ownership and the stigmatization of the legitimate use of firearms. Otherwise, ultimately, a gun ban British and Australian-style is inevitable.

Peggy Noonan observes liberals involved in four speech incidents in the past 10 days:

At Columbia University, members of the Minutemen, the group that patrols the U.S. border with Mexico and reports illegal crossings, were asked to address a forum on immigration policy. As Jim Gilchrist, the founder, spoke, angry students stormed the stage, shouting and knocking over chairs and tables. “Having wreaked havoc,” said the New York Sun, they unfurled a banner in Arabic and English that said, “No one is ever illegal.” The auditorium was cleared, the Minutemen silenced. Afterward a student protester told the Columbia Spectator, “I don’t feel we need to apologize or anything. It was fundamentally a part of free speech. . . . The Minutemen are not a legitimate part of the debate on immigration.”

On Oct. 2, on Katie Couric’s “CBS Evening News,” in the segment called “Free Speech,” the father of a boy killed at Columbine shared his views on the deeper causes of the recent shootings in Amish country. Brian Rohrbough said violence entered our schools when we threw God out of them. “This country is in a moral freefall. For over two generations the public school system has taught in a moral vacuum. . . . We teach there are no moral absolutes, no right or wrong, and I assure you the murder of innocent children is always wrong, including abortion. Abortion has diminished the value of children.” This was not exactly the usual mush.

Mr. Rohrbough was quickly informed he was not part of the legitimate debate, either. Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post: “The decision . . . to air his views prompted a storm of criticism, some of it within the ranks of CBS News.” A blog critic: Grief makes people say “stupid” things, but “what made them put this man on television?” Good question. How did they neglect to silence him?

Soon after, at Madison Square Garden, Barbra Streisand, began her latest farewell tour with what friends who were there tell me was a moving, beautiful concert. She was in great form and brought the audience together in appreciation of her great ballads, which are part of the aural tapestry of our lives. And then . . . the moment. Suddenly she decided to bang away on politics. Fine, she’s a Democrat, Bush is bad. But midway through the bangaway a man in the audience called out. Most could not hear him, but everyone seems to agree he at least said, “What is this, a fund-raiser?”

At this, Ms. Streisand became enraged, stormed the stage and pummeled herself. Wait, that was Columbia. Actually she became enraged and cursed the man. A friend who was there, a liberal Democrat, said what was most interesting was Ms. Streisand made a physical movement with her arms and hands–“those talon hands”–as if to say, See what I have to put up with when I attempt to educate the masses? She soon apologized, to her credit. Though apparently in the manner of a teacher who’d just kind of lost it with an unruly and ignorant student.

On “The View” a few days earlier it was Rosie O’Donnell. She was banging away on gun control. Guns are bad and should be banned. Elizabeth Hasselbeck, who plays the role of the young, attractive mom, tentatively responded. “I want to be fair,” she said. Obviously there should be “restrictions,” but women have a right to defend themselves, and there’s “the right to bear arms” in the Constitution. Rosie accused Elizabeth of yelling. The panel, surprised, agreed that Elizabeth was not yelling. Rosie then went blank-faced with what someone must have told her along the way is legitimately felt rage. Elizabeth was not bowing to Rosie’s views. Elizabeth needed to be educated. The education commenced, Rosie gesturing broadly and Elizabeth constricting herself as if she knew physical assault were a possibility. When Rosie gets going on the Second Amendment I always think, Oh I hope she’s not armed! Actually I wonder what Freud would have made of an enraged woman obsessed with gun control. Ach, classic projection. Eef she had a gun she would kill. Therefore no one must haf guns.

There’s a pattern here, isn’t there?

It is not only about rage and resentment, and how some have come to see them as virtues, as an emblem of rightness. I feel so much, therefore my views are correct and must prevail.

She missed the proposed Nuremburg Trials for Global Warming skeptics.

Looking for the text cited in that Senate Environment Committee news release this morning, I also came upon this review by Professor Robert M. Carter of Al Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth.

Carter delivers a devastating critique of the film.

