Second hand stupidity

LA Times:

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday approved sweeping new regulations that would treat e-cigarettes like conventional cigarettes, after one of the most personal debates to be heard on the council floor in years.

On a 14-0 vote, lawmakers outlawed "vaping" -- the practice of inhaling the vapors produced by e-cigarettes -- in most work sites and many public places, including parks and certain beaches.

The Nanny State strikes again.

As far as I'm aware, e-cigarettes are completely harmless. They pose no health risk to the people using them or to anyone around them. Those who smoke actual cigarettes find e-cigarettes a helpful aid when trying to quit. Yet they are now banned, even in many outdoor spaces, in the city of Los Angeles.

Much like the gun-Nazis in government schools who are suspending kids for wielding fingers and pastries because they resemble guns, the tobacco-Nazis must purge the Earth of anything that resembles a cigarette -- even if it actually benefits those who wish to quit the very malady they oppose.

That this law war passed on a 14-0 vote is perhaps the most disturbing of all. Apparently, not one of the city council members was willing to stand and defend individual freedom, which should include the freedom to make poor personal choices, but now doesn't even extend to the freedom to make good personal choices which might indirectly encourage others to make poor personal choices. This is a trend that will not end well.

Apparently, one of the members did make a gesture toward minimizing the council's usurpation of personal freedom, but when his amendment failed, he voted for the measure anyway. An admirable display of courage, that.

Buscaino introduced an amendment to allow bars and nightclubs to be removed from the new regulations. But his measure received only six votes -- two shy of the amount needed for passage.

E-cigarettes “are not tobacco,” he said. “And I don’t think they should be regulated exactly the same way.”

Here's a thought. How about they shouldn't be regulated at all?

Any suggestions for a new line to close out the national anthem?

Stoopid government schools

Associated Press:

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- A central Ohio principal says she suspended a 10-year-old boy from school for three days for pretending his finger was a gun and pointing it at another student's head. 

Apparently this principal endorses a very strict reading of the Second Amendment, where the right to bear arms is protected, but the right to bear fingers is not. 

To be fair, I shouldn't only mock the principal for this nonsense. She was following her district's "zero tolerance" policy regarding "pretend gun play." Yes, there's an app for that.

Look, I get that people are concerned about gun violence, especially in our schools, but adopting policies of militant stupidity that prevent kids from being kids isn't the answer. 

Unfortunately, this isn't an isolated incident. The article mentions other examples, including a similar policy that was cited last year when a Maryland school suspended a 7-year-old boy who had chewed a Pop-Tart into a gun shape. It's unclear whether the yummy pastry was loaded, or whether the boy had obtained it legally.

It's easy to laugh this stuff off and chalk it up to good intentions gone awry. But it's far from clear that good intentions are behind these policies. It is clear, however, that some serious consequences result from them. Kids lose instruction time. Tax payer dollars are wasted. Good kids end up with permanent marks on their records suggesting that they are prone to violence, sexual harassment, and other offenses. These are heavy consequences for a 6-year-old to bear, for doing nothing 6-year-olds haven't been doing for centuries.

A toxic culture also emerges as a result of this nonsense. Educators -- nearly all of them Leftists -- get quite drunk on their power to militate for their causes. Don't like guns? Punish a 7-year-old for the way he eats. Think men are predators? Punish a 6-year-old for kissing a classmate's hand, even if she welcomes it. Don't like America? Ban the American flag while allowing flags of other countries to stay.

It's insidious. It's also dangerous. Such a culture becomes so rigid and controlling that not only are kids not allowed to be kids, but adults stop being adults as well:

A Minnesota public high school was so committed to obeying its fire drill policy to the exact letter of the law that it forced a female student–dressed only in a swimsuit, and sopping wet–to stand outside in the freezing cold for ten minutes. As a result, she suffered frostbite.

Administrators wouldn’t let the student retrieve her clothes, sit in a car or wait inside another building...

It was 5 degrees, with a wind chill of 25 below, and they literally forced this girl to stand there and freeze rather than allow her to take safe,  nearby shelter. How culture-whipped and unthinking does one have to be to blindly follow a policy that puts a kids' health in danger?

This is the price of militant stupidity. And no one does militant stupidity like government. Our government schools have gone down a very dangerous path. They have crossed the line from educational malpractice into child abuse. Our children are no longer safe, and it's not only mass murders we should fear, but those who would protect us from 7-year-olds wielding Pop-Tarts.