It’s time once again for a review of the ever-changing, increasingly complex, regulation of alcohol around these United States. This should give you something to cheer and/or lament at happy hour tonight.
Connecticut: With only 20 days left in the state’s legislative calendar, supporters of liquor-law reform are getting nervous. Though we learned last month that an edited version of Governor Malloy’s proposal had wide-reaching support, Malloy brought the process to a halt. He says while the new proposal would legalize Sunday sales, the new striped-down version doesn’t do enough to help consumers. He wants to get rid of pricing laws that make liquor in the state more expensive than neighboring territories.
District of Columbia: Mayor Vincent Gray plans to bump up last call to 3 a.m. on weekdays and 4 a.m. on weekends with the hope of making streets safer. Unfortunately, more than 250 bars and restaurants, or 20 percent, will be excluded. During last Tuesday’s discussion of the “bar bill,” we learned that ABRA decided that bars with existing voluntary agreements with their neighborhoods would be exempt. Of the 1,169 liquor licensees in the city, 409 have voluntary neighborhood agreements and 267 of those include closing hour restrictions.
Illinois: Last month, Chicago overturned a 15-year-old ban on alcohol advertising on its transit system. The move will bring an estimated $3.2 million in additional revenue, but anti-alcohol groups are predictably unhappy about the change.
Mississippi: This month, Governor Phil Bryant gave his signature of approval to a bill that would finally raise the cap on the allowable amount of alcohol sold in the state. Bill 2878 raises the cap from 5 percent alcohol by weight (about 6 percent ABV) to 8 percent ABW. While true craft beer enthusiasts will still need to engage in a bit of bootlegging to get the stronger stuff, kudos to folks at Raise Your Pints Mississippi, the grassroots organization that has fought for beer consumers in the state for several years. The law will go into effect on July 1 — just in time for Independence Day.
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Last weekend, there was a public memorial service at Cooper Union in New York to commemorate the voice of the late Christopher Hitchens. I missed that gathering, unfortunately, but this weekend, there is another big event that will remind me of my most cherished memories of the man. No, it’s not the White House Correspondents Dinner tomorrow night. I never had the opportunity to attend one of the Vanity Fair after-parties in his apartment near the Washington Hilton.
No, the event I’m talking about is the NASCAR race this weekend at the Richmond International Raceway, the same race that he and I traveled to one weekend in 2005. “What?” you ask. It seems to you that the late Mr. Hitchens and NASCAR would mix together about as smoothly as Texas crude and distilled water?
Well, you’re partly right. As I write in the March print edition of The American Spectator (also online), what began as my half-joking recommendation that he attend a NASCAR race to “see a piece of Americana” turned into an unforgettable weekend when he took me up on my offer to drive him down to the the race in Richmond. He was doing a series of pieces on “red state America” for Vanity Fair, and NASCAR certainly fit the bill. I had written a few pieces on NASCAR as a reporter for Investor’s Business Daily, and I did my best to serve as his ambassador to the sport and to red state America. Walking around the infield media center of the Richmond track with his trademark whiskey flask, Hitchens was immediately recognized and feted by a local sportswriter as well.
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The TSA has been making a lot of headlines lately. None of them are very flattering:
- A woman going through Madison, Wisconsin’s airport was reduced to tears and was visibly shaking during her pat-down. A fellow traveler took video, which you can see here. Many victims of sexual abuse have reported feeling similar emotions during pat-downs.
- Dina Frank is 7 years old and has cerebral palsy. She needs leg braces and crutches to walk, and has had a double hip replacement. Since she can’t walk through the metal detectors, she has to get pat-down every time she flies. The screeners were apparently aggressive as well as thorough, and upset the poor child. The screening took so long, her family ended up missing their flight. TSA defended the actions, saying proper procedures were followed.
- A now-former TSA officer is facing 20 years in prison for trafficking painkillers. Twenty people have been arrested in the case, and two TSA officers have so far pled guilty. If the FDA and DEA weren’t so intent on limiting the supply of pain relief, this black market would never have emerged. And the sentence is entirely out of line for a victimless crime. But it does show that TSA employees are corruptible.
- Two TSA employees in Los Angeles have also been charged with drug trafficking. They allegedly accepted cash bribes to let narcotics pass through LAX.
- A Congressman who co-sponsored an anti-TSA bill received a particularly vigorous pat-down, and is calling it assault.
- An elderly couple with two artificial knees and an artificial hip between them weren’t that surprised to set off a metal detector and be patted down as a result. But they were surprised to go through multiple pat-downs, and that $300 in cash was stolen.
- A frequent flyer, feeling harassed in Portland, Oregon’s airport, lost his cool and stripped naked. According to the police report, “Mr. Brennan’s actions caused two screening lanes to be closed and while some passengers covered their eyes and their children’s eyes and moved away from the screening area, others stepped out of the screening lanes to look, laugh and take photos of Mr. Brennan.”
- And as a bonus, a (non-TSA) London screener gave a surprisingly thorough screening to supermodel Bar Rafaeli, which she remarked “left no doubt about her sexual preferences.”