Those raw scientific facts that Mr Gore chooses for use in An Inconvenient Truth are mostly correct. Indeed, much of the material could have been drawn from elementary university courses in meteorology, geography or geology, though one would hope that university treatments would be presented in a more balanced and critical way.

Overall, the film is a compelling account of various natural earth phenomena that have the potential to impact humanity disastrously, and therefore a graphic illustration of the fact that we live on a dynamic planet. Were the film to be stripped of its sententious script, we might be watching an episode in David Attenborough’s recent TV series, Planet Earth.

Hence, presumably, the appeal to audiences: who often break into spontaneous applause at the end of a showing, and thereby reveal both their gullibility to emotional messages and their lack of scientific understanding.

For the problem with An Inconvenient Truth is that it is well-made propaganda for the global warming cause rather than well-made climate science. Nowhere does Mr Gore tell his audience that all of the phenomena that he describes fall within the natural range of environmental change on our planet. Nor does he present any evidence that climate during the 20th century departed discernibly from its historical pattern of constant change. This is not surprising, for no such evidence yet exists.

During his movie, Mr Gore asserts that climate change is now a moral rather than a scientific issue. He is right, though not in quite the way that he might have imagined.

The moral issue concerns the way in which much of today’s environmental “science” – including that regarding climate change, as typified by this film – is presented to governments and the public. Mr Gore clearly believes that his presumed morally superior ends justify any means, including distortion of evidence, and in consequence he nails his colours firmly to the climate alarmist mast.

But then I came upon an example of what struck me as impossible-to-believe exaggeration.

Indeed. And the intellectual dishonesty involved in this is not restricted to Mr Gore’s film, but has become all pervasive.

For example, professional sociologists at the London-based Institute for Policy Research urge that “the task of climate change agencies is not to persuade by rational argument. … Instead, we need to work in a more shrewd and contemporary way, using subtle techniques of engagement. … The ‘facts’ need to be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken“.

Wonderfully damaging material, I thought, but much too good to possibly be true. So I started searching to find if there was the slightest basis for any of this at all, and I immediately found this Institute for Public Policy Research handy how-to publication: Warm Words: How Are We Telling the Climate Story and Can we Tell It Better?

One explanatory diagram

Many of the existing approaches to climate change communications clearly seem unproductive. And it is not enough simply to produce yet more messages, based on rational argument and top-down persuasion, aimed at convincing people of the reality of climate change and urging them to act. Instead, we need to work in a more shrewd and contemporary way, using subtle techniques of engagement.

To help address the chaotic nature of the climate change discourse in the UK today, interested agencies now need to treat the argument as having been won, at least for popular communications. This means simply behaving as if climate change exists and is real, and that individual actions are effective. The ‘facts’ need to be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken.…

What is significant here is that this discourse is immune to scientific argument, since it is simply constructed in a different way. Its currency is not science but ‘common sense’. The prevalence of this repertoire in public media underlines that the task of climate change agencies is not to persuade by rational argument but in effect to develop and nurture a new ‘common sense’.…

Much of the noise in the climate change discourse comes from argument and counter-argument, and it is our recommendation that, at least for popular communications, interested agencies now need to treat the argument as having been won. This means simply behaving as if climate change exists and is real, and that individual actions are effective. This must be done by stepping away from the ‘advocates debate’ described earlier, rather than by stating and re-stating these things as fact.

The ‘facts’ need to be treated as being so taken-for-granted that they need not be spoken. The certainty of the Government’s new climate-change slogan — ‘Together this generation will tackle climate change’ (Defra 2006) — gives an example of this approach. It constructs, rather than claims, its own factuality.

Where science is invoked, it now needs to be as ‘lay science’ — offering lay explanations for what is being treated as a simple established scientific fact, just as the earth’s rotation or the water cycle are considered…

Opposing the enormous forces of climate change requires something superhuman or heroic. Science is not enough — especially when scientists argue among themselves. What is needed is something more magical, more mythical. Many strong and successful brands have a kind of myth at their core — they appear to reconcile things that are normally impossible to reconcile.

