Put Your Hands On Your Head And Step Away From The Pale Ale...

Pennsylvania state police have raided three popular Philadelphia bars in order to seize sixty gallons of unlicensed beer - the bars, though they had purchased the beers legally and had paid all the necessary taxes on them, had failed to register them under their proper names with Pennsylvania's state Liquor Control Board. The fact that the bars were in possession of contraband suds became known to the police via a "citizen compaint". As it turns out, several of the beers were registered, albeit under somewhat different names than they were being sold under, and were mistakenly confiscated due to "clerical error" (read: bureaucratic incompetence); now their owners will have to go through a lengthy (six-to-eight month) process to prove that the beers actually are legal in order to get them back, by the completion of which the beer will have no doubt spoiled. There are a few key questions in this case, as I see it:

1.)How stupid and/or beholden to bureaucratic procedure are state employees if they can't tell that "Monk's Cafe Sour Flemish Red Ale" (the name under which one of the confiscated beers was being sold) just might be the same thing as "Monk's Cafe Ale" (the name under which it was registered with the PLCB)?

2.)As bar owner Leigh Maida asks, how can a government organ be responsible for regulating a product if it is not even aware of that product's actual name?

3.)Shouldn't these state troopers have been out writing traffic citations or doing something else of at least marginal benefit to the people of Pennyslvania? How does an amateur hour production of The Keystone Kops Meet The Untouchables "serve and protect" the citizens of the commonwealth?

4.)If it takes more than a dozen armed troopers to safely raid a couple of sedate, high-end Yuppie brewhouses, how many are necessary to secure, say, a crack den? A meth lab? A mob hideout?

5.)Given that these state troopers were not defraying the expense of their salaries by issuing revenue-enhancing fines to motorists, how much money did this operation cost the taxpayers of Pennsylvania?

6.)Who was responsible for the "citizen complaint" against the bars? Because whoever that person is, he or she really, really needs to be punched in the face, hard.

Have no fear, citizens of Pennsylvania. Your government can't necessarily protect you from crime, and they most certainly can't keep the roads you drive on in good repair or ensure your children a good education, but you can go to sleep at ease in the knowledge that they will never allow you to experience the horror of unknowingly ordering an unregistered microbrew when you go out to the bar. No doubt William Penn is looking down from heaven and smiling right now, knowing that the inhabitants of his land are able to live in such security.

Keep your hands off my friends' cigarettes

I see that New York busybody-in-chief, er, mayor, Michael Bloomberg, as is his wont, is hot on extending a smoking ban again, this time to publicly owned outdoor spaces such as parks and beaches. The logic being, of course, that everyone in a public place has a right to clean air. Guess what? If that's the case, then, as William Saletan points out in this article, we ought to ban smoking on private property as well, not to mention lighting the grill and driving cars.

I wasn't wildly enthusiastic about Bloomberg's 2002 ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, but at least in that case a sound argument could be made in favor on the grounds of public health. This is different. There is no evidence that secondhand smoke in outdoor places causes harm to other people, and even if there was, there are numerous ways to deal with the problem short of intrusive government restriction of private behavior. I hate smoking. I think it's a vile habit, I can't stand the stink of burnt tobacco, I feel an immediate and overpowering need to shower after I return home from spending time in a smoke-filled place, cigarette butts are my least favorite form of litter, I consider ashtrays fouler than toilets, and a smoking habit is one of the few things that's always been an unnegotiable and immediate deal-breaker for me with the opposite sex. And yet, people smoking on the beach or at the park has never bothered me. Truthfully, I can't even recall an incidence of it happening, but if there was one, I probably just moved to a different spot elsewhere in the park or a bit further down the beach, the same way I'd respond if I came across someone in one of those places who was talking too loudly or playing music I didn't like.

In my ideal world nobody would smoke tobacco, but I find the idea of the government attempting to enact that ideal by passing laws restricting the rights of my fellow citizens odious, no matter how widely shared by the populace or scientifically justifiable anti-smoking attitudes may be. That's doubly true when smokers are not bothering anyone else by pursuing their habit, which as far as my experience goes is the case here. Saletan quotes a NYC official who claims that smoking on the beach or at the park has "no redeeming value". Why doesn't he let the good people of New York, many of whom smoke, make that determination for themselves?