Americans have long beat their chests and bragged about their liberties. But more and more these are empty boasts — the land of the free is really the land of the regulated; the home of the brave now the home of the bureaucracy.
Take our insane “war on drugs,” an affront not only to common sense and fiscal sanity, but also to basic civil liberty. As is often the case, government has gained control of our bodies by regulating the market, i.e., dictating what you can or can’t buy, sell, or own, in this case, narcotics.
By what right does the government lay claim to this power? Often it is said — erroneously — that drug prohibition laws as are “society’s” way of sending a message — the message that drugs are immoral and/or physically dangerous to consume.
Nonsense. First, there is no such thing as a collectively moving “society.” There are only individuals who individually make countless decisions every day about how to conduct their own lives. Since every single day many millions of these individuals choose to intoxicate themselves with some substance or other, in spite of our vast prohibition infrastructure, if “society” is sending a message with its drug laws, then individuals don’t seem to be getting that message.
Of course, even if it was getting through, the logic of the message is downright abysmal. Wouldn’t everything “immoral” or “dangerous” be ripe for prohibition, then? As William F. Buckley famously observed, adultery is immoral, but the state doesn’t go around locking up people who cheat on their spouses. Eating a rib-eye steak is (allegedly) bad for you, but that doesn’t mean we close down Morton’s, The Palm, or any other red meat pusher (although maybe we shouldn’t be giving Mayor Bloomberg an ideas).
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Senators “will let legislation on domestic violence” known as the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act “pass the upper chamber despite having concerns about its constitutionality,” reports The Hill newspaper. That includes a provision backed by Democrats “empowering American-Indian tribal authorities to prosecute” non-Indians.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said he was “really taken back by some of the changes in laws dealing with Indian reservations,” calling it “unacceptable and very bad policy.”
A Republican aide cited a Congressional Research Service report that warned expanding the prosecutorial power of tribal authorities could violate constitutional guarantees on due process and double jeopardy.
UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh yesterday raised additional civil liberties problems with the Violence Against Women Act reauthorization, arguing that the changes made to the existing VAWA statute by Senate Democrats violate First Amendment free speech guarantees [first, second posts]. Volokh is one of the law professors most frequently cited by federal judges and America’s law reviews, and the author of two First Amendment textbooks, The First Amendment and Related Statutes (4th ed. 2011), and The Religion Clauses and Related Statutes (2005).
William Creeley of FIRE, and former ACLU Board member Wendy Kaminer, say that the Senate reauthorization bill drafted by Senator Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) would undermine due process on college campuses. Lawyer John Hinderaker raised additional civil-liberties objections to the bill’s expansion of tribal court jurisdiction. I earlier discussed some pitfalls of the bill here at this link.
Even the original 1994 version of the Violence Against Women Act had flaws. It contained a provision later struck down by the Supreme Court in United States v. Morrison (2000), and declared unconstitutional, because it exceeded Congress’s powers under the Fourteenth Amendment and the Interstate Commerce Clause. That invalid provision created a tort remedy for gender-motivated domestic violence that largely duplicated state laws (all states ban domestic violence, and take such crimes seriously). The statute’s crowd-pleasing title (no one wants to be accused of being in favor of “violence against women”) diverted attention away from its constitutional flaws. Lawyers and judges who raised valid federalism objections to this provision were ridiculed by people like Joe Biden, who falsely depicted them as ignorant. VAWA’s title continues to prevent dispassionate analysis of its provisions, and potentially opens the door to new constitutional violations being added to it.
Republican senators like Charles Grassley of Iowa have also objected to the lack of safeguards against fraud in the law and the misuse of millions of dollars in taxpayer money that should have been used to help victims of domestic violence. (Even if the Senate reauthorization does not pass the House, programs set up by the 1994 VAWA law will continue to operate.)
In primitive societies, people blame their misfortunes on witchcraft and other imaginary phenomena. The American Left blames the Koch brothers for everything, with equally little basis in reality. (One of my uncles, who once volunteered for Obama, told me that to him, the Koch brothers are like “the devil.”) The Kochs are routinely blamed by progressives for pushing all sorts of legislation that the Kochs have absolutely no interest in, and that would not financially benefit them or Koch Industries one bit. To be responsible for all the activity attributed to them by leftists, the Kochs would have to have supernatural energy and powers, much like the witches of primitive mythology.
A recent example of legislation falsely attributed to the Koch brothers is Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, which the Koch brothers had nothing to do with at all. The Stand Your Ground laws that exist in two dozen states were not invented by or advocated by the Koch brothers, nor did these laws radically change when people are allowed to use firearms in self-defense, as I explained earlier. (As the San Francisco Chronicle’s Bob Egelko and others have noted, Stand Your Ground laws took the definition of self-defense that had long been used in court rulings in states like California for up to 150 years, and formally codified them into state law, slightly broadening the definition of self-defense in those states that previously imposed more of a duty to retreat before using force in self-defense.)