The US Senate Committtee on Environment and Public Works released the following yesterday:

A U.S. based environmental magazine that both former Vice President Al Gore and PBS newsman Bill Moyers (for his October 11th global warming edition of “Moyers on America” titled “Is God Green?”) have deemed respectable enough to grant one-on-one interviews to promote their projects, is now advocating Nuremberg-style war crimes trials for skeptics of human caused catastrophic global warming.

Grist Magazine’s staff writer David Roberts called for the Nuremberg-style trials for the “bastards” who were members of what he termed the global warming “denial industry.”

Roberts wrote in the online publication on September 19, 2006, “When we’ve finally gotten serious about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we’re in a full worldwide scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards — some sort of climate Nuremberg.”

UPDATE

And over on the Huffington Post, the same David Roberts bleats that he is being attacked! Though he is willing to admit to “rhetorical excess,” Roberts is not really taking back what he said about crimes and trials. All we Global Warming skeptics are just a bunch of hired mercenary corporate flacks, who know perfectly well that Roberts and the other goofball, tree-hugging, Luddite moonbats are correct about the science, we’re just lying. Oh, sure. Pretty to think so, if you’re a moonbat.

Well, if they are ever going to be putting people on trial for lying about Global Warming, my next posting makes it pretty clear just who it is that will be standing in the dock.

The endless calls for “civility” among the nation’s political and media elite have become so numbing that it’s difficult to get out from under the haze and speak simply about this. But it needs to be said: These people are, morally if not legally, criminals.

EARLIER RELATED POSTING

The Daily Briefing, last year, suggested adding climate-change deniers to Holocaust deniers on the list of persons prosecutable for crimes committed by expressing certain ideas in speech or writing.

David Irving is under arrest in Austria for Holocaust denial. Perhaps there is a case for making climate change denial an offence – it is a crime against humanity after all. Twenty good years of action have been lost courtesy of climate change sceptics, many of whom did not act in good faith – they were protecting and promoting vested interests.

Brendan O’Neill, in spiked, observes that the patience of the elect is wearing thin.

There is a tidal wave of intolerance in the debate about climate change which is eroding free speech and melting rational debate. There has been no decree from on high or piece of legislation outlawing climate change denial, and indeed there is no need to criminalise it, as the Australian columnist suggests. Because in recent months it has been turned into a taboo, chased out of polite society by a wink and a nod, letters of complaint, newspaper articles continually comparing climate change denial to Holocaust denial. An attitude of ‘You can’t say that!’ now surrounds debates about climate change, which in many ways is more powerful and pernicious than an outright ban. I am not a scientist or an expert on climate change, but I know what I don’t like – and this demonisation of certain words and ideas is an affront to freedom of speech and open, rational debate.

The loaded term itself — ‘climate change denier’ — is used to mark out certain people as immoral, untrustworthy. According to Richard D North, author most recently of Rich is Beautiful: A Very Personal Defence of Mass Affluence: ‘It is deeply pejorative to call someone a “climate change denier”…it is a phrase designedly reminiscent of the idea of Holocaust denial — the label applied to those misguided or wicked people who believe, or claim to believe, the Nazis did not annihilate the Jews, and others, in very great numbers.’ People of various views and hues tend to get lumped together under the umbrella put-down ‘climate change denier’ — from those who argue the planet is getting hotter but we will be able to deal with it, to those who claim the planet is unlikely to get much hotter at all. On Google there are now over 80,000 search returns, and counting, for the phrase climate change denial.

Others take the tactic of openly labelling climate change deniers as cranks, possibly even people who might need their heads checked. In a speech last month, in which he said people ‘should be scared’ about global warming, UK environment secretary David Miliband said ‘those who deny [climate change] are the flat-earthers of the twenty-first century’. Taking a similar tack, former US vice president-turned-green-warrior Al Gore recently declared: ‘Fifteen per cent of the population believe the moon landing was actually staged in a movie lot in Arizona and somewhat fewer still believe the Earth is flat. I think they all get together with the global warming deniers on a Saturday night and party.’

