Feds vs Salt

The Federal government is now taking it upon itself to regulate how much salt you get in your food.

The Washington Post reports:

The Food and Drug Administration is planning an unprecedented effort to gradually reduce the salt consumed each day by Americans, saying that less sodium in everything from soup to nuts would prevent thousands of deaths from hypertension and heart disease. The initiative, to be launched this year, would eventually lead to the first legal limits on the amount of salt allowed in food products.

Obamacare and Home Visits

Ken Blackwell at American Thinker looks at the allegedly “voluntary” home visits and inspections hidden in the monstrosity of legislation that is Obamacare. Sure, governmental mandates for home inspections on behalf of politically motivated social services couldn’t possibly be abused.

Is your family being “targeted” for such home visitations? Let’s see if you fit into one of these very broad categories:

• Families where Mom is not yet 21. (No mention here whether she is married or not.)
• Families where someone is a tobacco user. (Does this include the White House? Watch out, Sasha and Malia! Does Grandpa, whom you love and have taken in, enjoy his after-dinner pipe?)
• Families where children have low student achievement, developmental delays, or disabilities.

Victimless Crimes

John Stossel at Townhall writes about prohibitions for things relating to your use of your own body and victimless crimes. No matter what it is you want to do, it seems someone in power will tell you that you can’t, because it’s for your own good. I can determine my own good without your elite and expert opinion, thank you very much.

The prohibitionists say their rules are necessary for either the public’s or the particular individual’s own good. I’m skeptical. I think of what Albert Camus said: “The welfare of humanity is always the alibi of tyrants.” Prohibition is force. I prefer persuasion. Government force has nasty unintended consequences.

I would think that our experience with alcohol prohibition would have taught America a lesson. Nearly everyone agrees it was a disaster. It didn’t stop people from drinking, but it created new and vicious strains of organized crime. Drug prohibition does that now.

Read the rest here.

Eugene Volokh on Reason TV

Ted Balaker at Reason Magazine interviews Eugene Volokh of the Volokh Conspiracy on gun rights, free expression, and the welfare state. Volokh is a law professor who immigrated from the Soviet Union, so his take on socialism and government control is particularly interesting to me.

Find out what Volokh thinks the biggest threats to free expression are, and whether today’s muzzlers come mostly from the left or right. Volokh also explains what the landmark Supreme Court case, DC vs. Heller, has done to gun control and whether he agrees with the “more guns, less crime” thesis.

Video:

Big Brother and Banks

Arguing that “tax havens” are not focused centers of dirty money and money laundering, the Cato Institute’s Daniel Mitchell asks whether expensive and invasive money laundering laws that force banks to snoop on their customers are actually effective or worthwhile.

Coercion and Liberty

Jed Gladstein at American Thinker addresses a very interesting and imprtant subject — the use of coercion by government to attain certain goals, even what are seen as higher0minded or enlightened goals.

Lawsuits Fight Government DNA Database

Reason Magizine mentions a story on parents who are fighting efforts by some states to keep newborn DNA records on file. The tests are done to detect genetic defects in newborns.

The genetic tests are done without the parents’ consent, and some states then keep the DNA profiles for years. State laws vary on length of time the samples are kept, from just a few days in many states; to Indiana and New Jersey’s oddly specific 23-year cutoff; to California and Florida, which keep the DNA “indefinitely.”

Big Brother is Monitoring You

Steve McCann at American Thinker mentions three instances of the Obama Administration working to pry itself into our private lives and monitor normal activities for no good reason. Apparently the Left isn’t too concerned with the government looking into your banking records or monitoring your cell phone conversations without a warrant. Of course, had anything even remotely resembling these efforts manifested under Bush, there would have been cries for blood in the street …

Full Body Scans vs Privacy

The United Kingdom has installed those fancy full body scanners that let people see through your clothes. You know, the ones that have people over here worried about privacy issues. Of course, if the UK were so worried about privacy they wouldn’t have the highest per capita number of security cameras or be employing military drones to monitor their citizens, but I digress.