Karen Finney, guest hosting for MSNBC’s Martin Bashir, blamed Charles and David Koch for the Trayvon Martin shooting, which she sought to link to Florida’s Stand Your Ground law (despite the fact that the Stand Your Ground law did not change Florida self-defense law very much, and the fact that homicide and crime went down in Florida after the state’s Stand Your Ground law was enacted):
Who was the Typhoid Mary for this horrible outbreak? It’s the usual suspects the Koch brothers…the same people who stymied gun regulation at every point who funded and ghost write these laws.
Finney, a Democratic operative, had absolutely no basis for this claim about the Koch brothers, and simply made it up, as a Minnesota lawyer pointed out. In response to demands for a correction, MSNBC has not cited any evidence for this baseless claim, because there just isn’t any. It’s completely baseless. In fact, the only lobbying on firearms issues the Koch brothers ever engaged in “in Florida was in opposition to the National Rifle Association’s support for a bill that mandated employers must allow employees to bring firearms onto company property.”
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Street musicians were recently banned from playing bagpipes in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Mayor Gregor Robertson was not happy about it. He takes great pride in his Scottish heritage, to the point of wearing a kilt to the swearing-in ceremony for his second term. So when Vancouver’s engineering department went over his head, he vowed to fight back.
Most city council members are from Robertson’s Vision Vancouver party, and they agreed to review the bagpipe ban. Just in time for the city’s Scotland Week celebration, Robertson happily announced that the ban was lifted:
“Buskers play a very important role in making Vancouver’s streets lively and dynamic, particularly in our vibrant downtown. The council won’t support an outright ban on specific instruments. The restriction on bagpipes has now been lifted. Staff will continue to gather noise level readings, monitor complaints and work with musicians and performers to see how these instruments can be permitted in a way that is acceptable to the public.”
Say what you will about bagpipe music. Banning it is bad policy. Kudos to Mayor Robertson and Vancouver’s city council for giving buskers the opportunity to make a little bit of money and add to the city’s cultural life.
“In San Francisco, Judge Richard Kramer has dismissed the Center for Science in the Public Interest’s lawsuit on behalf of parent Monet Parham seeking to declare unlawful McDonald’s practice of including a toy in its Happy Meal,” notes the Cato Institute’s Walter Olson at the world’s oldest law blog, Overlawyered. Olson wrote in December 2010 about the lawsuit and misleading press coverage of the case, which falsely depicted the plaintiff as being just an ordinary, “random” mom, rather than the liberal “activist” she in fact was:
With perfect Grinch timing, a consumer group has sued McDonald’s demanding that it take the toys out of its Happy Meals. The Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group, claims it violates California law for the hamburger chain to make its meals too appealing to kids, thus launching them on a lifelong course to overeating and other health horrors. It’s representing an allegedly typical mother of two from Sacramento named Monet Parham. What’s Parham’s (so to speak) beef? “Because of McDonald’s marketing, [her daughter] Maya has frequently pestered Parham into purchasing Happy Meals, thereby spending money on a product she would not otherwise have purchased.”
Around the time of the lawsuit, San Francisco’s City Council banned Happy Meals, in an ordinance that went into effect a year later. The City Council did so even though the meals in San Francisco’s own public schools are less healthy than at McDonald’s.
The woman who sued McDonald’s claimed that “her kids became disagreeable” and “pouted” when she said no to their requests for Happy Meals. If that’s a basis for suing, then, as Olson notes, “McDonald’s isn’t the only company that should worry. Other kids pout because parents won’t get them 800-piece Lego sets, Madame Alexander dolls and Disney World vacations. Are those companies going to be liable too?”
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Civility is at the very heart of civilization. Those two words, along with other words such as “city” and “citizen,” come from the Latin civitas, which means a body of citizens bound by common laws and rules. In other words, civilized people agree to be nice to each other. Think of how both you and the cashier usually say “thank you” when you buy your morning coffee, even if you’re complete strangers. Getting along in modern life would be impossible without at least passable manners.
Which brings us to today’s Regulation of the Day. La Toba, Spain’s mayor, Julian Altienza Garcia recently issued a 65-plank Courtesy Charter making it illegal to commit tactless acts in public from burping to slurping soup. To this writer’s knowledge, La Torba does not have a reputation as a bastion of barbarity.
The charter even contains a mandate of sorts — children are required to spend some time with their grandparents on a regular basis. It is not known how Spain’s Supreme Court would rule if they were to decide on the grandparent mandate’s legality.
Some of the other offenses include:
- Nosepicking;
- Touching your genitals;
- Flatulence;
- Yawning without covering your mouth;
- Coughing without covering your mouth; and
- Talking with your mouth full
None of these breaches of decorum are punishable beyond a dirty look and a wag of the finger. People convicted of other minor offenses will, however, be able to have their fines waived if they take etiquette courses. Mayor Garcia defends his Courtesy Charter, saying “It is a compendium of basic rules of politeness that are being lost and should not be forgotten.”
He’s right that manners are important. They shouldn’t be forgotten. And it certainly is useful to have a written etiquette primer. In fact, many already exist. You can look here, here, here, and here, for starters. But even if Mayor Garcia’s job description is as broad as he believes it to be, his constituents would be better served if he turned his attention to more pressing matters than other peoples’ boogers.
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