It is not only environmentalist activists and green-leaning writers who are seeking to silence climate change deniers/sceptics/critics/whatever you prefer. Last month the Royal Society — Britain’s premier scientific academy founded in 1660, whose members have included some of the greatest scientists — wrote a letter to ExxonMobil demanding that the oil giant cut off its funding to groups that have ‘misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence’. It was the first time the Royal Society had ever written to a company complaining about its activities. The letter had something of a hectoring, intolerant tone: ‘At our meeting in July…you indicated that ExxonMobil would not be providing any further funding to these organisations. I would be grateful if you could let me know when ExxonMobil plans to carry out this pledge.’

Hat tip to Seneca the Younger.

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UPDATE 10/12

Nuremberg Trials Proposed for Global Warming Deniers

Ann Althouse this morning, quotes a colleague asking rhetorically (and disingenously): What is the rational basis for banning same-sex marriage?

It’s perfectly possible to propose a rational debate on this kind of question, but when one finds that the debate’s proposer has already engineered the grammar of the proposition around so as to make the ordinary status quo appear in the guise of some intended innovation and aggression against the rights of others, it is apparent that there is a certain effort underway to fix the outcome of the debate before it has begun. “How dare some people suddenly compel the legislature and the courts to ban Gay Marriage!”

Of course, we all know that the precise opposite is the case.

Marriage is a human institution existing immemorially, even from times preceding the organization of the state itself, long prior to the creation of individual American states or the United States. The state never created marriage, but merely recognizes marriage as an estate, i.e., as a recognizable status conferring a number of customary privileges and immunities.

That marriage consists of the union of one man and one woman has been its definition for at least the entirety of the Christian era, some two thousand years. The innovation consists of the revolutionary demand that the definition of this most fundamental of human institutions must be modified to confer equality of status on homosexual relations in accordance with the wishes of a contemporary minority.

The increased popularity of monogamous homosexual relationships over the two decades following the arrival of the AIDS epidemic seems to many of us a positive development, but it is far from clear that the fashion would survive the removal of the health threat. Is two decades of anything a sufficient basis to modify the most fundamental institution of human society?

Liberalism has triumphed in the jurisprudential debate about the law’s treatment of homosexuality since the time of the Wolfenden Report. The consensus of opinion these days holds that Mill was correct. Absent some demonstrable harm to others from private action, the state has no right to interfere with the private conduct of consenting adults. Homosexuals have a right to do as they like in private, and the rest of us are obliged to respect that right. We owe them our tolerance.

We do not, however, owe homosexuals our applause and approval.

Just as it is possible to be a law-abiding and unoffending member of the community, and indulge in homosexual acts with another consenting adult in private, it is also perfectly possible to subscribe to religious or other opinions which take a negative view of homosexuality.

Alteration of the definition of marriage to include homosexual liaisons would, in fact, confer both public recognition and approval upon those liaisons in a form which the majority of American are not voluntarily willing to concede.

There is nothing coercive in declining to consent to the adoption of a new and revolutionary definition of marriage. But the forced participation of an unwilling national majority in the public recognition and celebration of unconventional liaisons would be indubitably coercive.

No one is “banning Gay Marriage” by prohibiting homosexuials from conducting whatever private ceremonies or taking whatever personal and private view of their own relationships they like. It is simply the case that a majority of Americans are declining to share those particular views or to recognize those particular ceremonies as meaningful to themselves in the same way.

I obviously disagree with the proposed “state interest” approach to analysis. But if I were compelled to argue in that form, I would observe that a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as it is traditionally understood, as the union of a man and a woman, should be perfectly constitutional. States obviously have a right to define legal concepts and institutions. They have a particularly good right to do so, when they are making no change whatsoever, but merely identifying what has always been understood to be the case.

The obvious line of attack for the left will be via the Equal Protection Clause. But there is no inequality to it. Everyone has just as much right to marry anybody else as he ever did. Arguing that you want to do something different and call it marriage, and you want everyone else to call it marriage, too, and they won’t, and you don’t like it, does not mean you have been treated unequally.

The Washington Examiner editorializes:

Something almost without precedent in America will happen Thursday. That’s the day when McCain-Feingold — aka the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 — will officially silence broadcast advertising that contains criticism of members of Congress seeking re-election in November. Before 2006, American election campaigns traditionally began in earnest after Labor Day. Unless McCain-Feingold is repealed, Labor Day will henceforth mark the point in the campaign when congressional incumbents can sit back and cruise, free of those pesky negative TV and radio spots. It is the most effective incumbent protection act possible, short of abolishing the elections themselves.

How can this possibly be, you ask? McCain-Feingold — named after the law’s main advocates, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Russ Feingold, D-Wis. — bans all broadcast political advocacy advertising that mentions candidates by name, beginning 60 days before the election. President Bush signed and the U.S. Supreme Court shockingly upheld McCain-Feingold three years ago…

None of this would surprise Alexander Hamilton, who argued in “The Federalist Papers” that written guarantees of things like freedom of the press would be purposely misconstrued by ambitious politicians and used as a pretext to do that which the Constitution banned: “I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretense for claiming that power.” That is just about exactly what has happened now with the First Amendment and freedom of political speech, thanks to McCain-Feingold.

By election day, it should be clear to all reasonable persons that McCain-Feingold was a serious mistake and, like Prohibition, ought to be repealed.

George W. Bush was conserving all that political capital he was going to use to pass Social Security reform and permanent tax reform. He knew that the Supreme Court would jjust have to strike down McCain-Feingold, so why take the heat? He went ahead and signed it.

The Supreme Court’s astonishing ruling in McConnell v. Federal Election Commission, I woud say, deserves to rank as the absolute nadir of Supreme Court decisions, worse than Kelo, worse than Roe, worse than Dred Scott.

The Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 is not only a direct attack on free speech, it is a direct attack on political free speech. If any form or species of speech deserves to be more protected than others, surely it would have to be specifically political free speech.

Senator John McCain, whose name was attached to this abominable piece of legislation, is likely to be a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. Let’s hope it does not escape the GOP’s attention that this potential nominee has a record of conspicuous enmity to both the First and Second Amendments.

More than 5000 current and retired law enforcement officers have joined Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (LEAP), an organization founded to fight for the abolition of the United States’ current illiberal, ineffective, and socially destructive drug laws.

The enforcement of drug prohibition in the United States costs tens of billions of dollars per year, creates a black market fostering violent crime, and results in the incarceration of enormous numbers of American for victimless crimes. Because of the War on Drugs, the United States has the largest prison population in the world, more than 2,090,000 persons. The US imprisons a larger percentage of its population than any other country in the world. Belarus comes in second.

LEAP has produced an eloquent video which I highly recommend.

Jill Stewart, in the LA Daily News, denounces some of California’s latest absurd legislative proposals.

IN 1966, California voters created a full-time Legislature after Speaker Jesse Unruh promised a dazzlingly “professional” Legislature instead of part-timers earning $6,000 yearly. By 2007, legislators will earn $145,097 in wages and per diem, costing roughly $200 million annually, yet taxpayers get a dubious “product” in return: mountains of pointless laws.

We are drowning in 47,000 new laws enacted since 1966, covering everything from the size of typeface on official notices on employee bulletin boards to the arcane timing dictating when you must use your windshield wipers.

You couldn’t know this, but it’s illegal to throw away your cell phone. Lawbreaker!..

in 2004, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger made news. He vetoed 311 bills. His vetoes caused legislators momentary pause. They sent him “only” 961 laws in 2005. Arnold let 729 become law — a “record low” in our times.

He has vetoed bills to strip independence from charter schools, to tell schools what sort of sprinklers to install, to protect grape pickers from eating unwashed grapes. He vetoed Assembly Bill 13 to prohibit “Redskins” as a school mascot, and AB 723 to require “tolerance training” of our kids — by our racially divided teachers. He vetoed AB 391 to pay “unemployment” to locked-out workers seeking raises (noting that “unemployment” checks are for people who lose jobs due to actions not their own — not for clever workers in the midst of negotiations). And many more.

Now, the Legislature is frenetically considering up to 1,700 extra laws before its Aug. 31 deadline — an embarrassing brew of self-serving special-interest claptrap that’s intrusive, abusive, regressive or downright offensive.

Assembly Bill 2641 by Democrat Joe Coto of San Jose, with scads of bipartisan coauthors, is the Legislature’s greedy bid to lure campaign riches from multimillionaire tribes who back the bill. It lets the “Native American Heritage Commission” delay any ground-disturbing activity in California — think of the possibilities! — that unearths remotely arguable “burial” items. It lets this commission, promoting tribal interests, decide what’s a “burial ground” and halt projects.

In this bad dream, landowners must negotiate with designated “descendants” of bones. This “commission” should have no more power over your land than the chamber of commerce. With huge Assembly support, 42-2, it heads to the Senate floor.

Senate Bill 1523, by the bombastically business-hating Democrat Richard Alarcón of Sun Valley, seeks to punish Wal-Mart. It would require any city or county, before allowing a store bigger than 100,000 square feet (Wal-Mart), to order an “economic impact” report. The purpose is to create a costly barrier to a store that’s wildly popular with working folks. With a lopsided Senate Democratic vote of 24-12, it heads to the Assembly floor.

Another odious “Thank God we’re not poor” bill is SB 1578 by Democrat Alan Lowenthal of Long Beach, making it “a crime” to tether a dog to a stationary object longer than three hours. If you’ve spent time in South Central, Richmond or Compton, you know that families tether dogs at home to ward off gangs and dealers. California laws already ban inhumane treatment. This bill springs from spoiled brats earning $145,097. It even exempts the upwardly mobile: In recreation settings, dogs can be tethered all day. (Let the poor eat cake; the rest of us are rafting.) It passed the Senate 21-14, and heads to the Assembly floor.

And there’s AB 2360 from Democrat Ted Lieu of El Segundo, who snapped to it when Tom Cruise enthused over using an ultrasound device to watch his unborn child. This silly bill bans the sale of ultrasound machines to all but professionals. No word yet on preventing parental purchase of tall chairs, boom boxes and furniture with sharp corners. With big bipartisan Assembly support of 63-10, it heads to the Senate floor.

And many hundreds more. If you let them, politicians suffocate you with rules. I’m praying the governor gives us a new record low for California laws in 2006.

Joseph Pearce identifies the real issue underlying Britain’s hunt ban.

The urban proletariat and its Labour Party representatives perceived hunting as a preserve of the rich and as an archaic throwback to the days of feudalism and privilege. In fact, hunting is enjoyed by all social classes in rural England and is an expression of the community spirit that still survives in the countryside, even as it has long since become extinct in the cities. This fact was made glaringly obvious by the sheer enormity of the size of the pro-hunt demonstration by the Countryside Alliance before the ban became law. The rural rich and poor descended on London expressing the unity of the countryfolk of England against the stripping of their ancestral rights by an urban tyranny alienated by the very notion of cultural roots and traditional notions of communitas.

The central issue is not, however, merely a question of tradition versus modernity, though this is doubtless a key and important factor in the tension between town and country. The central issue is connected to what the Catholic Church has termed “subsidiarity.” The principal objection to the banning of hunting is that the urban proletariat had no right to override the wishes of the majority of people in the countryside to pursue their ancient traditions unmolested. No foxes are hunted in Hampstead or in Birmingham. No stags are pursued through the streets of Liverpool or Manchester. What right, therefore, do the people of these areas have to dictate what the people of Much Wenlock or Moreton-in-the-Marsh can or can’t do in the fields surrounding their villages? Why should the tradition-oriented folk of the English shires be forced to conform to the conventions of what Evelyn Waugh described “as our own deplorable epoch”? Why should the civilized remnant of England be forced to practice the new barbarism of our modern cities? These, as I say, are the key questions raised by the banning of hunting.

We have the same thing here already with respect to gun ownership, and our traditional forms of field sport will sooner or later inevitably also face threats of legal prohibition inspired by urban intolerance.

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Hat tip to Steve Bodio.

Here’s a television advertisement from Greenpeace UK, which alarmingly illustrates the intolerance and appetite for power of Environmentalist extremists.

Gas Guzzler video